BRIDALS

(Continuation from the previous wedding post, but this deserves its own post because of all the pretty pictures)

The day before the wedding (Thursday 21) we had our professional bridal pictures taken by Lavon at Luvography. We have already done several photoshoots together, so I knew the photos would turn out nicely. She is great to work with, and makes it so easy for us because of all her great ideas. Here are a few of my favorites she did for us:

 

I’m so happy with how they turned out! Thank goodness pictures last forever so I can always remember my excitement from our wedding weekend! My house is already full of wedding photos. This makes me so happy!

 

A Koch Family Christmas

First off the travel home was enough of an adventure on its own. A completion of the whole “planes, trains, automobiles” thing was necessary to make it home for Christmas. I even met a funny harmonica musician at one train station.  Nice thing is that my sister and I were on the same flight back. So I left cold and snowy Idaho for a “spring time” Chicago. I couldn’t complain.

The next day after all the travel was Sunday, So a before church family selfie was a must!

Family Home Evening done right as a chocolate fondue party (this was later repeated in the week because #chocolate.) You would never think you could feel so sick of chocolate but its a thing. But so good! This is one thing I really wanted to make sure happened while I was home.

 

We also have this favorite family tradition of going to help organize/ weigh/ stock food at the bishops storehouse for a few hours then after we go to eat at cracker-barrel. Yumm. This time I was on the bag tying duty while these other little kids bagged and counted tomatoes and pears.

Another day our family decided to try out a new place on 3rd st. in Geneva- its called Doughocracy. Think of the line up in Chipoltle or Subway… but in a pizza place. You get to make your own personal pizza down the assembly line then it is cooked at like 520 degrees for 3 minutes.

Bam. delicious.

 

On Christmas Eve we all took the train downtown Chicago to go to the Christkindlmarket at Daley Plaza. It has many venders that sell things from around the world. Mostly out of our price range, some ornaments were more than 50 bucks a piece. But its one of those things where you soak in the experiance; the sounds, smells, and pretty colors. We also walked around the annual Macey’s display windows and up to see the tree in the walnut room. I don’t know what it is, but the city/ train experience always tires you out.

Later on that Christmas eve we did our little family devotional. This helps us to remember the spiritual side of christmas. We watch the “Joy to the World” video from the church and read the nativity story in Luke 2. Then we went on a little drive around the neighborhoods to admire the Christmas lights and decorations. Upon returning home from the drive us girls opened one gift- PJs of course!

Christmas Day was beautiful. My mom always does a great job at decorating the house, it has a warm and festive feel about it. So when we woke up there is always a magic feeling about the place. It was our last christmas that we would have just as the Koch family for a little while, so I knew it would be a special one.

Funny story, when I was 5ish years old alllll I wanted for christmas was a remote controlled T- rex dinosaur that growled and walked around. I thought it was the coolest thing. Well I got it for christmas that year. I always played with it around my sisters dolls, it kind of became the family joke. Well it somehow resurfaced this year in a new box. That was my joke gift. It caused some good laughs….

That was followed by my real gift of a sewing machine! Yay! I’m so happy.

The day after christmas we all got dressed up and went to a chicago musical production of “White Christmas” at Drury Lane. There was a pre- show dinner dinner too. We all felt so fancy.

 

We also did lots of baking. Mostly Rebecca, because of her famous cupcakes! She made mint oreo, candycane redvelvet, and gingerbread cupcakes for a Sunday gathering.

New Years Eve we have another fun tradition; it includes a movie marathon, random junkfood dinner, and to end it all…….. the Balloon Drop! Our movie selection this year was: The Cokeville Miracle, Ant Man, and the new Cinderella. Follow this post to get the recipe for my chocolate peanut butter balls we had as part of our spread.

 

Our home style balloon drop (116 balloons) falls with the new years count down.

Happy 2016! This will be a great year!

