The Stover Show

The bright side

2011-04-19T11:56:00.001-07:00

As an attempt to follow in my Mother's footsteps I would like to do a post focusing on the positive times we had during our two months in Iowa.

This first picture is what I like to call "My Peace" - being a single mom during a difficult time away from home were made easier by my son...my peace. Sawyer took care of me in so many ways.

When daddy was able to visit which was EVERY SINGLE weekend (Bless his heart...and two speeding tickets)he didn't have any distractions like we do at home. He simply spent time with his son. It was a blessing in disguise :)

Grandpa Roth spent lots of time working on the new shed as a release of energy. Uncle Aaron was able to help too and they got a ton done. This first picture is one of the first few days and by the time Aaron returned to Virginia the roof was on and the walls were insulated!

Lots of fun play time with Uncle Aaron, Aunt Jana, and Great Grandma Norris were had during our time together:

Sawyer on Christmas Day

Sawyer got to hang out with his cousin PJ, one month older than Sawyer

Sawyer asleep peacefully in his daddy's arms at the visitation

Inspiration

2011-03-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

One of the main reasons I decided to start this blog is because I am terrible at scrapbooking and although I'm not clever with words, this was my best shot at a record of the changes in our lives.

Sawyer knew his Grandma Sandy for five months. She was there the day he was born. We spent lots of time in Iowa, especially at the end. She held him, fed him, and laughed with him. During her time under hospice care she was there and alert for the moment he rolled over, and Sawyer would lay in grandma's bed with her hand on his chest after his morning feeding every single day.

I want him to know everything about her that he possibly can as he grows. Here is my first attempt:

Sawyer: Your grandma is my inspiration. I am who I am today because of her and your grandpa. They were so in love, high school sweethearts even. I didn't know it wasn't normal for parents to hug and kiss and cuddle until I was in high school and had friends over. And it never let up :) They had a deep respect for each other that showed my brother and I stability and strength.

She was a wonderful teacher. She told me once that sometimes she thought she should be paying THEM for her to teach. She had a passion for her job and each student that entered her classroom. Theresa told me once that mom was just as stubborn as she was patient - the perfect teacher :) She was a strong christian. She tought me to live by the Golden Rule, to lead by example, and the meaning of unconditional love. One of the most important things she tought me was not to judge, that it was "between them and God". I work on this everyday.

Something I have always cherrished is that your grandma would listen to me and boy can I talk! She would stay up late talking to me in high school and when I would come home from college. She would answer the phone every time I called and listen to me babble about my day, only for me to get to my destination and have to let her go even though I hadn't had a chance to hear how her day went. She was humble, forgiving, silly, and loving.

I am lucky to have been a part of her 56 years here on Earth. I look forward to enternity with her in Heaven. A huge thanks to my father, my brother, my husband, and every single person that supported us with love, hugs, time, food, friendship, fellowship, and prayers.

Fancy cameras for family memories

2010-12-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

We have lots of people in our lives who have fancy cameras. For this we are very lucky because they like to practice on us! Here are a few shots, most are recent except for the ones that I am pregnant in ;)

My uncle Lamar took Roth family pictures when I was seven months pregnant. They turned out great!

Our friend Jodi got a new camera recently and we had fun playing with in during our visit to Denver:

The the famous Megan took some great pictures of the Stover family over Thanksgiving:

Sawyer is four months old now and really becoming interactive. Lots of smiles and he is giggling and laughing now. He loves to stand, play on the yoga ball, and fly in the air. He is still sleeping 10-12 hours a night and taking small naps during the day. He travels great, which is nice for our many trips to Iowa :) We still aren't sure what color his eyes will be so vote in the poll above and we will see what happens!

Our world

2010-11-23T11:12:00.000-08:00

November has been a fun month. Sawyer entered the monthly age group instead of the week by week age group. He is now three months old! Lots of things have gotten done, lots of new friends have been made, and new experiences have been had.

Sawyer went to exercise his right to vote for the first time and although we had quite a bit of poo issues that day we enjoyed switching the "I voted" sticker from outfit to outfit :)

Sawyer has made lots of new friends. He has discovered the dogs:

He and Nathan are super friends after we braved a trip to Denver on an airplane!

He hung out with baby PJ at their Great-Grandma's birthday celebration

And we stopped by to see the fabulous Lu and her preggers mama. Megan looks great for 9 months pregnant! :)

Here is a few samples of a day in the life of Sawyer and his mama:

Cleaning out closets - can you believe the amount of tissue paper we have! That is what happens when you get married and have a baby within 16 months.

Find the baby - can you find the baby three stories down? The stairs in our house are insane but the openness makes it easy to move about and still see everyone. Until the crawling and walking begins...

Cloth diaper bleaching. Since we are cloth diapering sometimes a little fresh air is good for them ;)

After a long day of diapers, spit-up, and daytime TV, Heath and I get to be one again as Sawyer sleeps.

Life is good. Sawyer is sleeping 10-12 hours a night and is getting better about napping during the day (instead of cat-napping). He is smiling and beginning to laugh now. He has almost reached his feet and sits up great in his bumbo. We love to love him :)

Change

2010-11-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

Change is happening in the Stover household. Of course Sawyer is changing every day. But we have another change: we have decided that I will stay home with Sawyer - and Sawyer is excited! He shows his excitement by handing out smiles as often as possible, especially in the morning! This picture is one of the reasons I cherish being able to spend all day long with my sweet baby:

The month of October was the beginning of many things. We put Sawyer on a strict schedule and he thrived, sleeping 10-12 hours a night now! We used this book given to us by Mike and Kelly, the parents of Triplets and it has worked great! We have modified it a bit to meet our personal needs.

I started seeing my "Little Sister" again now that we can make it work. Both uncles (Aaron and Shiloah) got to meet their nephew which began the battle of the "Hawks" as Sawyer got his first round of Hawkeye apparel and now fits in his Jayhawk gear :)

Sawyer had his first "adjustment" from Uncle Shiloah and LOVED IT! He relaxed right away and let Shi do his thing.

Sawyer went from graduating to a Velcro swaddle instead of just a blanket swaddle to a sleep sack within 3 weeks! He loves having his arms free :) Although there have been strong signs of him finding his thumb....uh oh!!

We also spent tons of time with the Ory family as they were in town for Holiday Mart and Theresa has a booth for her business: Timeless Moments by Theresa. I spent all day long with Brennen, much needed and somewhat stressful time for me ;) It was stressful at times when I was alone with both kids and had to accomplish successful nap times. But we did really well and it was wonderful bonding with Brennen, and he is a BIG fan of baby Sawyer :)

We had a short but sweet visit from Great-Grandpa Smokey and Grandpa Ross so we took a four generation picture:

We also got to dog-sit for Jack. He has been great! Wonderful around Sawyer and doesn't bark as much as I thought he would. He loves the fireplace too! Here is a picture of all three boys napping :)

German Nanny

2010-10-04T12:10:00.000-07:00

The Stover family was blessed with a foreign visitor for the past three weeks. Jana came to visit from Germany. Her main objective for her visit was to spend as much time with Sawyer and 'our' mom. A few shopping trips were squeezed in of course ;)

Jana was a wonderful help and it was so great having a friend to keep us company too. We made two trips to Iowa together and I don't know if I could have done it without her! She was the official car seat carrier as I had a routine weight restriction and she loved it. Never letting me even attempt to get him in and out of the car. She was there to help me get things done around the house and manage emergency feedings on our many outings. We were a very efficient team of three :) I can't thank her enough.

Some fun conversations led to many questions about certain things we do here in the USA. I found that most times the only response I could come up with was "its the American way". Here are a few examples...

"Are these chairs common here? We don't have them in Germany" Referring to the 'recliner'

"Why are there 'party platters' for just vegetables? Don't they know they can do it themselves for much less?"

"How do you feel about Arnold Schwarzenegger being the Governor of California?"

To all of which I responded "That's the American way"

Jana came when Sawyer was 4 weeks old and left when he was 7 weeks old, so she was basically here for half of his life! In that time he started making eye contact, smiling, and pushing up with his legs. So that means next time she comes she has to stay the length of his age. So if she comes when he is 2 years old then she needs to stay for two years ;) Here is a picture of a classic bonding moment with Aunt Jana.

Sawyer Nash Stover

2010-09-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

Parenthood is in full swing at the Stover household. Sawyer Nash was born on August 12, 2010. Labor started at 11:15 the night before and mom labored in Sawyer's room for two hours before waking dad up. After we took showers and packed up we headed to the hospital around 3 am. With a quick stop for mom to unload her dinner on the side of the road - yikes! We made it safely to the ER to be admitted to Labor and Delivery. We called the grandparents at 6 am and five hours later Sawyer arrived just in time for both sets of grandparents to be present.

The past 6 weeks have been amazing, difficult, interesting, fun, relaxing, intense, hilarious, rewarding, new, and most of all wonderful. We have learned to breastfeed, use cloth diapers, enjoy bath time, etc. We have met new people, received TONS of wonderful gifts, and transformed our house into a baby machine. Here is a video of Mr. Sawyer waking up at 3:00 am for a feeding. Somehow he makes my 3:00 am the best time of the day. Sorry its so long (4 minutes) but its worth it! ;)

We have braved a wedding, travels to Colby, KS and travels to Iowa. So far so good!

Here are some favorite snapshots taken over the past few weeks...

Grandma Stover made this blankets

3 days old (photos via Megan Peters)

Jana came all the way from Germany to spend three weeks with us!

Daddy brought us home flowers :)

Sticking his tongue out at Grandpa Stover!

Napping in Iowa with mom :)

The countdown to sleep deprivation bliss

2010-08-11T11:58:00.001-07:00

Baby Stover is on his way! We are three days from D-Day with minimal signs of meeting him anytime soon. While have been waiting, our local photographer friend Ms. Megan Peters took some wonderful belly pictures for some quality memories. Here are a few:

This one is Mommy's favorite

This one is Daddy's favorite

We have also been melting away here in the Midwest so I'm curious what day this little guy is going to come. On a hot day or....a hot day? Those are basically our choices.

A few weeks ago my son managed to master the virtual world from the womb and sent me these beautiful flowers signed "Love Sawyer Nash"...

...or maybe I just married a super-sweet clever man ;)

Showered with generosity

2010-07-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago was the baby shower for our little guy. It was a ton of fun and I owe a big thanks to Megan, Theresa, and Holly for putting it together. The amount of gifts and fun was overwhelming. We had tons of kids and tons of balloons for them to play with :) The biggest hit as far as gifts go was the Wee Blocker - thanks Sara!
Here are some snapshots of the lovely event:

I feel so fortunate to have had my mother and grandmother at the shower with me :)

Megan decorated with vintage baby clothes from our parents. Check out the picture Tawny brought of Heath and Shiloah in the cute baseball shirt!

Hooper checking out the ducky decorations

THANKS LADIES!! (Megan, me, Theresa.....Holly refused to get photographed)

We are really starting to feel like we are ready to bring this kid home, not so sure about knowing what to do with him but everything is as ready as its going to be! The nesting has hit full force for both mom and dad (and grandparents too!). His 0-3 month wardrobe is clean and put away, the baby monitor is up and running, the pacifiers are out of their packaging and put away, etc. Here is a picture of my Nesting Team from last weekend :)

Big thanks to Daddy and Grandpa for helping make the baby's room perfect :)

A little pregnancy humor for you all....this is my cankle after 5 hours of driving to Iowa. Holly thought I broke my ankle - nope, just got knocked up and swollen!

And to end - here is a recent belly picture - 37 weeks/9 months along.

Star struck

2010-06-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago a dear friend invited me to a wedding reception here in Kansas City. Since he didn't know anyone except for the couple he asked me to tag along. I wasn't expecting much, the location was in a rough part of town but the suggested hotels were all the best of the best on the Country Club Plaza. So I was a bit confused as to what sort of reception this would be.

After driving through the ghetto we pulled up to this gorgeous, super old, country club tucked away. We were greeted by a valet to park our car and proceeded back behind the country club. When we rounded the corner my jaw dropped and I started slowing down so I could take it all in. On the golf course were beautiful cabanas with flowing sheer cloth in a canopy over white couches and chairs scattered all over. The main tent was massive made completely from this sheer white material with amazing, trendy, chandeliers hanging from the top of the tent. And that was just the beginning. I could go on and on about the gourmet food, music, table settings, etc.

But that is not why I am dedicating a post to this wedding reception.

As we were making our way towards the endless buffet of food (complete with carnival food served at Midnight - score for the pregnant chick!) I squeezed by a woman that caught my eye. I knew her....from a movie! I was totally convinced and immediately told my friend. Of course, he is pop-culture illiterate and told me I was crazy.

So later on I saw her sitting in front of me and I was so convinced that I immediately got on IMDB to find out who she was but I couldn't place her to know what to search for! Then a man sitting with his back to me leaned over and kissed her - that man resembled Pacey Witter from Dawson's Creek way too much. But he seemed thinner and my friend didn't recognize him either so now I was starting to second guess my baby brain. Maybe I was crazy and just looking for some drama/entertainment.

So after awhile they got up and moved past us to the photo booth the reception provided as wedding favors to capture some fun shots. Now was my chance! When they signed the guest book next to their snapshots I would go over and read what they wrote. So I waddled over there (my friend super embarrassed) and looked for it. Darn! The photo booth girls were hogging the guest book, obviously doing exactly what I was about to do - confirmed celebrity material.

So I went back to my chair and sulked for a bit. And sure enough, a woman walked up to me to talk about my pregnancy, I have never been so excited to talk about my pregnancy with a random stranger than right then because I saw her talking to the gotta-be-a-celebrity lady earlier. So after letting this woman try to talk me into having a home birth (suuuure...) I casually asked her about the couple.

And we have a winner! Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson were guests at the same reception I was at. I gloated to my friend that I was, in fact, correct. Then proceeded to dedicate the rest of the evening to stalking them. I even peed within 10 feet of Pacey.

Diane Kruger - seen in Troy - Helen of Troy, and National Treasure as Nicolas Cage's love interest

Joshua Jackson - Pacey Witter in Dawson's Creek and Peter Bishop in Fringe

So three weeks later my pop-culture savvy friend Megan let me in on the inside scoop that Diane Kruger had posted the photo booth pictures on Twitter from that evening. I got on Twitter right away and sent Diane (first name basis) a response that I was at that same wedding and she and Josh were adorable...blah blah blah. Sure enough, she responded! Nothing exciting but she still responded :) Here is the photo booth picture she posted:

Now you all know two celebrities by two degrees a separation through me. You're welcome.

In other news...

2010-06-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

Here are a few snap shots of what has been going on with us the past few months:

Dancing Lucy - Her mom takes such great pictures of her that I couldn't choose so here is one from dance class that just makes my heart smile. And the other is from her dance recital which I was able to attend and I just can't believe how grown up she looks in the photo!!

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Heath got a pipe for Christmas and has almost mastered the art of appearing 20 years older than his true age. A personal goal of his!

Brennen turned one year old! We were able to be there for his first birthday as well as his baptism. I can't believe how fast he has grown and how beautiful he is!

Don't worry, we haven't totally neglected our dogs, not yet anyhow ;)We were able to take them to the lake a couple of times so far this year and of course they loved it! We are so fortunate to be near such a nice big lake (only ten minutes!)

Lightning hit our one and only tree. We hope it survives since we can't plant any trees in the back yard due to the dog destruction.

Heath and I celebrated our first year of marriage on May 23rd. He got me this beautiful rose bush. I love it! I'm trying my best to keep it alive...the neighbors have wagered their predictions as to when it dies and what that means for our marriage. I don't know why they don't have faith in our green thumbs...hum....

Umbrella Medical Systems had a few events in their office and they decided a fooseball table was needed, along with a pop-shot basketball. Priorities.

In photo: Kurk (tech), Trent (business partner), Andrew (business development), and Heath (stud).

The stork has nested

2010-05-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

As many of you know in November we decided to try start a family. So on December 4th I decided to take a test in the wee hours of the morning to make sure I was not pregnant and could indeed drink freely at my company Christmas party that evening. And low and behold - the letters Y-E-S appeared! Of course I freaked a little as it was unexpected to be successful so quickly that I then understood the reason for the second test. Except I didn't 'plan ahead' and had a bit of a problem completing the second test. Wow - I hope I'm ready for this!

I went back to bed and slowly woke Heath up, checked his mood to be sure the timing was right, and then let him in on the news and that I would need a lot of help 'faking it' at the Christmas party that evening. He was very sleepy-excited. Being newly pregnant during the holidays is a tricky task. We had three weekends in a row of parties and the lack of drinking on my end would be a dead give-away. Plus seeing family was tempting to share our news, even if a little early.

So once the morning sickness began (all day, every day) at six weeks along there was definitely no hiding it. We slowly told friends and family starting on Christmas Eve. It was really fun and exciting, even though I felt icky. We told Heath's family by hints through their Christmas gifts and it took Heath's mom and sister-in-law longer than Heath's dad and brother to figure it out! We had a good laugh over that :) And we told my family in the car on the way to grandma's funeral - ah, the circle of life... (5.5 months along in photo)

All check-ups have gone smoothly, morning sickness is long gone, we have a healthy baby boy (go team BLUE!)growing rapidly and he loves to kick and punch. It took Heath six months and two rum and cokes to finally get enough nerve up to feel him and boy was it worth the wait! His reaction was priceless. We are in the middle of labor and delivery classes right now (2 beer requirement for Heath before each class begins) and we are learning a lot! (YIKES)

Heath and his parents surprised me Mother's Day weekend by getting the nursery going. I left for Iowa on Friday to a lavender guest bedroom and returned Sunday to a slate blue fully decorated baby's room! It was such a wonderful surprise and fun to know Heath painted, shopped, decorated, and cleaned for me :) I'm a lucky girl! My dad made the cradle and my grandfather made the piece of furniture being used for the changing table (previously a TV stand).
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As you can see, I love to lay out all of his clothes that we have acquired as gifts or hand-me-downs and imagine him in them. So far we have 19 newborn-3 months outfits, 15 3-6 months, 6 6-9 months, and 2 9-12 months. I have no idea if this is enough or not! Its just fun to get them :) Also - the 'vintage' outfits that belonged to Heath and me as babies are fun too, here are a few examples.

