... that there were the Blickenstaffs!!!!!!!!!!!

They did it!!!!!

Newport Beach Temple
December 13, 2014

The ring ceremony afterwards at Soka Peace Fountain

And the reception!

We love our only brother so much!

Even if sometimes he doesn't love us back as much.

Congrats to the Blickenstaffs!!!

... that it was almost wedding time?

We had so much wedding prep and so little time!!!

First priority: Make absolutely ridiculous amounts of puppy chow with the cutest little helper you can find.

CHECK.

Kell and I made 5 gallons, and I believe Francie and Katie also made 5 gallons each. We know how to party.

(Side note: I'm pretty sure that approximately 3 gallons of it were actually eaten at the reception sooooo... Let's just say we were giving bags away to anyone who would make eye contact with us at the end of the night. 15 gallons of chex mix well spent hahahahaha)

We had all decided to stay in Orange County the night before the wedding, since we had the wedding dinner down there the night before and the wedding in the morning. Matt and I scored a great hotel room and dropped off all of our stuff with just a little bit of time left over to relax... or so we thought. After a few frantic phone calls and a little bit of wild goose chasing running errands with Mom, we finally headed over to the wedding dinner at Lucille's BBQ.

(Once again, Jake, it was NOT our fault that we were late. Okay? Okay.)

These two.

All the heart eyes.

Matt and I hid in the back with the other naughty kids and just ate ribs to our hearts content! Jake and Jacky traded in their wedding toasts for wedding roasts and it was quite an entertaining evening. Just Jake and Jacky's style and such a great way to have fun!

I'm soooooo glad Cait is back to ruin all of my pictures.

Blickensisters!

After the dinner, Jacky needed us girls to go over to the house to help with some last minute wedding stuff. So we headed over to her house to find this:

All of her friends feverishly making bouquets and corsages in the dark. The power in Jacky's whole neighborhood was out! We helped as best we could for a little while by cell phone/candle light, then finally gave up and hauled everything over to a neighbor's house who had power to finish the job! I could not believe how much of this wedding Jacky and her friends had done on their own... Probably saved them a fortune! I was pretty impressed. But also pretty tired. We finished waaaaaaay too late and stumbled back to our hotel rooms completely exhausted. Let's get to the actual party already!

... that we got to go home!!!!!

Finally it was time to go home and get ready for the wedding!!!

We drove to Vegas and spent the night there to break up the trip. We just can't get enough of those Williams! I had to do a little work that morning before we finished the drive and the Williams' internet was out, so a stop at Coffee Bean it was!!!

It was a good thing I got my work out of the way beforehand, because once we got to California, it was all play time!!!

Uncle Mott LOVES to play dress up hahahahahahahahaha!

Sister couldn't turn her neck: her necklace could fall off at any moment. But we couldn't have too much play time, because we had to go pick up our missionaries!!!!!

SO wonderful!!! We even stopped at Tito's on the way home per Mom's request... even if we did forget the extra cilantro and onions at home! Oops! It is so great to have Caitlin home safe finally, I missed having two sisters here in Utah SO MUCH! We only had so much time with Mom, so we squeezed as much in one week as we could! Including a trip to the house for some tangerines,



Lots of snuggles,


And a trip to visit Courtney's grave

Matt and I have been married three years and I have never taken him out to the cemetery. I always tell myself whenever we go home that I need to go out there, but I get so wrapped up in seeing family that I forget to go out there. This time I finally remembered, and I was really really glad that Matt finally got to share that little part of my life with me.

I also got to visit one of my oldest friends from elementary school for another quick Coffee Bean run. My Mally is just the cutest, sweetest, most beautiful mommy-to-be ever!!!!!


And of course we had to do some pre-wedding beauty prep as well:

Those teeth aren't gonna whiten themselves.

I love being home!!!!!

... that I am one year older and wiser too?

Yaaaaaaaay me!

I think I have successfully figured out the secret to getting flowers on special occasions: I make such a HUGE deal out of them, Matt knows it's an obvious win!!!

Aren't they gorgeous??

We didn't do much else for my birthday since I had already spent all of my birthday money in Vegas, and that was just fine with me! We went to Cheesecake Factory (our favorite obviously) and Kar was the sweetest sister ever and made me a DELICIOUS Twice Chocolate Torte, the Blickenstaff Birthday Cake of Choice!

Even Boston woke up just to join the fun!

I love my birthday!!!!!!!!!!

... that we love Thanksgiving!!!

The Williams were gracious enough to host Thanksgiving at their house this year! And it was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tons of sibs came into town and it was a true Harrison party! We brought Trent and Renee with us, and the Laugies, Lance, and Brooke and Collette all joined in the fun as well! We took over Pie Night and it is probably my new favorite holiday EVER!!!!! It even eclipsed the Thanksgiving feast itself!! We spent all day Wednesday baking and cooking up a storm

And everything turned out incredible!!!

Matt and I made a baked brie, always a hit!

And then we just sat back, stuffed ourselves silly, and talked the night away!


It was really such a fun night! The next day, we had Thanksgiving dinner at Kim's in-laws' house, but honestly, it was nothing compared to the delicious smorgsboard from the night before! It was over too quick, but the Williams had only one thing on their minds: Black Friday!

