December 3, 2005

Today is Part II of Kelly's Korner Show Us Your Weddings series and it's supposed to be all about the flowers, wedding party, ceremony etc.

Our flower girls and ring bearer were Kayla, Anneka and Riley Clingman - our dear friends and 2 year old triplets :) They looked absolutely adorable and did a PERFECT job. Here's Riley sportin' his tiny little boutonniere:
Since they were so young, our florist suggested that we do these little moss balls with ribbon handles so the girls could carry them down the aisle easily. In the picture below I'm holding Anneka's moss ball:

My ABSOLUTE FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR EVER is Fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas :) ha! You get the idea. Since our wedding was in December we bought this Christmas tree and decorated it with ornaments that were our colors that had little tags on them with our names and wedding date. We let everyone take an ornament as their favor. It's fun because it's the tree we use every Christmas and I had SO MANY extra ornaments I get to use them to fill up jars and vases and hang them on garlands at Christmastime: Another one of my favorite things we did was display our grandparents' wedding pictures:

Rings on our sign-in picture:

I'm putting this picture because I love it :) Our niece Lilly is super cute!
Another one of my favorite pictures - Dave's brother Jonathan holding his daughter Lilly with Dave's dad and Grandma:

Ceremony:

Best picture of my bouquet - LOVED it!

Dave and I with Anneka, Kayla and Riley after the ceremony - I think we took about 100 pictures and this was the only one with all of us kind-of looking at the camera: Don't forget to check out all the other links at Kelly's Korner.

Next week it'll be time for reception pictures.

300 Pictures

If I told you that we went on a trip and I took 300 pictures, you'd probably assume we'd been gone for at least a week. Nope! In this case we were gone for less than 48 hours. I know, I have a problem. If you're my parents you'll love this post and my bazillion pictures of Luke, if you're not my parents - I apologize :)

Anyway, we decided kind of last minute to head to Austin for a couple of days to hang out as a family before summer is over (YUCK!) and so on Tuesday morning we headed out. We stopped in Waco and while Dave was ordering lunch Luke and I checked out some jewelry:These pictures are of Luke chilling in his stroller, the cute place where we ate lunch and Luke eating pretty much all he would eat for lunch - a blueberry yogurt cup:
This is my new favorite picture! Luke is such a character and loves to do silly things to make us laugh :) After lunch it was another couple of hours in the car in which time we read a bunch of books, ate cookies and played with toys. After we arrived at Barton Creek it was time to stretch out and take a bottle:

I think it's safe to say that Luke's favorite part about the hotel room was the curtains:

After his bottle and some time playing with the curtains, we headed down to the pool:

They had this GIANT chess game out by the pool and Luke got a kick out of moving the pieces around. I'm sure it won't be long before his Uncle Mark is teaching him how to play!

We cleaned up after the pool and headed to dinner at a little burger place. I was SO excited becuase Luke took a real interest in coloring! I L.O.V.E. to color (which I realize is extremely mature of me!) and I can't wait for the days that we get to sit at the table together and color! After dinner we headed over to South Congress to take a boat tour and watch the bats. Luke was super tired, hot (it was 103 degrees!) and fidgety and the LAST thing he wanted to do was be on a boat for an hour. We were "those" parents with the whiney kid, but he managed to make it without a meltdown:

I'd heard a lot about the crazy bats that come out from under the bridge at sunset, but really didn't know what to expect. We ended up sitting out on the water in absolute awe as 1.5 million bats flew over our heads and down the lake. The lines in the pictures below ARE bats:

This was our first trip to a hotel with Luke and I was a little bit nervous about how he'd sleep, but he did great! On our way from the bat tour to the hotel he fell asleep in the car and once we got back to the room we let him take a bottle and lie in bed with us for a while, then we put him in his crib in the little hall area so he couldn't see us. He kind of wimpered a couple of times in the night, but he was definitley a trooper.

On Wednesday morning Luke got up, took a bath, played with the curtains again and wathed a little PBS (naked, duh!)

We checked out of the hotel and headed to breakfast (he konked out in the less than 10 minutes from our hotel to Chick-Fil-A - ha!)

