The Readings' First Christmas!

Here are a couple pictures of our first christmas tree together.

Walmart Fun

How would you like a round house kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys?

...and to drink...Peru!

We know this is quite late, but here it is anyway. Our summer came to a close with a fabulous trip to Peru. We went with Kimberly's parents, little brother, and grandparents. It was an absolutely amazing trip. We stayed in Lima, Cuzco, and Iquitos. Here's a bunch of pictures.

What Matterly has been up to

So we've only put one post since we've been married. Most recently we went on a cruise to Catalina and Ensenada. These are some of the pictures we took on the cruise. While in Catalina we kyaked and snorkeled. It wasn't the warmest activity, but pretty fun. Matt lost a contact lens while in the ocean. We hurried back to the boat to change and come back to Catalina for some food and sightseeing in the town of Avalon. The first two pictures are from our second visit. We made it back on the ship and set off to Ensenada.

So, Ensenada is in Mexico. What's Mexico known for? Luchadors! So what else should one get while in a touristy Mexican port, but your very own luchador mask. And not just any mask, but a Nacho Libre mask. This is Kimberly with an albino luchador masquerading as Nacho.

We went on Carnival and on the ship Paradise. This is us in the atrium. We got a soda card where we could get all the soda we wanted while on the ship. Kimberly made up a special concoction with diet sprite, cherry juice and a lime... only to find out she re-invented a Shirley Temple.

Apparently Picasa only allows you to post four pictures at a time, so we had to add these other two the old fashion way.

Carnival cruise lines spares no expense for it's valued passengers. They give you a very nice art piece of the ship as a memento. Suitable for framing and to hang in your living room. We left ours in the library on the ship.

Since we were already in LA and had a day or two to spare, we took a jaunt to Disneyland, where we enjoyed delicious churros and some fun rides in between waiting in churro lines.

The ones that didn't make it

These are a couple of other pictures that very nearly got chosen for our announcement. But we decided to go a different direction. We spent a couple Saturdays taking picutres back in early February in old town Albuquerque. We walked around and peeked in alleys. We eventually stumbled on this deserted alleyway that had what looked like an apartment building. But we peeped in the window and it looked like one big room in the back. Pretty cool, but anyway, the stairs you see in the picture are the stairs that lead up to the second story deck of that building. It was really nice because since it was deserted, nobody was around. We could take our time and I could run back and forth from the tripod to in front of the camera as much as I wanted. The picture we decided to include in our announcements was actually taken around the corner from this stairway.

Another note about HBMM...

While we were at Frontier sitting in our favorite room (dubbed the John Wayne room by Kimberly) we noticed these horns on the wall. Kimberly's mom stated that they were just like HBMMs that he had on his truck... So I had to take a picture of it, and then I had to blog it. Just more visual helps. ...we really do talk about other stuff than HBMM. Also note the picture of John Wayne peeking up from the bottom of the photo. That is actually a portrait done with nails. I think it's quite cool. Frontier is an overall very fun restaurant. A must visit for anyone coming to the ABQ.

Handle Bar Mustache Man

So there were sightings of a handle bar mustache man (HBMM). I think a picture would help for creating a visual image. This is not HBMM... but it is about what the mustache looked like. Ok, maybe it wasn't quite this large. This is Salvador Dali, and the mustache resemblance is uncanny. But the real kicker is HBMM's choice of transportation. HBMM's truck was basically a yellow four door semi truck with no trailer with a large set of horns on the hood to match his mustache. And now we will make a request to Sarah to post the real picture of HBMM.

The origins of Matterly

Since we anticipate many people using our names together and talking about us all the time, we decided to help out a little bit. Just as other couples who are on everyone's lips have helped out. There was Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez who became Bennifer. And then more recently there was Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes who became TomKat. So we are now Matterly.

Oh... I guess I could discuss the other "origins" of Matterly. Like where we met and stuff like that...

Kimberly and I met in the singles ward. Pretty simple. We met in July 2006, and our first date was in early August. Our courtship proceeded swiftly and we got engaged in October. ...on Halloween!! We are preparing for our wedding on March 23rd. We can't wait to be "marred" for eternity!

First Picture Blog

This is us back in early October.

First Blog

Welcome.