A Wedding, Wicked, and My Pumpkin Boy

Last weekend, Don and I attended his great friend Nick's wedding. Nick and Don served together on their church missions in Washington DC and then were roommates for several years in college. We commonly refer to Nick as "The Smartest Man Alive" since he really is exceptionally bright. He just graduated from Yale Law School in the Spring. Luckily, he found a fabulous girl named Michelle who is, amazingly, his equal in smarts and beauty. I only met her briefly with all the wedding hubbub, but I love her already and am thrilled that Nick found such a wonderful girl and so I can be friends with her (no selfish motive there at all! :).

We flew to Utah for the wedding last Thursday with our friend Luke and hung out with my family on Friday. My mom treated me and my sister-in-law, Jana to a pedicure. Oh, the joys of being pampered and spoiled by my mom! Then, we went to Cafe Rio and enjoyed some deliciousness before heading up to Nick and Shelley's rehearsal dinner.

Me, Mom, and Jana showing off our pretty toes

The rehearsal dinner was exceptionally fancy. It was at La Caille, which is a beautiful French restaurant with it's own pond, peacocks, bunnies, doves, fishes...and a lane that runs through about 2 acres of beautiful French gardens. I think it may be one of the only 5 star restaurants in Utah. The food was great and the company was even better.

I was thrilled to see many of my favorite people in the world (pictured below) and catch up after years of not seeing them. Eric and Jaime and their two kids are finishing up dental school in Las Vegas and planning on going on to oral surgery school. Dan and Holly Colton and their kids were also there. Dan just graduated from Law school at ASU and passed the bar. We also got to see Katie Neville! Katie is a longtime friend who now lives in Phoenix. She is one of the kindest, most thoughtful, just plain fun people I know. It was so good to see her and joke around like old times.

The wedding was wonderful on Saturday, as was the wedding luncheon and reception. My mom put in some serious babysitting for us while we were gone for hours on end, but I know Sam had a great time with her. He just giggles and giggles when he sees her.

Katie, Holly, Jaime, and me at La Caille.

The happy, handsome couple. Her dress was so beautiful!

Dan and Holly

Eric and Jaime

Don, Dan, Eric, and Luke. I know that everyone is going to love these awesomely cheesy pictures of themselves. :)

Check out Don's sweet mullet in the picture above! Eric took some pictures of us and we were flipping through them on our camera while a girl was singing a song at the wedding luncheon. When we saw this one, we started laughing so hard, we were both crying. I was hiding my face in my napkin and Don was all teary eyed and we could not stop laughing. I'm sure the girl singing thought we were laughing at her and everyone at our table was staring daggers at us so we'd shut up. It was just amazing how well Don's head had aligned with the girl's hair behind him and how close the color was! It was just too good! After she finished the song, we showed our friends the picture and then the understood the uncontrolled giggling. Who knew Don could be so handsome with a mullet!

Katie and Luke.

Don with his mission president and wife. I had never met them before and they had such nice things to say about Don. They are the sweetest people and she gives great hugs. I love people who love to hug.

We flew home on Sunday and on Wednesday night, we went to see Wicked at the Denver Performing Arts Center. Our friend Alan's wonderful parents live in Broomfield where Don grew up and babysat Sam while we went on a very hot downtown date.

We went to eat at this divey little Greek restaurant in Greektown and had some awesome gyros. Then, we headed off to the play. It was fantastic! We got tickets from the Family Housing Office, so we sat with a bunch of friends from work. We had such a nice time!

Don going in to the Gyros Place. It was awesomely divey. Several homeless people wandered by and in while we were there. Good times in downtown Denver!

The food was awesome! I love Gyros!

Me and Don trying to recreate the Wicked Poster. What a great show!

I took Sam's 5 month pictures on Friday. He is just a big boy. I wouldn't really say he is chubby - just exceptionally long and nicely filled out. He can roll from front to back and back to front (he's only done that twice) and is now blowing raspberries and making lots of new noises. I have to watch him more carefully now as he's starting to get himself into trouble (i.e. he kicked his playmat with all his toys on top of his head yesterday. Crazy kid.)

He is getting so big! I think if Sam and that bear got in a fight, I'd put my money on Sam. He definitely took the bear to town a couple times while I was taking the photos.

On Saturday, we went to Rock Creek Farms in Broomfield to the Pumpkin Patch. Sam looked so cute, I couldn't help take a million pictures of him in his funny little pumpkin hat. I love Halloween and doing fall things. It has been a cold fall here, so we were happy to have a nice sunny day yesterday. Today, it snowed... Crazy weather!

Sam was immediately thrilled with all the strange orange things in the field (as you can tell from his smile above). Most of the pumpkins were mushy because they froze early in the season, but we had a good time despite. Since we are cheap, we had already bought our pumpkins at the grocery store rather than spend the ridiculous amount the pumpkin patch charges. Unfortunately the crazy squirrels on crack in our complex ate one of our pumpkins (he ate the entire inside and most of the outside in just a few hours!), so now we only have one. We will have fun carving it with Sam later this week. I love to carve pumpkins!

He was definitely curious about the pumpkins