Happy New Year & Thank You!

Thank You For An Amazing Year!

Wow, it has been three months since the wedding, and we are just now updating the blog!  So much has happened in the past three months that have kept us busy, but my goal for the new year is to keep up my blogging!

We first want to thank all of our family and friends for an amazing wedding weekend.  It was just as fabulous as we had hoped and we loved every minute of it, from family arriving in town on the Wednesday before the wedding to the BBQs, the salon visits, the rehearsal, the dinner, the wedding day, to brunch on Sunday…all of it.  We experienced some of the happiest days of our lives, and the love we felt from all of you was incredibly special to us.

How can you follow one of the best weekends of your life???  Well, you take a two week honeymoon that was nothing short of amazing!  We cherish the time we spent together, the memories and new friends we made and the chance to celebrate our newly married status.

We came back from the honeymoon and took some time to settle in as newlyweds, after a very busy year, it was nice to spend some quiet time at home with our pets and each other.  But of course that was short lived, because life can get in the way…we bought a new truck for Doug, went to Chicago for Thanksgiving to celebrate with our Ludwig family, had our beloved dog face some serious health issues, and celebrated our first Christmas together as husband and wife.

I will add more pictures soon from the wedding and honeymoon, the holidays, and of course some really cute pictures of Griffey the Golden and Ali Cat!

We hope you all have a very happy new year, and we cant wait to see what 2011 brings for us.

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Bring on Spring, Loving April

The top ten highlights of our April:

• Gorgeous weather most of the month.
• We got a head start planting our veggies in the garden and flowers throughout the yard.
• We had a great Easter, we celebrated in St. Louis, and enjoyed our niece and nephews.  We also celebrated Doug’s birthday with my family. 
• Our nephew Nathan turned two and we celebrated with a Mickey party!
• We went to the Supercross Motorcycle event at the Ed Jones Dome, my first time at motorcycle races, oh the things I do since I met Doug!  :)
• Went morel mushroom hunting…Jaime=3, Doug=0
• The antics of our crazy pets…see the next post!
• We sold Doug’s truck and in the process of buying a new one.
• We made updates to the bathrooms, and adding a new shower to the master bath….gotta love drywall dust throughout the house.
• We have 5 months to wedding, and we are so excited to countdown to the day!

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Animal Antics

So, April was a busy month for our two four legged friends.  Griffey, although 9 years old, one would never guess and think he may still be a puppy.  He loves that we have four kids in the family under the age of 7 who walk around with snacks in their hands that he helps himself too.  This Easter, the lovable, gentle giant helped himself to the Easter Egg hunt in my parents backyard.  Plastic eggs with candy were hidden all over the yard, and Griffey with his high-powered nose, found some before the kids did, chewed open the eggs, then ate the candy!  Chasing him around the backyard so the kids could have their eggs, was how we spent the egg hunt!

Then, Griffey, the hunter, didn’t disappoint with his newly acquired hunting skills.  In four days, he managed to find three baby bunnies in our backyard.  Whenever he is outside longer than 10 minutes, we know something is up.  As we went to check on him, we find him IN the garden (which is fenced off) with a bunny in his mouth.  As Doug goes out to save the bunny, Griffey the Proud, trots around the backyard with bunny in mouth.  Sadly, the baby bunny didn’t make it…now repeat this process three times.  Me….very sad by all this, poor, cute, little baby bunnies….Doug, however, was a little proud of his hunting dog.  So, a week later, after we thought the bunny drama had ended, we were planting veggies in the garden and uncovered a fourth baby bunny, buried in the garden.  Yep, this time he took it upon himself to bury it!  Lovely surprise for us!

Now, Ali, the playful, lovable, friendly cat has a personality all of her own.  Her favorite past-time is pushing EVERYTHING off the kitchen counter…we can handle this silliness.  However, one evening, after a bad storm, we came home to find three, yes three, cell phone cords chewed in half…completely in half….and they were plugged in.  Doug suspects she received a jolt, but it didn’t stop her from chewing through three of them!  But it is hard to get mad at either of these adorable creatures!

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Busy March, Six Months to Go!

March was a busy and exciting month for us.  We had a great time at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Doug’s mom and niece Julie came to visit, we welcomed a new nephew into this world, and we celebrated Doug’s 35th birthday!  And, despite both of us getting the flu and sick for a week, there is only six months to the wedding, so we are excited about that!

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade was COLD and a bit rainy, but we still had a great time.  Check out the pictures, we ended the day at  Jive & Wail, where our niece and nephews danced on stage…yep, babies in a bar!  (At least it was a kid-friendly event!)

Doug’s mom and niece came into town and we had a great weekend, and visited the wedding dress shop to try on wedding and bridesmaid dresses, then lunch with the girls.  And, the very next week, we welcomed our new nephew, Cooper Richard Powers, into the world on March 23. …check out the photos.  He is an adorable baby and we are happy to add a 6th to our nieces and nephews count.

We ended the month with Doug’s 35th birthday by spending the weekend in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.  We visited a Bed & Breakfast ( http://www.southernhotelbb.com/ ) , antique shops, quaint restaurants and the Cave Vineyard ( http://www.cavevineyard.com/ ), which is a winery in a cave. Very cool!  We then the spent the last few days of March playing the Wii…Doug’s birthday present, so we are finally not the last people on earth to own the Wii.

