What the?

Wait a second... I'm MARRIED? When did I turn 20? How am I going into my JUNIOR year of COLLEGE? Pretty sure that like 2 seconds ago I looked like this:


and this:
and also... this:

and not too long ago my family looked like this:

Add about 14 years, another little Hammer girl, and 2 handsome men to this picture and that's what our clan looks like now.

It's pretty weird to think about how fast time goes by. That's one of those things that often makes me sad/ freaks me out. If you'd like to get sad about this also, all you have to do is listen to "Cinderella" by Steven Curtis Chapman. It's such a good song so sometimes I want to listen to it, but every single time I do, the first few verses leave me with the same results and I eventually regret even turning the song on. This regret happened to me for the umpteenth time just a few minutes ago as I was writing in my journal about my wedding. I was thinking about the Father/ Bride dance and how my dad and I danced to this song. So, since I was already in a reminiscent mood, I decided to listen to it....

And that's why I'm here at work. All by myself. Sitting in the corner of this room. Crying. I'm pathetic.

On the more positive side, my reflections have led me to think about 2 things.
1) how thankful I am for my great childhood and my amazing family.

-I've always loved my family and enjoyed being with them. However, it almost takes being away from them to fully realize what they mean to me and the impact they have had on my life. Going away for school gave me that experience, but I always had the assurance that I would be going home to them for the holidays or for the summer. Now that I'm married, being with the family won't occur quite so frequently, and I've grown to love and miss the goofiness between me and the sibs, the dancing and singing that would occur while doing dishes after dinner, the silly faces that were exchanged when our attention span couldn't last through the entire family scripture-reading time, the fun and the laughter. I've also learned to greatly appreciate my parents: my dad for working to provide for our family, coming home and happily going straight to work on the next new project my mom had planned out for him. And my mom for the meals she made, the laundry she folded, the decorating and the cleaning she did. I've come to realize that those things don't get done by themselves, and they sure take quite a bit of time. So here's to you, Hammer fam.

2) How grateful I am to have a cute little husband who works all day to take care of me and comes home each night to eat with me, talk to me, and laugh with me.

- Luke makes me happy. He makes me smile. He makes me laugh.... even when we're laying on the couch at midnight and he makes me carry him to our bedroom because he's playing dead (yep... that happened last night. Picture a 108 lb girl trying to carry a 160 lb boy. I had to take him limb by limb til I got him on my back... and even then I had to use the wall as a support system as I walked hunch-back with him on me to our room). He compliments me on my dinners, even when I didn't have enough time to run to the store to get some key ingredients. He takes care of me. And he loves me. Who could ask for more?

Basically I'm very content with my life, although a little confused about how it's going by so quickly. But such is life. And that's why we've got to take advantage of it.

YEAH MON!

If you're looking for a place to relax, get away from ALL troubles and stresses, put your feet in the softest sand in the entire world, view the clearest and warmest ocean water, see the greenest and most beautiful mountains, stay at the best resort ever, enjoy delicious all-inclusive meals 24 hours a day, be around the happiest/funniest people.... and basically experience the most perfect vacation spot ever, go to JAMAICA. Luke and I spent 5 days there on our honeymoon and it was pure bliss.

Getting there wasn't so enjoyable, however. After a 5 hour red-eye flight, an 8 hour layover (during which we slept on eachother's laps in the ever-so comfortable airport seats, woke up to see that we were possibly the only people of Caucasian ethnicity in the entire airport, tried to find something edible to eat with no luck except for a Dunkin' Donuts stand which only had donuts that looked like someone had drizzled chocolate sauce on them and then decided to lick it all off), another hour and a half flight, a trip to the airplane bathroom (which I've come to realize only allows enough space to slightly bend over when attempting to throw up yesterday's chicken fingers), and being cramped in the smallest airplane with absolutely no leg room, we arrived looking like this:


We enjoyed the bus ride to our resort with our driver who called himself "The Famous One". All the bus drivers are SO friendly and funny and make up names for themselves, such as The Famous One, Crazy Joe, etc. After getting to our resort, we went to a banquet on the beach which had SO much food. YUM.

