Thor's Birthday Pictures

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY THOR BOAR!!!!

Thor's very homemade birthday cake!!!

Thor patiently waiting while I took a picture of his cake.


Thor showing incredible restraint while I sang Happy Birthday to him.

Oh, the first bites of his cake!

Dave and I just watched as he devoured his first birthday cake.

Thor looking up to take a break.

Licking up the last bites.

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY THOR BOAR!!!!

Thor's Birthday, Broken Camera, New home, and Gym Membership

Thor's first birthday was on June 17, 2009! My baby is growing up and this last year has really flown by. I took lots of pictures of him and the little homemade doggie cake that I made and then my camera broke. :o( It won't allow my pictures to be transferred onto my memory card and so I have no way of getting the pictures on the compute because I have no clue where the cord is. (Note to self: look harder tonight.)

Last week was a whirlwind of a week and weekend. D & I went to San Antonio and viewed several reception venue possibilities. Went to a cake shop to look at cakes, crashed a wedding to hear a DJ we may have and signed the church papers for our ceremony stuff. We still have not decided on a reception place yet, but we have all been diligently working towards making a decision. I think on Sunday we have to make another trip down to San Antonio to view some more possible places. SOON hopefully. I have decided that we will buy the invitations this weekend and we are DIYing it. I was soooo opposed to this at first but then I found the perfect invitations for us and I think it will actually be fun to do. I may even recruit my mom & sister and have her do up half or even make a weekend event of it once the time comes.

I feel like we are much closer to deciding on a reception venue. We are looking at two more venues this weekend, possibly 3. Hopefully, this weekend a decision will be made! We are going down to San Antonio with my in-laws to be and also going to see some of the restaurants Annette has been to for the rehearsal! ***Oh I completely forgot to mention. One of the most disappointing things that I have found out while planning this wedding is that we really chose an unfortunate date. On January 2, 2010 San Antonio turns off the Christmas lights for the season and from January 3-12 the river is drained for yearly maintenance!!! How stinky! We found a great venue at a great price right over the river and then I found out all of this stuff. Now I'm not so concerned about being on the river or downtown anymore. It is okay though, because I really like our wedding date: 01/09/10 which will always be easy to remember because 01+09=10!!! Yea, dorky I know...I must be a math teacher's daughter (I am).

Amidst all of the wedding planning, Dave & I need to find a new place to live. We had been looking around to buy for awhile and then realized we weren't quite ready so now we are looking for a house to lease in the Pflugerville Area. I'm not quite sure what it is about Pflugerville, but I really like it. Living outside of Austin and commuting everyday to work sometimes feels like a big pain in the butt, but I like coming home to our little community. It is also a nice location because we are close to my parents and Daves. Anyway, we tried to do a lot of the leg work ourselves at first, but realized that the clock was ticking so now we have been working with a really nice real estate agent. We are in the process of applying to to rent one of the homes that we liked and that will take Thor (that is the biggest obstacle, finding a home to lease that will allow Thor). Hopefully, it all works out and as early as Monday we may have an idea of where we are going to live for the next 12 months (then hopefully BUY! :o) ).

Oh, and as far as the new gym goes. I joined the gym that Dave has been a member at for sometime, it is the Tech Ridge Gold's Gym. This is the first gym that I have ever had to actually pay for and join! Growing up there was always a free gym or 2 or 3 on the military base that I lived on, and then all through college it was just a part of the students fees, and even the apartment we live in now has a SMALL gym that we could use. Well with our time at the apartment coming to an end and I want to get back in shape I figured it was a good idea to join. We've been during well going regularly even with Dave starting the new job! Proud of us.

Only one more hour till the weekend!

dum dum da dum...dum dum da duuuuuum

I little update as far as wedding planning goes….

Dave and I have decided on a place for the wedding ceremony to take place and I have done all of the leg work needed to get approval for a ceremony there. We would like to marry at the Mission San Jose in San Antonio, Texas. Mission San Jose was built in the early 1700’s and is still an active Catholic Church to this day. It is absolutely gorgeous both inside and out and it has that historical look about it that I love. I think growing up in Europe makes me really appreciate buildings that are hundreds of years old and in the States that is very hard to find. A Target that is 10 years old is considered historic in America.

