Gobble, Gobble

Thanksgiving this year ended up being another wonderful friendsgiving at our good friend Bill's parents house. We had met them once before, last summer when we went up and stayed at their summer home in Sodus Bay and I can't believe it had already been over a year since we last saw them, time flies! His dad was cooking so we just brought a couple appetizers; baked Brie and cheese,salami,and crackers. There were two othern Simon students who came over too so we had a nice spread of appetizers pre-turkey! We all just hung out and watched football, ate apps, and drank wine...lots and lots of wine!

The dinner was amazing and it was so nice to be included in his family's thanksgiving dinner. They know that we are a long way from home, and getting home for the holidays just doesn't seem to be in the cards for us so it is amazing that we have such hospitable friends out here who take us in and make us feel like a part of their family :) 

I don't think I can remember the last time I ate that much and was that full...omg but it was obviously worth it! I am determined to cook and hopefully host at least some family next year for Thanksgiving, wherever we end up! I miss spending holidays with family so my fingers are crossed next year we will be able to:) 

Now we are packing up and heading out for a very last second trip to NYC for the weekend! I am so excited to see the tree at Rockefeller center and all of the Christmas decorations in the city! It was definitely on my wish list, so I am really excited its happening! We will be staying in Times Square so it should be bustling and we will be right in the middle of it! 

Better get to packing and hitting the road! Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!! 

Here We Go!

Livefit round two officially starts tomorrow with chest and triceps! As I mentioned last week I was going to attempt getting up at 5am and jumping on the spin bike here at home first thing to get used to waking up and exercising and I can happily report that I succeeded! It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, it was great getting that adrenaline rush first thing in the morning and being done for the day! Working out at home definitely made it a lot easier knowing I didn't have to go outside in the freezing cold dark and drive myself to the gym! I am a little nervous about actually going to the gym that early, probably because we don't live in the safest city so it makes me feel a little nervous. This is when I wish Bobby could wake up early and go with me. I don't have work tomorrow so I may at least wait for some day light until I go, but still go early so around 7am or so, but still get up at 5am to keep with the schedule, then I can get a good meal in before and wake up. It is definitely going to take some getting used to, but I will get in the groove!

I am excited to start the trainer again though and am determined to finish it this time! I have a friend in CA who is starting it tomorrow with me who also didn't finish last time and is determined to finish the 12 weeks as well so we should be able to push each other and keep each other motivated through out the program! I did some food prep tonight, roasted some butternut squash (obsessed lately), have 6lbs of chicken cooking in the slow cooker for shredded chicken, and also hard boiled some eggs. I feel a little less prepared for some reason, but then at the same time can't think of anything else that I would need to do, besides take some before pictures (ah scary! ha).

Time to build some muscle! Here I go again! :)

Livefit Round 2

I have "met" a new group of ladies, thanks to the wonderful world of facebook who are starting the livefit trainer next Monday, October 29th and I have decided to join them! I don't know if anyone remembers but I attempted this trainer around this time last year actually (just thought of that) and made it about 6 weeks (halfway) through. I made it through Thanksgiving flawlessly and was doing very well up until Christmas oops! During phase 2 the work outs get much longer and I was going to the gym at night which made it even more difficult since I was usually beat by the end of the day and working out from 8/9-10/11 was just not happening! So, this time around I am going to try to do mornings. I have been training myself to get up early every mornings (even on weekends yay me, not an easy feat) and last week I was up every day between 6/630am and got on a great sleep schedule and feel great! Unfortunately, that will not be early enough to get a workout in before work, and all though I am not yet working full time 8-10 hour days every day, I will be come January so I figure I might as well get in the routine now so I can stick with it then! So, this week I plan to transition into it by getting up at 5am and jumping on the spin bike that I borrowed from my friend T while she is gone till January to get my body accustomed to working out early, that way, hopefully I will be ready to jump into the 5am Livefit workouts the following week!

I did really well with the eating plan and was always anxious to get to the gym last time around so I am hoping for the same this time, but better! Bobby is NOT a morning person so I know I am going to be on my own. I love working out with him though because I can lift a lot heavier since I have a spot, but I will just have to lift heavy with him on the weekends I guess! He always comes as my guest to the gym, so I hope that won't cause a problem. He has access to the gym at the school so at least he has that so I don't feel SO bad, he will just have to figure out that with his schedule. I am sure there will be some days that I don't go in the morning and can go with him later, but I sure am going to try my best! It is a big change for me, I LOVE my sleep! I am totally that person to sleep in as long as I can before I have to get up and rush to get ready haha I am trying to change that. My wedding is 10 months away and I am nowhere near the shape I want to be in for it, so no better time than now! Not to mention I want to actually want to take pics in my bikini on our honeymoon (unlike our engagement trip to St Lucia...didn't take hardly ANY there because I was not feeling too great about my bod then).

I am excited to start, and glad I have this week to prep my mind, body, and food to ensure a great start to the trainer! Wish me luck! :)

Where in the world?!

