Going to the chapel...

Hany is getting married this weekend in Peoria and we're heading down there tomorrow for the rehearsal and start of the festivities. I can't believe it is already the end of August and Hany is getting married! Where did this summer go?!?

And in other wedding related news... my sister is E-N-G-A-G-E-D! Yep! Ross popped the question at his place this past weekend and she said 'YES'! I'm so excited for them! : )

And in funny, random wedding news... we got a fax from our Bahamas wedding planner today with a contract for the remaining food, beverages, etc. for our reception. On the top of the contract, it says "Miss Universe Swimsuit Competition". I guess the Miss Universe pageant held some swimsuit thing at the hotel we're getting married at a few weeks ago and someone forgot to update that part of the contract for our wedding. Oops!

Now we can toast!

We got our first gift from the wedding registry today - our toasting flutes! Yay!

They are actually a birthday present for me from my parents, but whatever.

I just love these glasses - so pretty!

Thanks Mom & Dad! : )

Wedding in Michigan

Matt and I went to Holland, MI this past weekend to see his cousin David marry Heather. Matt's family rented a big house near the beach for us all to stay at. The house was decorated with tons of random things... it was a very interesting place.

Best coffee table ever? It's a dollar bill!


Geeves... the remote control holder


The bedroom had a shower in the middle of the room


This was our room... hello PINK!


There were lots of "rules" around the place, like this one... the two drawers next to the ice machine had to stay half-way open so that the ice maker would work.



We were near the beach and for most of the weekend, it was too cold/windy/rainy to go out there. Here are a few pics from our 15 minutes out there...

It was windy!


Ahhhhh...


The Red Lighthouse


The wedding was held on Friday night. Everything was beautiful and the reception was fun.

Matt's mom and aunts at the reception


Matt's mom, Matt and me


The kids playing Ring Around the Rosey


On Saturday, we went to the Dutch Village in Holland. There were little Dutch style houses and canals running through the village. There were little shops (wooden shoe, cheese, fudge, candle, etc).

Delaney with her new wooden shoes. They were a big hit with the kids back at the house on the hard-wood floors... LOUD!


Matt and his aunt Helen trying out the wooden shoes


The village puts on a little show every hour and then invite everyone to come up and dance along. So, of course, Matt volunteered me to go up!

Leslie, Addison, me and Delaney getting ready to do the dance. Matt actually took a video of us doing this!


For some reason, Addison decided to lay down on the ground : )


Leigh Ann and Matt in the snow shoes


Kyle helps Addison and Delaney in the show shoes


Our lunch... cheese and fudge! Yum!


Yep... we did this! Tourists!


This was so random... is a stork Dutch? Leigh Ann jumped in for a pic!


After that, we hung out at the house. I gave Delaney my camera to take pictures and she had a ton of fun making videos of everyone.

Great pic of Matt... Delaney actually took this one! He posed nice for her. If it had been me behind the camera, that beer probably would have been in front of his face.

Random Wednesday

Not a lot to report, so I'll just spout off some random stuff...

I finished the Twilight book series last night. I'm sure Matt is excited to hear that. He was getting mighty annoyed with me keeping the light on late reading those darn books. It was entertaining to watch him sleep, though. He sometimes laughs and wakes himself up. I don't know what he dreams about, but it must be funny. : )

Speaking of Twilight, Matt and I watched the Twilight movie last weekend. Matt was definitely not impressed. I believe he called it "awful". I would say the book was way better. I think if I hadn't read and liked the book so much, I may not have liked the movie at all either. I've heard the next movie, New Moon, is going to be a lot better. Crossing my fingers.

I had gone to the eye doc a few weeks ago. My old contact style was no longer being made, so they gave me the new version of them. I could not keep those suckers in my eyes. Every time I blinked, they moved. It was like sand-paper on my eyeballs = not good! So, I went back yesterday to get a different brand. The eye doc gave me the third degree about the contacts... like she didn't believe me that I couldn't wear them. "Wow, I haven't heard of anyone having a problem with these, are you sure you wore them long enough?" Yes, lady, trust me, I wore them until I thought my eyes were going to bleed. And like I really wanted to spend my lunch hour coming back over to the store to try on different contacts? Not my idea of fun, lady. After I was thoroughly annoyed, I finally just said to her, I've worn contacts for a lot of years and have never had a problem like this before, I'd like to try a different style. I really couldn't figure out why she cared so much if I changed brands of contacts, but whatev. I got a new pair and so far, so good. I'm highly contemplating having the surgery done, but the thought of lasers on my eyeballs freaks me out. What if the doc sneezes and jumps or something???