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February…short month, lots of plans

Our February brought wedding planning to the top of our to-do lists….I went dress shopping, we picked out flowers, more marriage prep classes and had several wedding cake tastings…and, wow…what a surprise.  One quote for a wedding cake was $960.00, Doug and I about fell out of our chairs!  That would equate to about $5.00 a slice!  Needless to say we kept shopping around and think we have a much better option lined up.  We know weddings are expensive, but  seriously do people actually spend $1000 on a cake!

We also celebrated the Superbowl at my brother’s house, well minus my brother who spent the evening in the ER from a trampoline incident in his backyard.  I guess he better have a talk with Santa about the gifts he bring the kids!  We celebrated Valentine’s Day at BARcelona (http://www.barcelonatapas.com/ ), a great Tapas restaurant in Clayton.  We also celebrated my Grandma’s 91st birthday, and she seem healthier than she has in the past six months.  We also took my nephew Justin to his first Ash Wednesday Mass, which was an honor to take him as his godparent.  He is in PSR, so is learning all about Lent.

Other than that, we are looking forward to March….a new nephew’s arrival, St. Patrick’s Day and Doug’s birthday!

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Excited to Begin the New Year…January 2010

We were very excited to begin 2010, as we have a lot of great events to look forward to this year…most of all the wedding!  We spent New Year’s Eve with our great friends Sue and Phil with dinner at a Japanese restaurant then on to a party.  The next day, January 1 was Doug’s grandmother’s 96th birthday so we joined her for a birthday party.  She is so cute!  We also had our marriage preparation weekend in January spending the weekend at a retreat center for the Catholic Engaged Encounter program.  We also had a skating party for our nephew, Justin, who turned 7 years old…it was a blast, and Doug and I both skated for the first time in years!  Our pets, Griffey and Alice had birthdays…Griffey turned 9 and Ali turned 2!  We ended the month with Doug fishing in the 20-degree weather and I went wedding dress shopping.  Started out as a fabulous year so far…enjoy our pics!

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Random Pics of the Pets…

Here are recent and random pictures of Griffey and Ali.  We are still amazed that they have come so far from their first meeting.  When we introduced them for the first time, it was an all out war!  And the war continued for about a month.  Now, however, they have learned to tolerate each other and have even been spotted sleeping in the bed at the same time.  Alice turned 2 and Griffey turned 9 in January.  My favorite pics are of them each sleeping on the leather sofa…the one place they are not allowed….well, you can see how well that goes over!  I also love the pic of Doug in his camo with Griffey and the duck….the only duck Griffey will actually retrieve is a stuffed one!  To Doug’s dismay, his hunting dog is just not gonna hunt!

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Christmas 2009 in Chicago!

We had a great Christmas this year!  We celebrated Christmas with Jaime’s family the Saturday before Christmas with a party and dinner at our house, then on Sunday we had Christmas with each other and our pets…then on Dec. 23, after work, we headed to Chicago to spend Christmas with the Ludwigs.  We had a great time in Chicago, spending time with Doug’s family, we had a snowy, white Christmas and spent some time in downtown Chicago.  Doug’s dad dressed like Santa on Christmas Eve and we took some cute family photos.  We watched movies, played games, cooked and ate a lot of great meals.

Our day in the city was fabulous….we went to the Museum of Science and Industry, then over to see the Bean, the headed to a local bar called Tavern at the Park to have a few drinks and warm up, then headed over to Macy’s for some shopping before having dinner at Navy Pier.  It was a perfect day and had a steady snow fall most of the day.

Then, on Sunday, before we headed home, we celebrated Doug’s niece April’s 18th birthday!  Here are some of our photos…

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Christmas 2009 in St. Louis!

We celebrated Christmas with the Powers side the weekend before Christmas since we were heading to Chicago for the holiday….we had a great time with dinner and a party at our house.  Jaime’s two nephews and niece had a great time opening their gifts and we played Rob Your Neighbor with some pretty goofy gag gifts.  We were very glad that Jaime’s Grandma was able to join us, as she hasn’t been in the greatest of health lately, but she joined us and had a great night.

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Santa Paws Comes to Our House

Well…needless to say Griffey and Alice (Ali) were spoiled this Christmas!  Santa Paws came and brought them each gifts.  Griffey, who is finally on the mend, received a huge bone and Miss Ali Cat got a kitty tunnel….both are pleased with their gifts.  We love the picture of the two of them with their gifts…mainly beacuse of how close they are…a huge difference – and progress – from when we first brought Ali home.  It was complete chaos for about a month…they were both terrified of each other and we had to keep them seperated….and now, they have learned to tolerate each other…we have even caught them sleeping in the same bed at the same time.  We are not sure they will ever be best of friends…but it is peaceful in the house now.

Griffey, who had been suffering from an infected hot spot, is finally healing…after four trips to the vet, 6 rounds of meds and just about every over the counter health aid we could find…we finally have it under control.  Poor guy, he was pretty miserable for awhile…now he is back to his usual antics…like stealing our socks!

So, the pets are doing great, and my only complaint now is that both of them follow their daddy around wherever he goes…I am the odd man out here!

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