I never thought picking out where to go on our honeymoon would be SO difficult! We LOVE to travel, and have been blessed to have been able to travel to quite a few amazing places in our life time already (Greece, Italy, Switzerland, England, France, St. Lucia, Belize, to name a few...Bobby has been to more places than me lucky duck!). I swear all I have been doing lately is looking at every possible place we could go, that would have good weather in August/September and that we could do both nothing but relax and also adventurous stuff. As you may know, (maybe not) Bobby does not like to be bored and gets bored extremely easily so picking a place where there will be enough to do to avoid that is definitely key. I don't like to be bored either, but I have always envisioned that ideal pure rest and relaxation honeymoon, but I also live for an adventure when traveling so I am also wanting to be sure there is something new and exciting to do where ever we go.

I thought we had decided on a place a month ago, but as I normally do, I continued to look at new places and soon was back to square one. There are so many amazing places we want to go it makes it impossible to decide! Part of me wants that dream luxury honeymoon, while the other wants something totally awesome and new! I honestly don't know how we are going to come to a conclusion, we may have to just write down some places and draw from a hat! lol! Luckily we have some time to decided where we want to go, and knowing us we won't decide or book until the last minute, I guess that's just part of the excitement!

There are many factors that will go into this as well; where Bobby finds a job after graduation, which will then determine where we will be living, our friends are getting married the weekend right after us which we would love to be able to go to, if Bobby's new TBD job will allow him to go on a honeymoon right away or if we will need to wait a little while after our wedding to go. All of these things make it a little more difficult to figure the honeymoon out, so all in due time.

It is "recruiting season" right now at Simon so things are pretty crazy. Bobby is working his butt off finding jobs to apply for, working with the CMC to find companies he would like to work for, etc in hopes of interviews and hopefully offers by the end of 2012. The sooner he gets an offer the better! I am definitely someone who likes to have a plan set in place, especially when it comes to where in the world we will be moving to after he graduates. Of course we would love nothing more than to move back to CA (Southern preferably but we would take Northern too), but really, at this point we could end up anywhere! It is exciting, scary, and stressful, all rolled into one giant ball of emotion all while planning our wedding from 3,000 miles away...not exactly how I envisioned it, but it has been working so far. I know that it will all be worth it in the end, and everything will work out how it is meant to, we just have to stay positive and be patient and let things fall where they may. This is just kind of how our lives have always been together and we have made it this far and survived, so what's another 10 months right? :)

Life Lately

Things have been pretty busy the last two weeks, just with me starting my new hours for work, Bobby's dad came to visit last weekend for a few days, and just life in general. This week was a little stressful...on Tuesday I was driving down the road and Julia asked me to roll the window down a little so I rolled it down like an inch and the window just fell into the door...ugh so I had to leave work a little early so I could take my car into the dealership. Luckily I have an extended warranty and it ended up being covered so I only have to pay a $75 deductible. I apparently had a recall on something on my car and some oil leak so they fixed all of that too (all covered). I got lucky only having to pay $75 for all of that, the warranty definitely just paid for itself.

Wednesday was my long day at work, 10.5 hours full of art class and tennis lessons for Julia. I had forgotten to grab our mail box key off of my keys when I dropped my car off so we had to go grab that and go grocery shopping...just another long day. Thursday was the first day I watched the twins alone...for 2.5 hours. It was right at the hardest time of day too, lunch time haha Right as Megan was leaving they were both waking up, both pooped, V was ready to eat, and C was being C wanting to be held so I had to figure that situation out...which I did and everything worked out well. V is very a very patient baby, while C is the "high maintenance" one haha So, that was a little stressful to start but we survived and I would say I handled it pretty well, but I will still be completely happy with one baby at a time haha as cute as twins are, they sure are a handful!

Yesterday I just had to drop Julia off at school and then was done for the day. I had also been trying to get an idea of when my wedding dress would be in for the previous 2 weeks, I had emailed them 4 times about it and had gotten no reply so I finally called the salon....apparently my dress is IN already! I only ordered it 2.5 months ago, and it really annoyed me that nobody called to tell me. I will be honest I got pretty upset in the moment because I had been emailing them about that for two weeks with no reply, yet my dress was there and nobody told me...so since the owner/manager wasn't in at the time I am going to try to call back on Monday and just talk to one of them about the situation and hopefully this won't kind of service won't happen again. I am thrilled my dress is in (I just wish I was there so I could try it on and see it!), It's going to kill me that my dress is sitting there waiting for me and I am 3,000 miles away haha I hope we are able to go to CA before June so I can try it on and possibly take it home! I don't know that I am going to have my alterations done up there, I was already thinking of not doing them up there just for convenience, and then the mishap of no communication happened which made me pretty much make up my mind about it...so we will see.

We had a Simon Happy Hour last night as well, tried out a new bar which was actually pretty cool, it was fun. It is always good to go out and hang with friends, have some drinks and just take your mind off of whatever is stressing you out haha! We have no plans for the rest of the weekend, so we will see what happens, maybe nothing and I would be ok with that. Next weekend I believe we are going to NYC so that will be fun, then the next is the Simon Halloween party woohoo still have no idea what I am going to dress up as so if you have any ideas, send them my way ;)

Fall Kick Off!

