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I’ve been totally sucked into Final Fantasy XII and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the last month. Those games are huge and soooo much fun, but they’re really bad for my social life. So if you haven’t seen me since I got back from my honeymoon, that’s why. I decided to buy a Playstation 2 for really cheap instead of a new video game system like the Nintendo Wii. I figure there’s already a ton of great games for cheap for these old systems, and I didn’t want to wait in line to spend $300 for Zelda. It was close though. That new controller looks awfully fun.

Kim and I went back to my parents for Thanksgiving. Kim made a lot of food to take including fake chicken, gravy, mashed sweet potatoes and stuffing. We had Thanksgiving at their house, and it was great to see the family again so soon after the wedding. Dave had a video of the wedding that was a lot of fun to watch. I had a sauna with Larry and Gwenda. It snowed like crazy Thanksgiving day. The rest of the time we relaxed, watched movies, and I helped clean out some old electronics. Nathan wasn’t home. Hopefully we’ll see him for Christmas, and we’re hoping to have the relatives here if any can make it over.

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My friend Brendan, who I met in Spain, came up to visit this weekend. He stayed with Laura the whole weekend, but we hung out a lot. Friday night Laura, Brendan, two of Brendan’s friends, Jack and Ayella, and Kim and I had dinner together at our house. Kim cooked some snazzy pot pies with our initials in them, and other people brought salad and wine.

Saturday we went out and saw the Jason Webley concert at the Paradox. As usual, it was an awesome show complete with skies crashing down, swaying dizzy people with arms locked around each other and great musical performance.

Sunday we took it easy and hung out around the house until the evening, when we went to Laura’s for dinner.

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I wanted to link to some of the vendors that made our wedding go off so well.

So if you’re in the area of Vermont for your wedding, a great place to have it is The Inn at Baldwin Creek. They do a great job of taking a lot of the stress out of things, keeping you organized, having awesome food and still being very reasonably priced.

If you’re looking for a couple great photographers who are reliable, good communicators and take sweet photos, check out St Phalle Photography. They had the proofs online in less than a week after the wedding, and they made us look amazing :-)

I wish I could link to our DJ’s website, but I don’t think he has one. Jonathan Britt went above and beyond the call of duty. He kept the dance floor full all night, played music we liked even with just general guidelines, and looked sharp in a tux. He also MC’d for us and also communicated very well. He showed up early to set everything up as well.

Finally, back in the Seattle area, engraved glass mugs are a great groomsmen gift, and you can find some beautiful ones from Northwest Creations Etched Glass from Doug in Kent, Washington. Of course they ship too.

Kim and I flew into Hilo October 17th and immediately picked up our rental car which is essential for getting around in Hawaii. The earthquake of October 15th really didn’t affect us at all since most of the damage was on the west side of island near Kona where we weren’t until late in the week.

We camped the first night at Arnott’s Lodge which is a pretty cool hostel just outside of Hilo. Hilo is a pretty quiet town, so we got some ice cream and groceries and that was about it for night life.

We drove down to the southeast corner of the island where we saw a macadamia nut factory, a black sand beach that cut me up a little in the waves, where the road ends at a lava flow, and stayed at Kalani. (more…)

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Kim and I flew into Oahu Monday evening. We caught a shuttle downtown to Waikiki to stay at a hostel for the night. Yesterday we hiked to Diamond Head crater, which gave us a nice view of the city. We hung out on the beach at Waikiki for a little while before we took a shuttle right back to the airport to catch a flight to the big island of Hawaii where we are now. Today we’re going to get all our permits in line for the Na Pali coast on Kauai and figure out camping in Volcanoes National Park.

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Originally uploaded by mattandkim.

It was nice to go to someone else’s wedding so soon after working so hard on my own. The weirdest part of this wedding for me was that the ceremony was at 10:30 in the morning while the reception was at 6 at night. It was held in St James Cathedral and was a very beautiful ceremony, even if it felt really long to me. It may have felt longer than it was since half the ceremony was in Vietnamese and I didn’t understand it. There was definitely a different feel to having a wedding in a big cathedral than having it outside too.

After the ceremony Kim and I went and had breakfast with Jacob, Waleska, Jesse, Deborah and Wes at Julia’s. Then we all went home and lounged around for the rest of the day before the big (and I do mean big) party later.

The reception was held at China Harbor and would estimate there were close to 300 people. I keep wondering where all these people were at the ceremony since I only estimated about 50-60 there. There was so much food, especially seafood, that I thought I was going to burst. Most of it was pretty good, but I just had to stop eating after about the 5th course or so and go for a walk. After all the eating and dancing we hung around and talked for a while until cake was served, and by then it had been a very full day of wedding so we called it a night.

