The Best Honeymoon Ever!!!

No we did not go to a tropical island. No we did not roam the streets in Europe. No we did not visit luxurious hotels, sip cocktails, and eat expensive food.

The week after our wedding Eric got ACL surgery. Talk about the best honeymoon ever. Of course, we knew this was coming. Eric hurt himself at work back in May. He jumped down from a semi-truck, which he had done a million times before. But this time his foot landed on a rock the size of a tennis ball. His knee rolled and popped twice. He reported it to his employer immediately but continued to work on it. Finally in November he contacted L&I to report a claim. It took weeks to get his claim approved. Finally in December he was able to go see the doctor and get an MRI. Well, they found that he completely ripped the ACL off the bone. He also had some major tears in his meniscus. And in addition, he had a cyst on the back of the knee due to fluid leaking into the cavity for over five months.

So they needed to schedule him for surgery. They offered to give him surgery on December 7th. (Two days prior to the wedding) I told him that I would murder him if he did. So instead he scheduled it for December 15th. So we had a couple of days after the wedding to recuperate. We packed all the presents home. It took my truck, Eric's truck, and my brother's truck to get everything from the weekend home. And thanks everyone for all the wonderful presents. We are still trying to figure out where to put them all. So we spent most of the week putting presents away and cleaning house.

Eric's appointment was scheduled at 6:15 AM, so we thought we should get a good night's sleep on Thursday night. Well, what we weren't expecting was a huge wind storm to blow in. You guys know the one I am talking about. The power went out right in the middle of me making dinner. So I had to pull out the propane burner to finish dinner. We lit the candles and were doing OK until it was time to go to bed. That is when the wind really picked up. I was whipping the trees around so much that I got scared and made Eric go and sleep downstairs in the living room with me.

In the morning we left the house at 5:30 AM. There was devastation everywhere. We had one small tree fall on our shed. It didn't really damage the roof too bad. If the shed hadn't been there it would have landed on Eric's truck. Our yard was a mess. The road main road next to out house (Auburn-Black Diamond Road) looked like a war zone. There were trees across the road everywhere. I made Eric drive because I was scared. We had to weave in and out of trees and drive across power lines but we finally made it to Highway 18 and into Auburn. Oddly enough the power in the patch of Auburn where the surgery center was still had power.

So we checked Eric in. I got to visit him while they were waiting for the doctor arrive. It took him a while to make it in through the down trees. Eric was hooked up to an IV and lying in a bed. When they decided it was to go in for surgery they put some drugs in his IV. He started to get really loopy. He made a few phone calls to people that didn't really make sense. It was pretty hilarious. Then they took him back to the surgery room and I had to go back to the waiting room. He told me later that they laid him down, put a mask on him and ask him to breath. He said that was all he remembered.

Meanwhile I waited. I got bored of waiting so I went down the street to the Safeway to get a Mocha and do some grocery shopping. It was totally crazy. That Safeway was one of the few places that had power at 7:30 AM that morning. I got in line for Starbucks. It was about 25 people long. After I had finally ordered it was taking so long that I went and did all of my grocery shopping and then came back. The people that were in front of me were still waiting. Finally after 20-30 minutes I got my coffee. You think that was crazy, the line for gas was even worse. Massive amounts of people were filling up gas cans to power their generators. The Safeway gas station had lines going out into the parking lot. It blocked people from getting in and out of parking spots. People were upset and arguing. One person cut in line and the guy behind him got out of his car and started yelling. I was glad to get out of there.

I went back to the waiting room. I wasn't there too long when my brother Tony showed up. He was going to help transport Eric after the surgery. Around 10:00 AM Eric was already out of surgery and I was able to go in and see him. He was really drugged up and very fragile. His leg was bandaged up and they had put a catheter directly in to the knee with a pain pump that put localized drugs into his knee every hour. They gave us instructions that after 3 days he was allowed to take the bandage off and pull out the pain pump. An hour later we took him home. Of course, the first thing Eric asked for after surgery was a Mocha. So, while Tony took Eric home, I went to the Safeway again for another 20-30 minute wait.