Yellowstone in October

So its been on our bucket-list for awhile, and we needed to make it happen before the park was closed for the season. We decided to make Yellowstone a group adventure. I had tried all week to coordinate rides and times and people with everything but it was just one impossible logic problem. It just couldn’t work for all of us to leave at the same time as a big group (like 18 of us) so we had a staggered schedule. My group left at 7:00 a.m. but we still had the goal to all meet up with everyone at Old Faithful at 3:00 p.m. as the last destination before leaving the park.

I was able to bring my dad’s old camera to play around with. It was a fun place to practice photography, that’s for sure. So everything on this blog post (except for the map- thank you google) is taken from Dad’s Nikon, or Sheldon’s phone.

We drove in through West Yellowstone and followed the main red circle path (on the map where it says “Yellowstone” in green) up then around to finish up at Old Faithful. Fun fact is that there were 3 states involved in this trip (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming).

First Views of the park- through the West Entrance:

Not long after paying the entrance fee we saw a herd of elk off to the side of the road, one really big one with quite the impressive antlers, well of corse we parked and walked over to take a picture. While walking back to the car we realized that there was one elk right there in the parking lot! SO close! I knew it would be a good day!

Stop Number 1: Natural Hot Pools

Okay this place was a nice first destination. The lighting was perfect and there weren’t any other tourists there but us. I love the fact that we came in October, I was able to capture some beautiful muted natural tones.

Stop Number 2: Gibbon Falls

Okay this place was beautiful! It was just right off the road, there was a little walkway; but come on, people will hike for days to see this stuff. So good. This is nature at it’s finest. Also, selfies with a real camera are hard… But you can’t exactly take a bad picture of this place!

Stop Number 3: Norris Geyser Basin Hike

This is just the towards the parking lot, we did a good portion of this hike though to see the geyser basin.

Heavenly Father is the best artist, I mean look at His creations. Nature is so cool. I took some “Dad inspired pictures” of different paths around the park, and also paid close attention to the different textures.

We also found this pretty little lake off the beaten path.

Next Stop: Upper Falls

This is the place. I remember this beautiful sight very clearly from my family vacation back in 2007. Pictures really do NOT catch the awe factor. The sun is starting to shine pretty bright here though so some shadows are dramatic. Sheldon said that if he didn’t see a “yellowstone” he was going to sue… haha, good thing we made it this far. The park lived up to its name.

And the (partial) group photo:

Along the drive to the next spot we pulled over a few times for some classic Yellowstone photo-ops like these. We also saw a baby bear, but I didn’t get out of the car. Let’s remember this is October, it is getting pretty cold here.

Next stop: Snack break at the Bridge Bay pull off.

I loved seeing the variety here, all different landscapes in one park! Its really amazing. The sand here is made up different rocks, I personally like the black sand from volcanic rock. Also lets just appreciate the crackle texture on this old log. The friendly bird was workin’-it like he wanted to become famous.

Animal Sightings: Baby bear, elk, bison, squirrel, friendly fuzzy birds, and big ugly black birds….

Surreal landscape of Yellowstone Lake.

Last Stop: Castle Geyser and Old Faithful

We didn’t really plan ahead too well because we only brought snack foods expecting there to be a place to eat along the way… Well now we know that there are places, but they aren’t open for off-season. Upon arrival we saw the very end of the eruption of Old Faithful… we missed it. Well because it is SO iconic, and important to everyone to see, we waited another hour to be able to watch Old Faithful go off. So while waiting we walked through the gift shop, and the little museum, then decided to walk the loop to see other smaller geysers. Luckily we were able to watch Castle Geyser.

Old Faithful was a little late, not sure of that means he’s unfaithful or what…. but the miracle was that the timing worked out so that I could see everyone of our giant group at the Old Faithful Geyser at 4:00. We all met up for a few minutes, perfect!

We got back to Rexy around 7:00pm. It was a full day. We did it. Yellowstone did not let us down.

After starving all day we made sure to make dinner a good and filling one. Sheldon and I decided on Texas Roadhouse.

Successful day to say the least.