Birthday Cake

We recently celebrated Josh and Craig's birthday by going over to Craig and Valarie's house and eating delicious tacos (prepared by Val). Then we hung out the rest of the night and played darts. Usually Craig really beats us, but I think I might have actually won a game that night (can't completely remember...haha)!

As everyone knows, I have been practicing my decorating techniques. I made a chocolate cake for Josh and Craig's birthday.

Happy Easter!

This Easter we were very busy. We had to go to my family's house, then to Josh's family's house, and then we were off to the Laker game to celebrate Josh's birthday. We had a blast at the Laker game, but unfortunately we did not take any picture while we were there. We are bad at taking pictures of ourselves, but great at taking pictures of Bailee and Layla.

So I am pretty sure that this might be my favorite picture ever. Bailee was our Easter bunny. As you can tell, Bailee didn't like this outfit very much.

We made white chocolate covered strawberries, that were Easter colors to take to each of our family's house's.

The strawberries turned out great, but they were a lot more work than we initially thought they would be.

Decorating!!!

Let me start off this blog by apologizing for the long delay in posting any blogs. Most of our spare time these days are spent doing wedding planning activities. So it is hard to find time to do things that are blog worthy.

I recently have discovered the joy of baking, but I especially enjoy decorating. I recently bought a 70 piece decorating set (so I am taking this very seriously). I have been doing lots of practicing.

I have learned that decorating can be a messy business. I was using 8 different colors of icing, and it made quite the mess!

More mess! I borrowed Valarie's KitchenAid mixer, and I am in love!!

I made these cookies at the request of my co-workers. Here is the final product.

I was very proud of the way they turned out, and they tasted good too! I hope to take decorating classes soon, so I plan on getting better.

Engagement Party

We had a great turnout for our engagement party. A special thanks to Craig, Val, Jen, and Jerm for making it all possible. They all put in a lot of time and effort to make this a special day for us!!

We had a cocktail party with a variety of specialty martini's, and delicious appetizers. The colors were brown, white, pink and yellow (some of our wedding colors). We had beautiful centerpieces with pink and yellow gerber daisies (our wedding flowers). It had been raining earlier in the day, but luckily it stopped raining just a couple of hours before the party....thank goodness! The night turned out better than we imagined.

Craig, Heidi, Valarie, and Josh. This is a really special picture because Josh has his eyes open AND he is smiling.

My good looking family. Ryen, Louise, Lauren, Heidi, Laurie (one of the bridesmaids), Dani (the flower girl), Aunt Becky, Aunt Sylvia, and my Grandmother. It is rare that we all get to take a picture together.

A great picture of Jen and Val sitting outside close to one of the heaters. Notice the fabulous tables and flowers.

Our friends Kolbe and Jennie, being really smart and staying inside where it was nice and warm.

Jen and Jerm posing perfectly!

My LBA friends, Jill, Heidi, George, Becs, and Kavita. I thought I was hilarious by giving George bunny ears, and Becs was also cracking herself up with her pose.

Crazy Dogs!!!

How sweet is this picture? Every once in a while Layla and Bailee stop their constant play fighting and show that they actually do love each other.

Layla is a small dog trapped in a big dog body. She is the cuddler and wants to be held. Since she thinks that she is a small dog, she also thinks that she can fit in Bailee's bed.

It is hard to tell in this picture, but Bailee is standing in the back yard after Josh had just mowed the lawn, and he thought it would be funny to hit her with the leaf blower. She ended up liking it!

Layla is about 9 months old, and needless to say...she is quite the digger. One day after digging a hole (the size of a small swimming pool) she decided to come to the window and get herself busted!

Birthday Dinner

Last week was my birthday. It is a very difficult time to have a birthday, but Josh always makes sure that I have a special day of my own.

Earlier in the day, Josh had started to tell me that he was really busy at work, and that he wanted to get home early that day, but didn't think he would be able to. Well, I half believed him. Part of me thought he wouldn't just have me make dinner on my birthday, but the other part of me was worried that he actually did get busy at work, and really wouldn't be home to celebrate my birthday.

On my way home from work, Josh told me that he was still at work and he was really sorry. But when I got home there was a candlelight dinner waiting for me. He made meatloaf and garlic mashed potatoes (one of my favorite meals). Josh is quite the trickster!

Wedding Update - August 08, 2009

So with our wedding only 8 months away, here is a quick update on what is done (keep in mind I am super planner)

Ceremony and Reception site is booked
Food is picked
Favors are purchased
Bubbles are purchased
Wedding dress, veil, jewelry, garters,and hair piece is purchased
All bridesmaids dresses are purchased
Gifts for bridal party are purchased
Thank you notes are purchased
Invitations are picked (but still need to be made by us)
Colors are picked
Flowers are picked
Reception vases are purchased (but still need some bows added)
Limo is booked
DJ is booked
Save the dates are prepared

I am pretty sure there are a couple more things complete, but I can't remember them. So do you think I am excited?

Here is a link to our ceremony and reception site. It is gorgeous! Stay tuned for more details.

http://www.castawayrestaurant.com/sanbern/banquets.html

Christmas is Here!!!

This weekend was very productive for us. We were very excited for our first Christmas in our new home, so we wanted to make sure that we got to squeeze every day out of this holiday season. So on Friday morning, we got out all the Christmas decorations and decorated.

Saturday we had Craig and Jeremy come over and help put the Christmas lights on the house, while Valarie, Jen, and my cousin Laurie came with me to try on wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses. Happy to say that when we came home the lights were all on and looking great, and I was able to find my dress, and the dress for the bridesmaids.....it was a good day.

Sunday we got our Christmas tree! It finally felt like Christmas when we got our tree!

We Are Engaged!!!!!

Here is a picture of the ring!

A picture of us.....freshly engaged and very happy.

As many of you probably know, this proposal has been in the making for some time, so it wasn't exactly a surprise. Josh did his best to try to surprise me, but I sure made it difficult for him.

So earlier this week, Josh suggested that we go away this weekend, so I knew what that meant......proposal! I was expecting it to happen while we were at the resort. I ended up coming home from work early on Friday. That's how I found out that Josh was planning on cleaning the house, making me a candlelit dinner, and proposing to me. Josh's plan was to get all this done before I got home from work, but his day ran a lot longer than he'd hoped. So that plan was now ruined due to me leaving work early that day.

So Saturday comes, we are running late, and I am trying to get out of our house and onto our trip and to the proposal. I am outside on the porch calling Josh and telling him to hurry up and get in the car, then he tells me to come back into the house, and of course I question why. Then he got down on one knee and popped the big question. Well, I guess we all know what my answer was!

We stayed at the Marriot Palm Desert Resort the night we got engaged. This picture was taken from the balcony in our room
(I highly recommend it).

Halloween 2008

This was our first Halloween at our new home, so we decided to have a few people over and pass out candy. To our disappointment we did not have very many trick or treaters.

My favorite pictures of the night!!

Bailee and Layla were prisoners, surprisingly they didn't mind their hats.

Here we are posing with our pumpkins the night before Halloween.

We had a pumpkin carving contest - the 2 on the left are Valarie's pumpkins, the middle one is Jen's, the 2nd from the right is Josh's, and the one on the right is Heidi's. As usual Josh took first place in the contest. As most of you probably know, we do a lot of contests and Josh is usually the winner.

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