When we got home there was still no power. It wouldn't be such a big deal except for we have no heat when there is no power. We have a pellet stove but it requires power to run the auger and fan. So it was really cold in our house. Eric spent most of that first day lying on the couch and sleeping under 5 or six blankets. I did my best to take care of him. He needed drugs every four hours. And every time he needed to shift positions I had to help lift his leg. Prior to surgery they injected a local anaesthetic into his femoral artery. They said it could take a while to get the feeling back in his leg. So after surgery he could not feel his leg at all. He said it was like when you wake up in the morning and your arm is numb and no matter how hard you try you can't move it. So I literally had to lift his leg for him.

One thing did help us out a lot though. Later that day Tony returned with his work generator. They had power at their house in Tacoma, so he gladly lent it to us. We then had heat, T.V. , and were even able to keep our refrigerators running. Having all that free time lying on the couch Eric watched plenty of movies. We watched the Lord of the Ring series, and then the Harry Potter series, and many more.

Over the next few days the feeling in Eric's leg was slowly coming back, but with that it also started to become more painful. He was really uncomfortable for a while there. I think there were a few nights when he woke me up four or five times. But the worst came on Sunday night. Eric's leg was feeling really warm and we were a little concerned about infection. He did not have a temperature though, so we did not call the doctor. However, we started to hear a beeping noise. It was his pain pump. The screen began to say Error. I looked at the manual. It said that the Error message could be due to the tube being pinched or that their was coagulation in the knee and not allowing fluid to get in to the knee. However, it said nothing about what to do as a result of the error. So we left the pain pump in. We were supposed to take it out on Monday anyway.

Eric was in a huge amount of pain by the next morning. But I wouldn't allow him to take off the bandages and take the pain pump off while sitting on our living room couch. So I helped him to the bathroom. A good thing too. What a mess. I am so glad that I didn't pass out or something. For those who are faint of heart do not read the rest of this paragraph ... I took the bandage off. It wasn't too bad. The stitches weren't pretty, but I had seen worse. At least there weren't too many of them. They made four small incisions rather than then opening him up all the way. The biggest incision was below the knee where the drill had to go in to reattached his tendon to the bone with a Titanium screw. He was very fortunate though. They were talking about having to take a portion of his hamstring to use to reconnect it to the bone, but apparently the tendon was still in good enough condition to where they did not need to do that. So having looked at the knee and not throwing up yet I though I was doing pretty good. Then it came time to pull the pain pump out. I was a little concerned about hurting him. I thought it would be like an IV needle going into the skin. But I was wrong. I began pulling, and pulling, and pulling, and pulling. I was holding the tube up and looking at it. About a foot of tubing was hanging there when it finally came out. It was pretty disgusting. Immediately his knee began oozing fluid. He said that it felt so much better to get that thing out. It relieved so much pressure.

I got Eric back to the couch and he really started to improve. He was still uncomfortable and in pain, but it wasn't as bad. He had lots of visitors over those first couple of days, and having a generator really helped. Although I still had to take a cold shower when I had to go into work on Monday. We did not get power back until Wednesday evening. What a relief that was. We immediately began to do all those thing we had missed for five days. Taking hot showers, running the dishwasher, doing laundry, vacuuming. It was so exciting.

Meanwhile, every day Eric was improving. He got enough feeling in his knee to be able to get around on his crutches. By Christmas he was able to get around OK in short amounts. It was pretty rough to travel in my little truck though. But he suffered through it. We really didn't have time to do a whole lot of Christmas stuff. We didn't have a tree, and we did all of our shopping at the gift card rack at the Safeway. I did got Eric a DVR box through Comcast (Same as a TiVo). He loves it, and has gotten plenty of use out of it. We were able to go to Jack & Mary Ann's for Christmas Eve, visit friends, and go to my grandparents on Christmas Day.

Eric has now gotten the stitches out, and has started physical therapy. He goes in for another check-up with the doctor this week. L&I has been covering all of his doctor bills, but his company decided on keeping him on salary rather than going through L&I. They even talked of him possibly working in their office before he heads back to the field. It is nice that they are whiling to work with him on this. The doctor says that it could be 6 to 8 weeks after surgery before he is fully recovered, but I think it could be a while longer before he is able to go back to Iron Working.

Well, that was our honeymoon. It wasn't tropical or luxurious, but at least we were together. We will probably do a real honeymoon sometime later this year when Eric is healthy again.

We're Married!

Well everyone, we did it. We got married. Can you believe it.