The Williams are Black Friday professionals, and Matt had decided that for my birthday, he was giving me a shopping spree in Vegas!!! Do I have a great husband or what????? The Williams were scouring all the ads and creating their plan of attack, but I had left my purse at home. Before I knew it, Matt and Kim were literally shoving all the cash they had into my hands and I was whisked into a car and forcefully dragged to the outlet mall for our first round of Black Friday shopping! Can I just say that I have the BEST sisters and husband everrrrrrrr?

We did some damage at the Outlets and came home to Kimmy whipping up delicious quesadilla treats for everyone: the cherry on top of a perfect day!

I was ready for some relaxing, but to my surprise, Matt and the Williams wanted to hit up Sears! So I jumped back in the car for Black Friday round two!!! I couldn't believe my luck!

The next morning, we woke up bright and early to hit up round three at Michaels, Old Navy, and Walmart. BEST. DAY. EVER. While we were out shopping, all of the boys chipped in to get the Williams' house ready for Christmas! Marshall in particular was very helpful.


And after all the work was done, we rewarded ourselves with a little well deserved Cafe Rio.


That night, we had bought tickets with Renee and the Williams to go to a concert: the Andrew McMahon "In The Wilderness" Tour. It was in a small concert room above the Hard Rock Cafe right on the strip, and despite the fact that I didn't really know any of the music and was ready to fall over from exhaustion, we had a blast!

 

Even if most of my concert view actually looked like this:


C'est la vie. I didn't even care, it was just so fun to spend time out on the strip! We NEVER spend time on the strip and I LOVED it!



We were totally starving after the concert ended, and Brooke and Collette happened to be out on the town as well, so we all went to a midnight dinner at the Yard House. It was awesome!!! We had such a great time, ate some awesome food, laughed until we cried, and didn't leave the restaurant until we were practically falling asleep.

Our entire trip had been a blast so far, and Saturday did not disappoint either!! Matt let me take off AGAIN to spend every last dime of my birthday shopping spree money, so Jamie and I took off to the Galleria! I don't allow myself to go on shoping sprees all that often, and here I was blowing money right and left for THREE WHOLE DAYS IN A ROW!!!!! It was the best birthday celebration I have ever had!!!!!!!!!!

That night, Kim and Byron had planned to attend a Broadway play with some friends, and Matt and I had agreed to babysit for them. But at the last minute, their friends couldn't make it and gave their tickets back to Kim. Then poor little Pierce came down with an earache, so Jamie and Andy wanted to stay home with him that night and said they would help Trent watch the kids. So that left only poor little Matt and Me to go out for ANOTHER night on the town!!! I was seriously delirious with happiness!!!!!

We started out with an AMAZING dinner at Pizza Rock

Then off to Pippin!

Which was only a little bit scandalous... Definitely Vegasified! And definitely so much fun!!! I felt like such a city girl, going out to shows and dinner every night and shopping to my hearts content! It was the BEST vacation ever!!! We left Sunday after church and limped back home, and it was a good thing that Renee ended up going home with Lance, because we needed the back seat to take home all of our my shopping bags:

I love Vegas and Thanksgiving!!!

... that we are just a missionary family?

My wonderful parents convinced my sweet, adorable, hilarious, spunky grandmother to put in her papers and join them in the work as missionaries in Taiwan!

My Na Na is seriously the best. She always came up to our house for all of our school plays, constantly gave us presents (and anything other trinkets/jewelry/treats we happened to show any remote interest in while visiting her house), and is always smiling, laughing, and up for an adventure!

She put in her papers, got her call, and was going into the MTC before we knew it! Jake and Jacky happened to be in town that same week, so we all got together and snuck her out of the MTC for dinner one night.

We went to Spicy Corea, a reignited family fave in Cait's honor. DELISH.

Afterward, we really really wanted a pic with Na Na in the MTC (as instructed by Mother, obviously). The only problem was, they wouldn't let us in the MTC at all! We couldn't get in when we picked her up, so on the way back I made everyone park across the street and walk up to the MTC so that they wouldn't turn us away. Then the security guard still wanted us to drop her off at the gate! This simply would not do! So in true Blickenstaff fashion, we stood there and made it awkward until the guard said, "Are you dropping her off?" We put on our best sad faces and all said we just wanted to say goodbye to our grandmother, and finally she just let us in! We laughed and laughed all the way into the MTC and snapped a picture as fast as we could before anyone could kick us out.

Na Na was laughing the hardest because she was already wearing her missionary badge: clearly she had already been checked into the MTC! That poor security guard didn't stand a chance against this sneaky, stubborn pack of Blickenstaffs!

We love our missionaries!!!!!

... that Jake and Jacky came to visit?

I LOVE it when siblings come to visit!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jake was starting residency program intervews, and he decided to interview at the U so that he could come see his favorite sisters!

We met up for dinner one night at the Riverwoods so that we could look at the pretty Christmas lights

And initiate Jacky into the family officially!

 

(Blickenstaffs are so awesome.)

We ate dinner at Malawi's and played a few games at Called to Surf (so embarrassing, Utah).

Jake and Jacky even made it up to our house for a little tour of the zoo 

 

And of course Kar did all of our nails.

Their trip was short, but we only had to wait a few more weeks for the wedding!!!

I love sibling visits!