I am welcoming Fall with open arms! We are a few weeks into school, the beautiful Gabel girls are settling in at home, and we are finally getting the ball rolling on all of this wedding stuff! The weather has changed and I actually like it. It is SO humid here during the summer it's ick, so I am enjoying the cooler, dryer weather that fall brings! We have had a little bit of rain which I love (guess that's the Oregonian in me!) and the leaves are starting to change! Our friends said we need to go to this apple farm place since it's our last Fall here, so we will need to set that up, it supposedly has the BEST apple cider donuts around so count me in! ;) Halloween is right around the corner and I think Bobby and I are going to go for laughs this year...should be fun!

The twins had their newborn photoshoot on Tuesday and it has to be one of the cutest things I have ever witnessed. Even when they were pooping and peeing all over the blankets LOL Seeing Julia SO in love with her baby sisters was the sweetest sight, she did not want them to leave her sight so we spent most of the day sitting there watching (which was hours) and she was OH so excited when it was her turn to be in some pictures, both of just her and of the three girls. I can't wait to see the prints I just know they're going to be to die for!

Onto wedding stuff:

We have finally received the funds to get the contracts and initial deposits sent out to our vendors. It is such a relief! It has been a cat and mouse game trying to get these funds for these deposits, and it was delayed by a few weeks, but we finally have it and will be sending out the contracts and checks (boo haha) on Monday. I can not wait to finally have that all taken care of and off of my mind! Most of the vendors only require one initial deposit and then the balance to be paid sometime between 30 and 10 days before the event, some even on the day so I won't have to think about it as much once these contracts go out!

I need to reorganize my wedding notebook like nobody's business. I haven't really touched it at all since we changed all of this stuff around, so it is in desperate need. Now that we are actually planning and making payments I need to get everything reorganized so I can keep track of everything, so that will definitely be on my list of to do's for this weekend.

Other than getting those contracts out to everyone I think I am pretty much on track in the planning. I have collected some random addresses here and there for Save the Dates (and invitations later on) but have a loooong way to go until I am done with that...still waiting on Bobby to finalize his people!

So far the only stressful part of this wedding planning thing is making sure the finances are in order haha We have had a couple bumps, but we made it and are back on track! :)

Tis the Season

For weddings! The last two weekends so many friends have gotten married and it makes me so happy and excited! I just LOVE weddings, and even though I wasn't at their weddings I am just so happy for them all! It's crazy that we are at this age where EVERYONE literally is getting married! I love it! It gets me super anxious for our big day and I just can not wait till it's our turn! :) Seeing their pictures and all of the love that is captured just brings the biggest smile to my face, I mean seriously, who doesn't love love?!

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In our wedding planning news, I am much less stressed out probably mainly because I am out of that FUNK I was in last weekend or whenever it was, Labor day. I talked out the BM dress issue with Bobby and my MOH and they both agreed that just having Mackenize get the smallest women's size possible, which would be a petite 00 then altering it as needed would be the best option, so that is what I decided to do. I got to pick the dresses I wanted, each girl has a different dress which worked out perfectly, and turns out Mackenzie's great-grandma is a pro-seamstress and she can alter her dress for her for FREE so it worked out perfectly! Now that we have the dresses picked out I know for sure which suits I want for the groomsmen, at least color wise I do...they won't actually pick those out for awhile yet, but I know exactly what we want so I can kind of check that off.

I know who will be doing our hair and make-up, I found a wonderful group rate and all of the ladies are in so it will workout perfectly, just have to book that after our next major wedding payments are made coming up here in October. Those payment deadlines give me the most anxiety because it brings to light just how much weddings cost, but then Bobby brings me back down and makes me not worry about it as much haha Once this next huge round of payments is over they won't be as large and I won't stress out about it as much. We have the site rental fee for Rancho, the deposit to officially book the caterer, wedding day of coordinator and flowers to take care of first and foremost. Then we will be able to do the dj, videographer, make-up/hair, etc...the 'smaller' vendors.

We are currently (slowly) finalizing our guest list and collecting our guests addresses for the save the dates. Our plan is send them out sometime in January/February (6-7 months before the big day). Thank goodness I only have to do this once haha I have our Save the Dates picked out already, sweet and simple :) Can't wait to do those!

Bobby starts classes up again tomorrow, so we will finally be out of summer mode, and back into work mode and get into a regular routine. I have figured out my hours for work once the sisters come (still not here!) and also for when Megan goes back to work so I am excited for the new schedule and the baby fix times two! :) She has a scheduled c-section for next Monday, the 17th so we will see what happens this week!

Fall is definitely coming, it has cooled off quite a bit which is actually nice, I am pretty tired of the muggy, humid, heat that we have here the cool weather has been nice. I am sick of running the a/c, and being able to just open the windows for fresh, cool air has been great! Happy Fall! xoxo