After breakfast and a Starbucks run, we headed to the Austin Children't Museum. I can't tell you how much I wish we had something like this in North Dallas. (Or do we and I just don't know about it?!?!?!) It wasn't a huge museum but there was SO much for him to do and he was on the go for the entire two hours that we were there. We weren't able to get any really great pictures of him because he was constantly moving!
The picture below on the left is a view of part of the first floor of the museum...

More playing...

My little builder:

Kids were supposed to play with these trucks inside their little enclosed area, well not Luke! He had to take out every single one, put them on the floor and then put them back again: After the museum we headed home. We were in the car all of 3 minutes before both boys were sound asleep! :) We stopped for lunch in Waco where Luke (obviously well-rested) flipped through a book, stuffed as much food into his mouth as humanly possible and made bunches of silly faces:

When we left Waco, Dave sat in the back to help keep Luke entertained and so both he and Luke were forced to endure my control of the radio. I got to sing along with some old school Garth Brooks, Jason Mraz and Stevie Wonder :) After a quick bathroom break outside of Dallas, Dave took over driving and I snapped a bunch of pictures of Luke in the backseat - he was making a big game out of touching his paci to his toes and then putting it in his mouth (gross!).

Anyway, we arrived home safely around 4:30 and all slept really well in our own beds Wednesday night :) It was a fast whirlwind of a trip, but was an absolute great time. We're looking forward to many more family vacations :)

Randomness

If randomness was a real word, I think it would accurately sum up the past week or so in our house. I have every intention of putting some of these pictures into scrapbook pages, but with the pace things are going now and the fact that I go back to school for teacher work days on THE FOURTH (yes, the 4th, people! That's like a week and a day away! EEEK!) I'm not sure when those pages will actually get done. So to avoid getting weeks behind on my blogging, here's a smattering of what we've been up to:

These pictures are from two weeks ago and they're horrible. But you can get an idea of how stinkin' adorable he looked :)

Last Monday I walked in from the kitchen to see this sweet scene:

This picture is from our trip to Allen Outlet Mall and I didn't include it in the scrapbook page (from my last post), but I thought it was cute enough to share with ya'll:


I have a page in the works with cute pictures of Dave and Luke taking out the trash, but this picture isn't included and it shows why Luke's knees are a constant mess:

Two of Luke's latest pastimes - sticking out his tongue and messing with his diaper:

Wearing underwear on his head (I'll explain the underwear in a later post):

Creative project of the week - I put these cork board square up inside these two cabinet doors. It's been a great way to keep track of little scraps of important info. I picked them up at Lowes and they were the PERFECT size, but the adhesive backing strips they came with worked for about 12 minutes and so I had to hot glue them to the wood:

Luke likes to put silly things on his head (a basket, underwear, goggles, etc.) and then look at himself in the mirror. This is a pic of us looking in the mirror...
When I made Luke's lunch the other day I took his plate out of the microwave and realized that it was almost the same amount that I would eat (ha!) and so I took a picture :) He ate leftover fettuccini alfredo, sweet potatoes, meat loaf and (not pictured) strawberries, pears, goldfish crackers and a cookie. YUM!

On Friday I put Luke down for his afternoon nap around 2:00 and had to go in a couple of times to "settle him". He likes to jump and throw his pacis out of the crib and usually if I just go in and lay him back down he'll go right to sleep. Well, on this day it was almost 3:30 and he was still jumping and giggling so I went in to lay him back down and I saw that both of his pacis were on the floor. The lights were off and when I bent down to pick the pacis up I noticed that the carpet was wet. When I looked into the crib I could see that he had pulled his diaper off and had stood at the rails and peed onto the carpet! I quickly put a diaper on him (and shorts!), washed off the pacis (ewww!) and laid him back down and he went right to sleep. Too funny!

I apologize for the randomness of this post, but hope you enjoyed these bits and pieces!

