Wedding and Honeymoon: The short story

Christie and I had a most excellent wedding and were amazed at all of the people that came to show their support (and eat some good food).  Many of my family members from California, Utah, and Idaho came out to the Lone-Star State for the first time and a very large amount of Christie's family came from all over (with a large chunk from Utah).  We hope it was worth everybody's efforts despite the wretched Texas heat.  I am so glad I made it through that day--the biggest challenge for me on my wedding day was to not get heat exhaustion...and while I was feeling the tell-tale signs of it when we left the reception, I got some cold Gatorade and was back to my normal self very quickly.

Our honeymoon was started in downtown Houston for the 4th of July, where we saw an absolutely incredible fireworks display, and then we migrated down to South Padre Island to get some good beach time.  It was SO good for us to get away from work, school, and the pressures of planning a wedding and just RELAX!  We had so much fun that whole week, whether it was sitting on the beach, playing trackball (a Young family tradition), bocce ball, parasailing, going out to eat (we ate at a REALLY nice seafood place and it was GOOD!), off-roading on the beach in the 4Runner, or just hanging out at our awesome condo.  We got some good pictures and picked up some shells and hope we can hold on to them for a while to remind us of the good time we had down there.

When we got back from South Padre, we were awed when we saw the amount of gifts that we had to open!  It was very humbling and we are very grateful for all of the amazing and sweet things that people got us.  We hope that our thank-you cards made it out to everybody and wish we could do more to show our appreciation for the incredible generosity that everybody has shown!