My Chicago Card Plus got de-activated, which is so not awesome. Today, I tried to ride the bus and no good. Usually, bus drivers are nice in this situation and say, no big deal - get your card checked out. Not today. This one was giving me the evil eye and not letting me slide by. I had $1.25 and then a couple of $10 bills, so I didn't even have the right change. Finally, some other nice person standing there says, I'll just swipe my card for her. Super nice!

Things on the wedding front are moving along nicely. We sent our Bahamas wedding planner, Stephanie, a big update with all our wedding details we wanted this past weekend. She promptly sent us back an email on Monday morning saying she would read through it and get back to us. Of course, it is now Wednesday... I guess she reads really slow. We picked our dinner options, which was difficult because we don't get to do a tasting first. So, hopefully, the descriptions are true to their words!

Well, that's all for now... have a good day!

Chicago weather... sucks!

Today, we decided to pack a bag with some snacks, grab a blanket and head to the beach to watch the Air Show. As of Friday, the weather forecast was looking decent, maybe a little hot. Well, a lot changes in a few days!

We waited for the bus for at least 15 minutes, then switched to another bus, which was a debacle. Lots of people taking public transport to the beach, just like us. It ended up taking us over an hour to get to North Ave Beach. Ridiculous.

We found a spot on the beach and got all set up. Erin and Brett came to meet us and we saw a few planes... then the wind picked up and the drizzling started. It felt nice at first, cooling us off. Then, the announcer said the large umbrellas needed to come down due to the strong winds coming our way. Awesome. Then it downpoured. And none of us brought an umbrella with us. Not so smart.

Soaked!


I call this Matt's pensive look


Soaked blankets


Heat + rain + sand = GROSS!


We waited the storm out and air dried a little. We saw a few more acts and were waiting for the headliners to come out... but, the wind picked up again and more drizzling started. The skies were dark and it really didn't seem like we were going to see any headliners. So, we took off and went to Rocco's for some pizza and beer.

I don't know if the show ever started back up, but we have heard some planes flying over the West Loop. I'm bummed. I really like the Air Show. : (

Another b-day celebration

Saturday night, Matt and I went out to celebrate his birthday with a nice dinner. Matt hadn't been to Morton's Steakhouse, so that is where we went. They have a special going on right now where you get lots of food for $99.99 per couple. As part of the deal, we got two salads, two steaks, two seafood options, two side dishes to share and two desserts.

So, we got a ceasar and cobb salad, single cut filets, a crab cake, bacon-wrapped scallops, sauteeed mushrooms and mashed potatoes. For dessert, we got their signature lava chocolate cake (hot fudge center!) and a plate of strawberries with cream. We dipped the strawberries in the hot fudge center of the lava cake. Genius idea, I must say.

We could not finish all the food! It was so good!

Love, love, love the Air Show

I hear the planes practicing today!

The weather forecast is perfect for the weekend!

I can't wait to see the show!

Speedo

So, if any of you have heard Matt's grand plan for our wedding, you would know that he is threatening to wear a speedo and rip-away pants in the Bahamas. He's going to surprise us all after we say our I Do's, I guess.

Well, I got him a "Speedo" for his birthday... but, luckily for all of us and our eyes, this is the Speedo I bought. Speedo watershorts... which, I think we can all agree is a much better option. : )

Birthday drinks

Last night, in honor of Matt's 33rd birthday, we went to The Tilted Kilt for a few drinks and some eye candy for the boys. This place is like Hooters with a Celtic twist. The girls are all dressed in short plaid skirts and half shirts... just click the link and you'll see what I mean.

Our waitress was named Keri. I thought she was nice enough, but the guys thought she was kind of scary. The first time she brought us a round of drinks, she spilled two full beers all over the place and all over Steve. I don't think she would have been the guys' first pick for a waitress, but we were in a good spot for them to scope out all the others... we were near the drink station at the bar and a lot of the waitresses stopped there pretty frequently.

There are like 1,000 tv's in this place. The food was decent. I had some pizza and the guys had wings and spinach dip. I was going to order wine, but the waitress says to me "you don't want the wine here, honey". Ok, I'll take that advice.

As usual, when hanging out with work colleagues, we spent the night gossiping about other work colleagues and trying to figure out who was the hottest in the office. Seriously, does everyone do that or is it just these guys? Whatever... it was fun times.

Matt is off work today (lucky duck!). When I left, he was already camped out on the couch watching ESPN. I have a feeling he might be in that same spot when I get home from work tonight. Let's hope he showers, at least.

Matt and me


Matt turning the camera on me


Colin turning the camera on himself


Matt and Keri

Happy Birthday Matt!

Hope you have a great birthday!

Or I guess I should say "birthday season"! : )

Slappin' da bass mon

On Sunday night, we went to the Purple Otter for their 80's trivia night. Ross came up with our team name, "Slappin' da bass mon", apparently from the movie I Love You Man. I haven't seen it, but it's a fav of his.

