In case you were wondering…

Aurelio and I did in fact marry on Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2013. Groundhog Day is coincidentally one of my favorite movies.

Coincidentally, not one of Aurelio’s favorite movies, but we make it work

We had a lovely little ceremony at Momo’s house with our immediate families.

Betsy was kind enough to take pictures so I will share some with you! Hopefully not too many.

We’re always so natural, it’s CRAZY.

Here are my new sisters:

The beautiful sister on the far left helped with my flowers, and the beautiful sister on the far right did my hair and helped with my makeup. The beautiful sister on the center left assisted the hairdresser. She probably did more things but I wasn’t aware of everything going on. Sorry Cailie!

These are the siblings I’ve always had, although no less exciting:

They were also very instrumental. The menfolk did a lot of moving and cleaning and Betsy and Emmy helped with planning and decorating etc.

Here’s one with all of our siblings:

Trust me: this was the best shot. Unfortunately brother-in-law Josh was not able to make it and improve this picture.

The fun thing about having such a small party was being able to use the family silver and Mom’s mom’s china (supplemented with some of Mo’s mom’s).

Cake stand and servingware on loan from Emmy and Josh (right?)

Mom did such a good job on the cake! Beautiful and delish.

I have to post this lovely picture of my friend Amy even though I look like a total doofus:

True friendship is looking like a goon while your friend looks good

Amy helped out a ton! It seems like she did more than she should have been allowed to do…I guess that’s true friendship.

And who doesn’t love that little door for the milk man in mo’s kitchen? Not Dominic! Not Dominic doesn’t!

milkmen were much smaller back then

This image proves that men are great at doing dishes:

I see more evidence of this fact every day

Here are the Chayrez brothers. What the heck are they doing?

Just kidding. They were showing off their socks, which is perfectly normal behavior.

A picture with Gerow parents:

We have great personalities

And the Chayrez parents:

We might be tired of taking pictures

The only problem with backyard weddings is the creepy neighbors:

hee hee

Here we are with Mo:

Here I am with Cuen and Steph:

Those called Stephanie Chayrez have similar taste in shoes. Those called Cuen Chayrez are sometimes too fast for digital photography.

Cuen and Steph got us an amazing room at the Hard Rock hotel downtown. Talk about snazzy!

Here’s one last shot of one of the tables:

Thanks to everyone who helped with flowers! Cathy, Steph, Chase!

And thank you for reading and looking, everyone. These are all unedited shots Betsy (or someone behind Betsy’s camera) took. Austin’s friend Brandon was also taking pictures, so when we get more maybe I’ll do another post, if there is enough interest. My next blog posts should involve our new apartment in Austin, Tx (sort of) and our new jobs and news and new stuff.

Until next time,

The Artist Formerly Known As Stephanie Gerow

Do you see how I did that?

Games, books, prime, oh my!

I’m sorry I haven’t added anything to the blog in some time now. I thought the whole unemployed thing would help me in this area, but it turns out sitting on the couch and playing games on my kindle doesn’t provide that much writing material. The kindle fire is awesome though; I’ll see what I can do to blather on about it for a while.

I got it for Christmas, which I feel horribly spoiled about, and it is just chock full of goodness. I started out my game obsession with Draw Something, which is a simplified version of Pictionary, for those of you possibly ignorant of the concept. This is my first touch screen device, so you may as well know that when you were playing draw something two years ago on your iphone, I was crying in a corner. I even tried playing online with my laptop and then my wacom drawing tablet, but it just wasn’t the same.

I do have a few issues with the game. Some words, like “biscuit”, inspire me to spend ten minutes on a buttery steamy masterpiece that my poor opponent (or pal?) has to watch in real time as it slowly unfolds and I imagine is really boring and annoying. Then, other words, like “weak”, get a two second drawing of stick figures at a gym. Also you only start out with primary colors (that don’t blend) and it’s a little difficult to draw the Hulk, or Kermit the frog, without using green. But by now I’ve earned enough coins to buy two additional color palettes adding secondary and even tertiary colors to my little bag of tricks.

Enough about that!

The games I used to play only when waiting for the other people to draw something back to me are now firmly established in my repertoire: Happy Jump, Happy Fall, Angry Birds. There are a lot of emotions.

happy jump is soooooooo cute

In addition to the free games, there are also a lot of classics one can download. The first one I read was a lesser Jane Austen novel called Lady Susan. It isn’t her worst novel, and it was entertaining enough. It felt like a really fast read; I assumed it was a short story or something but they call it a novel, so who am I to argue?

 

the lady herself?

 

If you haven’t read it and you are a fan of Austen I would recommend it. The main thing I didn’t like about it was the fact that the entire thing consisted of letters between characters, except for the last few paragraphs at the end which are randomly 3rd person. And the end wasn’t that great. One of those quick little blurbs that makes you wonder if old Jane got lazy and started to hate other people’s letters as much as I do.

Yeah, I didn’t make it sound great, but I can say that there is at least one fantastic character and she will amuse you. So go ahead, give it a read.

As a kindle owner I received (from my friends at Amazon) a month’s membership  of Amazon Prime. I was very pleased to see that Prime members get to borrow popular books for free, and neglected to read the fact that you only get to borrow one a month, so I downloaded the hunger games (I don’t think I’d read it since the first time) instead of something unknown and exciting. One book a month, prime? Seriously? I would never buy that!

But with Prime does come a lot of free shows and movies. I’m currently on season 2 of Parks and Recreation. My brother Robort told me it was funny, and he was right, as usual. The pilot was a little slow but it really picked up. It has that sometimes dry, clever humor that I like. It can be silly and occasionally dumb but I like it so much more than the office, to which it has similarities, including the catchy instrumental song at the beginning. Season 2 is proving to be more amusing than season 1, a trend I’m confident will continue until the end of time. Right? RIGHT??

My California days are drawing to a close, so I also try to hang out with the chickens and cats my friends! I’m sorry! I’ve been really antisocial lately due to an excess of travel and human interaction. I am 99% recovered from that so I will probably see you soon. In real life. I will leave the kindle at home.

P.S. If you want to buy one or two cars from me I will make you a gift basket of freshly laid eggs and kittens (if I can find some) and candy.