Sheryll Lynne Contest!

So I entered Miles and I in a contest a little while ago through a photographer named Sheryll Lynne. Her contest was to promote her lifestyle photography. She had the contestants explain what they love to do and why she should be there to photograph it. I love having pictures of Miles and I, and our little puppy, but we haven't been in front of a professional's camera since our wedding! I usually put it on self timer or have my sister come with us and I'll do all the posing, camera settings, and editing. So I thought it would be really fun to be photographed by a professional! And lucky us, we made it in to the final 3! Here's the link, we'd love it if you would go vote for us! Here are some pictures that go along with my story.. 

30 hours in the car with a puppy...

Well we packed up the house, loaded up the car, and drove 30 miles, but we've made it to Nashville. I hear Rexburg got a snow storm yesterday, all I can say is HAHA it's 80 degrees here and the sun is shining and Nixon and I are happy happy campers. I LOVE IT HERE. There's a wafflehouse off of every exit, everything is green and purple and blooming, the birds are chirping, there's a doggy park at our apartment complex, and there's a great shopping center just a minute down the street (with a Panera). There's a jogging trail that tells you how many miles you've been running just up the street and Nixon and I are motivated to work out 5 days a week. I already found a flea market, there's only a one hour time difference between here and Connecticut, and one of my best buds is here to share the summer with. The only thing that could make Mount Juliet better is the rest of our family, Jenny Riddle, and chicken green chile quesadilla's from Bajio. 

Getting here was an adventure, we drove the first 10 hours and arrived in Montrose, CO to stay with Sammy and Cassidy. Nixon had a blast playing with their dog Diesel. It was pretty entertaining to watch. He was upset with us when we had to leave and he had to leave behind his friend. Their house was so cute and I loved going there to see them! We can't wait to get go back in August! Thanks guys :) From there we drove 15 hours to Collinsville, IL and stayed at a really nice hotel that my parents so graciously booked for us. It may have been the best nights sleep I've ever had. Thanks mom and dad! I got really sick on the last 5 hours of our drive. I was throwing up and passing out. It wasn't so much fun for me. But we finally made it to downtown Nashville where we waited for Nikki and Robby to catch up. Nashville is awesome! It's a relatively small city with such a unique feel. I'm excited to explore it a little more. In fact, Nikki and I are going today while the boys are selling!
I love our apartment complex. It's so nice. Our furniture is so much better than last year! It's stuff I would actually put in my home. We're finally all unpacked, we just need to hang a few more pictures and we'll be all settled. Nikki bought Nixon and doggy t-shirt at Target for $1. See below for the torture. He looks embarrassed to be dressed up.
I'm leaving tomorrow to shoot a wedding in Sacramento. It's going to be a fun trip! Three days in Sactown. I'm excited to see the Van Koman's and eat at Mikuni and capture Raliegh and Sharyl's wedding! They are a beautiful couple, as you'll see in a week or two when I post their wedding pictures. I'm so happy they asked me to share their special day with them.

Now on the the pictures:

WE'RE MOVING TO NASHVILLE IN 3 DAYS!!!!




that's all. I'm excited. I can't wait to take a break from Rexburg. Friday come sooner?

April Fools

So Mother Nature was the only one that played an April Fools joke on Miles and I... She's been building up to her joke for almost a month. She let us think that spring had come for almost the entirety of March. It's been in the 40's and even sometimes 50's for weeks. But then April 1st rolls around and "APRIL FOOLS" it snows... all day and all night. Then April 2nd comes... it snows, almost all day and all night... now it's April 3rd. You think she would have gotten her fun out of this incredibly mean joke. But nope, it's still snowing, with no sign of stopping. Mother Nature is one cruel cruel lady.

Michael Lake's Baby Blessing

Back in January I flew to Southern California for my nephew, Michael's blessing. One of the many perks of being a post-grad, I can pick up and go as needed. Miles had to stay behind for school, bummer. I never posted anything from the weekend. My sister emailed me some pictures from Chuckie Cheese yesterday and that reminded me that I needed to post about my weekend there, especially since it was my last weekend there ever. The Lake family is packed up and moving to Connecticut TOMORROW! As you can imagine my parents are ecstatic. I'm excited too, because Jen and Scott were the two that I never imagined moving to Connecticut, and Miles and I have been planning on moving there after his graduation. So now I just need to work on Nikki and her eternal companion, whomever he may be.

