A New Refrigerator

I have really disliked our fridge from the day we moved into our house.  I never grew up with a 'french door' style fridge and always felt like it's a stupid setup for a fridge.  The areas are so small and not convenient.  I also disliked it because of the way it would 'act' up on us.  When spring turned into summer, the ice maker decided to always jam up to make it impossible to dispense ice and to close the freezer without having to maneuver things to get it closed.  The last straw this past week was that the fridge froze some of our vegetables.  If I turned down the temp up since it was freezing them...then our milk wasn't cold enough.   It has always been a battle and I had no problem kicking that thing into the garage.

Here is a picture of the hated fridge:

























Tate doing some construction to make room for the new one

























And the new one :)  Me soooo happy!!!!


















































I am glad we have done one thing to upgrade our kitchen.  We have a few more things that we would like to change (well actually a lot more) and I can't wait to showcase a whole new kitchen some day!!!!  Until then...my new refrigerator will do!!!

Honeymoon BOOKED!!!!

I am so excited that we finally booked our honeymoon!!!  We got such a good deal through our travel business.  We booked it all on our own dreamtripslife website so not only did we save over $400, we also will earn 'travel dollars' on what we booked. I LOVE IT :)

I am so excited to relax for 7 days in the Mexico sun with a drink in hand and sand under my feet.

When we first talked about where we would like to go for our honeymoon, we had many destinations in mind.  There are so many places we want to go and see.  We thought about going to the Caribbean (St. Lucia, Jamaica, Bahamas, Aruba, etc) and Hawaii.  Since we are going right after our wedding, which is hurricane season in the Caribbean, that ruled that out right away.  I know we could have bought trip insurance and had a 'back up', but I didn't want to do that.  I didn't want to risk not going on our planned honeymoon.  So Hawaii was next to look at.  We looked into Hawaii and quickly realized they do not do all-inclusive anywhere.  We for sure want to be 'spoiled' on our honeymoon and not have to open the pocketbook at all.  Hawaii also has so much to see and tour that we would want to do when there.  We just don't want to do those things while on our honeymoon...we just want to relax, sip on margaritas and soak in the sun (while wearing 70 SPF sunscreen of course).

I've always wanted to go to Cabo.  I have always heard how nice it is and not like your 'typical' Mexico places.  I figured it had to be a bit nicer since it is a bit more expensive then places like Cancun, Mazatlan, etc.  We decided to Cabo it was.  We are staying in the 5 star resort...Riu Palace for 7 days.  I CAN'T WAIT!!!!

Here are some pictures I took of the resorts website:

Some things that we would like to do while on our honeymoon in Cabo is deep sea fishing, zip lining and visiting lovers beach.  If you know of any other fun things that we FOR SURE should do while in Cabo...let us know by leaving a comment :)

Quotes

Found some GREAT quotes that I need to post and share:

"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed." - Curly Howard

"When life knocks you down, try to land on your back.  Because if you can look up, you can get up.  Let your reason get you back up." - Les Brown

"Never, never, never, never give up." - Winston Churchill

"You become a champion by fighting one more round.  When things are tough, you fight one more round." - James Corbett

"Do not quit!  Hundreds of times I have watched people throw in the towel at the one-yard line while someone else come along and makes a fortune by just going that extra yard." - Joseph Cossman

"...The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, here comes number seventy-one!" - Richard DeVos

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.  The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." - Thomas Edison

"When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go ahead of it and make trial after trail until it comes." - Thomas Edison

Mother's Day!!

This past weekend was Mother's Day weekend and I was so excited that my mom was going to be able to come visit me for Saturday night.  Tate was gone on his bachelor party in Vegas so I really was glad I was going to keep busy with visitors.

On Friday night, my friend Leah came over and we went to dinner.  It was nice to catch up and see her because it had been awhile.

Saturday morning I attended a seminar called 'Super Saturday'.  It is for our travel business and I am so glad I did.  I learned so much and met some great people.  I love attending these events and I am so excited and grateful to be a part of such an awesome company.

My mom visited with her parents on Saturday morning and then drove up to stay with me.  I had planned a very  nice Mother's Day dinner on Saturday evening for us.  Before dinner, we went and did some shopping.  We went to DSW to see if my mom could find some shoes for the wedding.  She did, but they didn't have her size...so I am in the process of trying to find online for her.  We also stopped so she could get some calligraphy pens because my WONDERFUL mother will be addressing all of our wedding invitations.  She does calligraphy so well and I am so glad she has agreed to do it.