Now we are entering our 7th month, third trimester. ALREADY!

Mastering Bricktown

2010-05-04T08:06:00.000-07:00

Every time Shiloah and Holly have a child Heath and I get to go to Bricktown Oklahoma City's version of The Plaza and Westport combined. We didn't really plan it that way but they keep having children around the same time as our 'dating' anniversary so we like to break up the long trip to see the new baby by stopping in Oklahoma City for a night and spending a nice evening together.

Our first trip to Bricktown was almost 4 years ago when Hooper J was born. We didn't have much of a budget. So I got on the Bricktown website and called the 4 hotels they had listed for their rates. The first three were $100+ and the last one was $85. Done. We budgeted for two nights including one fancy dinner. Turns out the hotel we booked was less than acceptable, our first indication were the 'just married' vehicles in the parking lot. These weren't cars from fancy or classy weddings. The hotel was thick of stale smoke and we knew immediately we couldn't stay there, except for the cancellation policy. Looked like we were stuck for the night. So I told Heath we had to stay out as late as possible and avoid the hotel except for a few hours of sleep. So feeling frustrated we went to a brewery and I drank a lot, I couldn't face the hotel sober. It worked, except for my 3 am bathroom visit to find a cockroach crawling across my makeup. EEEKKK!!! I couldn't wait to get out of there. So the second night we decided to just take the financial hit and enjoy ourselves. (needless to say, that hotel is no longer listed on the Bricktown website)

So we got a room at the Sheraton and proceeded to jump for joy on the massive, clean, soft, quality bed as soon as we got the room. Then we dressed up and went to find a fancy restaurant. Sure enough, we found Mickey Mantel's Steakhouse. Super fancy, super expensive, and the service was amazing.

Then we went for a stroll on the boardwalk and found a little cigar/piano bar tucked away. It was amazing, perfect for us. A woman playing Norah Jones on the harp, big, warn, leather couches, a fireplace. We stayed there for hours. Then we headed back to the hotel, and Heath declared that wanted a brownie. Of course. So I decided I wanted ice cream, and wine. Of course. We figured, why not and ordered room service :) Although it probably took us months to pay it off we had a wonderful time :)

Celebrating 3 years together

The second trip to Bricktown was this past August when Boston was born, we decided on only one night and thank goodness our budget was a little more flexible than it was 3 years ago. So now being veterans we knew where to stay, and where to go. We ate at an amazing restaurant that somehow managed to get Heath's steak undercooked so badly we had to send it back three times! And we never do things like that! But the final time the chef came out to ensure it was correct, they were incredibly nice. And the food was AMAZING! Then of course, we went to the cigar/piano bar.

Celebrating 6 years together

Thanks Hooper J and Boston Ren! (PPPssstt! Shiloah and Holly - time for another kid - we need a trip to Bricktown!) ;)

Our little family

2010-04-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

Once again, I apologize for the delay in blog posts. This is turning into what my written journal looks like...3 entries a year! So before our lives change completely (hint, hint on next posting), I have to do a post about the adorable puppies that we had last Summer. We learned a lot, but we had fun doing it!

After 2.5 years of no puppies we were convinced one of them (probably Satchel) was either not equip ed, intimidated by Abby, or was batting for the other team. But low and behold they chose our honeymoon to figure it out and get 'busy'. We came home to a pregnant dog, and a bit of a traumatized neighbor.

Our mama dog, Abby, is a bit of a freak so we had some interesting moments. She only threw two pups (normal for labs is about 6) so I spent many hours in the storage shed with her waiting on the others. She was very annoyed with me and I was very freaked out that something was wrong. The Northland Animal Hospital received lots of phone calls from me that night, but all ended well. Here is a picture of the little boy at two days old:

Because Abby became a bit crazy with the hormones for about two weeks we had to monitor feedings, which was about every three hours. I got a little taste of what its like to have your own infant! So here was one of our feeding sessions:

I'm assuming I won't be able to drink wine (out of my super-cool plastic wine glass) to pass the time while feeding my own baby...

I have a ton of adorable pictures so I won't add them all, just the ones that my good friend, Megan, took. She has a great camera and a great eye for photography. We had a lot of fun with these :)

If you remember from a previous post, I like to sit on my front porch and wait for people to come talk to me. Yep, creepy, annoying neighbor-lady, that's me! Well, these puppies made me so popular in the neighborhood! All the kids would come and play with them after work in the evenings. I absolutely loved it. Beautiful weather, friendly neighbors, green grass, adorable puppies, life is great :)

HEYWORTH 09!

2009-12-05T16:46:00.000-08:00

I was going to do an overview of our lives in the past 5 months (sorry!), but I think there are too many subjects that need their own posts. So lets start with the Fourth of July.

A little background: Over the past few years we have become a part of this group of couples that try to get together once or twice a year and have a long weekend of fun, basically we try to pretend that we are in college again. Every year the hangovers get worse and worse! We became a part of this group from Flint and Theresa, the group began with three couples that married their college sweethearts. Now it is a mixture of additional friends from college for these three couples and a few strays like us :) Sometimes the gathering is only 3 couples strong and sometimes its 12 couples! Basically we pick someones house and we all have a big slumber party for days. Usually over the Fourth of July or New Years. Sometimes we pick a vacation spot such as Key West (a group favorite) or a cabin in Kentucky (Fourth of July, 2010) This year we went to the favorite spot, Heyworth, Illinois. Home of Kate and Terry Trost. Over the entire weekend we had over 12 couples! It was a full house:

Our hosts had t-shirts made for everyone that said "Heyworth 09" on the front and "The Key West of the Midwest" on the back. We played a ton of Flip Cup and Quarters. The boys went golfing, and the girls cooked and talked about babies as we had a new baby in the group and one on the way. More about that later...

And then we played volleyball....mud volleyball.....rainy, cold, swamp volleyball. It was insane, and we played for hours, but the rain just kept coming. So in the end we forfeited even though we were in first place and then we challenged the three showers in the Trost house to see how many hot showers and mud down the drain it could handle.

June events

2009-09-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

I am still attempting to catch-up on this blog-thing. I think I might be losing the essence of the blogness by updating only twice a month on subjects from three months ago. Oh well, its better than keeping a diary. I learned from the never ending list of thank you's that my hands can only write four sentences at a time before going numb. Yet I can type for hours. But my neighbor, Al, let me know how very unacceptable the wedding gift thank-you text from a friend of his was. Darn, I was totally going to do that...

To pick-up where we left off from the honeymoon post, about 4 hours after the picture of Heath in the airport was taken, we rolled into KC just in time for Lucy's birthday party. So we had a plan. As soon as we walked in the door at home we each had a list of things to do. Such things on the list included: check on the dogs, bring all luggage inside, turn on the air conditioning, bathing, and to wrap Lucy's present. The one thing that was not on the list was to open all of the presents that were delivered during our honeymoon that were piled in our living room. Which Heath promptly ditched all other responsibilities and began looting through the boxes, not keeping track of who they came from of course. He saved the big one for last. A brand new set of luggage. OF COURSE!

Lucy's birthday was a blast! It was fun to see everyone and to watch her force Trent's sisters' feet into the dress up shoes. OUCH! Here is a cute picture of her we took a few weeks after her birthday :)

Since I spent almost two years growing my hair out for the wedding at Heath's request, I figured I might as well donate it after the wedding. I donate blood mainly because I am O negative and it is apparently rare, so I guess having strong, thick, hair that I don't dye is a good reason to donate hair too. After all blood and hair are free! (not a good sentence to say often) And in order to donate it to Locks of Love you have to have ten inches. The wonderful salon that did my hair for the wedding, offers to donate the hair themselves and the hair cut is free! So the week after we got home from Brazil - off it went!

My mane

POOF! Its gone!

The end result

Lua de Mel

2009-08-31T16:26:00.000-07:00

Our Honeymoon (Lua de Mel in Portuguese) was quite an experience! We had an awesome time and have plenty of memories. We stayed in a small fishing villiage called Buzios, it is North of Rio about two hours along the coastline. Buzios is on a peninsula and has over 25 beaches, all very different from one another. From sand color, to water color, to water temperature, to type of people, etc. So our plan was to try a different beach everyday during our full ten day adventure.

