The First Annual Tom McShane Memorial Brother Sons Getaway Retreat

Dan-did I get the name right???  Haha!  Last weekend Dan went up to his Uncle Tim's cabin for the "First...well, I won't retype it!  They had a guys weekend full of golf, cabin fun, campfires and, most of all, time to remember Tom!

Dan carried on their new tradition of reading letters from Tom!  Dan and I didn't really realize that this could be a tradition but now it officially is one!  It all started with Uncle Kevin reading a letter that Tom wrote from heaven at the prayer service.  Then Uncle Tim read a letter from Tom at our wedding rehearsal dinner.  Then Dan wrote a letter from his dad and read it at this weekend retreat!  It will be so fun and meaningful to collect all the letters from Tom that people write from now on!

Blog Shout Out!

My friend Caroline gave a wedding shout out on her blog a few weeks ago!  Head on over to Pistachio Ice Cream!

http://pistachioicecream.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/orange-you-gonna-get-married/

Fall Decorations!

It's that time of year!  Harvest decor time!  I did not plan to decorate for anything but Christmas but how fun was this?!  While Dan was out of town for his "1st Annual Tom McShane Memorial Brothers Sons Weekend Getaway Retreat" (official name), I went to my parents' house and, well, just hung out!  We watched Bridesmaids (had to buy that on DVD on the way there), ran some errands, ate at IHOP for breakfast and then stopped at the nursery and found some fun fall decorations!  On a budget of $20, a cute little display was born on the fly!  You should've seen Dan's face when I drove in the driveway with these cornhusks practically sticking out the back! :)

Fall Season Preview

Like many of our favorite shows this fall, we are also starting a season of house projects!  Just to get you all excited (and hold ourselves accountable), here is a snapshot of our dream to do list for the next several months:

1.   Paint insides of both linen closets and hall bath shelving, reorganize, line drawers and shelves

2.   Paint entire basement including bathroom (stay tuned for the color!)

3.   Hang wedding pictures on canvas frames (1 or 2)

4.   Clean out storage room and wedding room (sell, donate, toss)

5.   Order curtains for front picture window

6.   Hem curtains on sliding door or get new ones

7.   Add curtain for small kitchen window

8.  Back splash tiling in kitchen

9.  Replace hall bath towel rod

10.  Re-paint upstairs hallway and hang pictures on wall

11.   Hang frames and bulletin boards in office-figure out desk situation

12.  Hang curtains in master bedroom

13.  Replace bedroom doors downstairs

14. Hang curtains in guest room

15.  Clean out garage and organize shelves (label paint cans)

16.  Add screen to hall bath window

Sound good?!  Everybody on board?!  Has anyone ever custom built anything or know someone who does?  Has anyone ever done a tile backsplash on their own?

Honeymoon Preview!

Dan and I had an amazing time in Rivera Maya, Mexico at the Barcelo Resort!  (all-inclusive I might add).  It was just so relaxing....and also weird to relax!  It had been so long since we had done absolutely nothing!  The past 16+ months have been insane, not to mention the past recent month alone!  So there were many moments of just realizing what all had happened and that we were on the beach just enjoying each other's company.  We both definitely needed it! Here are some highlights and some of my favorite photos from the trip (PS-do you know how hard it is to get a picture together when you don't know anyone around you and no one speaks English?! :)



Some of our favorite memories are:

1. When the concierge called our hotel room and I answered.  He asked me if my parents were there!  I need to practice my adult voice I guess!

2. Going to the Hibachi grill 2 nights because we loved it so much!

3. Dan climbing a palm tree to get a coconut.

4. Snorkeling and kayaking!

5. Almost every night we went to the hotel outdoor theater to see the different shows that were playing.  Each day, the hotel hung a poster to let everyone know what the show was that night.  We saw the poster that read "Perros y Gatos" (meaning "Dogs and Cats") and it had little pictures of dogs and cats!  I said, "Dan!  I really want to see that!!"  He was not surprised since it involved what we assumed to be little dogs doing tricks.  That whole day I even kept talking about the show and how I hope the Mexican people are really nice to the doggies.  When we got to the theater, we got some drinks and instead of sitting at the bar like we had been every night before, we decided to sit really close to the stage so that, you guessed it, Natalie could see the little doggies doing their tricks.  Not shortly after we sat down, a person with the show approached us and asked us if we could participate in a game.  We said, sure, thinking it was a little pre-show thing, what the heck, why not.  So we are called onto stage with 3 other couples (one from Seattle, one from Canada, one from Argentina).  We start to play a game on stage where Dan has to sing into the microphone until he runs out of breath and I had to jump rope as fast as I could until he was done and whichever couple got the most jumps won!  Well, I did get first place in jump roping annually in our elementrary school "play day" so I knew it was in the bag.  And we did win!  But, little did we know, there were more games and this WAS the show!  We were on the "Gattos" team (us and one other couple) and the other two couples were on the "Perros" team!  We thought, no way!  So, we were on stage for about an hour and a half in the heat and under hot lights and never saw any cats or dogs doing tricks!!  The only people doing tricks were us!  After the jump rope game, we had to play a celebrity guessing game that involved running as fast as you could to yell which celebrity was on the big screen.  Following this was a dancing contest where Dan and I did everything from the lawn mower to the fisherman catching the fish move.  After this, Dan had to sit on a chair while I had to run at full speed toward him with a balloon and pop it on him any way I could three times!  What a circus!  Definitely a great memory though!  Wow, sorry for the length of this one!

6. Eating, drinking and re-living the wedding day!

We Did It!

We got married!!!!!!

September 10, 2011 actually came!!!

I just can't believe that it happened and that it was even more than I had imagined in my head!  I still am not sure who reads this blog...maybe some girlfriends (Tiffany, Molly, Caroline), Aunt Becky, Jean Erath, my mom and Dan's mom...and that might be it! :)  But here's a huge shout out to you guys and thank you to anyone else for coming to our wedding and making it special!

This is one of my favorites: