More pictures from this weekend

Beautiful sunset at the Lakehouse before fireworks.

Dad and William take in the view from the pier.

Zander shows off his catch!

Hunting for turtles for Ms. Lily who requested a specific number of turtles, tadpoles and frogs be caught.

Taking a dip in the lake. Who needs a swimsuit?

Lily showing off her prized turtles.

William's Photoshoot

Ryan and I stole William for a bit this weekend and did a little photoshoot. The kid is just too cute to not photograph!

Wedding Shower

Ryan and I just got back from a weekend at the farm and lakehouse for our family wedding shower. It was great to see everyone and we just spent the last few hours re-organizing the kitchen to make room for our awesome gifts! Thanks to everyone for coming and a special thanks to Kathleen for organizing and Pam and Randy for hosting! I don't have all the pictures yet, but here are a few.

Ryan's mom, dad and brother made the trip up as well! (His dad was off chatting while this picture was taken.)

Trading great-grandma secrets.



Ryan's critiquing the recipes that Aunt Pam included in the recipe box.

Wild wedding week

This has been a week of wedding mania. Sarah came down last weekend and we spent an inordinate amount of time hitting multiple bridal salons to look at "accessories". Happily, on Sunday afternoon, we finally found all the goods we were looking for. So that is a big item checked off the list!

Ryan and I have also had wedding appointments pretty much every day this week. We've done two cake tastings, two flower consultations and did a caterer tasting. It's been busy! And I think both of our brains are now whirling with all the options!

We haven't decided on cakes yet - I think there's still one more place we want to look at, but there's some good options out there! I think I like the cake tastings best, not just because I get to eat cake (which is a definite plus), but the cake situation is just so easily determined. There's a hard cost that it's relatively easy for the bakers to quote us, there's no add on charges. They deliver it and set-it up. All we really have to do is pick flavors and a design. That's the kind of decision making I like!

The flowers and food are a bit more complicated. The flowers just because it's really hard for me to visualize what it is the florists are describing and it's not something they can just show me a sample of. I think I'm fairly trusting of florists and will assume they will make good decisions, but it is a bit tough to decide what the main flowers should be.

And the catering.... the catering has been a constant annoyance from the beginning. The caterer we tried out last night definitely had the best tasting food and the price is good, so I think we will end up going with him, but I'm just blown away by the fact that none of the caterers we've met with have been able to give firm answers to many of our questions. There just seems to be so many possible charges and changes that it makes me very nervous.

However, the BEST part of the catering adventure was when one of the chef's cut the tip of his thumb off while preparing a tasting menu for us. We felt horrible for the guy, but were also a little disturbed by the whole thing. He was serving the food as well and every time he came out of the kitchen, the bandage he had wrapped around his hand was more full of blood. Not exactly appetizing. And my favorite was when he offered to show it to me. Nice. :-) It was so bad, we actually asked if he wanted us to take him to the ER or call someone for him. He said there was nothing they could do and that he had another appointment after us so he was going to work through it. At one point I looked over at Ryan and whispered, "This would only happen to us."

We also ordered our invitations this week, so those should be coming soon! I think I've kicked it into high gear this past few weeks after being a bit lax for the last couple of months!

Next is the family shower and bachelorette party! Now the fun really begins!

Congrats, Grad!

Congratulations, Zander on your high school graduation!

Ryan and I were able to go out to Boulder this weekend to see Zander's high school graduation. It was a really fun ceremony and great to see Dad and Zander. It was the weekend of the Boulder Boulder (race), so we got to see lots of festival activities and even got a little light hiking in too.

I'm looking forward to actually being at home for a few weeks now though!

Crates

The dogs were misbehaving earlier this week and Ryan sent them to their crates. Dutifully they both went to their room and their crates. Unfortunately we had forgotten that we hadn't set Irie's crate back up after our last trip. So when we walked into the room, this is what we found...