We stayed in a little hut that overlooked the beach and the ocean. It was small but confortable, it took us a few days of watching the small TV in Portuguese before we realized they had more than CNN on in English - in fact they had CSI Miami! I never thought Horatio would make our day! Since the plane from Rio to France crashed while we were in the State of Rio de Janerio we opted not to watch CNN much.

We made friends with Lua, she was a great dog, always at our side, would wait outside of store fronts for us while we shopped. We made friends. She was also friends with many people, we caught her cheating on us a few times.

We found our favorite beach 6 days into the trip. It was the day after we celebrated my birthday which landed on May 31st, directly in the middle of our Honeymoon :) We spent the whole day celebrating and then the following day went to Praia da Tartaruga (Turtle Beach) and had a ball!! The sun was bright, the water was warm, the drinks were delish, and the people were a blast. About halfway through the day I started wondering what day it was, as I was trying to convince myself it was June 1st I realized that it didn't add up. So I asked Heath, he had no idea what day it was. So we asked our server (aka, local guy fetching our drinks in between bouts in the water with his friends and flirting with girls) what day it was, he said he thought it was the 28th of May. We knew THAT was wrong so he asked the bartender for us. It was May 31st. My Birthday. The day after we spent the day celebrating.

The last day of our trip we spent one night on Copacabana Beach in Rio. My long lost Austrailian friend Sonya met us out for dinner. Sonya and I were exchange students in Brazil together ten years ago and we haven't seen each other since. It was amazing seeing her, she hasn't changed a bit! And neither have I apparently ;) We had a GREAT time with her at the Brazilian Churrascaria and the beautiful Rio beach the next day.

Highlights from the trip: experiencing a water taxi, meeting Lua, re-connecting with Sonya, celebrating my birthday twice, drinking caiparinhas every day, falling in love with each other all over again, getting a message on the beach, the private boat tour of the beaches, the Cuban restaurant that had its own humidor and cigar lounge, reading a book under an umbrella on the beach while it rained, and speaking Portuguese again.

Lowlights from the trip: the 'stomach' issues, not being able to flush toilet paper, choosing restaurants based on the cleanliness of the bathrooms, having to decide between the supernastybeachbumbathroom which was locked with a chain and padlock in the back storage shed connected to the beach bar, or the ocean, and finally deciding on the bathroom due to the children in the water, then experiencing the supernastybeachbumbathroom, realizing we will be starting our marriage off in therapy becuase of the supernastybeachbumbathroom. The flight back involving three planes, 20+ hours, and still getting over our 'stomach' issues.

BEIJOS!! Tchau:)

The Day Arrived

2009-08-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned how much I want to thank everyone who helped for making our day wonderful? Well here I go again. It was perfect, we really had a wonderful day and we couldn't have asked for better people to share it with.

Here are some highlights:)

The decor was perfect, thanks to all my creative helpers, I could have never come up with this without you. Notice the use of the wine bottles ;)

This was a WONDERFUL idea that my WONDERFUL mother-in-law and best friend came up with. A nice way to remember our loved ones. Sheet music from "She'll be Comin 'Round the Mountin" in memory of Heath's Grandma Bev, my grandpa Ray's overalls, my Grandma Edna's quilt, and my grandpa Bob's hand-carved cribbage board. And a family tree complete with pictures of our parents and grandparents. A true gift. Thank you.

Then it was time to get ready, we both got ready at the hotel and took pictures ahead of time. Here is us at the hotel just before we left for the wedding, what a beautiful day!

Our wedding party, what a good looking bunch! And Hooper, Brennen and Lucy did awesome :) (so did their parents!)

I adore this picture, Heath loves his mama and she loves her boys. I'm so glad to be a part of it :)

Doesn't he clean up nice!! I'm such a lucky daughter:) Out of all the professional pictures this was taken by a guest, and its the best one. I just wish I could remember which guest took this one!

This was our little secret, after the ceremony we escaped back behind the barn to catch our breaths, probably the best idea we had during the whole process! After those crazy vows we needed a moment and this was the perfect moment. Our wonderful helpers Miles and Linda set this up for us, food and drinks included!

The hay ride was a nice touch, the kids really seemd to like it. I think we had over 25 kids there and we tried to get some of them in this picture. From left to right: Hooper, Aiden, Lily, Lucy, Cash, Jayden, Ramzy, Bowen, Tyler, Naner, Andrew, Brennen, and Cole. They all make me smile :)

I couldn't help but add this to the end. Lucy's reward for being an awesome flower girl. Thanks Lu!

To Rehearse and Dine

2009-08-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who took pictures of our rehearsal dinner, especially Lamar and Megan, I think most of these came from you. Here are some favorites:

Shiloah being a complete goof while Heath hugs their grandmother.

Our ring bearer and flower girl. Typical: Hooper being super sweet and Lucy pulling out Taz. I love these kids!

Roth Cousins :)

Aaron and Jana, super cute shot!

And my favorite photography moment. Somehow two different people caught the same moment from different angles.

Thanks again to everyone for making it all happen :)

Wedding Week

2009-07-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

I have been attempting to make a video similar to the one I made for the bachelorette party, it didn't go so well. So instead I will stick to pictures. Since I am a full two months behind I need to stop fiddling with it and get moving! So sorry for the delay!
We had a lot of help that week and I can't thank you enough! You know who you are!!! Here are some fun snapshots:

Theresa's sister Maria came down early to do some mad flower arranging, she did a WONDERFUL job. Theresa and Brennen helped, they were quite a team.

Jana and Jens helped out with the vases and ribbons. Meanwhile Heath displayed his support :) You can't see it, but he had an ice pack on his back so I guess he is off the hook....

You can also see a little bit of the inside of the house if you haven't had a chance to visit. We like windows :)

The Bachelorette Party

2009-07-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

The bachelorette party was one week before the wedding and it was at our house. Heath took Jens to a ball game with Ben and the ladies started showing up. We had good food, good drinks, good people, and secret entertainment!

My good friend Shellie had this idea to have a friend of hers, Shannon, who writes music, write a song for me and Heath and perform it at the bachelorette party. Of course he protested but Shellie is pretty pursuasive! He showed up much later in the evening when the fun was getting underway and I was told there was a stripper at the door. It is all on video but I will save that for special requests. Basically I was very confused and once I saw him and his guitar on the front step I realized he wasn't there to strip and maybe he was going to play some music. So naturally I asked him if he could do Michael Jackson.

Before you watch the video you may want to know a little side story to the choice of lyrics. You see, Heath first decided he was going to marry me about 5 years ago when we went out for a night on the town with our friend Reed. Heath was nice enough to finish my drink for me at the end of the night and paid for it later. So while he was in the bathroom haveing a serious conversation with God, I layed down on the floor beside the door to make sure he was ok.

A couple other things: Our new house is in Smithville, and we don't fight much but when we do it is usually about cleaning.

Here are the lyrics:
Sometimes you’ll argue
like a game of cat and mouse,
It may be nothing more than
whose gonna cleaning the house.
But when the yellins done,
you’ll go back for more, Of that hot,
hot loving on the bathroom floor

It was a match made in heaven
This was meant to be
He had too much to drink
But wasn’t in there to pee
And you, you were waiting
patiently all night outside the door
When you fell in love…
On the bathroom floor

You’ll stand by your man
when the going gets tough.
And, when you start your own business,
know it’s gonna be rough.
But if you love him, support him,
and just sit back and chill.
You could be fighting about
whose cleaning your new house in Smithville

It was a match made in heaven
This was meant to be
He had too much to drink
But wasn’t in there to pee
And you, you were waiting
patiently all night outside the door
When you fell in love…
On the bathroom floor

We know you’ll stay together
‘til you’re old and gray
You'll stand by each other
baby come what may.
But if it doesn’t work out
and you say goodbye,
We’re thinking Tanner maybe might be your guy.

It was a match made in heaven
This was meant to be
He had too much to drink
But wasn’t in there to pee
And you, you were waiting
patiently all night outside the door
When you fell in love… On the bathroom floor

Thank you ladies for a great night! :)

Dumpster Diving

2009-06-15T14:04:00.001-07:00

HI! We're back! So sorry for the long delay, we had a few things to take care of the past couple of weeks. ;) I will start from the last post and give you a blog by blog update. Hopefully by the time we get through all of the updates we will have professional wedding photos back from the photographer :)

Lets start with: My Big Redneck Wedding - Dumpster Diving for centerpieces.

