Home Sweet Home

Prepare for a pictureless post.
I know that means most of you have already navigated away from our page.  Maybe all of you.  Sorry, but our tumbled up sweet apartment is covered in cardboard boxes and garbage bags and we haven't had time to shop for wireless Internet yet.  The husband dropped me off on campus so I could get some things done.  Not necessarily to get the blog done, but here I am.
What I should really be doing is my Spanish online class, which starts today.  The rest of my BYU classes start on Monday and I should probably look and make sure I don't have any assignments yet.  Usually about this time each semester I'm excited; new teachers, new material, new classmates!  But this time I'm dreading the responsibility of school!  I'd rather just keep hanging out with the husband like we've been doing for the past month.  No responsibilities but to set up house.
Which, by the way, has been a blast!  We spent the entire day yesterday searching for a good deal on a mattress.  We're convinced we found the BEST!  We also got our hands on our very own washer and dryer (thanks to having kind cousins like Candice).  It's been fun.  And we love the apartment.  It's spacious and has a cool back door that leads to the grassy area and basketball court we share with our neighbors in the 4-plex.  It's so nice, we wondered how in the world it was so affordable!
Oooooh.... yes I'm reminded about once every hour as a huge galumphing train blasts right under our window blaring its horn, which rattles our furniture slightly.  And these trains are long!  Clank clank clank clank clank clank as each individual car clunks past us for three to five solid minutes.  I suppose I can bear that, but why the horn?  Who is going to be hanging out on the railroad tracks at three in the morning?  And if someone were really insane enough to be doing that, who would not see the blinding headlight on the front of the train from 10 miles away- or feel the earth quaking beneath them- and get the heck out of the way?
Personally, I think that the train conductors must get an unholy amount of pleasure out of shattering a beautifully quiet night in suburban areas with those blasted horns!  If I had to be up driving a stupid train in the middle of the night, I'd probably want all of the peacefully sleeping people to share in an ounce of my suffering too.  OK, so I get that.  But what does the rooster have against me???
If I'm not being woken up in the night by a roaring train, a confused rooster will certainly do the trick.  The thing lives just on the other side of the railroad tracks.  Close enough that I could probably throw a rock at its head.  I get the feeling that would cause more problems than it would solve, but it's definitely tempting.
I always had some ideal image in my mind of being woken up by the crowing of a rooster once the sun was fully in the sky.  This thing doesn't even wait for a ray of sunshine!  It just crows its head off at any time- night or day.  Seven a.m. would be perfect.  One a.m., two a.m., and any other possible moment between train hurricanes, is not what I'd ever dreamed of in my ideal farmer world.
It's been a fun adventure.  Roy sleeps right through it all.  Lucky him.  The only time he ever wakes up is when I'm giggling.  And I'm giggling because that rooster is so dang confused it's just hilarious.
Mom says I'll get used to it and soon I wont be waking up anymore.  Well... I'll let you know how that goes.

SpOiLeD

It's really not my fault my 22nd birthday cropped up only ten days after our Tucson reception.  We've already been showered with wedding gifts, it seemed ridiculous to even expect a sliver of birthday cake!  BUT, of course Roy and Mom wouldn't let my special day go uncelebrated.

Roy got up super early and got started on my breakfast-in-bed while I slept in.  He, Mom, and Dad marched into our room singing "happy birthday" and blinding me with the flash from the camera.  It was an awesome surprise and a yummy start to my day.
I spent most of the day with Mom and my hubby.  Roy was constantly reminding me it was my birthday and doing special things for me all day.  That night Lynn, Grandma, and Grandpa joined our little family at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and... of course... cheesecake.  AMAZING!

Of course the waiters were forced to come out and sing to me.  Poor guys...

But to-die-for cheesecake!!!

After food we went home and celebrated some more.  Honestly, I don't deserve it!  Too much attention for one summer!  But it really a perfect birthday and I loved every minute.  Especially with Roy- sweetest husband ever!  Thanks Roy and fam (which, of course, includes Lynn)

Teeth, Meet Skull

Before I start on my horror story involving a fatal teeth-bending accident, let me assure you that wedding and reception pictures are coming.  Tons of snapshots from friends and family have been shared on Facebook, which is fantastic.  It all looks beautiful. But I'm still waiting on our professional photographers before I post anything on the blog.  Just be prepared to be blown away.  I was!
In fact, the morning after the Tucson reception was over I simply had to bust out our camera and capture the leftover beauty.

