3 days and counting!

Hello, people! We are 3 days out! I kept meaning to write again but things have been CRAZY!

Some highlights:

Jason and I celebrated our five year anniversary on October 14. Because it’s our anniversary of dating, it’s really the last year we can celebrate it! Next year we’ll have a whole new anniversary date and a new milestone to celebrate!

We went to the lake and were all by ourselves over Columbus Day weekend – just like when we got engaged. We even ate some smores! It was a great time to get a little relaxation because the craziness started right when we got back. I’m so glad we had that weekend to ourselves!

We both had parties that our offices threw for us – and we both got to attend both of them which was really nice. It was so sweet.

I saw Hanson twice this week. One of the times I was 4 feet in front of them with nothing but air between us for an hour and a half. Talk about a really great week – it started with Hanson and it’ll end with marriage!

We got our ketubah yesterday. It’s beautiful… but they spelled my middle name wrong. Go figure! Apparently another one should be here tomorrow! Fingers crossed!

The guys are getting their tuxes fitted today – hopefully that’ll all go well because the tux place has been a little… unreliable. Hopefully they’ll wow us and everything will be perfect today!

Things are pretty darn crazy. There is still a lot to do but slowly my list is getting smaller. Maitha came into town on Monday. She was a huge help yesterday driving me all around while Jason was at work for his last day. Erin is coming in today and the rest will follow tomorrow!

Just a reminder to everyone to use the directions listed in the email below. You can use MapQuest and GPS’s to get you to the major highways, but once you turn off you’ll need the directions in the links below. Please use them!

See you all at 12 noon on Sunday! We can’t wait!

Directions to ThorpeWood

The invites have gone out! And I realize that the directional card says that there will be more directions here. So even though we’re still 39 days out (yes, I’m very much counting down now), I want to make sure they are here in case someone comes looking for them! I will also post them again as the date gets closer and add this post to the left-hand side bar with hotel booking info so you can find it easily.

ThorpeWood is where both the ceremony and reception will be. There is parking there – and someone will be outside to direct you to the proper place to park.

So now the directions: ThorpeWood may not be in your GPS systems – and if it is, it might still be confusing to get there. The VERY BEST way to get there is to follow the directions straight from ThorpeWood themselves (complete with landmarks that no GPS or Mapquest can give), which I have linked to below. We’ve done the drive a few times now and the first time we used a GPS and got lost and ultimately got there from these directions. Believe me – they’re the best and they will get you there. Please, please, please use them and don’t rely solely on Mapquest or a GPS. Also, be aware that cell phones may not work – it’s pretty patchy up there. We know for a fact that AT&T and T-Mobile don’t work up there and Verizon does. Not sure about other carriers!

From DC or Baltimore
From Harrisburg or Gettysburg
From the west / Hagerstown area

12805 Mink Farm Road
Thurmont, Maryland 21788
Phone (301) 271-2823

We can’t wait to see you all there!!!!!!

The Utahn Family

We had a nice trip to Utah a couple of weeks ago. It was great spending time with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Steve. There was lots of visiting in the form of game-playing, ice cream eating (we made 2 batches of homemade ice cream, fresh peach and raspberry pineapple), bowling, and drives. My grandma and her sisters threw us a shower so we also got to see some extended family. Because Jason had never been to Utah we made sure we did at least a little bit of site-seeing and took a drive up to Snow Basin with my Grandpa. Grandpa was a great person to ride with he told us about the history of the places we were in and even a little bit of family history!

One of my favorite parts of the trip was going through a book of my family genealogy with my grandpa and learning more about his family. Grandma was right there with us while we looked at it and even she asked some questions! My dads cousin Bobbie gave it to me as a wedding gift because last year she got me very interested in her genealogy finds. She even added pictures to it it is seriously so cool. I love learning about my family history and love going through old pictures even more!

Family means an awful lot to both of us. Its one of the reasons we work well together – our families are super important to us. We’re excited to join our families together we have such awesome relatives and we cant wait for them all to meet each other. It is so special that by marrying someone you are able to join many, many people together into a family. Were making our own new, huge family. That is so cool. Plus, I don’t know where we’d be without our families – especially our parents – we owe everything to them!

Here’s a little more from Jason (!!!):

It was wonderful getting out to see the mountains again, it’s been quite a while since I was last out west. I’ve always been a beach baby but I’m also very at home in the mountains, torn between my favorite to be honest. The visit was awesome, Utah is a beautiful place. Kaitlyn and I took daily walks, at both morning and evening if possible just to soak up the area. All of the family I met were great people, Steve got me to feed lines to his Aunts and a cousin. I look forward to bringing our families together because we sure are lucky people to have both sides full of great people. So many people have been a huge help in this monumental event in our lives and it would take forever to thank everyone individually for everything for small ideas, listening to every little detail, coming along with us to see places and vendors, and even imparting wisdom morning, noon, or middle of the night. We’re very grateful to have such wonderful families willing to help us in anything we possibly need. The big day is fast approaching and I look forward to it more and more each moment, to combine two families near and dear to both of us and to marry the woman who completes me.

