Forks, WA

Humm... no sign of our wedding photos yet. So I guess we'll continue with the story:

The wedding was a wonderful party - three whole days of party. And then we needed a vacation away from it all. So Brooke and I ran off to the Pacific Northwest for a few days of absolute relaxation.

Now, we've heard it a lot. People's first thought tends to be: "why there?" And our reasoning is:

1. It's cool. Literally. It was nice to get out of the Utah 100's into the Washington 70's for a few days.
2. The Hoh Temperate Rain Forest - part of the Olympic National Park, the rain forest is the only non-tropical rain forest in the world. It gets about 13 feet of rain a year (as opposed to utah's few inches), and it's got moss growing everywhere. The glacier-fed rivers running off Mt. Olympus have this crazy unnatural light blue color because of the slate-dust from the glacier.
3. The heart of the Olympic Peninsula is the small town of Forks, WA - site of a popular vampiric love series that Brooke's started and my sisters are truly devoted to.
4. La Push and the beaches of the Pacific Northwest. They may not be warm, but they're awesome beaches.
5. There's lots to see and do, but they're the kind of thing that you can do a few and relax the rest of the day and not feel guilty.
6. Just look at the photos!

Anyway, the beaches were almost always covered in fog with some awesome waves. The forest maintained its magical feeling with the overcast skys and occaional light rains. Forks is just a great little town. Our Toyota Yaris that we rented got 45 miles to the gallon! And all in all - it was a great few days to get away and rest up from the stresses of wedding planning. We had a ton of fun!

Now it's your turn to go. We're busy moving in to our new apartment and getting settled.

We're MARRIED!!!

Well as most of you know Zac and I are now Married! We got married August 15th and it was the perfect day. We decided to do a dinner the night before instead of a luncheon after the ceremony so that we could have a later temple ceremony. We had the dinner at a church and Ann's (Zac's mom) friends (Eileen) did the food. She's done about 15 dinners like this for other people so she offered to help Ann. Well as we sat down to eat Zac noticed that his chicken wasn't completely cooked. We're still not sure what happened but somehow a batch of chicken didn't get cooked all the way. So we just brought them back to the kitchen and it wasn't too big of a deal. But Donald (Zac's dad) was stressing out Ann was laughing and poor Eileen was so upset and she felt awful. It gave everyone time to talk and get to know each other better. After we finished dinner we had a dance. I always wanted to dance at my wedding but it kind of gets awkward because you can't just stop the line with people still in it and then even when you can stop the line it's half an hour after you originally wanted to and you still have to do the cake. so we decided to do the dance at the dinner. It was so much fun. I got to dance with Zac, my dad, Grandpa Draper, and my brothers. Zac got to dance with his mom and sisters. It was great.

The sealing was great! We had so many family and friends. The sealer gave us some really great advise. He told us to remember five words that would get us through anything. "I love you" and "I'm sorry". He also told my that I need to learn spanish. He must have told me that at least 4 or 5 times. So it looks like I'll be learning Spanish. :D

When we came out of the temple everyone was waiting for us and we took pictures with the group then they all left to get lunch while we finished pictures with just me and Zac. One of Zac's friends went and got us water and lunch for us so when we were finished with pictures we went to a park to eat really fast before we had to be back to the church for more pictures. :D

After pictures and right before the reception we had a ring ceremony. Zac's mom and dad are the only members in their families and so we wanted to be able to include then in the day as well so we exchanged rings. Our bishop from the singles ward helped us with that.

Then we rushed back into the reception. Everything turned out so good. (Well at least everything I saw) It was the best day of my life. We are so excited to finally be married and start a new life together!

Bear Lake

So, the wedding preparations are going well, we've been very busy, but we took some very nice time off to go with our singles' ward to Bear Lake. It's the only ward I've ever heard of that goes boating on a regular basis, but that's what a singles' ward is for: a vehicle to convert "ward funding" to "ward fun" and build testimonies at the same time.

We had a great time. We went tubing for the first time - and for those who have not been tubing, you sit on a floating tube and get dragged behind a boat at breakneck speeds over every large wave and wake you can find. The great thing is that you get all the adventure of hanging on for dear life - and then when you do finally succumb to the watery rodeo, you smack the surface of the water in a brilliant display of acrobatics only to be safely caught in the welcoming water. We had a lot of fun and we've got the the aches to prove it!

And naturally, you can't take Zac to the beach without him trying to make use of the limitless construction materials - as Brooke was reminded. Actually, the truth is that we both have a love for creation and sandcastles are just plain fun. Zac has made it a tradition to built at least one sandcastle a year and this year's (thanks to the help of Brooke and a few other ward members) was really good. But we've had some creative ideas since then that ensure the next sandcastle is going to be even better!

So now, after some good fun and some good sun, we're back home and starting to turn our attention to the wedding - which believe it or not, is only a week and a half away!