Snapshots of love (and a wedding)

If we hadn't done about nine loads of laundry out at Uncle Tom's National Park today, I'd probably feel a little more like sharing what's going on in this crazy life of ours. Let's just say that at the end of the day, we're all pretty pooped. The great news is that it's a good kind of busy.

Guilt tapping me on the shoulder to edit these wedding pictures finally won, so I was able to at least get this small gallery of the wedding ceremony itself. Our incredible photographer Brian Diggs took thousands of beautiful photos, now it's just a matter of sharing them in an easily digestible manner. (Speaking of, does anyone have any ideas to make a stop motion movie with these photos? I've been trying iMovie, without success, and I just don't think Jump Cut could handle it.)

Anyway, looking at these photos takes me back to this beautiful moment in time, standing under my sister's yucca and lavender altar, Alberto's voice and soothing words of wisdom, Julian tugging on my dress to be with us while we shared our thoughts on loving each other. My promise. Ian's promise. To do our best.

Because that's the only thing we can really promise.

Pre- and post-wedding photos

Ian and I are still buzzing from the good energy spread around at our wedding two Sundays ago. We were surrounded by some of our favorite people, many who traveled a good number of miles to join us in a celebration of love. Here are the photos I got with my camera, so there's not many from the actual wedding celebration itself. These are from the pig roast preparation and post-wedding party.



You can buy any of my flickr photos at flickr.com/broylesa.

Also, I've never given a shoutout to the Web mind who makes it so that I can produce these slideshows. A Fabio Cavassini has made a site where you can use photos you've uploaded to flickr to make slideshows. Thanks, Fabio!

Sabotage after the wedding

One post wedding highlight was the discovery of a large insect similar to the one above, but with bigger mandibles and a longer, more swollen abdomen, that Scott bravely caught in Uncle Tom's garage. This bug was massive. Tom said he'd never seen one like it in 20 years living and working outside in Central Texas. No one knew what it was, but termite or ant queen were thrown out there.


It looks like it may have been a female dobsonfly, but we'll never know for sure.


Amid all the excitement about the bug arose the question, "What do we do with it?" About half the crew (not to generalize, but they tended to be vegetarian, with the exception of the overly emotional one who was moreso after a half dozen drinks) wanted to let go back to its business.

Ian and I were in the camp that wanted to keep it not just for posterity, but also for research and art. Ian grew up with a fascination of bugs and bug collections, and Troy introduced me to the study of entomology back in college. We wanted to pin it to a cork board and frame it for Julian's room.

Ian felt particularly strong about keeping it, so he put the argument to rest by pulling the groom card. We all went back to the party. No less than 20 minutes later, we discovered the sabotage that had been had on the bug container. The glasses that had been holding the creature were in the sink; the insect long gone. It quickly turned into a Clue style game of whodunit, with one clear pro-bug-life perpetrator who we'd thought had passed out in her grief-stricken state.


Now all we have are some crappy pictures we took and a memory of the biggest, gnarliest flying bug any of us had seen.

Top photo by kaleidoscope, via flickr.

I sure won't miss this scratching

Not only are Ian and I both scratching ourselves silly (well, less today than yesterday) from the batch of chiggers we must have found on Sunday, we're having a bit of Julian withdrawals. Anyone else scratching or still calling their belly buttons be-bos?

Here we go...

So many fun things to share today!

First, my debut as food writer for the Austin American-Statesman. I couldn't be more proud (and excited and nervous and giddy and all the other things you feel as the plane first lifts off the ground, heading toward somewhere you've never been). So far, I've met only wonderful people, like the people in my first lede story about the Austin Discovery School where students do most of their learning outside, in gardens. In my first column, I rekindled a memory of nearly burning down our apartment in Alicante, Spain, that was probably best left forgotten. The Relish Austin blog is up and running, with a couple of posts to greet you and, if I stay good on my word, daily posts on the weekdays after that (breaking food news notwithstanding).

Second exciting thing: I have some candidates for a wedding dress! I went on an exhausting shopping trip for both the Ian man and me, while he stayed at home to watch the kid. (It was a fair trade, I promise.) I spent something like 3 hours trying to channel my inner Stacy and Clinton to find the perfect stylish dress (not white, not frumpy, not long) and something equally fabulous for Ian. I ended up at the Armani Exchange (what? I've never shopped there in my life.) and found killer (and not that expensive) shirts and jeans for him and an awesome dress that I know Ms. London and Ms. Klum would approve of. We'll see if it's the winning number.

Third fantastic moment of my day: Julian has these berry/nuts that he collects outside, and when we come inside, he refuses to let go of them.

Today, we let him win.

See what fun he found.

Toys? Who needs toys?

More What Not to Wear

Astute reader Terry Sulsen tipped me off to this article on naturallycurly.com, a site that was started by some people who used to work at the Statesman. She interviewed me several weeks ago, but I had kinda forgotten that they were going to do an article.

Now, more apologies for not posting more, but I have an article of my own I need to get back to. My first story as the food writer is running on Wednesday, along with my first Relish Austin column. :) I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Ian and I got to sneak away for some shopping today. We both need something for the wedding, which is coming up a week from today, so we went by American Apparel and got non-wedding stuff. Makes perfect sense, right? Everything in this store fits Ian to a T. I'm so glad he finally found a place where he can buy (expensive) stuff to show off his cute little body. Still no dress for me, but I will find it this week. Stacy and Clinton would have been proud of me today. I tried on some good stuff, but I said no because I know that there's more out there.