Here was my food for our Mother's Day dinner @ Trattoria da Vinci.

{The quality of pictures may not be the greatest...from my phone}

I have fallen in love with this restaurant ever since Tate brought me there the night we got engaged.  It is sooooo good and just a great atmosphere.  My mom loved it also.

On Sunday, we went to church and did some yard work before it started to rain.  My mom is very good at yard kind of stuff so I always like her to help me with stuff when she comes and visits.  She also worked on some of the envelopes...





















I can't wait to have them all done and to see what they look like.  She did a few @ the house and I love them.

I want to end my Mother's Day post with a quote that my oldest brother left on my Mom's FB wall yesterday.  It was so perfect...so I am stealing it :)

"Mother" is such a simple word,
But to me there's meaning seldom heard.
For everything I am today,
My mother's love showed me the way.
I'll love my mother all my days,
For enriching my life in so many ways.
She set me straight and then set me free,
And that's what the word "mother" means to me.

Thanks for being a wonderful mother, Mom!!!  I love you.

{Yes this picture is old...it's from 2006}

Another Busy Weekend

Another busy weekend has come and gone.  We had a lot of wedding to do items.  It started out on Saturday morning with going to Anchor Paper to buy all the paper for our invitations.  We had a good idea of what we wanted, we just needed to find the exact colors and buy it.  We bought it, ordered what they didn't have there on site and even got our envelopes.

Next stop, lunch.  We didn't have our next appt until 1 so we made a quick stop for some lunch.  Before we left home, I went to our DreamtripsLife website to find a coupon to use for lunch.  I found for a place that is on our way down to our cake tastings that afternoon.  Buy one sandwich, get one free @ a little BBQ shop.  IT WAS SOOOO GOOD.  Tate really loved it also.  We received big souvenir cups to keep and they had FREE ICE CREAM!!!!! 

After lunch, we were onto our cake tastings.  I was super excited about this.  The first one went really well and the cupcakes were AMAZING!!!  The gentlemen let us take home the cupcakes that we didn't eat while there (he gave us 8 total, 2 of each kind to try).  We brought home one of each kind and a half eaten one :)

The first cake tasting was better than the second.  We got pricing for both...and they are both kind of expensive in my opinion.  We have another cake tasting in a couple weeks and I am going to see what other options are out there.   We want delicious tasting cupcakes, but not pay an outrageous amount.

After our 2 cake tastings, it was one to wedding ring shopping.  This was more for me but we really wanted to get Tate's ring size and see what mm size of ring he likes because we plan to order his online.  We found what he liked so now we just need to look online to see what we can find.  We also found what I liked, but they had to order it in because there is only 1 left.  They will received it on Tuesday so hopefully I like it on...we will see.

After running around all morning...it was nice to get home and work on the invitations and to update our budget to see where we were sitting on that.  I have a very good start on the invitations and the budget is all updated.  It feels good to have those time consuming items done.

We didn't do anything Saturday night.  We woke up on Sunday and went to church.  I had plans on Sunday to meet up with a mother of a knottie bride to buy some vases from her.  She was selling them for $.75/vase.  I am going to be using these to make the memory candles.  If I had bought them online, they would have cost $3.50...so I was super happy to buy 10 for less than buying 3 online. (We won't be having 10 memory candles, but I thought I will use the others throughout the house).

Before we met up to buy the vases, we decided to bring Mya to a off the leash dog park.  She rarely gets to run around free with other dogs...so I thought it would be good for her.  She loved it.  She was like a kid in a candy store...running all over the place.  I really hope I can find time to bring her weekly because I feel like she really needs that time to just run free.

Here is a picture after she settled down a bit...





















Another picture of her and the other dogs getting to know eachother!!!  Isn't it lovely...Mya has her face in the other dogs butt.  Imagine if this is how humans got to know eachother...so odd!!!

I wish we could have stayed longer @ the dog park...but it was FREEZING out.  Only 30 something degrees outside...brrrrr.  But we were on our way to buy the vases and then home again.  It was an eventful weekend full of running around...but it definitely feels good to get things done.

Another day in history happened yesterday...OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD!!!!  He has been the most wanted man in the USA since 9/11 and the troops finally killed him yesterday!! I hope this serves some sort of justice for the families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks.  I would like to thank our troops who have fought and continue to fight to this day to keep our country free!!!  GOD BLESS AMERICA...