Our team did respectable, but nowhere near winning. The questions were tough, and the trivia lasted over four hours! And the place was hot, because the a/c was not working well and it was like 1,000 degrees outside on Sunday.

I was mentally drained and sweaty and gross by the end of the night. But, I got my fill of greasy bar food and Miller Lite, so the night wasn't all that bad. : )

MOB dress shopping

My mom took the train into town on Saturday morning. She wanted to find a dress to wear to our NYE wedding reception, so we hit up some bridal stores.

We stopped first to check out my wedding dress... it came in a few weeks ago, but I wanted her to see it and also just to make sure they got the color and length right. It was perfect! And A LOT heavier than I remembered. Maybe because it was such a hot day, I noticed the weight more than I had in February when I originally tried it on.

We almost had a dress disaster, though... when Erin went to zip the dress back up in the plastic bag, part of the dress got totally stuck in the zipper. We all just looked at each other like 'uh-oh'. We got the store's alterations lady and she was able to maneuver it out without too much snagging/ripping. Whew! At least it was in a spot that wouldn't have been noticeable even if it had ripped.

My mom tried on loads of dresses and we finally found the perfect dress. It looks great on her! We also found some goodies for the gift bags for the Bahamas! Things are starting to come together and I'm getting anxious for the big day to get here!

Interns last day

Friday of last week was the summer interns' last day of work before heading back to college. Every year, we do a big send off happy hour in the office for them, with games and such. Last year, we did the TP Olympics. This year it was scaled back a bit and we had trivia and the Family Feud.

One of the trivia games was intern coordinators/battle of the sexes. Matt is an intern coordinator, along with another girl we work with, Erin. And there are also two others, Nate and Monica. Since I am dating Matt and Erin is married to John, who also works at TP, they decided it would be fun that the six of us battle it out in a rapid-fire trivia game. Did I mention that Nate and Monica are dating also? After the first round, the girls were up by 4. But, round 2 was a debacle and the guys ended up winning and making up the difference... some might say their questions were a little easier than ours in the second round. I did not say that, because I barely remember the questions I was asked, but we heard people talking about it afterwards. It was all random, so it was pretty much luck of the draw. Originally, I was worried that it would be just me vs. Matt and one of us was going to be pretty embarassed. And by "one of us", I mean Matt, of course. : ) But, luckily it was 3 vs. 3.

Some of the other trivia competitions include 25th floor vs. 26th floor (26th floor won), Notre Dame grads vs. Notre Dame haters (ND haters won), Kraft team vs. Sara Lee team (Kraft team won). The Family Feud was between the four groups: Top Dogs, Middle Management, Young Guns, and Interns. (Middle Management won - yay!)

Afterwards, we went to Dave and Busters, where we played some more trivia. I got lots of Tootsie Rolls with my ticket winnings. : ) We finished off with dinner at the Blue Agave. Lots of interesting people watching at that place.

Greek Town

Every year, a group of people from my office go out for a big dinner in Greek Town... which just happens to be down the street from where Matt and I live. The girl that arranges the dinner, Georgia, is Greek and speaks Greek to the waiters. This year, we went to The Greek Islands.

Basically, we just order tons of appetizers and pass everything around. We get to try loads of good stuff. We had quite a big group this year (like 20 of us!) I'm a big fan of Greek food! : )

Weekend

Let's see... we stayed in Chi-town this past weekend, which was cool. We seem to have a lot of weekends where we're on the go these days.

We went to Colin and Jeannette's house for a BBQ on Friday night. Great food, great drinks, perfect weather... all made for a great dinner party. Did I mention the great food?!?! Colin is quite the chef and grilled huge steaks and sweet potato wedges for us. I had never had sweet potatoes on the grill and they were excellent!

On Saturday, Matt and I registered for wedding gifts. We've been out of town so much lately and kind of putting this off, but we finally got through it. Of course, it was a long day of looking at things and deciding what we needed. Matt was in charge of the gun, so at least he wasn't too bored.

Some people from work were celebrating their birthdays by doing a pub crawl on Saturday, so we met up with them at the last stop, Brownstone. We actually got there a little earlier than they did so we could grab dinner. Brownstone has awesome food! It's always interesting to be relatively sober and meet up with people who have been drinking all day.

Fuzzy self-taken picture at Brownstone


Matt doing a b-day shot with Georgia... can you believe they actually had a shot on the menu called the "Georgia Slut"??? Very funny!


We stayed out for a bit and then came home and crashed.

Sunday, we spent a lot of the day relaxin' on the couch. We met up with the half-marathon runners at Flat Top Grill for some brunch. So good! Congrats to Erin, Ross, Brett, Keely, Brian... and anyone else who made it the 13.1 miles!