1 year later...

Monday Nick and I celebrated our first anniversary.  It is hard to believe it has already been a year since the big day!  We decided to just get away for a short little trip over the long weekend.  So we booked a cabin overlooking the river in Grafton, IL.  We arrived late in the afternoon and got dressed up for drinks overlooking the river and a nice dinner.

On the deck of our cabin

After dinner we went to another restaurant on the river and just sat and watched the boats.  It was quite nice not to have anything we had to do for a couple of hours.  We spent the rest of the evening rereading all of our wedding cards.  We also brought along a bottle of pineapple wine that we brought home from our honeymoon.

We had decided we would save it for a special occasion, but I think we may have saved it a little too long because we both took one drink and decided that was enough and poured the rest down the drain...oops!

The next morning we slept in and then decided to have some wedding cake for breakfast.

Nick's reaction pretty much sums up how the cake was.  It wasn't terrible, (much better than the wine) just not as good as it was a year ago nor was it good enough to really want to eat more than a few bites.  Nonetheless, I'm glad we saved it; it was a fun little tradition. 

We spent the rest of the day exploring the stores in Grafton and the little towns around there before heading home.  

It wasn't an elaborate weekend, but it was nice to get away from home for a little while with no agenda and just enjoy our surroundings.  

End of Summer Adventures

Unfortunately, with Labor Day weekend this coming weekend I think it is time to admit that summer is almost over.  The good news is we have been trying to pack in a few adventures while we can.

The first adventure was a trip to Indianapolis for a baby shower for my wonderful friend Gabie.  Nick stayed at home for the weekend but I had a wonderful time seeing college friends that I hadn't seen in almost a year!  Katie, as always, did a great job as photographer and captured these wonderful pics of the 4 of us:

 I hadn't seen Sarah since she became a mom to the adorable little Hugo almost a year ago so we had to squeeze in a little trip to see the little man as well.

Seriously, how cute is that little guy?

Any day now Gabie will be adding a second little man to the crew.  Hopefully it won't take me a year to meet him!  

When I got home Sunday evening Nick and decided to have a date night before he had to leave for the week for work.  The Missouri Botanical Gardens had a Chinese Lantern Festival all summer that we finally had some time to go check out.  It did not disappoint and was absolutely spectacular:

The only downside was that it was incredibly crowded but luckily we ran into a very nice volunteer on our way in who gave us some tips on what to hit up first before the huge crowd got there so it wasn't too bad.  

Our last adventure was a bit on the nerdy side.  Nick's brother is back in the states from his deployment in Germany and was going to be at his parent's house this weekend so we decided we would head to Decatur for the afternoon.  Since he wasn't getting in until early afternoon we decided to make a stop we have been talking about making for what seems like forever, The Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library in Springfield.  The museum was incredibly well done and very educational.  Most of the places in the museum you can't take pictures but we did snap one with Mr. Lincoln:

So there was the end of our summer fun.  Hopefully with the craziness of fall and the election we will still find some time to squeeze in some fun this fall that I will be sure to share as well!

Mustache Party

About a month ago we had a wedding shower/going away party for our dear friends Austin and Amanda.  Nick and Austin used to be roommates and Austin and Amanda were recently married and moved to Syracuse with the Army and for graduate school.  We did a simple mustache and lips theme with some diy decorations.

We also tried to serve food that reminded us of the two of them.

The whole spread

Austin's I'm too Poor PBI (in the shape of mustaches)

Raisin Bran Cookies
Don't Feed them to Wrigley Austin...

 Wrigley and Austin have a very special bond and when Nick and Austin used to live together Austin would regularly share his Raisin Bran breakfast with Wrigley which is where the Raisin Bran cookies come in.

Who doesn't love a Cupcake?

Amanda's Smoothie in Salad Form 

Cheesy Quinoa Bites
Healthy & Cheesy, just like Amanda

Amanda's I Make it Classy Chicken Salad (to compliment the PBJ ofcourse)

Our gift to them even stuck with the theme, matching mustache Tervis cups  and the mustache sandwich cutter we used for the PBJ sandwiches.

It was a great night celebrating two great friends who we already miss a lot!