It has been such an eventful year. Let me tell you, having a big wedding requires a lot of work. So much planning and organizing that I think it drove Eric a little crazy. And of course, after spending months and months of making invitations, programs, candy boxes, and thank you cards I have decided to not work on any arts and crafts projects for a while. Throughout the planning process we were very lucky to have a lot of help from my parents. And let me tell you, the amount of money you shell out for a wedding can be very stressful.

However, the hardest part of the wedding for us was the guest list. Eric and I really struggled with this. There were so many people that we wanted to share the special day with. I have a huge family, and Eric has so many friends. In the end we decided the only way we could afford this wedding is if we did a family only wedding and a huge reception. Of course when I say family only wedding that was still 175 people. We would have loved to have everyone we know there, but it just wasn't an option. In the end we invited total of 500 people, and believe me we could have invited more. For those of you who weren't there, we really wish you could have been. It really was the hardest part of the whole wedding. At least for those of you where not there, we can share the story and the pictures.
Well here it is.

After months of planning it came down to a couple days before the wedding. The last couple days were pretty stressful. I almost had a nervous breakdown because I could not get the picture show to work on my computer. I think it crashed about ten times. Finally at 4:00 AM on Thursday night I was able to get it to burn to a CD. What a relief that was. And Eric was so stressed out that when he couldn't find a vacuum to clean up at the club he freaked out. And as if he wasn't freaking out enough, I accidentally stepped on my cell phone charger Friday morning and broke it. Then my cell phone battery died. All of the vendors were expecting to call me on my cell, so I called Eric who was in Seattle and asked if he could find me a cell phone charger. That is when he really lost it. He looked for a Verizon store for a couple of hours until I finally convinced him to give up the search when I told him that I found some 1 hour battery boosters at Thriftway (Thanks Aunt Barb!). By Friday afternoon, everything had calmed down. Almost everything was set-up and ready to go. We had a very informal rehearsal at Camp Burton. We were very lucky Pastor Sears was able to make it because his first grandchild was born that morning (Congrats Becky and Chris!).

After the rehearsal Eric and I went separate ways. Eric went back to our house in Auburn. He had a couple of friends stay the night there with him. I stayed on Vashon. When Eric and I started looking for a place to stay the night of the wedding I discovered that you can rent the Keepers Quarters down at the Point Robinson Light House. Since Eric and I used to live a couple of miles away and loved to go fishing there we thought it would be a perfect place to stay. They required that you rent the house for a minimum of two days, so I rented it for Friday and Saturday night. I had two of my bridesmaids stay there with me on Friday night. It was nice to have them there to keep me relaxed (Thanks Cara & Julie!). It is a great little house. It is right on the beach and has a back porch that overlooks the water. It has three bedrooms, a full kitchen, dinning room and living room. It even had a washer and dryer, which came in handy when I broke a glass wine bottle in my bag and all my clothes had to be washed.

The next morning we and picked up Coni and Darcy at the ferry dock, and went to Monique's place Studio 202. Everyone got their hair done, and they did such a great job there (Thanks Monique!). While sitting their at Monique's I looked outside the window to see sideways rain. It was miserable.




My dream of having the photographer take pictures of Eric and I down at Pt. Robinson was drifting away. Then as I went to get into the car there was a glimmer of hope. It stopped raining. We hurried back down to the house at Pt. Robinson to get ready.


In true wedding fashion we were running a little bit late. So one of the girls called Eric (who was waiting at the house, along with the photographers), and asked him to hide while they brought me into the house.


We didn't want him to see me before I was finished getting ready. So he told us that he would get dressed in the Port-O-Potty. We all laughed and thought "He must be joking". We get down to the house. There are the photographers, but no sign of Eric. We asked them if he was hiding. They told us he actually went into the Port-O-Potty to put his tux on. How many people can say that happened on their wedding day.


So the girls and I went into the house to get ready.






And Eric and the photographers were taking some pictures on the beach.











Once I was already to go they had Eric stand on the back porch facing the water. I walked down the stairs to meet him. It made me a little nervous to have the cameras right up in my face, but when I saw Eric I completely forgot about them.

The weather was holding out so we decided to go down to the Point and get some pictures by the light house.





Darcy helped me hold my dress off the ground while the rest of the girls were getting ready. The pictures turned out wonderful. And they took so many of them. I was so excited that it didn't rain and we were able to take them.





In fact on a lot of them the sky was absolutely beautiful.






