Wedding Days

 This weekend was Jillian and Chase's wedding and it was a wonderful celebration! They were married in Cardston. We have a temple in Calgary but it was closed for some minor renovations. Allen and I were married in the Cardston temple and it had been a lot of years since we had been there. The person who married them was Brother Ursenbach. When I met him, I said, "Oh! I have some favorite Ursenbachs: Andy, Dan, Matt, Chuck...." and he happily responded, "Those are my sons!" The lady who helped us in the bride's room was from Paris and so it was fun for her to be able to speak French with Jill and later with Chase. The ceremony was really lovely. He encouraged everyone there to apply the covenants they make in the temple to their marriage. I had never thought of temple covenants that ways before. 

After the ceremony we had some Subway trays and Allen's mom and Carmen brought some veggie trays. Then we were off to take pictures on the temple grounds.  I can't wait to see the pictures!

That afternoon we had a lunch in Lethbridge at Earl's restaurant with lots of family and friends. It was nice to be able to sit and relax and visit. I stole a cool picture from Zoe's instragram from the restaurant.

Saturday was the reception. Celebrating with lots of extended family and even more friends made our hearts swell! 

Now they're off to their honeymoon!

Bridal Shower

 We are only a few weeks away from Jill and Chase's wedding. Last night some ladies in the ward planned a shower for them. Because of the new covid restrictions, we ended up doing it on Zoom. Peirce and Zoe and I went to their new place to be part of the shower. It was so fun! I'm so grateful for my dear friends who organized the shower! We felt the love! 

Karyn was up to her usual amazingness. 

She made no-bake cheesecakes and also had macarons. 

It was delicious!

The Power of 30 Minutes

 During the summer, I always have these grand plans about things I'm going to get caught up on in my house and in the yard. However, I run into the problem of balance. If I spend too much time cleaning and doing yard work, I start to feel like I'm getting ripped off. If I don't do it, I feel like I'm wasting all this extra time I have. 

A number of years ago I decided I would do a load of laundry every day. It changed everything when it comes to laundry. I still do it religiously every single day. The loads are never very big, which makes it easy to wash and dry and put away each day. Sometimes I even have to look for things that I should wash - but not that often. Bedding, towels, etc make up the lulls in empty baskets. The nice thing about it is that I never have baskets and baskets of laundry to fold and put away and I never have piles of laundry sorted on the floor waiting to be washed. It's just become a quick and easy thing that gets taken care of each day. 

I decided to implement this strategy for my housework and yard-work goals this summer. I committed to 30 minutes a day for each. It's amazing how much gets accomplished in 30 minutes! This morning was a great example. I have mostly been working in the front yard but now things are mostly caught up and it's hard to find 30 minutes of work to do each day so I decided I should venture into the back yard. It's been something I've stayed away from because we are working on building a new fence and a new deck and there is a lot going on back there. However, today I decided maybe what I should do is tidy up the pile of boards that have been left for a couple weeks from fence work. Imagine my surprise when it was all taken care of in only 7 minutes?! I went from this:

to this:

So then I had to figure out something to do for the last 20 minutes. See all those shoots around the lilac bush? I decided to get to work on them. It's amazing how much of that was taken care of in just 20 minutes! 

One of Gretchen Rubin's secrets of adulthood is that nothing is more exhausting than a task that is never started. That is so true! I looked at that pile for so many days and hated it....and it was so easy to look after!