28

Last week was my 28th Birthday.  Unfortunately I had to work.  Yes I recognize that most people have to work on their Birthdays but when you have a July Birthday and summers off you don't expect to work on your Birthday.  Luckily it wasn't too bad of day.  After work Nick and I went to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Brio and it was quite delightful.  Prior to dinner, Nick came home with these beautiful flowers:

Saturday he also surprised me with a kayaking trip.  We have been talking about this for a while and it was a great surprise. It was a great 7 mile trip down the river.

Some highlights:

It was a pretty low key birthday but we had a great time and so far being 28 isn't so bad!

Baby Alphabet Book

For our niece, Payton's birthday Nick and I made her a custom alphabet book.  

We used an online photobook company to put it together.  Each letter has pictures of family or of Payton doing something like napping or going to the zoo.  Here are a couple of the pages:

G is for Grandparents

L is for Lake
M is for Mommy

S is for Sister

V is for Very Busy
W is for Wedding

Y is for You

The other letters were:

A- Aunts

B-Bathtime

C-Cousins

D-Daddy

E-Easter

F-Friends

G-Grandparents

H-Halloween

I-Itty Bitty Payton

J- John Deere

K-Kisses

L-Lake

M-Mommy

N-Naptime

O-Ohio State

P-Pictures (we used pictures of art that Payton had created at school)

Q- Quite Happy

R-Reading

S-Sisters

T-Toys

U-Uncles

V-Very Busy

W- Wedding

X- X-mas

Y- You

Z- Zoo

It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to put together and as you can see we had to stretch a bit for some of the letters, but in the end I am pretty happy with how it turned out and hopefully Payton has not only an educational book but also a keepsake!

Baby Bucket List

Now that Nick and I have been married almost a year the most frequently asked question we get asked, I am sure comes to no surprise, "When are you having kids?"  Actually some people started asking us that question pretty much the day after we got married but they shall remain nameless :)  My usual response is either "someday" or my favorite response "Its at the end of our 5 year plan, we just haven't decided when our 5 year plan is going to start."  The real answer however, is just that there are a few things that we would like to do before we are responsible for a tiny human.  On one of our many road trips lately we decided to make a list of all the things we would like to do before having a baby;

Our Baby Bucket List: 

1. Both of us would like to complete a Triathlon
2. Finish the basement
3. Go on another all inclusive vacation
4. Pay off debt
5. Learn to kayak
6. Leave the hemisphere 
7. Lose a combined 60lbs
8. Go to Vegas
9. Vacation with friends
10. Nick wants to relearn to play the piano
11. I want to relearn to use my sewing machine

Now we both know that somethings are out of our control and people have unplanned babies all the time.  We also know it is probably unlikely we will accomplish everything on our list but we figure we are much more likely to at least accomplish some if we don't set goals! 

We will keep you posted on our progress and until then we are happily living baby free!  

Bye Bye Mr. Kookaburra

or at least your sweet gum tree.  If you don't know that reference it is from an old preschool song (this was the least annoying version I could find!):

Anyway we have 2 sweet gum trees in our yard, one in the front and one in the back.  If you have never experienced these annoying little trees in the fall they drop these prickly little balls all over the yard: 

They are a pain to clean up in the yard and they really hurt when you step on them.  Basically they are very very annoying.  I'm not usually a fan of cutting down trees but this tree had to go.  So a couple weeks ago we hired someone to come cut down the tree in the backyard.  (the one in the front yard we think might belong to the city so we are still working on that one)

Here is what the yard looked like when we moved in:

The sweet gum tree is the one on the left.  It did provide a lot of shade which we enjoyed but the annoyance was enough to make it go.  The guy that we hired does this as a side job so he broke the process up over a couple of days.  First, down came the branches

Even Nick helped:

The next morning all the branches were gone

but our yard was a bit of a mess

Nick and I cleared the yard a bit and made a nice big pile of branches 

and we had a nice clean yard

and the branches were all chopped up

then it was time for the trunk to come down

and finally grinding out the stump

Our yard went from this

to this

Lots of ground up mulch so we still need to plant grass and make it look like a yard again but at least there will be no more gum balls all over the place.