After we took a ton of pictures we headed up to Camp Burton Lodge to meet with the rest of the wedding party. Camp Burton was looking wonderful. My mom's family had helped with all of the flowers, decorations, and setting the tables. And all of the greenery came from Jack and Mary Ann's property.


The wedding party and family's took all of the formal portraits, which although they are nice to have Eric and I didn't really want to spend too much time on them. After a half hour of smiling it starts to get old.

Then me and the bridesmaids headed back to the Camp Burton staff break room. We were bored, so we found some crazy things to do. We took some funny pictures with these crazy hats we found back there.


It was fun. My bridesmaids are so great. Then my step dad Dean came back there and we tortured him as well. It really helped to ease the tension of waiting for the ceremony.



Then it was time. We got ready to walk down the isle. All of the girls looked beautiful. And no one tripped down the isle (Good job Darcy!). My mom had asked a friend to play his classical guitar as we walked up the isle. He played "Love Me Tender", which was a total surprise. Eric likes Elvis music.










Pastor Sears performed the ceremony for us. In case you don't know Mr. Sears, he teaches math at Vashon High School.


Eric and I both had him as a teacher. Eric was one of many kids who played pickle ball with him before school, and I went to school with all four of his kids. So we were really excited when Pastor Sears said he would perform the ceremony for us even though we do not go to his church.




We asked him to keep it short and sweet, and hid did. I did my best to hold back they tears. I only cried a little. And before you knew it we were married!


Then dinner was served. And it was fabulous! The owner of the now former Express Cuisine cooked all of the food. I think we sat and talked to him for three hours when we were deciding on the menu. Everyone was so excited. We had salmon and halibut (Thanks to the Wheelers!), standing roast, roasted potatoes, pasta, salad, and a salmon spread that was delicious.

We felt very fortunate that he cooked for us because it was his last professional job before he retired. After everyone stuffed their face we proceeded to the party at the Sportsman's Club.


There was a crowd of friends there already when we arrived. There were so many people there. At least 300. Thanks goodness we sent up tents and heaters outside (Thanks to Pam Myers and Zender!), so a lot of people stood outside. I think that might have also had something to do with the fact that the kegs were outside.

The inside of the club was packed as well. We didn't really decorate much there except for the lights. I hung up 30 strands of white Christmas lights in the ceiling. It looked really great.

And of course the main decoration we had was the chocolate fountain. It was 5 tears high and stood about 3 1/2 feet tall. It took 10 pounds of chocolate just to keep it running. But that wasn't all.

The lady who we hired to do this used 3 banquet tables to set out all of her dipping items. And we are talking about good dipping items. Cream puffs, cookies, fruit, and I don't even know what else.


I asked her what I should try. She handed me a leaf made out of white chocolate that had 24 carrot gold dusted over the top. She even had a chocolate wine bottle with our names on it.



It was one of the most memorable parts of the day.






Everyone enjoyed it so much, especially the kids. Hunter Burger literally had chocolate drooling down his face.




And of course, I stuck my tongue right into the chocolate fountain.



At the end of the night she boxed up the left over dipping items and chocolate for us. We told everyone to take some stuff home. We didn't have to tell them twice. Everyone took so me and at the end of the night there was none left for us. We did take home 10 pounds of chocolate though. I ending up using most of it to make Christmas Fudge. It was good.

In addition to the chocolate fountain my grandmother made us a wedding cake. It was beautiful.










This was her third wedding cake this year because two of my cousins Michael and Clarice also got married this year. So she is no amateur. Not only was it beautiful but it tasted delicious too.

Eric and I wee so fortunate that my Uncle John and his band played for us. They were so great. There were so many people dancing. When I was setting up a schedule for the day I was thinking that maybe Eric and I would want to leave around 10:00 PM.





Well, I didn't have a watch or anything, and when the band stopped playing I asked what time it was. They said it was after midnight.

Eric and I didn't end up leaving until 1:30 AM. We had such a great time. There were so many people there that I don't think I even got a chance to talk to everyone. It was such a great day thanks to all of the people who helped us.

You can check all of the wedding photos on the following website. Don't order any photos through that website though. Eric and I have the CD of all the photos we can just send you the pictures that you want via email. Just let us know the number of the photo. There are some pretty cool ones in there so check it out. Here is how to log-in.

https://goo.gl/photos/AfJQXa3hdMDVwPaA8