Long Beach Half Marathon...

Most of you know we signed up for our second half marathon. We also peer pressured a lot of our friends to run. Surprisingly, most of our friends came through and ran. We were so lucky to host the Perry's for the whole weekend. They always host us when we go up to Sacramento, so it was so nice to return the favor. They ended up being our first visitors at our new house! We loved that they were able to make it down for the race. Their trip went by way too fast, we all ended up being preoccupied by the race schedule. We were able to enjoy one night of sushi and dancing!
Here we are bustin' a move...

Lindsey and Taylor crossing the finish line.

GO REESE! j/k! (Linds-can't wait for SF!!)

Here are Linds and I with the OVERALL marathon runner!

He passed me and finished the marathon when I was on mile 11.
Here we are tasting our success!!!

Although we did not have time or energy to train, Ryan and I ran the race. We are still a little disappointed with ourselves. Ryan and I are super competitive, we have no urge to run a full marathon yet, but we do need to beat our previous race times. Here are our upcoming events: We are running our local Turkey Trot 10k (Linds-this made me laugh when I read your blog), I think I am going to run the Huntington Beach Half again on February 1st, and we are signing up for the San Francisco Half Marathon on July 26th. They just introduced the California Dreamin' racing series which includes the Long Beach, Huntington Beach, and San Fran half/full marathons. If you run all three in a two year span you receive a special jacket and medal. I really want to achieve this by next July...this running stuff is so addicting! I am sure a few of our friends caught the bug as well!

Closing, remodel, and moving...

Ryan and I have had a crazy month of October. We closed escrow and did some little upgrades to our new townhome. We are so happy to be close to the beach and family. Hopefully there won't be a large adjustment to our commutes. Here are some pictures of the process. I still haven't taken any pictures of the front or the rooms furnished...I will post some later.
Here is the living room with the old carpet and white walls...

The kitchen with ugly flooring (everything else was in really good shape). We ended up getting wood flooring throughout the main level. You may notice the baby on the island, that is our new nephew, Robbie. He is just checking out the durability of the granite. Here is the fireplace with our new wood floors, tv mounting, and new paint.
We are having a housewarming/Ryan's 30th Birthday party in a few weeks. Our goal is to have the place a little more set up by then. After the party I will try to post new pictures.

Can't decide on a photographer...

So we have had a crazy busy weekend. We NEED to book our photographer in the next week!!!! Dates are starting to book up for next year. So now I am calling in the reserves...if you have a chance to view our two top choices and leave your opinion/comment it would be super helpful knowing what others think.

John Partridge www.johnpartridgephotography.com
John Partridge's Blog www.johnpartridge.net

and

Matthew Morgan www.matthew-morgan.com
Matthew Morgan's Blog www.matthew-morgan.blogspot.com

THANK YOU!!!

We have been M-I-A!!

The last month has been so busy. I started back graduate school, which I am only counting the days when I will be done! We also have been house hunting for the past 10 months and things have finally come around! We are so picky and have realized we are "high-maintance" house shoppers. We are finally in escrow and the closing is approaching fast. I will post pictures when things are set in stone. I can't believe we are going to be considered "Newport Beach" people!

As for the wedding, we have put that on the back burner. We have met with a few photographers and are still working out the details with the church. Our priorities are currently confirming our venue, church, and photographer. These are the things that book up a year in advance and we are almost a year to the date!

Tonight we have a taste testing...Yummy! It is my mother's birthday today and we are treating her to the tasting...WOW we give great gifts! :o) This week we are meeting with a few more photographers, so I will be asking opinions once I post their websites! Sorry this is a boring post, I just wanted to make sure everyone knew we were still alive!

What a busy Friday...

Yesterday Ryan and I had a hectic day. Our wedding planner created an itinerary of venues for us to see. We were surprising on schedule the whole day. That included us having 30 minutes to eat lunch. Here is a list of the places we saw...

Centennial Heritage Museum, this is an outdoor location in Santa Ana. It is very pretty, reasonably priced, and staying on our list.


The next stop was The Turnip Rose at The Grand Newport Plaza. It was very pretty and included most of the things you would need for your reception at the low low price of $36,000. Needless to say, we will NOT be choosing the Turnip Rose for our reception location.

The next location was Old Ranch Country Club, this is located

in Seal Beach. Their banquet room is large and will fit large sized groups. They are currently getting sliding windows in their rooms
so they would be open for the entire reception. We like the view of the golf course and the inside/outside feel. It is a little pricey but we will probably keep it as an option.

