August 13, 2009 Update

Andrew's Update: Well, we hit another milestone. I booked the flight to St. Maarten this evening. I'm looking forward to spending the Christmas break in the Carribean! It should be great weather. Along with that, I've got my groomsmen picked out and we're moving along pretty well. Less than 4 months now!

One Down, 179 To Go

After a couple of weeks of preparation, the first day of school finally came. My new 6th graders arrived this morning and I got to set the pace for the rest of the school year. After two rough years and one fantastic one, I'm hoping things go smoothly with this new group. They seem pretty good so far; but then again they all do on the first day.
I spent a lot of time setting up my room and, for the first time since starting teaching, I finally feel like I have the place how I want it. Here's a couple of pictures of the room.

WEDDING STUFF
Andrew and I got another wedding item accomplished this weekend. We did our cake tasting and it was everything I hoped it would be and more. Our cake will be coming from A Piece of Cake Desserts (www.pieceofcakedesserts.com) located in Mesa. We tried a few different options and settled on the top two tiers in my favorite of the day (devil's food and caramel buttercream filling) and the bottom tier in Andrew's favorite (white almond infusion with almond cream cheese filling). It's gonna be good!

I picked up my wedding gown yesterday and it is gorgeous! I've been a little nervous about the dress since I learned that the place I was getting it from was going out of business. They called me to let me know they were closing but not to worry because they would contact me when the dress arrived. So needless to say, I've been quietly worrying for the past 3 months. Thankfully they followed through and I picked up my dress from a lady in a Fry's parking lot at 43rd Ave and Bethany Home Road. The whole thing felt so shady. Andrew went with me (because he thought it felt shady too) but waited in the car with his eyes closed and the trunk popped. A few minutes later the exchange was done and we made our getaway with a beautiful wedding dress safe in the trunk of my car.

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted!

Summer has come and gone so fast! However, we were able to get a little relaxing in where we could.
OREGON
In mid-July I went with my dad and sisters up to Bandon, Oregon to visit our grandpa and uncle. It was a great trip and went by too quickly. It was filled with our usual routine every time we go to Bandon: lunch at the Station, lunch at Lord Bennet's, lunch at the Barn, walking around Old Town, going to the toy store and trying on goofy hats, buying T-shirts at the T-shirt shop, purchasing fudge and taffy at the candy store, watching baseball games on TV, and of course napping in our chairs in Grandpa's living room (I wouldn't change a thing.)
However, the trip home was a disaster. We drove our rental car the 3 hours to Medford to catch our flight to Phoenix. At the check-in counter, we were informed that our 7:55pm flight was delayed until 1:20am (hopefully). With not a clue what to do in Medford, OR we got our rental car back and headed to a movie. A couple hours later we were back at the airport trying to be positive. Eventually we were able to get on the plane at 3am. The flight was fine and we arrived in PHX a couple hours later. But, a monsoon storm had just settled over the airport and even though we had landed, it wasn't safe to de-board due to the lightning so we sat...and sat...and sat with the most obnoxious, irritating, loud man you can imagine sitting behind us. Finally we got off the plane only to be drenched by the torrent of rain that came down only during the 5 minutes we were walking out to the car. Ridiculous. By 7am we were home again. What a trip!
The next day I was recounting the horrible experience to Andrew, coming to the conclusion that I was happy to stay put for a long time, when he reminded me that he had taken the next couple days off work so we could go on a trip...
CALIFORNIA
We set off to LA and it was wonderful. Beautiful weather, beautiful beaches--perfect. We spent a lot of time at Venice Beach (I had never been and Andrew wanted me to see the weirdos). We got a lot of sun and I got taken out by a wave, but it was fantastic!

So now I return to the working world. I picked up the keys to my classroom today and head in tomorrow to get everything ready. What a whirlwind summer.

Wedding Stuff & Our Poor Enzo

The Save the Date cards are out! Woo hoo! We can cross another thing off the list. Other things that can be crossed off our recent To-Do List include:

• setting up a florist (thanks to a tip we got from a friend whose wedding is in October, we found a great, reasonably-priced, florist from Glendale)
• Putting furniture and hanging curtains in the back room of Andrew's house. We can now watch TV in there, have a place to sit, and see the picture without annoying glare from the windows.
• Making appointments with our caterer and cake people to do tastings (yum! we can't wait for this part)
• Taking Enzo to the vet to get his doggie shots. This actually turned out to be a pretty entertaining visit. Andrew never had the heart to have Enzo "fixed", but we're considering having it done now. So, long story short, the vet thought she found his testicles, but they turned out to be his lymphnodes. It took them close to an hour, doing different things to try to figure out if he even has any, only to come up without an answer. They think they're very tiny and need to do surgery to find and remove them. Sucky huh? Guess Enzo's not as masculine as we thought.

Stay tuned for more!

Andrew's Update 6.18.09

Well, it's been a busy few weeks for us. Sarah's been doing summer school, I've been traveling a little to Vegas for work and I've been working on the KTM and getting it ready for some motocross and single track. So, we've been putting the save the date cards on the back burner. Once Sarah's birthday (6/20) and father's day is over, we'll try and get those out to everyone.

On a side note, I just bought a couch from IKEA, so now more than two people can sit in my back living room!

Updates

• Andrew and I registered at Target. The process was fun for the most part. Especially when Andrew started tagging random objects because he wanted to see how far away he could be from the barcode and still have it work. After doing the registry I went on Target's website and saw that a couple of things that we registered for received terrible reviews so we took them off and had to find alternatives. That part was a pain.
  
• We are working on getting addresses together so we may mail our Save-the-Date cards. We wanted to get these out about a month ago so hopefully we get going on these soon.
  
• We're working on getting our honeymoon planned in St. Martin (see map on left). We're really excited about this. It looks like we'll be going the week after the wedding, which means we'd be gone at Christmas time, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Special thanks to Craig and Melissa for giving us their time share so this trip is possible.
  

Our First Post

This is the first of many posts about our lives, our wedding, and our dog.

Wedding Update:
After over 7 years together, we have finally decided to get married. Or should I say Andrew has decided, I've been ready for about 4 years :)

The wedding is set for December 12, 2009 at Regency Gardens in Mesa. We're excited about the upcoming event and have most of the big stuff done already. Andrew and I chose the place for a few reasons:

• It is really beautiful but not over-the-top
• They offer very reasonable packages that include almost everything we needed (catering, cake, DJ, photographer, etc.)
  

And Andrew's #1 Reason:

• The owner is a motorcycle guy. Our tour of the place ended up being about 2+ hours long because they started talking about bikes, riding, and so on.