Life with The Youngs: A Reason to Celebrate

This holiday season was one to remember! Not only was it Kiera's 1st, but we also made our family complete by getting married on New Years Eve.

We made an effort to have a more low key Christmas this year. The focus was on family and spending quality time with each other rather than on spending money. It was so nice to just give and get a few quality gifts rather than mounds and mounds of.... well..... crap :) Everything came from the heart including a photo collage that Lexi and I made for Jeff. I think that we liked making it for him just as much as he liked getting it!

My favorite gift this year was that Emily decorated Kiera's nursery as a treehouse. She really has a gift. It was tons of work and I will love it forever. She and Justin did tons of prep work at their house and then, when I wasn't home, they came to the house and assembled everything with Jeff. It really can't be described in words, but I can tell you that portions of REAL tree trunks and branches come up from the ground and sprawl over Kiera's crib with a leaf mobile. One one wall their are family pictures mounted onto wood planks up on the wall. The other wall has a night sky painted onto it with a fiberoptic light system of stars. I will have to upload pictures in the next blog so that you can really see how amazing it is!

Friends and family joined us on New Years Eve at our restaurant as we celebrated our marriage. Our wedding was...absolutely PERFECT. The ceremony was beautiful, meaningful, and memorable. Jeff may have proposed in April, but we literally planned the details of our wedding in less than 1 month. We considered having a huge blow out wedding next Fall, but after Kiera was born in September, we decided that we wanted to have a simple and special night that keeps the focus in all the right places. We were just anxious to make our family official. I couldn't be happier with how it all turned out. We are so fortunate to own a restaurant that offered the perfect setting.

The highlights of our ceremony included Kiera's adorable handmade tutu dress and peacock feather headband, Taylor's live performance of "Bless the Broken Road," Megan's reading of "One Day," lots of sniffles from us and just about everyone there, Jeff reading his vows from his iphone (naturally... he loves that thing!) and my vows to both Jeff and Lexi. Our wedding was about the commitment that Jeff and I have to each other, but I thought that it was important to make a few promises to Lexi as well. She is just as important and deserves to know that I am committed to her too. She got teary eyed, which of course made me teary eyed!

The reception was a blast. It began with good food, conversation, and lots of pictures, and ended with a crazy dance party until 2:00 am. I think that the most hilarious part is that we didn't plan to do any of the "formal" wedding activities, like a 1st dance, but when the dancing began, we ended up having our 1st dance to "Poker Face" by Lady GaGa. How perfect! After about an hour of reception excitement, Kiera went to sleep in the apartment behind the cafe. We hooked up a video monitor up front to be sure that she was safe while we all partied the night away. The power went out all over Bar Harbor for about 2 hours at about 10:30, but the many candles and emergency lights kept us out of the dark. We counted down to midnight with lots of champagne and no power, which was memorable. We rung in the new year surrounded by so many amazing friends.

As always, an event like that couldn't take place without help from so many people. I should give a shout out to Peter and Christina for letting us use Leary's Landing to take group photos AND for doing a million other things (too many to list) - you guys were incredibly helpful, Taylor for performing during our ceremony, Megan for reading, Erica for being an all around amazing friend/helper/toast giver, mom and John for babysitting Kiera when we needed to run around, Julienne and Justin for making our cake topper, Kim for making some yummy food and whoopie pies, Jean for altering dresses and making Kiera's head band, Sharon for performing our ceremony, Emily and Lexi for standing by us, and the Side Street Cafe staff for preparing delicious food and offering such great service, Queen Anne's for transforming the cafe with flowers and decor, and Roberto's Salon for transforming us girls!

I asked Jeff, "If you could change one thing about that night, what would it be?" Without missing a beat he admitted that he wished Serena had been there. She was in Florida with her mom, and was greatly missed. These are the moments that you can't get back, and having her there was really important to both of us. I don't think that he ever imagined that he would get married without both of his daughters standing by him.

We don't have our professional photos yet, but these came from my mom and Peter. They got some great shots.