The final stop of the day was Meadowlark Golf Club. We like the location, it is in Huntington Beach and relatively close to our church. There is a great patio around this entire room and can be utilized throughout the reception. They offered us drinks and appetizers while we waited for the proposal. We thought this was a nice gesture, no other location has offered anything. My theory is if you are going to spend thousands of dollars in one place they should try to get your business anyway possible. This is not a reason to choose the place, but we know that they will give us great service if we do choose this location.

**Here are two other places that we have visited before and are still considering...

The Newland House/Barn is in Huntington.

We consider this a blank space...we would have

to order tables, chairs, caterer, decorations, and

a tent depending on the weather.

(I am not sure why the picture is split...you get the idea of the place.)

Rancho Capistrano was one of our first choices but we thought it was too expensive. Now we are realizing that it is around the same price range as everything else. Go figure! The only thing we don't like about the location is that you can not taste the food you are going to serve and you are stuck with one option of food.

We have a lot of decisions to make...blah! Ryan and I discovered that planning a wedding is stressful...Can we just elope? :O)

My fabulous discovery...

Last night I was looking at wedding blogs and finally discovered how to create a storyboard. It is super easy. I used bighugelabs instead of photoshop. Over the last month I have collected inspirational wedding pictures. I am using the pictures to help design my wedding. Here is my first attempt...What does everyone think? We want it to be more of a shabby chic garden wedding. Sorry if that doesn't really make any sense! Oh and...we found our wedding coordinator! We were just looking for someone for the wedding day but then we soon realized we need more help, so we hired her for the year! We are super excited and hope she will relieve our stress. The only problem is that I am kind of a control freak and will probably do a lot of work myself.

So thoughtful!

Last week my girlfriend, Lindsey, sent me this adorable edible arrangement from ediblearrangements. She is so thoughtful. Her card mentioned that this would be one of my last unhealthy sweets because I am going to be watching what I eat...she knows me so well. The arrangement had the most delicious dark chocolate dipped apples. YUMMY! The fruit didn't last too long in my house!

Now Ryan and I are stuck eating healthy for our training. Next Monday starts our training for the Long Beach Half Marathon in October. Our friends Lindsey and Taylor will be stuck training with us. This will be their first half and they are flying down to HB from Sacramento for the race. Lindsey- sorry we talked you into it, but now we can go dress shopping when you come into town!

Here is a recent picture of us with his niece, Avery, at a wedding this month. Little Miss Red is too cute and soooo funny. There won't be any updated pictures for awhile, Ryan and I refuse to get engagement photos taken until we are in the middle of our training. Last time we became so fit, but when you stop working out the body does not maintain its shape! :O)

My DIY Bridesmaid Cards...

Unfortunately, my bridesmaids do not live locally, so asking them in person was not an option. So last week I made and sent my bridesmaid cards. I think they turned out pretty well (these are just 2 out of the 6). Let me note that these are not the colors of my wedding. I thought these cards should be girly and fun. The text

was in chocolate brown and I added two little crystals on the ring-bearer. I thought it added a little sparkle. Each of the cards had a different poem ending with the question of "Will you be my bridesmaid?" All of my bridesmaids had a laugh because I made a label on the outside envelope stating not to open the letter until they called me. I didn't want to just ask them over the phone, so I thought the letter would be a nice addition.

For Ryan's nieces, I found a special flower girl poem. His two nieces will be our flower girls and his new nephew will be our ring-bearer. We also bought both of his nieces a cute flower girl book that comes with a flower necklace. TOO CUTE!

It's all about the details!!!

Updated wedding news...

We don't have too much planned, but we have started. We are planning to wed in September 2009 in Orange County. The main reason behind this decision is that I will HOPEFULLY be finished with my program. (I feel that if I keep writing this, I will start doing work). The wedding is suppose to give me motivation to do work, instead I just want to plan a wedding!
So we have decided that we NEED to hire a wedding planner. That is what we are trying to accomplish this week. We interviewed a woman on Monday and I loved her. But just for reference, we want to interview a few more. So as of now we have meetings Saturday and Monday. I have a vision, I just need someone to execute my ideas and calm my craziness. At the end of the day, I know that everything will be fantastic.

Drinking the blog kool-aid...

So for the past few months I have been viewing all of my friends' blogs and completely feel out of the loop. Since moving to California, it is very easy to loose touch with friends from the past. I have decided that blogging is a great method to stay in touch with friends and keep everyone updated with our life. Creating a blog can also be an amazing way to vent. :O)

Ryan and I are recently engaged and it will be nice to share my ideas and plans for our wedding, as well as sharing the fun events that will occur in completing my Masters program.