Tuesday, we were so jetlagged from the day before that we just relaxed on the resort. This included exploring the hotel and discovering our favorite treats. Mine was their PINA COLADAS, which they called Snow Dogs
and Luke's favorite was the Jerk Chicken Quessadillas.

That day we just layed out, went in the ocean, and played a giant game of chess. Literally:

Naturally, I beat my husband. JK. He actually won, but he had to put up a fight to do so. I figured that our honeymoon was an appropriate place to pull out my mad chess skills. He was impressed.

Wednesday was AMAZING. We took a bus ride with "Crazy Joe" up the mountains, and along the way he explained a bunch of things that we passed: like how at some places they have speed DIPS instead of speed bumps, and banana trees, etc. At the top of the mountain, we put on our harnasses and hats and got ready to ZIPLINE through the jungle.
It was beautiful. And way fun.




Thursday= Dunns River Falls. This was a Jamaican National Park, and was so much fun. Before going to the Falls, we had to rent some sexy water shoes. At Dunn's River, we CLIMBED up the waterfall. Yep. It was really cool. The water was a little chilly, and the sun was blocked by the huge trees, so we were a little cold, but it was fun nonetheless. The best part about it was that when I got my hair wet Luke said I looked like a bald cat, but he still loved me. I have such a loving husband. :)
We really enjoyed this part of the trip. It was so much fun.

Friday, we only had a few hours until we had to catch our flight back home, so we went on the Glass Bottom Boat ride. We went out probably a good 250-300 ft out in the ocean and it was still super clear and really shallow. We saw a bunch of different fish, and even fed some piranhas. Pretty cool.
Then we had to make our journey back home. Good bye Jamaica :(

It was such a perfect honeymoon. We absolutely loved it, but we'e happy to back in the States, back to REALITY, and starting our new life together.

Happily Ever After

After much waiting, patience, and anxiety... after much traveling between Rancho Cucamonga and Fresno... after 1 1/2 months of being engaged in Provo and then after 51 lonely days and nights of separation at the beginning of summer, June 13th FINALLY came along, and Luke and I were joined together as husband and wife for time and all eternity in the Fresno Temple.

Luke and I are a pure example of the whole "best friends turning into lovers" thing. After being really close friends for a little over a year, we both concluded that we were just perfect for each other and decided we didn't want to live the rest of our lives without one another. So far we've found our marriage to be full of fun, laughter, jokes, and love and we know that we only have more of it to come.


As we look back on our Wedding Day,
we've tried to think of what we would change or what we would have done differently. Honestly, not much comes to mind. We had our family,



our closest friends,



great photographers, wonderful food and helpers in the kitchen,

the best DJ possible, and each other. We're so thankful for all the love and support we've felt from everyone that we know.

The married life so far has been splendid. There are so many perks and benefits to it that I have come to enjoy such as: being able to wake up and fall asleep next to the person I love, going furniture shopping together and daydreaming about what our future home will be like, attending the family ward and spending more time watching all the cute babies (and wishing time would hurry up so I could have one of my own) than listening to the talks, AND of course... making a blog! I feel like only married people should have blogs, because the single life just isn't that interesting. Don't get me wrong, if you have a blog right now and you're single... I still love you and you're obviously cooler than me, because your life is obviously interesting enough to blog about. But my single life consisted of the same thing every day.... aka boring. BUT now that I'm married I can join the blogging crew! Yay me! So obviously I'm new at it. Pretty sure as I get better at it, this thing will be rOcKiN' and super cool. So just keep lookin'.

As I get our wedding pictures back from our photographer I will post some up... but for now the next thing to be posted is:

JAMAICA

so be sure to stay tuned because it was just amazing and we loved it.

<3