Stewart Wedding

Breanna & Chase are officially 

BREANNA AND CHASE STEWART

Stewart Wedding Day
March 10th, 2012

Getting ready for the big event

 

The Beautifully Transformed Barn where the ceremony took place!

Now for the moment we've all been waiting for:

THE CEREMONY

Alaina made the most beautiful flower girl! 

The Stake President gave a brief rundown of F. Burton Howard's 2003 talk that talks about this lady who took such care of her silverware. The point of it was: "If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently. … It becomes special because you have made it so." I fed the girls the entire ceremony so they would stay quiet :) ha ha. Aren't they cute.

Then for the exchanging of the rings. Talk about a pretty ring. Bling, bling, Bre! :) And Chase's is cool too!

The Happy Couple!!!

And of course after the ceremony, you have to get lots of pictures of the bride and with the bride. Jess and I helped with the dress and all for the pics. You don't want to get a gorgeous dress like that dirty ;)

Here's the family! (Everyone but Matt, we missed you babe!)

The girls and the happy couple.

Then for the ravishing women

and the stylish men.

And my  sweet, adorable, lovable Zoey! (That's right, she gets 3 adjectives! I'm a little biased :)

oh,... and my belly bump and my pumps!!! (I could write a whole post on my view of "pumps" but I'll sum it up for you... OUCH!!!)

Collages from Shannon's blog. (Thanks Shan!)

 Then for the Luncheon: Mmmm, Mmmm, Mmmm!!!

A quick clean up and THE RECEPTION was a go. Which included all the good stuff such as: Visiting and Socializing and being with friends, family, and the bride :) 

Here's me and my BFF Chelsi! She is also the amazing photographer that took all the professional looking pics :) 

The only picture I got of just me and the bride

Zoey was tryin to send happy vibes Alaina's way. She was a bit sick!

Then we got their attention. :) Besties... and Besties!!! Love it! And we're both carrying soon to be Besties too! Isn't that great? What a blessing!

The Cutting of the Cake

They were too nice, huh? :)

Then the garter was taken off and thrown, and the bouquet of flowers was thrown. And wouldn't you know it? Jake and Leeann were the lucky catchers! Looks like they are heading straight for a wedding! Oh wait? They are! :) So excited for that one in July!!!

 

Then to start the dancing, of course the traditional couples dance. It was beautiful. I teared up. The song was "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri. I think it's my new favorite now :)

Then the father-daughter dance. I really teared up then! We're all a bunch of ball babies!

Then the DJ's got the party started and it was time for the rest of us to get on the dance floor!

Man, they can really get down!!!

Ryan took pity on me...since he knows this prego lady can't exactly "get down" and look cool right now, so we just did the traditional, yet totally awesome, swing dancin! Thanks Ry!

Even Zoey did quite a bit of dancing!

Then we got a little tuckered out... and what do you know,  it was time for the happy couple to head on their way and for us to clean up :)

 Time for Take Down

Good thing we were wearing comfortable shoes :) Take down wasn't bad. With everybody's help, we just got things done and done. And looked dang good doin it! Check out Leeann! Hot mama!

Tired, cold, little girl, resting in her Uncles arms! How sweet!

What a jam packed, fun-filled day! It's so nice to have the family together for such a beautiful occasion! It was marvelous! Simply Marvelous!

Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic 

Feb 29th - March 8th 

Wow, what a get away. Matt and I have vacationed in many different ways but never like this. This was solely rest and relaxation. We just sat on the beach, played in the ocean, sat by the pool, played in the pool and played some pick up volleyball games. We had an amazing time. In the evenings we got all ready and went "out to eat" and then went to the evening entertainment. We skyped with Zoey and my parents most nights as well. Thanks heavens!!! :) That would have been tough if we couldn't have seen her but it was nice that we got to see her and especially because we got to see her having so much fun with everyone and having a lot of bonding time with family and with her lil cousin Alaina! I'm so glad that they are close! :) This vacation was so nice. We got to sleep in and do nothing or do whatever we wanted and  have no cares in the world! Now that is a vacation!

But REALLY. Even if we wanted to do something, we couldn't have :) We went to the excursions office to see what type of things we could do while in the Dominican. They looked at me and said, "you pregnant?"  "Yes." "Uh, not much." They have all sorts of things like Zip line tours and horseback riding, four wheeling tours, snorkeling. They did say that I could go snorkeling, but everything else was off limits! JEEZ, right? The snorkeling was $150 a person and neither of us love to snorkel, and especially not all day… so that was out of the question too.