Like father like son waiting at the airport:

Some of the bowlers (Jason kicked all of our butts both games):

Jake at our favorite milkshake place:

Jake and Uncle Steve:

Snow Basin:

Sparklies on the way home:

Registries

The most common question we have been getting asked (after “How is the planning going?”) is, “Where are you registered?” I realize I have not blogged about this and the links I have up now to the registries may not be all that obvious. Fear not! I am now here to answer your question!

We are registered at Williams-Sonoma, Target, and Macy’s. Any gifts you order to have mailed to us will automatically be sent to our parents’ houses – the sites should have the addresses stored. If you want our address, please email me or leave a comment on this entry and I’ll get back to you – I don’t feel comfortable listing it on the site (because we get such high traffic – haha – just kidding).

Here are the links to the registries:

Target

Williams-Sonoma

Macy’s

Most of the things we registered for are at Macy’s because we tied it to St. Jude’s Hospital so every purchase made through our registry there contributes a portion of the order to the charity which we think is really cool.

We are also planning to redecorate our bedroom and its furniture (and open a savings account together – big steps!) so if you don’t find something you like on our registries, any monetary donations towards our redecorations would be much appreciated as well!

Moved!

We’re out of the old apartment. Turned in our keys this afternoon. We worked our booties off cleaning it yesterday and even rented a steam cleaner to get the carpet looking beautiful only to learn that they have cleaners come in to clean the place and then check the apartment again. So that was all for naught. And then we learned that they somehow LOST our move-in inspection sheet which listed all of the things that were wrong with the apartment when we moved in. WHAT? The guy that did our move-out inspection said we shouldn’t be charged for anything but there were issues we moved in and if we get charged for them because they conveniently “lost” the move-in sheet I will go crazy. Absolutely crazy. I’m convinced that the woman that we signed the lease with purposely threw the sheet away. Before we signed the lease she talked about loving shelter puppies and the elderly. After we signed the lease for said apartment I realized she was lying. She was not a nice person. Not nice at all.

The good news is that we’re done with that place. DONE! The negativity of the place is gone and we are in a happier place. On Saturday, we moved into the new place. Thanks to our good friends Jessica and Joel, we got moved in pretty quickly. We moved out within our 3 hour allotted period for the elevator and loading dock and got moved in even more quickly. It was an amazing experience compared to our move-in experience last year.

We’re happy with the new place. The courtyard is SO nice – the picture below doesn’t even show half of it. It’s HUGE. Like in college it generates a feeling of community because people hang out on it. The night we moved in, someone was having a BBQ in the courtyard. Jason saw someone reading underneath a tree. People garden and spend time outside their apartment. When we walk Rufus there are other dog owners walking their dogs too. We really lucked out.

It’s beginning to feel real

The past week has been really productive – it’s crack-down time now! We’ll be pretty crazy-busy until Labor Day and then we’ll have a little bit of breathing time again. I’ll try to write again before then but if you don’t hear from me it’s because we’re going crazy!

We got our rings! They’re really pretty and engraved. I love them. I love them so much that I kept taking them out of their box enough that Jason informed me we would have to shine them again before the wedding. My bad! I’ll try not to touch them again until October. Operative word: try.

We went tux hunting again and decided on one. Hopefully it looks good. They could dress the manikins to show us what the tuxes looked like but not the real man. What? Does that even make sense? The tie/vest colors still weren’t matching the bridesmaids’ dress color so we went tie shopping this weekend and came home with ties for the groomsmen and a few different options for Jason.

Speaking of apparel, tonight Allison is taking me to get my second wedding dress fitting. I’m excited because it should actually fit me now!

Our Aruba honeymoon is all booked. I can’t wait! I’m very much looking forward to pina coladas on the beach and of course spending time with my new hubby.

We also got paint for our new bedroom which Eddie and I will be painting on Friday night after work. And then Jason and I are moving on the 15th!

All that and we still had time to see the musical Spring Awakening at the Kennedy Center thanks to my parents who gave us a gift certificate for Christmas last year (thank you!). It was really good… and was fun to get dressed up! I particularly enjoyed it because Duncan Sheik wrote all of the music for it. It was VERY MUCH his style – I could tell without a doubt that he composed the pieces.

I can’t believe how close the wedding is now… it makes me both nervous and excited. Nervous because I still have a lot of decisions to make and excited because I’m ready to marry my man!

Mr. Paul

Mr. Paul is the man that will be marrying us!

Here is a picture of him that I took from my dad’s Facebook. Mr. Paul is on the far left, with my dad and a couple of other neighborhood guys – Mr. Foley and Mr. Burman.

Mr. Paul is a dear family friend and is part of one of the families that I considered my second family as a kid growing up. I have a lot of memories of him growing up. One of the coolest memories I have of him is that he was the first person I told after I found out that Allison and my dad were pregnant with Jakob. I was soooo excited to tell everyone that I was going to be a sister, and he’s the first person I told. And I still remember that he guessed what was going on before we even told him (we all walked up and said, “guess what?” and he said, “you’re pregnant!”) and he was SO thrilled about it. Then, before Jake was born, he banded with me and agreed that if the baby was a boy he should be named Zachary. We made a pact that we would call the baby Zeke no matter what. That lasted for about a month… but it still meant a lot to me when I was 13 that he stuck with me!