I have to admit, I was impressed with Irie's determination to do as she was told. Cracks me up. :-)

Points of Pride

• Sewed all the clothes that needed mending.
• Mowed the front and back yard after work tonight (and I had already hit the gym today and worked an extra hour).
• Finished my reading club book, The Happiness Project, and really enjoyed it. I need to re-read it now to capture all the ideas I really liked.
• Knocked off 90% of my to-do list at work this week. There's still some big projects on there, but not bad for being out all last week.
• Researched possible classes (both for fun and just skill building) to take in the coming months.
• Have hit my goal of getting at least 45 minutes of cardio 92 times in the last 4 months. That gives me an average of just under 6 times per week. (I'm still enjoying my star chart to track how many times I do it!)
• Went through all the boxes of my highschool/college stuff that mom had brought down earlier this year (now I just have to figure out what to do with the stuff I actually want to keep!)

Serious survey - your input needed!

Per Kathleen's suggestion, I'm launching a poll to help pick Lily's flower girl dress. (Mind you, Ryan and I still get final say!) So, here are the options thus far. Leave a comment to let us know which you like best.

*I've added numbers to the post before this one so that I don't have to re-post all the pictures.

 Dress #1 - The Actress

 Back of Dress #1 (William is definitely checking this one out.)

 Dress #2 - Big smiles!

 Dress #3 - way more interested in my bracelet than the dress.

 Dress #4 - Ta Da!

Dress #5 - quite proud of herself.

You'll notice the quality of the pictures go downhill. My camera died early in the day and I had to resort to my phone camera. Oh, well. :-)

Progression of flower girl dresses

A few weeks ago, Kathleen and Lily went with me to make the final decision on my wedding dress. I was pleasantly surprised that Lily thought my selection was "perfect". She's so opinionated you never know what knit-picking may come from her. :-)

While we were there we also had Lily try on several flower girl dress contenders. She started out very excited about this prospect, but, as fate would have it, she loved the first dress and very little interest in trying on the others. I loved the first one as well, but we weren't 100% sure what size she will be in by September, so haven't made a final decision yet.

For your viewing pleasure, here are some shots of the cutest flower girl ever.

*Dress #6 - She's trying to be all coy, but she really liked this one.

Dress #7

Dress #8

Dress #9 - She did NOT like this one.

Dress #10 - and the pout grows....

We're going to try to check a few more out tomorrow, so more pictures may be coming soon.

Wedding update

Ryan guilted me in to feeling the need to blog by telling me how sad he is every day when he looks at his iGoogle page and sees that there are no new posts. I haven't been taking many pictures lately and have felt like most of the little tidbits of life have sufficed to share on Facebook, but it has been many months, so I know it is time. :-)

Really my life these days seems to be fairly consumed with all things wedding. I guess that's too be expected. So far it's been a fun (if sometimes stressful) experience. The worst part has been finding a caterer, but I think I've just finally come to terms with it just being food. The cost is just astronomical, which I expected, but it's just disheartening to think about spending that much for something you're not thrilled with. But, honestly, when you break it down per person, you kind of understand how it happens. Regardless, I think I've come to terms with it.

Everything else has been a bit more fun. We've found a photographer that we REALLY like, so we're very excited about that. We just felt a really good sense of rapport and love his photos. We're also excited that there will be two photographers on hand and we'll be able to do some fun shots in downtown St. Charles in addition to our more "rustic" venue.

Mom and a few of my bridesmaids went with me to do some dress shopping this weekend. It was a bit overwhelming, but I was encouraged to find that I actually liked many of them on me. However, that almost made it more difficult! I think I've got it narrowed down though and am just letting it settle in my mind before making the actual purchase. Then the real fun part comes with bridesmaid dresses and Lily's flower girl dress. :-)

And the guys have not been forgotten. We've locked in our tuxes (and even a tiny one for William!). We're still playing with the shirt/vest combinations a little, but we're well on our way!

DJ - done. Hotels - blocked. Colors - decided. Hair salon - found. Timeline - timed. (And by the way, I really had no idea how hard it would be to fit everything in to one day. Amazing!)

