disneyland and wedding plans

on saturday, luke and i journeyed to disneyland with my mom and dad and sam and clay, which is really something considering luke's dislike of disneyland and my dislike of huge, mobbing crowds.  and it was memorial day weekend, so it was even more mobby than usual.  that said, we had an amazingly fun time.  we stayed together as a family unit for the entire day (as in, no one got frustrated and stormed off, with the exception of the 20 minutes sam spent at a shooting gallery in lieu of accompanying us on the pinocchio ride).  we all just genuinely enjoyed spending time together so that was fab.  we're also all very snarky and evil and spent most of the time we weren't picking on each other picking on the other people around us.

plus, i got to experience the tiki room for the first time in all my disneyland years.

here's one of the instant classics:

i'll upload more later when i'm 1) not so tired and 2) likely to have more patience (working with kids is exhausting).

in other news, i'm in full wedding planning mode.  we spent memorial day at home with my family and my grandparents and it was then that i learned that my grandpa doesn't want any fool pool-covering company coming near his pool with plexi-glass and steel-reinforcements.  and, that major blow to the wedding-in-the-grandparents'-backyard plan notwithstanding, i think it's a little too much responsibility and pressure to bestow upon close family just before i get married.  thus, i'm in the market for a wide open meadow-y locale in which to host the wedding.  i would be supremely stressed about the destruction of our location plans were it not for the very pleasant fact that i've found our photographer.  since pretty much the very day i listed myself as "engaged" on facebook, little advertisements about photographers have danced around the right side of my profile and once, a few months back, i was tempted into clicking on one.  as it turns out, i found marianne, whose photos are gorgeous and who, i learned after meeting with her today, is definitely someone i'd definitely feel comfortable hamming it up in front of.*  she hasn't even taken any pictures of me and i'm already singing her praises.

see?  it's not all about sarcasm with me.

*i am also quite comfortable ending sentences with prepositions.