He’s also the guy that got me into hockey and the Caps. He took me and his daughter, Kelsey, out to a practice one time and I was instantly hooked. After that, he often drove Kelsey and I to the rink so that we could watch games together with his season tickets. If it wasn’t for him I probably never would have learned about hockey and how awesome it is!

So fast forward to Memorial Day of this year. He asked me how the wedding planning was going and I told him pretty much everything was planned but that we still had a major hole: someone to marry us. I told him of our dilemma: we want someone we know to marry us. Our first idea was Jason’s sister-in-law, Emily, and she was really flattered about it… but then we realized that if both Matt (Jason’s brother and best man) and Emily were in the wedding, their daughter Esme who (will only be a year old at the time of the wedding) wouldn’t have her mommy or daddy around during the ceremony and that might cause issues. Well, we certainly didn’t want an unhappy little niece. So I explained to Mr. Paul that we were stuck. He jabbed me in the arm and said, “Well, I’ll marry you!!!” Now, I think he was half-joking… but I as soon as he said it I said, “OKAY!”

So there you have it! Mr. Paul is marrying us! And we’re both THRILLED!!!!!!

“Because… you know… we’re getting married.”

Recently it came to our attention that we should be looking for wedding bands because… you know… we’re getting married. Well, we were lucky enough to do some one-stop shopping this weekend and we now have wedding bands in the making! And we even stuck to our (very) low budget that I made for them! Woo hoo! And, because we find it funny, it also needs to be said that Jason was the high maintenance one (and his ring cost 4x as much as mine). When he explained what he wanted, he had three rings to do it – he wanted the width of one, the milgrain (miligrain?) of another, and the finish of yet another. I found what I wanted and said, “I want this EXACT ring. Same size, same everything.”

We also looked at tuxes. The vest colors kind of matched the bridesmaids dresses… I say kind of but they really didn’t match at all. Can we say color clash? I’m not quite sure what we’re going to do about that. So we’re not done with tuxes yet. Here’s my scruffy groom modeling the not-so-matching vest and dress:

We also hit up an Ikea sale this weekend to get real wood living room furniture for half price. We’re replacing nearly everything we have to get matching and better quality stuff. We’re in the process of selling our old stuff on craigslist which is great because we’ll have less to move in August! We wound up getting 3 of the 6 things we wanted (a TV stand and two small bookcase to go next to it) because people had rushed and bought things before us. But then the strangest thing happened… while I sat there moping about how we shouldn’t have eaten free breakfast before we shopped, people started returning the pieces they had just bought. So we wound up getting the desk and the bigger bookcase we wanted as well! People are crazy. Absolutely crazy. I don’t get it. The only thing we didn’t walk away with that we wanted was a china-like cabinet – which we’ll eventually buy anyway (at full price – boo-hiss) because my aunt is giving me my grandmother’s beautiful china when we get married. Next to re-do: our bedroom furniture. But that will wait until after we’re married.

I also got my first fitting for my dress last weekend and will have my second fitting in 2 weeks!

Did I mention we’re under the 100 day mark now? 97 days and counting!

Visiting the Lake

We went to the lake last weekend to see Matt, Emily, and little Esme… and wound up seeing quite a few other friends and family! It was a great time and we even managed to get a few pictures!

Emily and Esme (in the cute little outfit we got for her)

Bill and Aunt Diane

Little Ru

Matt and Esme

Ella and Esme with Grandma

Us and Esme – she is too darn cute!

Happy 4th of July, everyone! We’re headed to Iwo Jima to see the fireworks tonight. Should be a fun night!

Banana Pancakes, Part 3

This weekend we drove up to Frederick to meet with a DJ (hired) and a hairdresser (hired). I think we’re done hiring vendors which I thought would be a load off my back. Well, now I’m getting bogged down in logistics which is 10 times as stressful. I’m thinking that this is the part that everyone talks about as being stressful. I looked at Allison while I was making four lists at once and asked, “It’s only going to get worse, isn’t it? This isn’t even going to be close to all that I have to worry about, is it? I’m only going to get more stressed out, aren’t I?” And she confirmed what I feared. Well, at least I have her. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

We also celebrated Father’s Day with both of our families which was really nice. Jason and I originally planned to have a Father’s Day brunch at our apartment with both of our parents but when I went to invite my parents, Allison offered their house (and kitchen). We took her up on that offer so that we could have a bigger cooking and serving space. We made a ton of food – but the main event was our famous banana pancakes (with and without chocolate chips) that I made for Jason on Valentine’s Day and he made for me on my birthday.  We also had turkey bacon, eggs, berries, and mimosas. It was delicious. I intended to take pictures but after cooking pancakes for an hour and a half (there were a LOT of them) I was pretty exhausted and I didn’t even think about pictures. Oops! Both sets of parents agreed that it should be the start of a tradition so I’ll try to remember to take pictures in 2010!