One of my bridesmaid's (Jana) came all the way over from Germany to participate in our wedding. To make a trip like that you have to make it worth your while, so Jana came to America for 25 days. I was very excited to have her help :) I warned her that the day after she arrived we had a big day planned. So she arrived on Thursday night, I went to work on Friday and she rested up from her jet lag all day. Then Saturday came. Oh boy! Here was our schedule:

8:00 a.m. - Gomer's Liquor to order alcohol for the wedding. I was so excited they were open so early! I'm sure there are plenty of other people out there that were excited too....they are called alcoholics. Jana and I spent one hour at Gomers selecting the beer, wine, and random liquor. The good thing about Gomer's is that they take back anything you don't open :) So we over-ordered. They owner said we would be returning at least 1/3 of what we ordered. Turns out we ran out of beer two hours into the wedding and somehow forgot to set out the wine. So we have about 80 bottles of wine in our garage :) Nothing is being returned.

9:00 a.m. - go to bank

9:15 a.m. - head towards the mall - stop by every Wal-Mart we can find to clean them out of green ribbon

10:00 a.m. - go to mall and return 5 bridesmaid dresses Jana didn't need

11:00 a.m. - Meet Megan and Lu at Costco to get utensils and such for reception. We were 9 minutes late. (Megan made sure I was aware of this)

12:00 a.m. - go to Sam's Club in case they had a better selection (and Megan got a Sam's Club card) They did not have a better selection

12:30 p.m. - Eat at Applebee's so Jana doesn't faint. Meg and Lu came with :)

1:30 p.m. - head back towards the Northland stopping by Wal-Mart's on the way

2:00 p.m. - Arrive at the recycling center. Theresa had this great idea to decorate the tables at the reception with clear wine bottles. All I had to do was come up with 100 clear wine bottles for free!! So we showed up at the recycling center, found the massive dumpster full of clear glass and dove in. 40 minutes later we had made a lot of friends, heard lots of congrats on the wedding, and had 120 clear wine bottles.

3:00 p.m. - head home to unload car (stinky old wine bottle stench)

4:00 p.m. - meet Ross and Tawny at the wedding site to spy on a wedding

5:00 p.m. - make a last minute stop to my seamstress' house to get Jana's dress altered

5:30 p.m. - stop by liquor store to get some wine for the night (tons of wine bottles, but no wine)

6:00 p.m - meet Kathy at the house to begin our project

Middle of project...after we emptied a few more bottles...

2:00 a.m. - Mission accomplished

I have great friends :)

Stay tuned for pictures of the wine bottles decorated, and on the tables...

Emotions

2009-04-30T06:33:00.000-07:00

I am overdue for a good solid post of wedding developments. We have been quite busy, but I haven't documented it enough to make the post interesting with pictures. So it will be a little delayed.

For now I couldn't resist the cuteness of miss Lucy Lu on her mamma's site showing off her emotions. This is a good prelude to the wedding post as I have gone through each of these emotions on a daily basis for the past two weeks.

Thinking
DJ or no DJ?

Surprise
30% off bridesmaids dresses! No way!

Silly
If we run out of chairs people can sit on each other's laps!

Sad
rain rain... go away... come again another day... -notonmyweddingday!-

Angry
Why are the hotel people so unreliable!

Lucy is no longer a cute baby, she has turned into an amazingly beautiful little girl. Sad and Silly are my favorite!

Happy Earth Day!

2009-04-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

I am so excited about Earth Day today, everyone seems to be embracing it. The entertainment world, Google, especially politics!

I have been trying my best for the past few years to be more energy efficient, less wasteful, and more conscious of my carbon footprint.

I take our recyclable materials to the local Bridging the Gap location every other Saturday, which includes pulling cans and bottles out of the trash that my dear husband-to-be mistakenly disposed of.

I try not to use lights when not necessary, I like sunshine better anyhow. Does it count as being energy efficient if I go to bed before dark in order to save energy on electricity? Is that a good enough excuse to sleep a lot?

I reuse bottles despite the cleaning people at my office insisting on taking them off my desk at night and throwing them away. Although I am having troubles with our new dishwasher at home melting them, our old one didn't so I could use them over and over again.

Heath and I carpool about 50-75% of the time to save on gas and parking. We do this more to save money but it helps neutralize the fact that I drive an SUV.

I was excited to see that President Obama and the Secretary of Agriculture (who happens to be from my hometown and former governor of Iowa!) are in Iowa today celebrating Earth Day :) I'm a proud girl! Here is the interview from this morning with Tom Vilsack regarding their policy and visit to Iowa.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Fresh Air

2009-04-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

One of the things we love the most about our new diggs is the location. You know how in real estate they say "location, location, location!" (always followed by an exclaimation mark....point...mark? whatever... too much pistachio cake today)

The best way to describe our new environment is to imagine taking a subdivision out of the center of Overland Park and dumping it into the middle of fields, pastures, cows, and gravel roads. We live in a community called Forest Oaks and when you venture out of the neighborhood there is nothing for miles. It's great. The black top road to the entrance has no road markings and it is long and winds back and forth. It is like a fantastic mix of suburb and the area I grew up in.

Here is the view from the road on our way into town:

I love the random white horse in the middle of all the cows :)

Not only does the location seem perfect for us, but it is also perfect for our dogs :) There are plenty of places to take them to run free and play fetch (Abby needs lots of room for fetch!). The best part is look how close it is to our house! No excuses now ;) The arrow is pointing to the house, not Heath's arm.

I had to add this picture, how opposite are our dogs? Abby looks like a lion/cheetah and Satchel looks like Gilbert Grape.

Suits us!

2009-04-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

We managed to put off getting Heath's suit until the last minute. Notice how I said "we", I am totally all over this 'two shall become one' event coming up.

We ran across an amazing option to get a suit custom made for Heath at Bachrach. The store recently decided to do custom suits to the every detail. From the fabric, to the lining, to the buttons, to the angle of the buttons, to the pocket style, etc. We made an appointment on a Saturday when they opened and Mindy was there waiting for us. She had a notecard with our names on it, bottled water for each of us, and a white rose for me! It was so personal and fun.

Heath was quite overwhelmed with all of the decisions that he had to make for a full hour. Reminder: these are the ONLY decisions he has had to make for the wedding. Poor guy, a whole hour. ;)

The best part of the whole experience was that the suit was within budget for a whopping total of $536! Awesome price for a custom suit that he can wear for work as well.

Oh yeah.....Heath's Birthday

2009-04-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

Heath's 28th birthday was in March as well - I'm not sure why I remembered to do Abby's birthday post and not Heath's.....priorities I guess.

Ever since we decided on this house we have been excited about the front porch, especially Heath, who really wanted a rocking chair for his new front porch. And since I know him so well he played into my surprise by coming home that day excited about the beautiful day (for a change) and enjoying a cigar on the porch before dinner (yes! I cooked!). Of course he even added the sadness about having to use a kitchen table chair because we don't have porch furniture yet. Such a sucker.

Happy birthday Abby!

2009-04-01T10:31:00.001-07:00

Our dear female dog Abby turned 6 yesterday. Abby's official name is Abender Dun Dat. No, we did not name her, we got her when she was 4 and this was what was on her papers. We are thinking maybe a kid named her? Kind of silly, we like it!

She has been a great addition to our family and companion for Satchel. Her and Satchel are quite different, Abby is built and behaves more like a hunter rather than a show dog, like Satchel is. She has amazing balance and is super swift (Satchel - not so much). She is also super needy and stubborn. Abby is Satchel's best friend and lover - well.....not so much on the "good lovin" part.

I read the other day that Labrador Retrievers live to be between 12-16 years old. So I'm excited that we have a good 6-10 more years with our pups :) Especially when Abby is in this kind of shape!

Photography by Megan Peters

Wants for sale

2009-03-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

I have a hard time understanding art or at least understanding what good art is. Recently my good friend Amanda introduced me to this site, it is a couple in NYC who are trying to make a living as artists. They draw a painting of something that they want and then sell it for what it's worth, sometimes it is thousands of dollars and sometimes it is free. Here are some examples:

"A Slice Of Pepperoni" $3.00

"An iPhone" $432.42

They also turn New York trash into art.

I hope to one day participate in Christina and Justin's creative way to make money. I think its safe to say that I understand this kind of art :)

iPood

2009-03-23T12:11:00.001-07:00

I would like to introduce Brennen Cade Ory, the brand new son of Theresa and Flint Ory:

I purchased this outfit for him because I couldn't resist, even though they have closets full of clothes from the 10 cousins he already has.

Way back in high school Theresa decided that Brennen would be the name of her first born son, I feel like I have known this kid forever! Congrats to the new parents! He is a lucky little boy :)

Hoop Shooter

2009-03-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

This weekend we had the privilege to spend time with Shiloah, Holly, and Hooper J. On their last full day here they went suit shopping for the boys for the wedding (yes, with only two months until the wedding, the procrastination has shown its scary mug) while walking through the mall Hooper was encouraged by his parents (not grandma!) to try out the trampoline jump thingy.

I don't think the kid (now 2.5 years old) will have any troubles living up to the nick-name his favorite Uncle Heath gave him. The boy already has ups!