So, now we're on to the really fun stuff - like cake tasting!!! I think both Ryan and I are looking forward to that one the most! :-)

I'll try to be better about getting some tidbits up here once in awhile and hopefully as the weather gets warmer we'll be out and about more and there will be some pictures to post!

Our new wheels

After 6+ months of thinking about getting a new car, I am now the proud owner of a 2011 Honda CRV. We looked at lots of different options, but I think the CRVs good reputation and largest capacity of the small SUVs (combined with decent gas mileage) finally sold us on it. The fact that they've come down in price almost $5000 in the past 6 months didn't hurt either!

Here it is sitting in front of the DMV office awaiting license plates. 

Now Ryan's canoe will have an easier way to be transported, we don't have to feel like we're in a clown car when transporting Lily and/or William, and our dogs can still be transported even if we end up having a kid or two in the future!

The Saturn is still in our midst as the trade in value didn't seem worth it. Not sure what we'll end up doing with it (holding on to it for awhile vs. selling it), but for now it's enjoying it's retirement. 

And now I'm officially done spending money for awhile... except for on that pesky wedding.... :-)

Trick or Treat

Hansel was all smiles because he LOVED taking his hat off.

 This was as close as I could get to everyone looking happy at once! Notice the grip that mom has on the baby - she wasn't let him take the hat off for this one!

 Ryan was trying to be funny and managed to get decked by the decoration!

William wasn't so sure about all the crazy decorations, but this large inflatable black cat wasn't too bad! Lily was more interested in eating her taffy. :-)

Our engagement hike

As everyone (at least who's in the immediate family or is on facebook) knows by now - Ryan and I got engaged this past Sunday. Somehow he actually managed to surprise me, which I didn't think would be possible. I had plenty of ideas, but it turns out he was one step ahead of me and managed to totally fake me out.

See, we've had the diamond for awhile now and it's been residing in my jewelry box. Every time I opened up my jewelry box to get earrings or whatever, I'd see the diamond. So, on this particular day (though I had thought it would be a good day to propose) I also knew that the diamond was still in the jewelry box. But sneaky guy that he is, he had replaced the diamond with a cubic zirconium so that I wouldn't notice it was missing (and no, I never took a good enough look at it to notice it was a fake.)

So, unbeknownst to me, we left to go on our hike at Little Grand Canyon in southern Illinois. Ryan was cool as a cucumber on the drive there and actually slept half of the way so I really had no idea what was up. But when we actually got out on the trail, he began asking me all kinds of questions about marriage and I started to wonder....

He popped the question at the bottom of the canyon (yes, the dogs were there) and we got to spend the next few hours climbing our way back out and trading stories about all the sneaky things he had done and all the suspicions I had. It was perfect!

It's slowly starting to sink in that we're officially engaged now and my mind is whirring with all the details (which, according to the wedding planning books, we're already several months behind on!) :-)

Here are some pictures from our "engagement hike" as I have now dubbed it.

 It is such a pretty trail! I highly recommend it, especially this time of year!

 Tuesday, taking a break in some leaves.

 Me being silly and trying to figure out a way to show off the ring!

 Our lovely engagement pic. Ha! Can't beat being nice and sweaty!

 Ryan and his followers.

 Just another pretty shot.

And for those who want to see a slighly better picture of the ring - here you go. I LOVE it!

William's birthday

I'm way behind on posts, so you'll have to bare with me as I catch up (maybe), but here are some videos/pictures I've been wanting to share of William's birthday last Friday.

The koala food was adorable, but unfortunately it took a litle too long to prepare for William's taste.

 However, when the cake came out, he was revived.

Check out those big eyes now!

Riding on his new super-cool fire truck!

Enjoying the new tunnel!

Halloween has gone to the dogs

For the second year running our dogs have taken first place at the Happy Dog Spot halloween costume contest!

Tuesday was our little shark. (Personally, I think this particular picture makes her look like the shark is eating her rather than her being the shark.)

And Irie was our diver (or I suppose more accurately, our snorkler.) She was wearing her life vest and my snorkel and mask.

Together they were quite the pair!

 Our proud pups!

Pictures of apple picking