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Who’d ever have thought that listening to Al Gore give a slide show presentation could make and entertaining movie? I didn’t, but I was wrong. An Inconvenient Truth turned out to be another really great documentary. I thought going in that there wouldn’t be anything new since I felt I had done a bit of research on climate change – wrong again. There was plenty of interesting new information, and it was presented very, very well. I’m amazed at the amount of work that Al Gore has done on this topic: visiting both poles, giving 1000 presentations on the topic, visiting heads of countries to discuss the issue, and much more.
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Bubbles

The wedding was better than I ever expected. Everything seemed to come together for a really magical evening. The weather was good, the food was good, the music was good, the dancing was a blast, all the vendors we hired turned out great, the staff at the Inn was great, the people were amazing. In fact, I’ll have to do separate posts for each of the vendors as they deserve the props and web linkage, just not in this post. As with all weddings, there wasn’t enough time to talk to everybody. It was wonderful to see so many friends and family all together. I doubt I’ll have that many friends and family together at once again unless I start throwing huge parties and paying to fly people in.

I was a little worried about the weather considering it poured on Kim and me Thursday night while we were camping in a slightly leaky tent. It turned out to be very nice the day of the wedding though, even if it did pour the next day for our picnic. We got to have the ceremony outside, and the leaves were lovely. Sierra threw leaves instead of flowers.

Happy Posers

I wasn’t supposed to see Kim at all the day of the wedding until the ceremony, so it was amusing trying to avoid each other around the Inn. I went for a run by myself that turned into a tromp upstream in my drenched shoes since I wanted to cross and run on the other side but fell in. I later went for a walk with Brian and Bridgid up one of the hills. The day of the wedding was pretty chill up until the ceremony since we had been running around like crazy taking care of details the few days before. I’m glad Kim hasn’t been in school or working the last few weeks so that she had time to take care of so many details.

The ceremony started a little late since Kim had to get into her beautiful dress that her mother and grandmother wore that I saw for the first time as she came down the aisle. I’m glad she doesn’t wear stuff like that often though because it was hard to be

Barn Dancing

around her without pulling her veil or stepping on her bustle. I liked the part in the ceremony where Bill and Sue asked who supports this couple and all the guests say we do. The whole ceremony was nice and I’m looking forward to getting a copy of the video from it.

After the ceremony Kim and I went off alone to do pictures. I think one of the coolest little details that the Inn at Baldwin Creek had setup was assigning Kim and I our own personal attendant. A girl name Laura, who is the daughter of the innkeepers, brought Kim and me drinks and appetizers all through the evening so that we didn’t miss out while everyone else was at happy hour. After some nice shots by the creek we did group pictures. Ugh. This was the only hard part of the whole evening. We had group photos too close to the tent with all the food and drinks and people kept wandering off, so it was hard to get all the photos done.

Having the tables mixed up and facts about people at the tables was probably one of the best ideas of the evening. Everyone was talking to each other and enjoying themselves. Just those little ice breakers were enough to really make people a lot more comfortable. Neither Kim nor I was that hungry, which was a shame because it was good food. Nathan’s toast was very good and funny. I got him and the fathers big beer glasses with their names on them. I kinda wish I’d gotten myself one they were so cool. Nathan and my dad were drinking out of his the rest of the evening.

The first dance went of very well. I hardly even remember it, it went by so fast, but I do know we got some of our snazzy moves in. The bubbles were a nice touch. Kim and her dad’s dance went great too, even when they had to adjust to having the song go longer than expected. After the first dances the dancing didn’t really stop the whole evening except for the cake cutting and garter toss. I danced with my grandma and mother and I think just about every girl in my family. The DJ did great. There were a few songs where Kim and I were wondering why he was playing them, but it was because people had requested them. Whatever kept people out dancing! There were dance circles and a conga line, and Kim looked awesome in a lot of pictures with her dress spinning. Nathan dove for the garter, and Roslyn dove and rolled twice for the bouqet. Steve ended up putting two garters on Roslyn though since Nathan was MIA until the first garter was on.

I think we ended the party at a good time, because I know my feet were tired and I think a lot of other people were beat from the non-stop action. Kim and I hung out for a little while with the people staying at the Inn, and then we left them to enjoy being alone for the first time as a married couple.

The next day we were late getting to the picnic with all the details and packing we still had to take care of, but it turned out to be fine since nobody got there at 10:30 anyway. It was pouring at the Branbury State Park, but more than 30 people showed up anyway. We all huddled under the picnic shelter and talked for a few hours. It was nice to get to spend some more time with people we didn’t get to at the wedding the night before.

The rest of the trip we returned Kim’s grandma’s car to Southington, hung out with Dan for an evening, and spent the day with Stephanie and Marc in New York. It’s always fun to visit New York, and it’s great now that we know some friends there. We walked around Central Park for while and played with hula hoops at the edge of the park before catching the subway to the airport and home. Going back to work was soooooo hard, but at least it’s only a few weeks before we leave for our honeymoon in Hawaii!

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Nathan was up for the day with his time off from the busy fire fighting season, so we ignored the rain and went for a hike. I did this a few weeks ago with Jake, but it looked much different in the rain. The stream we hiked up was a lot higher and it wasn’t really possible to keep your feet dry. I still jumped in the lake once we got there, but it was COLD! This is really a beautiful day hike. It may be my favorite in the Cascades so far.

It was good to see Nathan, even if for only a short time. I had no idea he was sporting a mohawk these days. I told him he should keep it for the rehearsal dinner, but probably shave it off before the wedding. He had a long drive ahead of him after the hike, all the way back to Central Oregon.