It was depressing to throw the flowers in the centerpieces away.  Of course, there was nothing else we could do with them.  They were beginning to wilt and would soon make our porch a crunchy petal mess.  Before they would disappear forever, I captured them in the immortality of a picture... or two.

The tent was way more beautiful than I ever expected.  Even the word "tent" makes it seem incapable of anything romantic, but it was perfect!  What really made it amazing was the flower chandelier made by Emily Spackman and Pam Simkins (awesome family friends).

OK, no more spoilers.  I'll write all about the receptions when I have the pics.  Now for the horror story.

Roy and I both felt lucky to have so many good friends and family that were willing to travel to our receptions.  Quite a few made it down to Tucson, including Sydney, Alicia, and Brittany.

They helped Roy and I open and keep track of our gifts.  But, sadly, they had to go home on Sunday.  Here I am taking them to the airport.

We thought they would have to be missing out on a great day on Lake Roosevelt on Monday with the rest of us (Zac, Alexa, my cousin Nick, Dad, Roy, and Roy's sisters Kirsten and Leah).  And it did, actually, start out as a great day.  The perfect day imaginable!  We were the only boat on the whole lake, and the water looked like glass: every wakeboarders dream!

Look how flat that water is!  And how good Roy is getting at jumping!
Here's Leah, looking happy and ready to go tubing!

Little did she know...

 Little did ANY of us know, I guess. 

This is how we think it happened: Sometimes when Dad would make tight circles we would go flying to the outside of the wake and Roy would come crashing into us.  See how his tube goes beneath ours, forcing my end of the tube to dip down into the water? 
I remember flying across the wake and suddenly the end of the tube started getting eaten up by the water.  A split second later my leg got sucked under and I hit the water.  Hard- like slamming into a cement wall.  My chin was pressed into my chest as I skid across the water.  When I finally came to a stop I rolled onto my back and let my head rest in the water while I floated there.  Yeah, it hurt.  But I thought it was just because of the awkward way my head had hit the water and then been forced down to my chest.  Turns out that force was thicker than water.  It was Leah's face!

I wasn't even aware she was floating next to me until the boat came around to pick us up.  Her hand, covering her mouth, had blood seeping from between her fingers.  Dad and Nick pulled us out of the water and checked us out.  I was bloodless.  Just a headache and a quickly growing bump.  Leah was in worse shape, but she was toughing it out.  Three of her teeth had been shoved back- definitely not where they were supposed to be.  Dad tried to pull them forward again as far as he could, but most of the blood was coming from deep cuts in her bottom lip.
We got off the water right away and made the drive back to Tucson where we met up with friends: both a dentist and an orthodontist.  It was so awesome of them to come down to Dr. Blaze's office so late at night.  He and Dr. Johnson fixed her up the best they could with the time they had.  Who would have thought Leah would have braces by the end of the day?? 
The braces kept things in place while she flew back to Provo the next day and quickly got in contact with her dentist.  Unfortunately her x-rays revealed that one tooth had died.  Yesterday she had a root canal done on that tooth, but they expect her other two teeth to heal.  In October they plan on giving her a full set of braces.  Sorry Leah! 
And me?  Nothing but a bump on the head.  Great way to kick off my relationship with my new sister-in-law!

Hey I'm Mrs. Buckmaster!

WE DID IT!!!  WE'RE MARRIED!!!

Just today Roy and I got home from our amazing honeymoon in Hawaii.  The flight across the Pacific was a red-eye so I still need to catch some Z's.  But first I wanted to reassure everyone who wasn't present that my sunburn did miraculously disappear just in time for the wedding.  I could tell from the flood of comments that everyone was extremely worried for me (note sarcasm).
Here's proof:

See, no trace of burned skin.  A miracle!

Catch-up posts to follow