The Honeymoon

Part 1 -- The Hayride

Part 2 -- The Interview with Seth
Part 3 -- The Interim
Part 4 -- The Rook Party
Part 5 -- The Meeting
Part 6 -- The Sign
Part 7 -- The Phone Call
Part 8 -- The Dinner Party
Part 9 -- The History Channel
Part 10 -- The Trip to England
Part 11 -- The Homecoming
Part 12 -- The Interview with Seth (part 2)
Part 13 -- The EE Questions
Part 14 -- The April Phase
Part 15 -- The Birthday
Part 16 -- The Engagement
Part 17 -- The Memorial Day Picnic
Part 18 -- The Official Engagement
Part 19 -- The Date
Part 20 -- The Family Participation
Part 21 -- The Wedding Dress
Part 22 -- The Bridesmaid Dresses

Part 23 -- The Wedding Ring
Part 24 -- The Bridal Showers
Part 25 -- The Week Before
Part 26 -- The Rehearsal
Part 27 -- The Wedding Photos

Part 28 -- The Wedding

Part 29 -- The Reception

Appendix -- The Marriage Advice

Since we celebrated our 13th anniversary the other day, I thought I'd drag out our honeymoon photo album and post a few pictures from that era of history. 

Since I did most of the wedding planning, Seth took on the responsibility of planning the honeymoon (with my help, since he's a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of guy and I didn't think that would work out well on a honeymoon). We've both traveled quite a bit so we wanted to visit a place that neither of us had been before. Seth decided that it would be fun to go out West (or at least west of where we were currently living). We settled on a week in Lava Hot Springs, Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone.

The day after we were married, we took a flight into Bozeman, MT, rented a car, and drove down to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. We had heard that the hot springs there were world famous, and we wanted to see them. We stayed in Greystone Manor, a B&B that had been converted from an old church. 

Note that this was in the era before selfies and selfie sticks.
We had a real live person take this picture of us.
AND it was also in the era of 35mm cameras,
where we couldn't immediately see how it turned out and try for another if it didn't.
Thankfully, the person taking this was OK with the camera. 

After we settled into the room, we drove down the street to find the world-famous hot springs. And the only thing we found was this sign and, through some gates, what looked like a small area surrounded by concrete.

It wasn't what either of us had envisioned (I'm not sure what we had envisioned since neither of us had been to hot springs before), so we decided it wasn't worth our time to visit.

Instead, we finished out our time at Greystone Manor by enjoying the heart-shaped pancakes with coconut syrup the lady of the manor made for our breakfast.
Then we moved on to Jackson Hole, WY.

We hiked up a little trail to the top of the mountain to get a good look down into the valley where Jackson Hole is located. 

We arranged to stay at a guest house of a friend of a friend. And when we arrived, we found the place was infested with earwigs. Seriously. They were everywhere. But, there were no other available places to stay, so we moved into Earwig Palace, nestled in the valley of the Grand Tetons. And worked hard not to think about them crawling in our cooler of food and around the bed and over the floor.

Our favorite memory, besides hiking through the Grand Tetons, was eating at the Gun Barrel Steak and Game House. We loved the buffalo and vowed to find a place that served buffalo for every anniversary thereafter. (We kept that up for the next year. This year, we had steak on a dinner cruise, which was also very nice, but not nearly as tasty as the buffalo.)

We were proud that we got to check off three states from the list in one trip -- Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.

Then we started out on our way to Yellowstone, driving along the mountain chain. 

In front of the Grand Tetons

On a hike in the Tetons, courtesy of a timer on the camera

Sampling some of the fresh, mountain water.
(He didn't die or get dysentery.)

Having fun with the food storage bins that kept the bears away from the food.

After driving through the Tetons, we headed into Yellowstone and toured the park from there.

Of course, we stopped by Old Faithful and waited for it to erupt,
which it did, right on schedule!

We really enjoyed seeing all the hot springs. 

The Upper Falls

Somehow, we got the brilliant idea
that we would hike down to see the Lower Falls.
We didn't realize there were 350 steps involved.

After taking in the view from the bottom of the trail,
we realized we would need to hike back up all 383 steps.
There were a lot of steps.
A lot.
A. lot.

