A Minnesota Wedding!

December 28th, 2013

We woke up to a surprisingly beautiful, sunny and fairly warm day for Minnesota! Perfect day for a wedding! 

The first event of the day was the luncheon. There was just a small group of us at this really nice restaurant. The food choices were awesome and it all looked delicious.. sadly I wasn't able to really eat anything yet.. but they had good bread! :) It was just really nice to sit down and relax and chat with everyone before the ceremony and everything. While everyone was finishing up at the luncheon, Jay, Nathan and I took the bride and groom (Aaron and Chelsea) over to the St. Paul LDS Temple to help get them ready. I was so honored to be able to accompany Chelsea in the Temple and be in the brides room with her and help her get into her wedding dress and just spend some quality sister-in-law bonding time before she got married! She is so sweet and fabulous. I am so glad I get to have her as a sister now! (I have gotten some great new sisters becoming a Brooksby! I love it!)

Aaron and Chelsea got married in the Temple and were sealed to each other for time and all eternity! What a beautiful blessing that is! Their ceremony was so touching and so beautiful!

Here they are coming out of the Temple as husband and wife!!

I'm so glad I got this picture of them looking at each other this way... 

They are SO in love and it was so fun to see them interact with each other throughout the day. You could tell when they looked at each other, time stood still for them. Even though lots of craziness was going on around them, they were in a different world, just loving each other and loving being together. It was quite precious to see! :) 

The hubby and I had fun taking lots of pics... hehe! 

Extended selfies.... ;)

So after the Temple ceremony we headed over to the event center where the rest of the festivities were at that night. After spending a couple of hours setting up.. which Chelsea's mom did a marvelous job! It all looked SO SO beautiful and elegant... We started the night off with a beautiful ring ceremony, then they had a "mix and mingle" portion where you could all mingle and give her congratulations to the bride and groom. They also had lots of treats and a crepe company catering. Those crepes were delicious! Then after that portion, they brought everyone back to the amphitheater where they had the ring ceremony and Ben (a Brooksby brother) gave a wonderful toast to the Bride and Groom! Then of course there was a dance! You can't have a Brooksby wedding without a dance! It was really fun to see all the Brooksby brothers get together and show off their moves!! 

http://youtu.be/CzV_JaylZ1c

Check out this video... you wont want to miss this! 

Here is the lovely couple when they were getting ready to leave! 

The weather turned on us throughout the night, so when they were leaving it was freezing cold and super windy... but no fear, Ben, Jay, Nathan and I were out there as their send off party waving and yelling goodbye and all sorts of craziness! :)

After the bride and groom left, we all pitched in and helped take down and clean everything up. Finally around midnight and super exhausted we made our way back to our hotel and slept! :)

Even though it was a long and exhausting day.. it was so worth it! What a fun and beautiful day it was!! We were so glad we got to go and be apart of Aaron and Chelsea's big day!! :)

Our Trip to the Frozen North!

So Nathan and I woke up super early the day after Christmas and started our long day journey to Minnesota for his brothers wedding. The first few hours of the trip were a little sketchy as we drove through some snow storms (which are a lot more sketchy when its super dark outside and the snow is blowing everywhere... you can't see very well...), but once the sun came out and we made it to the other side of Michigan we had clear skies and dry-ish roads for the rest of the drive! 

We arrived in Minneapolis late afternoon and after we made lots of wrong turns, went the wrong direction on one way streets, and got super lost in downtown Minneapolis we finally found our hotel and family!! Man, that city is confusing! Even Siri couldn't figure it out! ;) 

When we got there we met up with mom and dad Brooksby and Lisa (Nathan's sister) and her family. Then on Friday two more Brooksby brothers joined us, Jay and Ben. Sadly Joel was unable to join us and also Jay's wife and their kids couldn't join us, they have a newborn at home and didn't want to take him out in the bitter cold weather! (I don't blame them!) Thank goodness for FaceTime tho! We were able to FaceTime with Joel everyday and keep him updated with all the happenings going on! So fun!

Later on that night we got together with the soon to be bride and groom (Aaron and Chelsea) and her family! We all had a great time getting to know everyone, eating yummy desserts and opening christmas presents and wedding gifts!  

Sadly the inevitable tummy bug hit me that night, and then hit Nathan later on in the early morning hours... :/ bummer. So Nathan and I spent most of Friday in bed at our hotel, taking turns using the bathroom and sleeping. By Friday night we were feeling a lot better! I was still pretty queasy for most of the trip and wasn't able to eat much... I was able to eat a couple pieces of bread most days! Nathan recovered much quicker and was able to eat actual meals! 

Saturday was the wedding... and what a wonderful day it was! (It was so fabulous that it gets it's own post... so it will be up soon!) 

Sunday, we were all so exhausted from the day before, that we all slept in and then just took it easy for the rest of the day. We did try to go to church for sacrament meeting, and when we got there we found out that that ward got canceled because of the cold weather...?.. or something? So we just went to the last hour of the other ward that meets there. We still got some sort of church in! :)

It was so cold there that the windows in the skybridge froze on the inside. So of course we had to stop and leave a picture! 

On Monday we all went to the Mall of America for the day!! WHOA is it huge! So so cool... I wish I could have had more energy to truly appreciate its greatness and explore it all! But we still had lots of fun!!

I think Nathan and I stood in front of the Lego store for like 20 mins just starring at all the huge lego statues! SO so cool! 

Little miss Kenzie... so adorable!

These two girlies are so fun! Loved spending the weekend with them!

This little man is so stinkin' cute! 

We had SO much fun playing with him... he is so funny and always so happy!

We have some pretty dang cute nieces and nephews! This is only 3 out of 8 and they all are this cute! 

I don't think our car battery liked the bitter coldness too much... but no worries.. it just needed some assistance and then it started just fine!

Our drive home was pretty uneventful with clear roads and sky.... .for the first 3 hours... then the snow started.....

and kept going...

and going...

and going...

and going till we got home! We were planning on getting home around 10 ish or so.... but we ended up spending New Years in the car and getting home around 12:30. So needless to say it was a very long trip back, and we were very happy to be home! At least we got to see some fireworks to help celebrate the New Year while in the car! 

What a wonderful weekend we had! We loved being able to spend so much time with some family! :)