An evening at a Padres game

Andy and Amy (friends from college) were in town for the weekend. They live in San Jose.
Kenneth came down from Newport Beach to hang out with Andy.
Tom and Tracey (Tracey swam with Mike at KU) looking good. Tracey is due in 5 days. They live here in San Diego for now.
We all had a fun night together watching the game, even though the Padres lost again. Mike and I have been to about 5 games and we seem to end up going to the losing games. However, it was exciting to see 8 homeruns that night by both teams (4 from the Padres).

SSSCat!!!

Life with the beasts is interesting. The beasts being Theresa’s three, seemingly harmless, cats; Disco, Reggae and the fat one. We’ve all been living together for good amount of time now and for the most part we get along fairly well. Cats are unique in that they do what ever they want when ever they want…even when they know they aren’t supposed to! My latest cat saga involves trying to convince them that the kitchen counters were designed for food, dinner, my car keys…pretty much anything except cats. I tried everything. When I would find one of them sneaking around on the counters I’d talk them down and then reward them with a treat once back on ground level. That did not work. Looking back, I think they figured out that going on the counter would lead to a tasty treat. Stupid Pavlov. I tried the spray bottle which I’m convinced one of them actually enjoys…so that was a no go as well. The only thing I found that would work was a loud clap followed by my crazy dance (hands shaking, a few twirls followed up with a high kick to finish it off). Effective 100% of the time…except for when I was asleep. The night time was the right time for the cats…redrum. Anyway, almost every morning since moving into the new condo, I’d find cat prints on the counter tops and could see the satisfaction gleaming in the little beasts’ eyes. It had become a game to them, a game of cat and Mike and I was loosing. That all changed with the help of amazon.com. That’s where I discovered the SSSCat! The SSSCat is amazing and I love her. She comes fully equipped with a motion detector mounted on a can of something awesome. At night, right before I go to bed, I engage the SSSCat who has done an amazing job of taking back the counters. Now, anytime one of the little fellas decides to be a hero and explore the counter tops, he’s met with series of deafening beeps followed by a poof of air. Safe and effective. The first night there were two separate beeps and poofs followed by, you guessed it, ssscating of cats. The next night, just one. I haven’t heard any since the second night which is both satisfying and disappointing. I’m glad to have cat-free counters but I really enjoyed the beep!, beep!, POOF…..ssssscaaattt! Good times.

More House Decor

We added plants and 2 pictures!

New Furniture

After much debating, we decided to go ahead with all new furniture. It took us a while, but we finally found something we both liked. Furniture shopping is hard, especially since we are both picky. At first, we thought we wanted darker furniture since everything else in the room was light. However, when we came across this set, we were immediately convinced it was perfect for our home.

















I had to do a little convincing to get Mike to agree to the chaise. We were concerned with blocking the window and finally agreed the chaise would give us an extra piece of furniture that would be comfortable and wouldn't cover up too much of the window.




Now we need help deciding which set up looks better. Any thoughts?

Doin the Happy Dance Again!

Ladies and Gentleman...THE dress has arrived! I got my wedding dress today. Yipee! I'm so excited! I came home and immediately went into the bedroom and locked the door, so Mike wouldn't walk in and see it! I pulled it out of the box and it took me like 30 minutes to get it on!! Ha ha, it's not easy getting into a wedding dress by yourself. Once I figured it out though, it wasn't that hard. I put it on and pranced around the mirror for a little while. I still like the dress, which is a good thing...ha ha! I hear of other ladies getting their dress in and not liking it anymore!

I took a few pictures in front of the mirror to send to my mom and the bridesmaids. All the pictures look funny, because I obviously had to take them of myself and I'm holding up the camera in all of them...ha ha! Now it's tucked in the closet in it's little garmet bag until I take it to in to get alterations. In order to start on that, I need to figure out my shoes!! Until then, I'm sure I'll pull it out a couple more times to look at it.

So, I'm going to dance around and be happy all day!! Whoohoo, I got my wedding dress!!

IMPORTANT WEDDING INFORMATION

Hey everyone, just wanted to pass along some important information about our wedding. We weren't sure if everyone was aware of this...

Please click here to view the message. (Make sure your speakers are turned up.)

Hope you enjoy!! Ha Ha...This entry was meant to be a joke, I hope no one took it seriously!!

Back to Wedding Planning

Now that we are all moved in, we can go back to planning the wedding. We haven't really done anything for the wedding since we had our last trip back to Kansas in the beginning of May. We have all the vendors booked, except an officiant. We've tried making appointments with some, but it seemed like the weekends we were in town, they weren't available.

I'm working on getting the bridesmaid dresses ordered. In case you missed my previous post, I allowed them to chose their own black dress. Kate, Mike's sister, just told me she decided on her dress. The lovely one pictured here.

We are also working on wording the invitations. It was a little harder than I thought. Did we want our middle names on them, did we want our parents' names on them, did we want the address of the ranch on them, etc. Finally, we decided on all the above. In order to get all that information on them, we ended up having to use every line available, but we think they look great.

5 months to go....

New Place, Different Sounds

We've been in the condo for 2 weeks now. We like the windows open, but the sounds around us have definitely changed.

In the apartment, we were used to hearing waves crashing and birds on the roof of the building in front of us...mostly crows in the morning. Also, we could hear helicopters flying over the ocean, mostly the coast guard or military. If I was sleeping in, I always heard the sounds of others leaving for work...opening the garage doors and starting their cars or greeting fellow neighbors.

At the condo, we have to get used to different sounds. We are located in between 2 schools. We have to now get used to hearing the school bells and morning announcements and the sound of kids chatter when they are at recess or after school events. Yesterday, the school to the south (must be a high school) had a talent show. Kids were singing different songs. A couple of them were good, but most of them would have not made American Idol. I also discovered yesterday as I was out on the balcony unwinding and reading, that the helicopters that report the traffic from the 5 fly in circles over our building. There were 2 helicopters flying circular patterns over the freeway and our building! I couldn't really concentrate on what I was reading.

In about 3 months, we probably won't even notice the silly school bell or those helicopters flying over our building every night between 5pm-6pm! We'll have visitors notice, and we'll be like what helicopter? However, we will always miss the sound of the waves crashing at night!