We tried to do what all the brochures say to do: stay out of their way.

A wildfire had gone through at some point previously. 

Our last stop was Mammoth Hot Springs. 

We had a great time traveling around together and a very difficult time coming back home and adjusting to real life (i.e., leaving each other to go our separate ways to work). I'm all for the ancient Israelite custom of the newly married man staying with his wife for a year before going off to war (or work, as the case may be). If a presidential candidate had that as a platform, I would totally vote for them. Totally.

Easter 2015

One of my favorite Easter memories is from 1979 -- when I was almost 4 and my sister was 2. 

My grandparents lived about 30 minutes from us and we often got together with them on Sunday afternoons, between church services. That Easter, we had dyed eggs and my Grandmaw went outside to hide them around the house for us to find. The hiding part was cut short when she came in to tell us that she had found a real live, baby (Easter) bunny by our wood pile. She'd almost stepped on the baby bunny and brought us all outside to show it to us. We all took turns holding the baby bunny (that's my Dad and me in the picture) and then returned him (or her) to the nest. I have no idea what happened to our Easter bunny after that but it was fun to enjoy a real bunny on Easter (with all disclaimers and acknowledgements that, of course, Easter is about about more than bunnies -- Easter is about celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, showing that He had paid the penalty for sin and offers eternal life to all who repent and believe in Him).

This year, our Easter didn't involve any bunnies, but it did involve a nice time with friends. After church, we enjoyed a delicious dinner at our friends' house and later the fathers went outside to hide the eggs for the kids. 

They had a great area to work with.

This was Cael's first time experiencing an Easter egg hunt, but he figured out pretty quickly what to do.

The boys (and Elizabeth and Hannah) enjoyed the hunt and took turns deciding who had found the most eggs.

It didn't really matter because we gave them a lesson in wealth redistribution when we came inside and sorted the eggs according to the initials we had written on them (all's fair in love and egg-hunting, you know).

Cael was thrilled about his candy and coins; Kieran just enjoyed opening the eggs to see what was inside. Money and candy don't really hold much interest for him. The peanut butter pie, on the the other hand, that his dad made and brought to share was a fixation of his. And said pie is now gone, most of the pieces being eaten by Kieran.

Kieran also enjoyed looking through tractor magazines with Don, a (retired) farmer from North Dakota who was visiting his daughter and family (our friends, the Liethas).

And, after the kids got out jump ropes to practice and play with, Seth decided his exercise for the day would be jumping rope (jump roping?), so he went out to show them all how it's done. He has his high school wrestling practices to thank for the skill and expertise he showed in the jump rope area.

We enjoyed remembering the resurrection of our Creator and Savior with our friends on Sunday afternoon and are thankful for the restful weekend we spent together as a family.

He is risen!

A love song

One of the things that I love about Seth is his sense of humor. The other day, I posted this on my Facebook status:

Random memory (as I listen to country songs on the radio -- don't judge): I once asked Seth why he never wrote a love song for me. He said, "Because nothing rhymes with 'Stacia'." ‪#‎acacia

Several friends offered their recommendations for words rhyming with "Stacia" . . . in case Seth wanted to write that song after all: aphasia, Valencia, facia.

My multi-talented SIL Ruth took it one step further and actually wrote a song on behalf of her brother in the country genre. It made me laugh and I thought I'd share it here, too.

Stacia, Stacia, oh mah, Stacia,
Ah jus’ wanna take this occasia
Ta sing y’a little song
 Cuz Ah cain’t help but praise ya!

Ain’t a never gonna take ya on a trip ta Asia,
But Ah can grill ya’ll a steak and feed ya focaccia.
Ah’d surely take the jolt if somebody tried ta taze ya
Even though it means Ah’ll get another abrasia.

Ah love the choice o’ yer life’s vocatia.
It don’t matter to me what yer boss pays ya.
Ah don’t care what the bathroom scale weighs ya,
All ya need ta know is that I gotta embrace ya.

As time goes by an the years start ta age ya,
If ya end up with rheumatism and hip dysplasia,
Even if ya grow some whiskers on yer facia,
Ain’t nuthin’ could convince me that Ah oughta replace ya!