Riding, Peeking and Resting

On Tuesday we headed to Allen Outlet Mall since we thought there might be a little bit of a reprieve from the heat (we were mistaken!) and a little shopping as well. Luke enjoyed touching all the trash cans (I know, ew!) and putting his face on all of the benches. He also sat in almost all of those little cars/trucks/boats that they have outside and he got a huge kick out of peeking out of the back window of the semi truck ride :) The Cole Haan Outlet was his favorite store (as is mine, but for different reasons) because they have all of these low cabinets where they keep the extra purses that they let him open and close. He did so much opening and closing that he felt the need to take a quick rest on their cute striped bench for trying on shoes. Ha!

Show Us Your Life - Wedding Dresses

It's Friday! Which means Kelly at Kelly's Korner is hosting another "Show Us" day - and this time it's wedding dresses! Dave and I got married in December of 2004 and when it came time to look for a wedding dress I really had no idea what I was looking for - unless you consider simple, flowy and kind of different knowing what you want :)

My mom and I headed out one Saturday "just to look" and ended up at a boutique in Dallas. As we walked in I saw this dress hanging up and absolutley loved it. The only problem was that it wasn't being made anymore and the only one they had left was a size 10. It was originally close to $2,000 and since it was a sample we got it for $250! $100 in alterations later (a TON of hemming, rebeading and taking out 4 back panels) by THE BEST alteration lady ever and I was in business!

Here's me in my dress before the wedding. I didn't do a veil... it was just a little too traditional for my taste:

A view of the front:

Flowiness:

This picture cracks me up! I guess I didn't try on my dress after the alterations close enough to the day of and when I put it on I couldn't get it to stay up. My mom ended up having to sew me into it!

The back:
Anyway, here's the rest of my wedding dress story - I just wasn't all that sentimental about keeping it. That's great for a lot of people, but the thought of taking up valuable closet space with a dress that I would never want my daughter to feel pressured into wearing or having it preserved and not being able to open the box just wasn't my idea of a good time, so I listed it on Ebay. I figured that I wore it, loved it and had great memories of it, but since I never intended to wear it again I could pass the dress along to somebody else who could enjoy it as much as I did. Much to my surprise the bidding was successful and I actually made a profit of several hundred dollars on my dress! I wrote a sweet note to the adorable girl who bought it from me wishing her well at her wedding and in her marriage, popped that sucker in the mail and have enjoyed looking at pictures of the dress ever since. :)

Virtual Vacation - Banff Edition

So, since our family isn't going on a vacation this summer (we decided that there were a few more responsible things to do with our cash this year such as buy a new refrigerator that matched our kitchen and pay realtor commissions - ha!) I thought it might be fun to do kind of a "virtual vacation" and share a couple of pictures from some of our past vacations. I'll try to post these on Thursdays and if you want to share one of your favorite vacations you can leave a comment on this post with a link to your own blog post. FUN!

We live in Texas - which I've heard referred to as the oven of the U.S. and my favorite summer vacation of all time was 3 years ago when we headed to the Canadian Rockies and escaped the inferno for a little over a week.

WARNING - I tried to limit myself to 10 pictures, but found that virtually impossible since I took over 700 (I know, I'm crazy). Please bear with me on the bazillion pictures.

WARNING #2 - At the time of this trip, gaucho pants were very popular. I love me some gauchos and in an attempt to pack light I think I brought about 3 pairs and wore them with everything. Be warned that you're about to see a whole lot of gaucho-ness.

We flew into Calgary and one of our first stops was the Calgary Zoo (which was awesome) and I think on the second day of our trip I discovered The Pita Pit... it was kind of like a Subway concept (you got to "build" your own), but with GIANT pitas! YUM! In the collage below you can see me holding my new best friend - and yes, I ate the entire thing. In fact, if I saw a Pita Pit in between meals I would often make Dave stop and I'd get and eat a pita just because I knew I wouldn't be able to eat them once we returned to Texas:

The pictures below are from Canada Olympic Park, also in Calgary. I'll start with the picture at the top left and work clockwise: this is Dave doing a luge (sp???). It was super funny to watch and he'll probably ask me to take this off when he sees it up here :) The next picture is looking down from the top of the ski jump. To get up here we had to ride a ski lift and we couldn't figure out how to get the bar down. I seriously had a panic attack when we got to the top and cried because I didn't want to ride it back down. The bottom right pic is Dave standing on the medal platform and the bottom left picture is me with Heidi and Howdy, the 1988 Winter Olympic mascots. My family lived in Calgary during those games and we went to several of the events and I got a Heidi doll that was my favorite stuffed animal all growing up.
After Calgary, we drove to Banff and stayed at this AWESOME place called Johnston Canyon. We stayed in this cute little cabin that reminded me bunches of my grandparents cottage that we used to visit in the summer. There were some great hiking trails and we got to see some wildlife and gorgeous scenery:

More views from our hike along Johnston Canyon:
One of the funniest things that happened on the trip, was when we were staying in Johnston Canyon we tried to use our Visa card at dinner one night and the credit company had shut off our account because the card was being used out of the U.S. (we forgot to call and tell them that we were travelling). Dave was on hold with them for over an hour and the restaurant was closing and the waitress (who was the last person there) said that she wanted to get home but she didn't want us to have to hang up since we'd been on hold for so long and so she told us to just finish up the call, go through the kitchen when we were done to let ourselves out the back door and to please come back the next day to pay! The picture on the bottom right is Dave on hold :)

The next day we took a tram up to the top of this mountain in Banff and it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen:

After the tram we headed down to this one lake/waterfall (I can't remember the name) and took pictures with a real Canadian Mountie... he asked us where we were from and when we told him Texas he told us that he had gone to Fire School at Texas A&M! Aggies are everywhere!

Top left picture - If you ever get a chance to go to Canada, you HAVE to try the chocolate/vanilla swirl cone at McDonald's. I haven't found a single McDonald's in TX that has them and I miss them dearly.

Bottom Left - The Fairmont Banff

Right pictures - a boat tour that we took in Banff
If watching the Bachelorette this season hasn't prompted you to book your trip to the Canadian Rockies, these pictures will:

At Lake Louise:

Somewhere between Banff and Edmonton we took a tour of a glacier:

Dave and I have never had much success with trail rides (we've been on a couple before this one that didn't turn out so well), but we decided that our luck had probably turned (how many bad trail rides can you really have) and set out on a tour that was supposed to take about 3 hours. It started out great, but then a cold front and rain storm moved in and the 3 hour tour turned into almost 6! At one point (we were on this trail literally on the side of a mountain) our guide told us that if it continued to rain the horses would instinctively just stop and we might have to "make camp" and stay there for the night (since vehicles couldn't reach the spot). Eventually the rain stopped and we were able to continue the ride, but I don't think I've ever been that wet or cold before! Please note the bottom 2 pictures below - before and after our ride:

After Banff we drove to Edmonton where we visited West Edmonton mall and did some other various sight seeing and then drove back to Calgary. Our last night of the trip we were supposed to stay in this cute little bed and breakfast but locating it turned into what I think is the biggest fight Dave and I have had in our 10-year relationship. I cursed, we stopped the car and switched driver/navigator positions about 9 times, Dave cursed, someone ripped the map out of shear frustration and we ended up on private farmland about an hour and a half away from where we were actually supposed to be. When we did get to the bed and breakfast the owner showed us to our "room" which was this cabin in the woods that you could only get to by this super steep and rocky path. We couldn't even get our suitcases down there - we had to take our clothes, toiletries, etc. out and put them in grocery bags and carry them down: My absolute favorite restaurant ever in Canada is Swiss Chalet and I had to take Dave to experience it for himself, the picture on the bottom left is of him smelling the special sauce (note to all of my Canadian relatives: Dave committed a cardinal Swiss Chalet sin by ordering mashed potatoes instead of the fries. I tried.). I also picked up as many boxes of Shreddies (my favorite cereal) as I could fit in my suitcase and before we took off to fly back to Texas we picked up a box of TimBits (Tim Horton's donut holes for all you non-Canadian readers) to bring back for my parents and Mark, but we ate them all on the plane. Ooops!

If you made it through this post, thanks for sticking with it and I hope that you feel cooler just looking at the pictures :) Don't forget to post pictures of one of your vacations and leave a link in the comments section. I'm counting on living vicariously through ya'll!