They did have a couple of things to borrow that was part of the all inclusive. We took out the boogie boards a couple of times. They also had kayaks and I was really excited to take those out, but no, It's not allowed for pregnant ladies. The guys actually said that "due to my condition" I would not be able to take the kayaks out. ha ha. So forced, once again, to rest and relax, rather than do some hard core adventurous activity :) I wasn't too disappointed. How can you be when you're standing next to clear blue water and standing there in hand with your sweetheart. :) Don't worry

It started off with the horribly sad hand off! But we were reassured when we skyped that night and all was well with Zoey! :) She was actually chasing Scoobie around and loving it!


And then we were off! Here was our first look at:

 The Dominican Republic

The Room  



THE BEACH
We both brought books and ipods and had every intention on reading and listening to music, but it was just so nice to lay there, chat, people watch and listen to the ocean. I think I only read my book once! :) We went swimming like everyday although the waves never really got big enough to "catch." We had fun using our boogie boards as kick boards and floatation devices :)

 

 

 

The Food  
In all honesty this trip made us realize that we are far too picky with food! :) I intentionally ate a very large breakfast every day (french toast, an omelet, and fruit) so I would not have to force myself to eat food that I didn't like later :) There was a lot of food that was very "dominicanized" and we are just stuck in our ways. Plus I'm mostly eating vegetarian and everything seemed to have meat in it. It didn't help that the very first night we were there, we walked into the buffet and there was this large roasted pig on a stick with just a tiny part cut out of it and large fish displays to show what you could be eating! :) Ha, yeah, I didn't touch much meat! Luckily there were some nice restaurants that we went to. We really liked the Italian and the Chinese food! We didn't starve, that's for sure! And we filled up on a whole lot of Piña colada's and bahama mama drinks during the day. So no worries! We had a good time getting ready for a "date night" dinner each night anyways! It was fun and the food was all part of the experience!
 


The food we hated:

 

The food that saved us!!! :) 

 

The Entertainment  
The entertainment was pretty good. The show names were like "The Spectacular Show" and names of that sort, so we really never knew what the show would be like :) There was a good variety. Our favorite was the Michael Jackson show! This guy was an impersonator and was amazing! His dancing was spot on! It was super fun! 

 

 

We got to take a picture with the cast! :)

The "Just hangin" at the resort 

playin chess

 

 and relaxing by the pool

Bring me two pina coladas, one for each hand:)

 The Sunday Party 
They do this every Sunday... It's a huge buffet with lots of entertainment during dinner and then a live band for the evening, and they have fireworks! It was pretty fun! The food was alright, they had mashed potatoes!!! :) ha, something saves me from starving each time! We got up by the stage where everyone was dancing and enjoyed the music and got our little groove thangs on! :) It was a good time!

 

 

The Local Walmart :)
(Not really a Wal-mart! :)

The Togetherness

Most of all it was just great to just have that time with Matt! He is the love of my life and it's so nice to get to rekindle that relationship and just have a little time for ourselves. It was awesome to have no cell phone, email or work distractions! It's amazing how much we found to talk about. We sure have been blessed and we love to talk about all the blessings in our lives! We've been married over 5 years and that 5 years has been so much more than either one of us could have imagined! While in the D. R. it was fun just enjoying the little things that we used to do together. It's the little things like, arguing/flirtatiously bantering about whether or not a word that I used is actually a word or not, or getting two different drinks and switching back and forth, playing Foosball or ping pong, or getting all dressed up to look good for our "date nights." Those things are always fun and we don't get around to doing them as much anymore... we have someone more important to attend to! :) And soon we'll have two. That's why it was just a beautiful thing to have this time together! Which brings me to a special thanks to my parents/family for watching Zoey for us! I'm sure glad she was surrounded by people that love her while we went on our little getaway.

 The Welcome home present! :)
How thoughtful huh? The Olsen's, you know our good friends that we always talk about, well they drove us to and from the airport and look what they brought us! What good friends! What a way to top off our vacation! A nice big cake welcoming us home!

And then the next day, finally, the moment I had been waiting for...
The Reunion! :)
She seemed confused to be seeing me in person and not through Skype, but she was all smiles and excited! The next day she gave me about a million kisses too! :) I think she missed me! :) Oh what a glorious day!   (She wasn't sleeping but the flash was too bright) :)

Well we got a whole lot of R & R. I'm feeling overly blessed and am on grateful high!!! And now it's time to get to work and get all ready for Bre's wedding! Exciting! :)