While I'm on the topic of Ruth and her many talents, I thought I'd share these cute button puzzles she made for Kieran. I had mentioned a while ago that he was working on learning to button with some button boards but that I thought it would be good for him to practice on buttons of different sizes. Ruth immediately had the idea of making puzzles with buttons that he could practice with. And quick as a wink, she sewed up these two puzzles out of fabric scraps and buttons she had on hand for him to use.

He saw the dragon as an elephant. Can you?

He's enjoyed putting them together and taking them apart.

 I think she could start a business out of making custom button puzzles, don't you?

How I met your father, part 29

Part 1 -- The Hayride
Part 2 -- The Interview with Seth
Part 3 -- The Interim
Part 4 -- The Rook Party
Part 5 -- The Meeting
Part 6 -- The Sign
Part 7 -- The Phone Call
Part 8 -- The Dinner Party
Part 9 -- The History Channel
Part 10 -- The Trip to England
Part 11 -- The Homecoming
Part 12 -- The Interview with Seth (part 2)
Part 13 -- The EE Questions
Part 14 -- The April Phase
Part 15 -- The Birthday
Part 16 -- The Engagement
Part 17 -- The Memorial Day Picnic
Part 18 -- The Official Engagement
Part 19 -- The Date
Part 20 -- The Family Participation
Part 21 -- The Wedding Dress
Part 22 -- The Bridesmaid Dresses

Part 23 -- The Wedding Ring
Part 24 -- The Bridal Showers
Part 25 -- The Week Before
Part 26 -- The Rehearsal
Part 27 -- The Wedding Photos

Part 28 -- The Wedding

Appendix -- The Marriage Advice

Dearest Kieran and Cael, 

We've come to the end of our tale about how I met (and married) your father. I've enjoyed revisiting the beginnings of our relationship and remembering things I'd long forgotten. 

So, your father and I were finally married. After we exited the church sanctuary, we stood at the doors, greeting people as they moved into the reception area. I remember, in particular, your Uncle Dan passing by and giving your dad and me a big hug and saying with a huge smile on his face, "I am so happy for you guys!"

And I also remember taking off the shoes I was wearing because they were very uncomfortable and putting on another pair of sandals so that the circulation could continue to my feet. 

And then it was time for us to be introduced at the reception, "Mr. & Mrs. Seth McKeever." I loved hearing those words.

This was the spread your Aunt Katy put together to feed everyone.

After we made our entrance, we sat down at a table and ate a bit and then tried to make it around to chat with everyone who had come. I don't think we were able to talk with everyone, but it was so nice to have so many of our friends and family there with us to enjoy the day. 

And your Aunt Kenda was finally able to meet my boss -- someone she'd wanted to meet in person for quite a while. 

And this is just a fun aside -- my boss sent this note to my parents after he found out your dad and I were engaged. It meant a lot to me that he and his wife came to our wedding. 

We didn't do a lot of traditional weddingy things, like toss the bouquet or garter (I wasn't even wearing one), but we did keep the tradition of cutting the cake. 

Until I saw this picture, I'd forgotten your dad grabbed a big handful of cake and pretended he was going to shove it in my mouth.

We were kind to each other.

Until the end. If you look closely, you can see a bit of icing on your dad's nose. That was thanks to me.

And then we kissed and made up.

 I like to title the following pictures, "Son, if you ever hurt my daughter . . . "

 "Just kidding!"

After most of our guests left, we opened our presents so that our family could share in the joy of that moment with us.

A long-time friend of my parents, Ruth, was ready to help wherever she was needed. This time, she pitched in to help organize the flow of the presents. My parents (and I) still treasure their friendship with Ruth and Bill.

After the presents were opened, we changed our clothes and then got ready to leave for our honeymoon. My parents gathered up the presents and took them back to our condo for us. And I think everyone who was left helped to clean everything up.

Frost and Roger again participated in our wedding by offering us the use of their Miata as the get-away car. Roger even helped to decorate it.

We drove it to the hotel where we spent the night, and then they came and got it the next day while we went on our way to the airport. 

So there you have it. How I met your father. 

And, by God's grace, we've lived happily (for the most part) ever after. 

The end.