New beginnings

I have been debating about how to start this blog. I have had a hard time coming up with a name and then what to write about on the first entry. So I decided to start at the beginning, the beginning of our new family. I'll skip the how we met, and all that jazz. But Sunny and I knew each other for over a year before we got married. He said he knew right away that he wanted to marry me. It took me a lot longer.  But eventually I came around and we knew we would get married at some point. We slowly made plans and gathered decorations to use because we didn't want to be bombarded with the expense all at once and also because we would find good deals or something we loved and had to have along the way.

This is the boquet I had made, they are fabric flowers. It was mailed just in time for our wedding.

This was decorations I bought online which also arrived in time for our wedding, although it was too dark to actually see the flowers.

 All of those plans changed when Sunny got orders to go to Germany in July 2012. His order gave a report date of March 2013. At first it seemed like our options were to just pick a fall wedding or sometime early in 2013 or after he was in Germany. The more we learned about the PCS (permanent change of duty station) process, the more we realized it limited our options. To shorten the story we realized the best decision was to get married in August. This would allow us to move out to Sunny's current duty station, which he was required to live at, before the new school year for the boys. This would give us time to actually live together and get used to each other before a significant move to a new country. It also allowed us time for doing the necessary paperwork needed for the move. Becoming a military dependent is a long process, adding us to PCS orders for overseas is even longer.
So August was our month, the start of school was our deadline. We started the process, marriage license and started looking into where and who would marry us. On August 10 we were discussing plans and I made the comment wouldn't 8-10-12 be a great anniversary date, we would have a hard time forgetting that date.
That was it. It was settled.
We called an officiator and two witnesses and told them where to meet us that evening. I had my hair done at a local beauty shop, got the boys in suits and headed up the canyon with a few of the wedding decorations we had already purchased. Sunny and I wanted a wedding in the woods and Utah doesn't have great trees but it was the closest we would get.
From there things started to unravel quickly. First, it was a clear beautiful day and as we stood around waiting for everyone a random storm blew in. Strong winds, dark clouds and rain suddenly came on us. But we hoped it would blow over quickly. Then Our witnesses could not find the canyon for some reason. Its pretty easy to find if you watch the signs but somehow these two kept missing it. The canyon looses cell signal as well so we weren't really able to just give them directions. We kept having to drive down the canyon a bit to get ahold of them. They had sent a message saying they were giving up and going home that magically came through and my maid of honor and I hoped in the car and went down to convince them to meet us at the mouth of the canyon and follow us up. Finally we had  everyone there and we found the amphitheater and started to set up. That's when the ground keeper came by asking what we were up to. Apparently you can't just get married there, we were going to have to rent it. So we decided to rent a picnic site a little ways away. It was DARK by the time we finally were able to get married. Sunny and I had written our own vows and we couldn't even read them. Luckily all our friends own iPhones and it has a flashlight app. We both choked up a bit, but we did it.
After we got married we found a nearby restaurant and had a group dinner and ended with 2 slices of chocolate cake that we did feed each other. Sweet SGT Green surprised us by paying for the whole meal.
Our pictures are pretty awful but we do have a few of the days events which I will share.

Waiting for the rain and wind storm to stop

 

My maid of honor and myself at dinner

                            The only good picture of Sunny and I taken at the dinner after we got married.