wedding pictures part II

 I should probably hurry and finish posting my own wedding pictures before I have to be blogging about my sister Amy's wedding, which is happening this Saturday. She had just started talking to her fiance, Jordan, when I was getting married in July, and now it hasn't even been a year and we're doing another wedding. Life is pretty exciting.
 I didn't get to see Dillon's pictures with his groomsmen until a few weeks later, but I love how they turned out. I hadn't met any of these gentlemen before.

 Can I say handsome?

 In fact, Dillon looks so stunning in this picture that I had to cut it down to just his amazing face.

 *faints

 It was amazing how beautiful and handsome everyone looked. I had never seen Andrew and Aaron in ties before!

wedding pictures part I

I was planning to write some thoughts to go along with all these lovely pictures, but I found it was too much to ask of myself. How could I articulate anything of what I was thinking and experiencing that day? So I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

bits of happily ever after

I'm hoping to write a little bit about the two big changes in my life, the obvious ones: getting married and being pregnant. They might be a while coming, so in the mean time, I know my readers will enjoy some random shots of the time since my wedding in July. It will probably give you a taste of the kinds of things you'll be seeing frequently here.

The view from our back porch, taken in early fall

My kitchen (when it's clean). Here also you can see the makeshift stove I used until a couple of months ago, when our real propane lines were repaired. The story of our appliances breaking would be a post in itself, and probably a funny one. It's God's goodness that it all happened (and is happening) in our first year of marriage, while we're still just so happy to be married that we can laugh at taking cold showers or wearing thick sweaters in the house. Lastly, this picture shows that, although my cabinets are beautifully painted and holding up quite well, I still have not refinished the doors.

I'll confess, this is actually the first picture I took after our wedding. I didn't even bring my camera on our honeymoon trip. That seems strange now, but I don't think I had enough space in my brain even to think about it. So I finally got out my camera on this random July day to take a portrait of Harold the tortoise. I thoroughly enjoyed it when he or one of his cousins would walk up to my house.

A summer walk out to the pasture with Horatio, our first dog. He was a stray who had come to live at Dillon's mom's house before we were married, and was named by Dillon's sister Hannah, if you can't tell. But he is a magician of escape, and so was always getting out of their yard to bother the neighbors. He now lives on a cable at our house ... when he isn't escaping back to Mom's.

This is Dillon with the first post of our chicken coop, more accurately called our chicken fortress. The back of our dear house is in the background.

It looks like this was taken on our fall trip to the ranch.

Here are our chickens, enjoying their new pen. We love just standing outside and watching them in all their odd chickenness.

This is at my parents' house the evening after our twenty-week sonogram in Allen. We had just found out that our little bump is a little boy bump.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Christmas table decoration during December (and a little bit of January, perhaps). I used up almost the entire apple-scented candle that I got for my birthday in November and I have no regrets!

Dillon's mom kindly lent us a cute little baby Christmas tree, and it made me very happy to decorate it just how I wanted it. On Christmas morning it had only two gifts under it, which was rather adorable, I thought.

This is the announcement picture I put together for Facebook.

Dillon burning brush...

And lastly, here is a common sight out the back door. The cat on the left is Peaches, who was actually our first animal; she is very thin and dainty. Next to her is the crazy one, the giant, fluffy, fat, wild Teacup, otherwise known as the Beast. She is to be found either trying to kill something or cuddle with something.