Anyways, the Mission will do a non-denominational wedding so long as you bring your own minister and provide a letter confirming his agreement to marry you. Well, all of that is done and now we are just waiting to hear back from Alice, the church’s wedding lady, about whether we are approved to get married there or not. I don’t think there would be any reason for a rejection, but I am still nervous until we hear back from her. So please everyone keep their fingers crossed for an approval to get married at the Mission San Jose. If not, I feel like we will have to start from ground zero for what would feel like the third time!!!

As far as a wedding reception site, there is one that I plan on visiting in the next couple of weekends to see if it will do. I’m excited about it because it has almost everything that I want in a reception, table service, dancing area, enough room for a sit down dinner and room for creativity on our part. Hopefully that works out for us, if not we will continue looking.

Something that I have found that is really working in our favor is that our wedding will be in the winter. Prices seem to be a little more reasonable and dates have been completely open so far, with the exception of a later wedding ceremony time. I have also done a little research and discovered that the closer to the wedding date that we wait to book outside vendors (ie: DJ, cake, flowers) the better the price will be. I’m hoping that is true, but I don’t want to walk the fine line of not being able to nail down that stuff with enough time to go.

We are less than 7 months away till the wedding and besides invitations and the reception site, one thing that I really need to do is to pick out bridesmaids dress and my dress. I have made 3 appointments at 3 different bridal shops to try some dress on for the 27 of June. I’m really excited about this date! I’ve invited several ladies to include my mom, my mother-in-law to be, Sarah and Sam. Kelly will be out of town that weekend and Jenny lives far far away. Hopefully everything will fall into place. Price, dress, fit, order time, stuff like that.

The details and things and money that goes into a wedding really seems a bit ridiculous as I am right in the middle of all of this. At times I really feel a little uncomfortable and even morally conflicted about spending so much money and effort into a one-day event. I often think about how easily it would be to either just elope or for Dave & I to go to the courthouse one day and get it all over with. Then a part of me, deep down, knows how much I would regret that. I feel as though our wedding will truly be about the celebration of our decision to commit to each other indefinitely. I want pictures of that decision and I want people to eat, drink and be merry celebrating our marriage to one another. It’s a huge decision to marry and when it feels so very right, as it does in my case, it makes me want to share that with all of our friends and family.

I’m also desperately trying to make myself relax about some of the wedding planning that has to take place. I can see the possibility of becoming a bit uptight as the big day draws near and I really want to avoid that for the sake of my sanity and the sake of our relationship. (Dave usually has to take about 90% of my irrationality and my mom the other 10%). So I often take a step back and breathe and then remember why we are doing this madness in the first place, and the reason is: for love.

june bug

okay, first of all, let me HIGHLY recommend the movie UP. wonderful wonderful movie. dave and i love going to see animated movies in 3D. he loves the new 3d technology and i just love the disney animated movies so it makes for a fun event for us. i especially love going during the day like on a sunday when i know there will be tons of families and kids at the movie. the reason for this is because i love hearing kids reactions during some of the scenes. like when something is really sad or funny i can feel the emotional response in the room through them just by their laughter and/or ohhhs and ahhhs. love it. the only downfall of going to the movie during this time is that we need to go to theater way early because there is usually a bigger crowd on a sunday afternoon then say a 10P.M. showing on a thursday night.

UP was a great movie for both kids and adults. for kids it was about adventure and talking dogs and birds, a real adventure movie, but for adults there was a deeper life message that children may not even catch. oh and it wasn't morally preaching, like doing right vs. wrong, but more about life stages and transitions. warning though: you will cry in the first 15 minutes. both DAVE and I did!

prior to going to see the movie, dave and i invited both sets of our parents to a favorite local mexican restaurant in pflugerville for lunch and to meet for the first time. everyone got along really well and our first family meeting could not have gone any better. we were both thrilled about that because all morning my stomach had been in knots about our folks meeting. i don't know what i was expecting that could have been so bad?? just the general anxiety of something like that makes me nervous. i'm glad that our parents have met now it makes me very relieved that this monumental moment is done and over. now i really look forward to daves family meeting the rest of my family and i look forward to our siblings families meeting each other. all of that does not make me nervous the way this first meeting did.

