Idaho - Wyoming - Colorado
Two years after they met, six months after Bret got home from his mission, and after months of hinting. . .
Bret and Erika were officially engaged in April.
Right after the BYUI sememster was finished Bret left to work for the summer in Colorado. Erika was going to also spend the summer working but in Rexburg. The only real wedding plan complication that this caused was getting engagement pictures with both of them. We didn't want them to be the first couple to have individual pictures on their wedding announcement so in a rash moment of engagement excitement Erika and I called up Michelle (who has been our family photographer for the last 3 years) and planned a weekend trip to Colorado.
On the Friday morning of our get-a-way weekend Erika and I stopped at Maverik to fill the car and stock up our caffeine and chocolate storage to help us survive Wyoming. I wanted to clip my nails because they were bugging me so I asked Erika to pump the gas and use my debit card. In a very teasing but somewhat serious voice she started complaining that she didn't know how to use a debit card . . . oh, and could she also get a Score bar for the trip? I laughed and in the same teasing but somewhat serious voice replied something along the lines of, "if you're old enough to get married and Score, you're old enough to use a debit card to get gas". It was just the beginning of the silly humor that would take place over the next three days.
Once we got to Michelle's we were pretty hyper and excited for this girly trip. As we walked up to Michelle's front door we noticed a bright yellow chair on the porch. .. well, half a chair. It was missing the legs. Just before I rang the doorbell Erika grabbed the half-chair and placed it about 4 feet in front of the door, pulled her knees up to her chin with her (of course) bare feet showing and and with her fingertips drumming together in excitement in front of her over-exaggerated cheesey grinned face. When Michelle answered the door she burst out laughing hysterically. Michelle loved it so much that when she did our family pictures a few weeks later she actually posed Erika in the same position.
All of the pictures turned out great, really showing the personality of these two crazy kids. There were so many to choose from that we loaded the wedding invitations with only a few of our favorites.
On the long trip home through Wyoming Michelle and I made a favorites list from the weekend:
* Across the bare emptiness of Wyoming there were four unmarked black sedans with tinted windows and Chinese symbols in the back window. They all pulled off the main road onto a dirt road. Chinese Mafia?
* Prehistoric looking bird flying in what looked like slow motion
* Little America - oriental man who bowed at Erika while holding his money tray, saw a polygamist family loading up on the fifty cent ice cream cones
* NOTHING through Wyoming except for snow barricades and semi-trucks
* Wendy's in Cheyenne smelled like vomit and they got our order totally wrong so I was a little surprised when the new limited time salad tasted pretty good.
* Cheyenne to Thornton went super fast even though Erika was constantly telling me to go faster and asking why cars were passing me
* Trying to find our hotel we ended up in the business district and found an official Google office building
* The hotel bedspread matched the hotel hallway carpet
* Michelle kept getting locked in the bathroom at the hotel - the pocket door had a weird latch
* Michelle informing us that the Hellbusch backyard has a corner - just the way she stated it so matter-of-factly had us all laughing, as if she was surprised that there was a corner in the yard. What she meant was that it was a beautiful corner for taking a few pictures.
* Climbing the wheat field hill for pictures and by the time we got back down we had a good inch of mud on our shoes. Barefoot Erika had the easiest clean up!
* Bret took us to a Mile High Thrift to find Erika a wedding dress and a suit for him. Erika's dress was $9 and the suit was $4.
* Walmart - HILARIOUS!! Erika changed in the bathroom and the Walmart employee in the bathroom who was gushing at how beautiful Erika's dress was and how excited she was for her. Bret and Erika played in the toy department like little kids and as Michelle and I came to the superhero isle we were met with Bret protecting his girl. The picture was one of our favorites so we came up with a way to include it with the wedding invite:
* The Rubbermaid bin isle. It was Michelle's suggestion to have Bret pull Erika across the isle for a picture but when Erika was pulling Bret we nearly lost all bladder control. We were sleep deprived, hungry, tired after five hours of clothing changes and pictures and it all added up to a bladder issue. They satisfied their hunger by eating Cheetos in the furniture department. They did pay for them first.
* Paint war on the water tower hill during trash-the-dress session and the old guy watching with this romantic adorable look on his face. The two girls who kept trying to get in the pictures were a little annoying.
* While sitting around the Hellbusch dinner table Katie said "hawesome". It was so funny to hear our personal family language used in Colorado, especially by Bret's little sister who had never met Hyrum.
* When we went outside to leave Bret's house there were cheese puffs all over the car, road and cars around us. Some of his wild neighbors were having big graduation parties.
* Getting egg-ed as we drove away from Bret's house last Saturday night. Michelle hollered out "don't use your wipers". We pulled over at a gas station only a couple of miles away and the egg was already dried to the car. It was a pain trying to get dried egg out of the front grill and off the paint.
This isn't actually from the trip but it's the only picture I have of Michelle. It's a photo reminder that she is spontaneous, fun, cool, and a little bit crazy and I'm just, well. . . not.
It just translates to quirky, weird and a lot of crazy. In my defense, I was hanging out with Nathan and Hyrum.
They made me do it.
And that has nothing to do with engagement pictures.
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