Heidi-Ho neighbor!

2009-03-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

We have successfully met most of our neighbors. To add to the list we now have next door neighbor Rob and his two kids who drew us this wonderful picture and put it in our mailbox:

Thanks Megan! (age 6)

Megan's dog Lucy (not to be mistaken with my friend Megan and her daughter Lucy) loves to dig holes under the fence and come play with her new neighbors too! Lucy is a very little dog but she likes hanging with the big dogs in our yard. Of course this encouraged our female Abby to venture into her yard which is not so cool.

We also met the neighbors from across the street and were invited over for a fun evening of Pineapple infused vodka, and great conversation. I got a lesson in Mexican tequila, we shared stories of wine festivals, and we learned the ins and outs of Smithville and the neighborhood. They also let us know that they watched our house being built six years ago and assured us it was well done ;)

I am so excited for Spring/Summer!

PIMP

2009-02-27T13:48:00.000-08:00

Heath partnered with three other Healthcare companies in the Kansas City metro to develop a non-profit networking group that puts on local events. It is called Midwest Med Trust, and he is the only guy in the team of four sponsors.

A few weeks ago I had a happy hour with my office scheduled at the Flying Saucer, although Heath likes to attend my work functions with me he couldn't because Midwest Med Trust was hosting an evening event for the top doctors in the metro. Which worked for me because that meant after his event he could pick me up on the way home :)

But they finished early and he decided to come in and have a drink. So in walks Heath in his brand new navy blue pin-striped suit and power tie.....with four blonds in tow.

I'm a lucky gal ;)

Home at last

2009-02-25T14:21:00.000-08:00

Well we did it! We moved into our new castle a week ago today. We closed on the house at 10:00 Wednesday morning and had all of our belongings in the new house by 10:00 Wednesday night. It was an intense day! Many thanks to the boys that helped us move the big stuff, Trent, Tanner, and Josh.

This is what we had to look forward to come Thursday morning:

YIKES!

But we have been working hard, Heath's parents came up and spent the whole day with us on Saturday painting over the very BLUE kitchen. Now it is "Song of Summer" (green) and we LOVE it. Many thanks to them for their hard work, paint donation, and a perfect paint job!

We even had our first neighbor visit on Saturday, the family from across the street came by to give us a card and a massive cookie!

As you can see I didn't get the picture taken until after we dug in! (Lucy got most of it!)

Thanks for all of your support, it was totally worth all the stress and waiting. COME VISIT US!

Pity Party

2009-02-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

We were supposed to close on our wonderful, exciting, big, new house on Thursday last week. Less than four hours before closing we got the phone call from our realtor - we are delayed. We tried for the next day, but no, the appraiser that seems to not need a job in this economy, didn't come through....again. Then the weekend came, then the holiday, then the underwriter had a death in the family. So we have been throwing ourselves a pity party ever since!

It is quite depressing, I think we both went through all of these stages of grief. We went from being dumbfounded, to super angry (Heath), to super sad, to needing a stiff drink, to getting the stiff drink and having a few laughs over it, to sleeping all day because there was nothing else to do.

Everything is in a box, all that we kept out of boxes and in an overnight bag are those few items we needed to get through the weekend of moving. Moving clothes, toothbrush, toilet paper (for new house), dog bones (to keep them busy), etc. So we have no food, no utensils, and no clothes (or work clothes!). The rooms echo and time has stood still.

We also had a desk that was delivered to the house on Friday, so we had to drive 30 minutes up to a house we didn't yet own, and take the massive 90 pound box off the porch and take it back into the city. Praying our new neighbors saw us.

In order to keep ourselves busy this weekend we went for drinks with friends (happy engagement Ben and Alysia!), we purchased a fridge, we let friends make us dinner and played games all night at their house, and we ordered pizza and pasta and ate it out of the containers they came in with plastic forks for dinner on Sunday AND Monday night.

It was really a blessing (in disguise) to be able to have one last weekend to do our favorite things as West Plaza citizens.

The many phone calls to reschedule the rescheduling, utilities, U-haul, friends to help move, new furniture/appliance deliveries, etc. Everyone has been really accommodating and friendly. We have been paying for the utilities on the new house since Thursday and there has been a washing machine in my car for the past ten days. What a mess.

Our landlord showed the house we are currently in multiple times throughout the weekend, I can't imagine that was a good selling point as far as lack of space, as there are boxes everywhere, packing materials all over the floor of the basement and porch, and we haven't cleaned in two weeks. ICK.

We are scheduled (for the fourth time) to close tomorrow at 9:00 a.m....anyone want to hold their breath?!

Dreaming....

2009-01-30T13:51:00.000-08:00

So Heath and I have spent the past week dreaming of how wonderful it will be in our new castle. It will certainly feel like one compared to the past 8 years living in Kansas City at various apartments/town homes/bungalows.

A little background on the previous renting experiences. I have lived in an apartment, a town home, and two small houses in Missouri. In Kansas I have lived in two apartments. Heath has lived in an apartment and two small houses in Missouri and in Kansas he lived in an apartment and rented a room from a friend in a suburb. Our credit reports are many pages due to our many addresses.

Now we will be moving into something we actually own. It also has more than one bathroom and a garage that you can fit a car into! In fact, you can fit three! We are most excited about the master bathroom, our own sinks, means our own toothpaste. Heath likes Crest, Mikayla likes Colgate. We can have guests stay with us and they can actually shut the door to their own room AND their bathroom! Its AMAZING!

There will be no more talks about landlords, or rent is due and its already the 5th! Our dogs can have a decent backyard to play in, and we have a mailbox, in front of our house on the curb. Not attached to our house so the mailman freaks me out every Saturday when I hear him on the porch, I don't have to go down the street to the community mailbox to get the bills, and we can put our name on the mailbox! Heath and I can get drivers licenses with our current address knowing that it will not be outdated in a few months.

Here is a start to our new house resolutions:
1) Heath will have all of his vitamins in his drawer by his sink and take them every morning
2) Heath will put the coffeemaker in the bathroom (because we have room!) so he doesn't buy coffee every morning.
3) Mikayla is going to cook dinner more often now that she can see the living room from the kitchen and feel a part of what is going on in the rest of the house.
4) We both will take our dogs for walks everyday on the walking trail or on the access road.
5) We will sit on the front porch as much as possible to get to know our neighbors
6) Mikayla will bake cookies to encourage them to come see us.
7) Heath is going to exercise more regularly
8) Mikayla is going to do push-ups everyday until the wedding now that we have enough carpet to stretch out on (excuses!)
9) The dogs will NOT be in the house at all, garage and basement at the very most.
10) The window blinds will rarely be drawn, we now live in a safe neighborhood and can feel safe letting the sunshine in!
11) Heath will run MJ a bath when she needs her much appreciated baths.

This is what we have been doing since we heard the house is ares last week. We sit on the couch and dream. We also force each other to choose our favorite part of the new house. We never can choose between the front porch, the master bath (TUB!), the neighborhood/location, the layout, the many walk-in closets, and the garage.

We close February 12th and will be totally moved in that weekend :) It is going to be a long two weeks...

"home ownership is a wonderful... trap"

2009-01-23T13:45:00.001-08:00

This is one of the responses I got to the exciting news that our offer has been accepted on the house we bid on exactly 63 days ago! Yippee!!! We are so excited, and relieved. It is so frustrating and slow buying a short sale home. But the benefits are worth it. Which is why we are able to buy a much larger/nicer home than a typical first time buyer at our age should! We don't feel worthy:( Here she is...
What do you think?? The front porch is the entire reason we even considered looking at it. Definitely one of our top five favorite things :)

Tomorrow both sets of parents are going to do a walk through of the house with us, it was already scheduled since the Iowa set of parents were planning to come in town so it worked out just right to hear back from the bank today! We can't wait to see it again....well inside that is. Heath and I have been quite creepy lately, doing drive-bys and yesterday we managed to really cross the line by taking the dogs there to try out the walking trail. You know, like we live there. I'm sure we are already labeled as the creepy people with the dirty old jeep and two big dogs that randomly show up. Watch out people - here we come! Just look for us on the front porch :)

Song of the moment - Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T14:45:00.000-08:00

On Saturday and Sunday mornings Heath and I love to watch CMT. This past week we heard this wonderful music video. It is Rascal Flatts doing "I'll Be Home For Christmas" a capella. I listened to it three times in a row while driving the last ten miles in a bed of white snow to my parents home on Christmas eve. Merry Christmas!!

2008 in review

2008-12-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

Heath and I have been engaged for exactly one year as of Sunday. And as of today we have five months left until the wedding. Yikes! I thought I would review our 2008 year of engagement. I still have a paper version of my calendar. I don't have a fancy blackberry or iPhone....yet ;) So let me flip back to January......ok, here we go!

January: I went to my first bridal show with Heath's mom. Our friends Flint and Theresa, and Sara and Mark came to visit us and we dragged them out in the snow to the wedding site.