oh, completely forgot also, we went to schlitterbahn on saturday. (this blog is completely in reverse...but that's okay.) we had made plans to go down to san antonio to check out the missions and do some san antonio wedding venue searching. late on friday night we get a message from jono and lexie asking if we were interested in going to schlitterbahn saturday. and we were like heck yes. so we left the house early on saturday and piddled around san antonio, getting lost, stuck in traffic, but generally overall enjoying ourselves. i'm pretty sure that we have decided on a place to get married two, but now it's just a matter of finding a a reception venue.

after we were done with san antonio we headed up to schlitterbahn to meet jono and lexie. the water park really has gotten much bigger than i remember it. there are shuttles and 3 different parks and 3 different lazy rivers and many more rides. the lines were really reasonable and i'm so glad we decided to go.

Outdoors

Dave and I did some hiking over the weekend. He took me out to a park I hadn't been yet and I felt so deceived once we got there! He had been holding out on me, this place was really great for a quick day trip and just down the road from the apartment. I can't wait to go again, hopefully sometime soon. Here are some pictures from our outting.

Thor and I got up to a little spot that use to have water flowing through it. He did not want to take this picture because it required standing on a rock that was like a ledge.


This picture was about half-way. The weather could not have been any nicer!


The stream was perfect for wadding in most of the way of our hike.

Thor had an absolute blast and was well-behaved, too!

The face of a tired puppy makes me happier than I could ever explain. This face means little work for mommy and daddy has to be done for Thor the rest of the day.

I want to remember to take more videos from now on. Just figuring out the settings and how much memory Dave's camera has for a video and pictures. Look for more to come!

scooby doo and our cat

HARDIN AND THOR SHARING

THOR NEEDED SOME EXTRA SUPPORT SO I LET HIM BORROW MY SPORTS BRA

THOR GOING TO TOWN ON HIS PEANUT BUTTER FILLED KNUCKLED BONE.

thor and hardin have such unique personalities. hardin is much more like a cat and thor is much more like a 2 year old that you cannot reason with. anyways, i love them tons and take pictures of them tons!

i have been following dooce.com's blog and she is hilarious! she also does a section on her blog called daily chuck and chuck is one of her dogs. if you get a moment or two please check it out! you can find the daily chuck by clicking here...do it. i was holding in my laughter at work yesterday when i decided to browse the archives. so anyways she inspired me to look at some of my old puppy photos and i was surprised to find that i have over 435 pictures of thor and hardin! that is just in their respective folders and does not count pictures of them in folders of trips or randoms...i hope i remain as diligent in taking pictures once we have children.

Round Rock Express

Fun night! Dave took me to my first Round Rock Express baseball game last night. So much fun. Dave is not a huge fan of baseball...GASP, I KNOW! but we went anyways, and I look forward to going again, sometime soon. We met up with Luke, Mandy, and Summer and Mandy's parents. It is a really fun and pretty complex. Tons of places to eat, a rock climbing wall, a pool, two different jungle gyms for the kids to play on and cheap seats, backstop seats and box seats. We paid for the cheap seats, but the backstop seats were not full and we were able to find a seat with Luke & Mandy. The RR Express won, too! Which, apparently is quite rare. Dave said that he has probably been to about 5-6 games before and this was the first time that he had actually seen them win a game. I think it's because I am good luck.



The electronic screen was not working because of some technical difficulty, however, there were firecrackers throughout the night. There were firecrackers during the National Anthem and then again at the conclusion of the game.

This is a picture from the seating area that we were suppose to sit in.



This is a picture from the seating that we actually ended up sitting.

I'm getting much better at taking these pictures of us! This was when we were walking up to the stadium entrance.

Picture of Dave and I while watching the game. I particularly like this picture because it seems like there were a bunch of creepers in the background watching us take a picture.



This is a picture of our nice well rounded baseball dinner...

Baby summer kept us and all of the people around us very entertained when the game was moving slowly. She is too cute right now. She is mocking a bunch of stuff like shaking her head in a goofy way when her mommy and daddy do it first.