Dana Burland

I read somewhere that because we never fully exhale, our lungs house air molecules up to seven years old. I remembered that semi-gross fact while hiking last week and stopped for a second to pack my lungs full of fresh Colorado mountain air. I want to hang on to our honeymoon for a long, long while. We did, saw, ate, explored and ooogled at so many things in our seven days out west. I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—recap them all, but here the of our trip highlights: Summit County We stayed, hiked, boated, biked and sled in a handful of spots around Summit County. Our first full day in Silverthorne, my family treated us to a pontoon ride on Lake Dillion—it was the best introduction to Colorado, ever. Hello beautiful snow capped mountains (or “tarp protected”, if you like my dad don’t believe snow still exists in the summer), and hello cold and rainy early afternoons. Another day we biked 20 miles from Frisco to Breckenridge and back again to explore the ski town. On a free gon...

I almost, maybe, possibly, potentially might have finished the name change process. Right after returning from our mini-moon I started a crusade to get my last name changed. I heard the process was, to quote my grandpa, a ruzzabuzza . Thankfully this blog post by a fellow married Grand Rapidian outlined the process easily. I was in and out of the social security and secretary of state offices in record time. My biggest hurdle, surprisingly, was getting my name changed at work. They needed a copy of our marriage license, which was then lost. They needed Ben’s social security number for non-benefit reasons that I still don’t understand. I was passed off to five different people including the one woman who flips the switch right before she went on vacation for over a week. Meanwhile coworkers kept asking me, “are you ever going to change your name?!” Sigh. The whole thing was making me feel spicy, so I ventured home and channeled the feeling into dinner. The result was spicy ma...

The day before the holiday weekend we got a package in the mail. It was all our final high-res wedding photos—just in time to take home to show the families. We love a lot of our photos, but some stand out as absolute favorites. They’re a reminder of a feeling, or tell a behind-the-scenes story. These are some of our favorites that we keep looking at and loving and/or laughing at:   This is my great grandma’s brooch. The stylist had to build an architectural structure out of bobby pins to support it, and still I planned on taking it out after photos, but it stayed in all day.  I see this side of Ben all the time. This takes me right back to seeing each other for the first time and our excitement for the day ahead. I don’t know what made me laugh so hard, but the happy and relaxed vibe from this photo perfectly captures how we felt all day. This one is the cover of several photo books I’ve put together for people. My favorite.   How cu...