February: I tried on my first wedding dress. We saw our friend Ben on the show Extreme Homemakeover (so awesome). Ross and Tawny (Heath's parents) moved to Kansas City!!

March: We went to go see the Bodies Revealed Exhibit. Heath turned 27.

April: We went house hunting for the first time. I went to Minnesota to see Theresa and we found my wedding dress at the Mall of America. KU won the Championship.

May: Went house shopping in Weston, MO and went to the wedding site exactly one year from the wedding.

June: Went to the Spooner Cabin with Trent and Megan in Council Grove, Kansas. Went to Dary's housewarming party. Booked our photographer for the wedding.

July: I went to go visit my brother in Virginia. I babysat Lucy a lot! Went to Mike's wedding in Colby.

August: We went to Mike and Kelly's shower. Heath and I celebrated five years together! Aaron and I pulled off a surprise visit to Iowa.

September: Our good friend Luke was in town so he and Dary and Heath got a little crazy. Uncle Greg came to town and entertained us for an evening.

October: I went to St. Louis to help Theresa with her frames. We went out on the town with Shi and Holly.

November: I voted in my first election. We put a bid on our first house.

December: Began the process of purchasing our first home. We completed the wedding website and sent out our Save The Dates.

I am sure I am missing some things but this is what is on my calendar. Have a Merry Christmas!!

Consumer Reports - MJ style

2008-12-15T13:09:00.000-08:00

I am a firm believer in customer service. It is not a difficult trade as most of us know from experience. I have worked in many service industries including IT, the railroad, education, and consulting.

I am also a consumer. Sadly I understand that small town customer service is very different from big city customer service and the every-so-freightening global customer service. Those of us who have worked in customer service know that word of mouth travels faster when something negative happens. I believe the ratio is 10/1. I appreciate the word-of-mouth marketing theory and I support it. For this reason I will be posting any time I have a good or bad experience alike.

But for this post I have to do a little 2008 catch-up. I have two good and two bad experiences to share to keep it fair.

UPS - They have a decent online business account system, they have decent customer service, and their drivers/delivery people are awesome! This is most important since they are the face of the company. Specifically there was a time when I was in a pinch at work that I decided to forget trying to work with the 'other' service and go with trusty UPS. It was 6:45, the last pick-up in the good area of KC was at 7:00 and I was trying my hardest to get there in time. Otherwise it was to the East Bottoms for the 8:00 pick-up - YIKES!

So there I am balancing a HUGE box as I tryed to stumble across the downtown sidewalks in massive need of repair (welcome to Missouri) in my high heels. I was about to enter the parking garage to walk up the 7 flights of stairs to my car when that big brown truck came rolling down the street. This super nice UPS guy stoped right in front of me and came out with a big smile on his face and took my box. MADE MY DAY!

Fedex/Kinkos - Imagine the same situation only a month or so before. I first went to the Fedex/Kinkos in my building only to be ingored by three people working there and no other customers in sight for about 10 minutes. Then I had to go to the Plaza location to make the 7:00 drop off and was glared at by the Kinkos workers as well as the Fedex driver for getting there at 6:55. They did one of those dramatic glances at the clock to make sure they actually had to help me. ZERO customer service skills.

And their online business service is pathetic.

BUT in defense - I do really like their drivers, especially our good friend Jamie!

Lands' End - Great customer service. You call in, get through to someone right away, and they are VERY helpful and sweet and great follow-through. I like their catalogs, and their promotions, lots of good deals. Their products are decent, but they do run large.

Samsung - Horrible customer service and faulty products. I have a Samsung phone and have had the worst time with their accessories, I understand that this is a small portion of their overall products but regardless, it matters. So I had this specific accessory go bad on me twice, the first time Verizon just gave me a new one, the second time it seemed to be the adapter which I could only get from Samsung directly. So after I sat on the phone for 60 minutes and was transfered at least seven times the conclusion was that I could buy a new one for $13 (why would I do that? It is faulty!) or to send it back at my expense and wait for 6 weeks for a new one. I then asked if I could get 3 for the next 3 times it was going to go out on me and of course that was not an option. So I verified with the woman that every 6 months I would have to pay money to send it in and wait 6 weeks for a new one back. It didn't seem to matter when I told her that an easy fix for me was to never buy a Samsung product again. She said "I can understand why you would choose that". WHAT?!? Yes, I could have ordered this adapter through them but that takes 6 weeks to get anyhow even if I pay! You can only get them through the retailer if you buy the phone too. What an unnecessary mess. I will never buy a Samsung product again.

*BONUS*
Centerbeam - They are our outsourced IT company for my job. I have to call them all the time and it is hit or miss if they can actually help, but instead of focusing on that, I would like to focus on the fact that they GAVE me an 80 Gig Video iPod! Just for filling out a survey. I love them!! Yes, you can buy my customer service love.

I have three more but I think this is enough for now. But just as an FYI - Pitney Bowes is aweful, but its not like they have much competition. Hallmark Business Expressions has good intentions but really messed up on our Christmas card order for the office, and Shutterfly has very professional customer service for those of us that do not know what we are doing.

Does anyone have any to add??

Christmas Party -a-thon

2008-12-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

My company Christmas party was this past Friday, and following was Heath's company Christmas party the following day on Saturday. We have been planning/dreading this for a month or so only because it is a little scary having them back to back. But things went just fine :)

Hay Group's Christmas party was in the new Power & Light district at the Bristol (YUM!). We played a fun round of Jeopardy which resulted in many many laughs. Our office has 15 employees and we are quite the dis'fun'ctional family.

Sadly, Heath and I suffered from headaches from the begining of the eveining so we were not as lively as usual. Here is an example :(

Umbrella Medical Systems had a themed Christmas party. The theme was "The Newlywed Game". So you can imagine how Heath and I 'stuck out' to be the only engaged/not wed couple there. But we actually made it to the finals!! (yes, I cheated)

Here is a picture of the Umbrella Medical Systems/Data File power group. Meet Bill, Janine, Heath, Me, Megan, and Trent.

Our gifts

2008-11-26T09:21:00.001-08:00

I have finally obtained the most recent ADORABLE picture of Hooper J, Heath's nephew. Hooper is two years old and lives in Oklahoma with his parents (see piano bar post). We are so excited to see him over the Thanksgiving holiday in Colby, KS with the rest of the Stover/Potter families. It is always a good time with good people. I am a lucky girl to have such wonderful in-laws.

We will be staying at Grandpa Smokey's house this time around. This can be a fun, yet scary option - Smokey can drink most anyone under the table and he is a very festive man. Guaranteed good time, but usually I get to leave when its time. But we will be staying in the basement (where the bar is) of Mr. Peer Pressure himself. The extra bonus is Cuddles, the very fluffy, foo foo dog, will be there to entertain me.

Due to the big trip to Colby we have had to ask some big favors of friends, one favor to Dary and Christy to let us ditch a car at their house in order to take advantage of carpooling (thanks guys!), and the other favor (the big one) is to Tanner and Oheema to take care of our pooches. Late notice and all, good friends always come through. Here is the most recent picture that I have taken of the pups, although we (my dad) built this wonderful dog house, during the fall they love to nestle into the leaves from the giant sycamore tree that fall behind the dog house. Don't worry during the winter they LOVE the dog house.

I can't help it - one more picture of Hooper J - beautiful child!

Big Decisions

2008-11-20T13:55:00.000-08:00

Today we are placing a bid on a house. I think this cartoon illustrates the massive amounts of confusion we are going through. It is, of course, not your typical situation where we offer $$ to the seller and they counter with $$$. Oh no - we had to make it complicated. We are placing a bid on a pre-foreclosure home. First time home buyers and first time bidding, the perfect storm, and we are jumping in with two feet. But I guess we are better off than the sellers at this point :(

Heath and I are learning so much by the moment, the real estate business is a fierce one. Heath is sure that I have jinxed the whole thing because I have been talking about it non-stop and I have been really excited. Doesn't he know me at all? When I get a new shirt I wear it three days in a row and once a week for the next 8 weeks - I get excited about things! He is such the synic! So here I am - announcing it to the inter web - all three of you! Please pray for us!

Lessons Learned

2008-11-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

I will try not to talk much about politics on this site but I couldn't resist for this historical event.

I was raised in a family that did not talk about politics, ever. Growing up I had no idea what my parent's political views were or even if they had any. I have to admit, sometimes ignorance is bliss for a young, small town, Iowa girl. The only exposure I had was when Tom Vilsack ran for Governor of Iowa during my senior year of high school. It was amazing to be a part of his election and his re-election four years later. But I still knew very little about the whole process.

This past year was a big step for me in the right direction of my adult life by becoming involved in the entire election process. Because Heath was so involved from the beginning and because I work in an office where politics are openly discussed I decided it was time.