(my bestest friends. I love my sisters!)

I was also given the opportunity to take some family pictures for Jen and Scott as well as some blessing pictures of Jen and Michael. I love how both turned out. To see more click here and here. I especially love how the blessing pictures turned out. I have never been given such an opportunity to photograph something so special and so spiritual. Jen wore her temple dress and Michael wore his blessing outfit and  I set up a white backdrop. It just feels so celestial. I love it. And while Jen was trying to find the blanket she made to bless all her babies in Matthew was saying to her "Don't cry momma, you're an angel." He thought she was an angel dressed in all white. It was so sweet. 

Our Valentine's Weekend

This post is only overdue by about a month... But for anyone that knows Miles and I well, we love our holiday's. We still celebrate the anniversary of our first date,  of our first kiss, date night Wednesday's, the anniversary of our engagement, our wedding, and than all the nationally recognized holidays. We love celebrating us, and more often than not we go well above and beyond with our celebration. It gets kind of expensive.
So this year for Valentine's Day we decided that since we had a long weekend, we'd spread out our Valentine's Day and give ourselves a budget. We decided to focus on spending time together, not spending money on one another. So our Valenetine's weekend consisted of:
Thursday: we made Valentine's sugar cookies
Friday: we went out to dinner and saw Valentine's Day the movie with my sister Nikki
Saturday: Miles surprised me with breakfast in bed and gave me beautiful calla lillies and my favorite perfume, burberry brit, then we went snowboarding all day.
Sunday: we slept in and cuddled all morning, then I made Miles breakfast in bed complete with heart shaped toast. We were bad kids and only made it to Sacrament meeting. Then we built a snowman, took Nixon for a walk, and we cooked dinner together. I set up a special indoor picnic complete with glow in the dark stars (that I cut out and painted with glow in the dark paint because no where in Rexburg had glow in the dark stars!) and I put up white chinese lanterns, set out a blanket and cut out 14 hearts each with a different reason I love Miles on the back. I sprinkled the ground with Hershey's kisses so that Miles knew I "kissed the ground he walks on" and I made special place settings with our initials wrapped around the napkin. I also had some outdoor sounds playing in the background, like crickets and bullfrogs and the occasional owl hoot. After dinner we laid on the blanket and star gazed. When Miles and I were dating and he first told me that he loved me, I didn't say it back right away. It wasn't awkward or anything, he whispered it in my ear as he was saying goodnight and then left, he didn't linger waiting to hear it back, but I wanted him to know that I truly meant it when I told him I loved him too. I didn't want him to think I was just saying it to say it back. So the next day I snuck in to his room at the Ridge and wrote with glow in the dark stars on his ceiling over his bed: "ti amo" and "sogno di me" which is Italian for "I love you" and "Dream of Me" so that every night he would turn the lights off and think of me before he went to bed. So for in memory of that very special occasion,  I decided to write love messages with the stars for Miles to find on our ceiling. Also, our first Valentine's Day together, when we were dating and I gave Miles a little journal that I had been writing in with letters to him and excerpts from my personal journal entires that were about him and added pictures or objects that went along with each post. In honor of that tradition we wrote each other a letter in our journal. It's become a very special journal that we keep together, writing love letters and about exciting experiences together.
Monday: we had school off, so Miles and I went snowboarding again! We're making our season passes worth it.
It was the perfect Valentine's weekend that didn't cost us much. I love my handsome hubby and I'm really grateful for a holiday that celebrates our love.

The Stella Awards.

My mom sent me an email that I found both funny and outrageous. It was about the Stella Awards for 2009. For those of you that may be unfamiliar, the Stella Awards are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald's in New Mexico, where she purchased her coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right? These awards are for the top seven most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. 

* SEVENTH PLACE * 
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son. 
* SIXTH PLACE * 
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles , California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps. 
* FIFTH PLACE * 
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol , Pennsylvania , who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT days and survive on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental Anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish. 
* FOURTH PLACE * 
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun. 
* THIRD PLACE * 
Third place goes to Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.  
* SECOND PLACE * 
Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000....oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. 
* FIRST PLACE * 
This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was: Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down? $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Are we, as a society, getting more stupid...or are more members of Congress serving on juries these days? Feel free to leave me your thoughts.