I learned a great deal about the different parties, the issues, the processes, etc. I had a lot of people encouraging me to become informed and to vote and I owe them a huge thanks. A lot of my political education came from asking questions. People that I trusted to give me the facts in a way that I can understand from both sides of the issues. These people are mostly co-workers and friends (thanks for putting up with my questions!). Is it twisted that one of my favorite things to do is initiate a heated debate between a conservative and a liberal about the issues for my own benefit?

I also did a lot of internet research, including finding those handy sites to help me understand the issues and what was important to me (I know some can be misleading, but I was careful!). I watched every debate in detail (I would sometimes rewind and watch again) and I ignored every negative ad I came across.

I know that I am just one vote, but it is still important (especially in Missouri!). I am so glad that I finally got my stuff together so that I felt confident enough to exercise my right to vote in such an important historical election. It was an amazing experience and I can't wait to tell my children about it.

I also want to say a quick thanks to my dad for chatting with me about it last night, he resisted a great deal but finally I got what I wanted (don't I always Dad!). We had an amazing conversation about the election and it just made me realize how much I am like him and how lucky I am to be his daughter. Thanks Dad!

Timeless Moments By Theresa

2008-10-31T11:05:00.001-07:00

Last week I took off work Thursday and Friday and participated in the 2008 Holiday Mart at the Overland Park Convention Center in Kansas City with Theresa.

Theresa has started her own business,Timeless Moments By Theresa, making these wonderfully trendy, emotional, and quality picture frames:

You see, Theresa and I are best friends but we are quite opposite. She is short, I am not. She has curly light hair, I have dark straight hair. She likes to shop, I like to avoid all malls. So needless to say she has this amazing talent to think up ideas and then create them. Or in this case, find something she thinks is awesome and making it for herself. She is quite handy and creative. I'm not. So it is super fun for me to be involved in her projects from time to time. I did help a little on the sanding and painting of the frames - but that was only a small portion of all the work that she put into this. Did I mention that she created and built the booth herself??

Theresa and I have been best friends for 13 years or so, ever since our Freshman year of High School. To be friends with a Collora girl means you gotta know how to pull your own weight! The Collora family kept me out of a lot of trouble because if I wanted to hang out with Theresa then the best way was to help out with the family businesses. I learned so much.

One of my favorite memories of working with them (and there are many!) was when Judy gave Theresa the keys to the van packed full of crafts and off we went to a craft show in Illinois. We did it all ourselves: travel, unpack, set-up, sell sell sell, tear down, pack-up, travel back home. All in one day. You can imagine the look of confusion on the cops face when Theresa got pulled over for her first speeding ticket on the way back home. He was sure that we were two High School rebels out drinking and stole a bunch of loot from someone. Sorry officer - we like to rock the craft show for fun on Saturday nights.

So last weekend was just like old times and we did very well!! It was a success for sales and Theresa and I got to spend four days in a row together :)

*notice - the warped hand-made cart to the left with a tired, pregnant, stressed, Theresa looking over it.*

The Piano Bar

2008-10-22T06:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was very full of activities (moving Trent and Megan, Hooper, sickness, etc.) but the most entertaining of them all was going out on the town with Heath's brother, Shiloah and his sister-in-law, Holly. We started at Buca di Bepo on the Plaza and after being offered two houses to buy and a job from our waiter (I think the economy was on his mind) we headed to Westport.

Holly wanted to go to one of the new dueling piano bars, she was so excited to go to a 'grown-up' bar, it was hilarious. This poor sheltered girl from Oklahoma hadn't been to a real bar since college. Ernie Biggs was a good choice, pure entertainment in a nice atmosphere, and not to crowded. After many fancy drinks and Holly winning the college fight song contest (Boomer Sooner!) we called it a night.

I think the picture shows - we were having tons of fun, Heath even showed his teeth for the camera!

Our Goddaughter

2008-10-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

Heath and I became the proud Godparents to Lucinda (Lucy) Sloan Peters two and a half years ago. We are very good friends with her parents, Trent and Megan, in many ways.

First of all they have been our neighbors for the past 3 years in our eclectic neighborhood in West Plaza. Second, Heath and Trent started their own business in May of 2007 and for at least a year prior to, they worked very hard (in the basement - while Meg and I were upstairs watching Grey's Anatomy) on the concept and the development. Third, Lucy goes to daycare four houses down from our house so we get to enjoy seeing her after work often.

I am writing this because it is the end of an era for the Peters' family, they are moving to the suburbs. EEEKKKK! We will be following suit soon I hope, but for now it is very sad. No more long walks with the dogs, wine/movie nights (at least the kind where I can walk home), daycare pick-ups after work, bringing Molly over to play and watching Satchel look down the street in anticipation, watering each other's flowers, grilling on a nice afternoon, carpools when one of the four run-down cars is in the shop, trips to the office with pizza just to 'say hi' to daddy and HEAT! (how Lu says Heath).

Basically we are like one big family that is spread out between five blocks. I'm sure we will still have our fun times and begin new memories. I know Megan is having a hard time leaving the house she got married in, had Lucy in, etc. But it didn't hit me until I was asked to pick up Lu at daycare after work last night and I couldn't help but take this picture. I'm going to miss this!

The Dress

2008-10-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

So my wedding dress finally showed up. Just for the sake of memories I will tell the story of how this dress was purchased...

Theresa was living in Minneapolis across from the Mall of America when I was ready to dress shop. How convenient that Ms. Shopper herself was located next to the biggest mall in the country. This is definitely a scary thing for me. But I made the trip up to see her (and my wonderful Uncle Greg too!) and to attempt my biggest fear - wedding dress shopping. Ick.

After many try-ons and attempts at fancy bridal galleries we happened to stumble upon The Chapel of Love. Seriously, that is really the name. And it just so happens that it is what it seems, a one stop wedding shop. You can buy your gown AND get married, all in the same day. Its like Vegas, but on the 4th floor of the Mall of America.

So in my true cheesy fashion I happened to love all of their gowns and had no problems finding a bunch to try on. But it didn't matter. I tried on one dress and loved it. But it gets better people! It was only $344 AND it was 2 sizes smaller than what I had been trying on! Bonus. Sold. Most importantly - I was done shopping!

So six months later (and the first order going to another bride...grrrr) my dress was delivered yesterday at work. Yes, at work, since I wanted to be sure it didn't sit on my rainy steps all day (and it did rain!). Here it is!

hehehehe....I know - it really isn't that funny ;)

Our Yearbook

2008-10-11T18:58:00.001-07:00

So there is a website that has hit the social networking sites this week called Yearbookyourself.com. As Heath and I sit on the couch on this uneventful Saturday night we though we would have some fun with it. I think we look our best in the 60's - at least we know this is when our parents looked their best!

Secret Blog

2008-10-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

I have decided not to share this blog with anyone for awhile. I need to have time to wrap my head around it. Basically I do not expect many people to read this, it is more for Heath and myself to keep a cyber-diary of our lives as they begin together.(saaaapppy!!! Ick.)

I have zero writing skills and my spelling is lacking, but at least those that do read it will be able to comprehend. If you ever feel the need to correct my grammar please sugar coat the heck out of it! At least it will be in English.....most of the time. Heath happens to be a wonderful writer (he gets it from his mom) so if he ever decides to make an appearance the quality will go up a few notches!

Ironically, after I started the blog yesterday I went home and started flipping channels waiting for the VP debate to begin. And lo and behold! The Cosby Show. YAY! Then the disappointment, I had already seen that one recently. Just as I was about to change the channel, Heath walked in the door from work and said "one more Cosby Show?" Making fun of the fact that when its late and we should be going to bed we act like children by asking "one more Cosby Show?" in hopes to stay up later and watch more T.V. (rarely is it actually The Cosby Show).

I figured this was the best time to tell him about the blog. He knew I was thinking about it but I couldn't think of a name. He seemed fine with it but didn't ask where it was out in cyberspace. He was distracted by the fact that he had to go back to work and miss the debate. Poor guy.

ps- I promise, no politics.....yet. But I have to add a picture to keep things interesting.

The Cosby Show

2008-10-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

I thought the first post should describe the inspiration for the chosen title. I grew up watching The Cosby Show. My parents refused to let us watch The Simpsons, but had no problems with The Cosby Show. Now I watch whenever I come across it while flipping channels. Heath humors me and watches with me.

As a child my parents would help me understand time measurement by the number of Cosby Shows. I specifically remember going into the kitchen soon after my dad got home from work and asking my mom when it was time to eat supper. As she stirred whatever goodness she was cooking on the stove she pointed to the little T.V. on the counter and said "two more Cosby Shows". I immediately understood and sat down to watch whatever mischief Theo and Cockroach were up to that day.

I still feel all warm and fuzzy inside whenever I watch this show and hopefully one day Heath and I will have the same loving and crazy family the Huxtables portrayed on T.V. Welcome to The Stover Show!