Cody's 30th Birthday Party

We were in Hancock for Cody's 30th birthday and his family threw him a birthday party.

Here is a picture of the cake.

The birthday boy.  

 

Deb and Rick cooked almost all of the food at Ridge Runners in the kitchen.

We had lasagna, ham, sandwiches, beans, all kinds of chips, and other items. 

Eric, Chance, and Amber smiling together.

Cody, Deb and Neil.  The four of us went on a fun gambling trip to Mohegan Sun Casino a couple of days after the party.  Cody and I had never been there.  There were a ton of restaurants, the rooms were nice, and they had quite a few updated games.  We ate at Bar Louie for "dollar" burgers and then we ate at Wolfgang Puck express for lunch in the morning.  Cody and I didn't do so great gambling, but I think Neil ended up doing pretty good.  We were really excited to go though, it was nice to head out and hang out there for the night.

Here a picture of Nan and Cooper!  Nan loves Cooper so much that I had to make sure I got a picture of them together.

Here we are with Eric.  It looks like he is smiling but really he was just getting ready to cry in this picture.  Haha!  Could have fooled ya!

Family picture!  Cody was disappointed at our wedding that a picture with the 5 of them did not happen so I made sure that we got one at his birthday party.  It's not that often that we get all 5 of them together for an opportunity for a picture.

Here is Cody's favorite birthday present.  Robin got him a wrestling belt.

Unfortunately it was a kids sized belt so Cody couldn't actually wear it.  But he had fun posing and playing with it.

Here are some action shots of the guys.

More wrestling moves.

I think this was my favorite picture of the night!!

Friend pictures!

More friend pictures!!  

The Charles women!

Got all the fam in the picture.

Nan and Aunt TT

Neil and Davey eating dinner.

My little buddy Cooper!  I love poodles!!  After everyone left Rick and Cody played pool with each other for about 3 or 4 hours, and this little guy sat in the chair and cuddled with me the whole time.  

Brian playing with his granddaughters.

At the end of singing happy birthday all the kids helped Cody blow out the candles on his cake.

They all liked it so much that we had to light a couple more candles so that they could blow them out again.

Bryleigh's turn to blow them out.  Kelsie and Bryleigh were buddies all night long.  They were running around and playing with each other throughout the whole party.

Overall I think that Cody's birthday was a success.  A lot of people came over to hang out and celebrate his birthday.  We had good food, good friends, plenty of alcohol, and it was a good night.  Happy 30th birthday to my Bebesee!

2014 in Review

Continuing on with my blogs that I should have written over a year ago...  Here are the highlights of 2014...

Right after getting engaged we came home and decided to get two kitties!!  We went to the animal shelter down the street and we got our boys!  I can't believe how much love and happiness these two little guys have brought us!

Cody and I got engaged just in time for bridal show season.  And we went to a TON of them!  In 2014 we were really looking hard for a photographer and a wedding venue.  I feel like we were meeting and interviewing photographers almost every weekend for months!!  We also toured and reviewed numerous wedding venues.  Planning a wedding is honestly a hobby...  Just like in 2012 our hobby was looking at model homes/houses.  2014 was all about wedding stuff.

In June 2014, I "graduated" from the LDP program at Swagelok and moved into a supervisor position on 2nd shift in the component warehouse.  This was definitely a challenge both professionally and personally.  I had never supervised anyone before and I was a little unprepared for the sleuth of problems that I was going to face in the position.  It was also challenging missing a lot of events and not getting to see Cody regularly.  That summer we meet up twice a week for lunch dates.  I would bring him lunch at Huntington Beach and then he'd come to Swagelok later on in the week.  It helped so that we could see each other more.

I went wedding dress shopping with my cousin, mom, and some of my friends.  I ended up finding my wedding dress at David's Bridal.  I had liked some other designs but I loved the corset on this dress and I really liked how I looked in it!

We were super excited to get a deck added onto our house!  We truly missed having this the previous year and it was a good addition the house.  Memorial Day weekend we had a little cookout for our friends and family to come over.

Krista, Deb, and the kids came to our house over Easter.  It was so much fun watching the kids trying to find their Easter eggs and their baskets.  Holidays with kids are so much fun!  

We celebrated our 3rd dating anniversary this year at the Melting Pot.

Katelynn and Shawn got married on 7/19/14.  It was a really nice ceremony and we got some great pictures with the family.  Katelynn is such a great addition to our family.  She's such a sweetheart!!

We went back to Hancock over the 4th of July for Kelsie's 8th birthday.

We had our engagement photo session with our wedding photographer.

Our nephew, Eric Jeffery Charles, was born on 7/20/14.  We got to meet him over Labor Day weekend.

Another addition to our family was my cousin Aaron's son Maxwell.  Maxwell was born on October 10th 2014.

My little cousin, Raquel, also had a baby girl named Brylee on 12/8/14.

We had our best trip to Vegas yet!  We went to Vegas in October when the weather at home was in the 30s to 40s, but the weather there was in the 80s and 90s.  It was FANTASTIC!  We loved it so much that I don't think we'll go to Vegas during any other season.  We got to go on a kayaking trip that started at the base of the Hoover Dam...

Then we went to the Valley of Fire which was absolutely stunning.  The next day we went to Red Rock Canyon and an abandoned ghost town.  We also had a ton of fun swimming and drinking by the pool at our resort.  It was really hard to top the view and the proposal from our last trip to Vegas... but I have to admit we had a lot of fun during this trip.

Grandma's last Christmas was in 2014.  :(

We went on our first couple's trip with Hannah and Kyle.  We went to Fort Lauderdale over New Year's Eve.  We all went on a segway for the first time, tried alligator bites, went to Miami (and had a comprehensive tour of the city), we had excellent pizza from a shop right by our hotel, we played back alley to all parts of the night, we went on a New Year's Eve yacht party booze cruise, and overall had a fun time! 

2014 was a good year for us.  Probably the most significant thing that happened was expanding our family and getting our boys.  We also made good progress on planning our wedding.  We spent a lot of time with our family and we got to go on two pretty awesome trips.  Another great year for us.  :)

2013 in Review

Today my dad and I were looking through old memories and we looked through my blogs.  In the past I used to write up a "year in review" blog at the end of the year with all the highlights from that year.  Well for some reason I didn't do that in 2013 or 2014 and I regret that.  So I decided that I still have the pictures, blogs, and general memories of those years... so better late than never!

One of the most time and money consuming efforts for us in 2013 was building our house.  Towards the end of 2012 and the first 4 months of 2013, all of Cody and my time was spent on building our home.  We went to check on our house at least 2 to 3 times a week... every week!  I'm very proud of how diligent I was with my blogs throughout that whole process.

We signed the papers and got the keys to our house on March 28th.  We were both so thrilled and excited.  Everything was a first for us... from opening the door for the first time, to putting on a roll of toilet paper... everything was awesome.  The most stressful part about building our house was actually picking out the paint colors for the walls. We agreed on almost everything else, but the paint colors took us a lot of time to figure out.  We also painted ourselves which was a long weekend!

We moved into our house on April 7th with the help of my family members!  It was a quick and easy process.  Everyone pitched in and it seemed like it didn't take us much time at all.  I'm pretty sure by 2pm everyone was gone.  Cody and I worked throughout the rest of the night though and we actually had everything put away and organized after that first night.

This was also the year of Hannah and Kyle's wedding.  We actually had Hannah's wedding shower at our new house.  This was probably the biggest and only true fight Cody and I have ever gotten into.  He was really concerned that something was going to happen to our brand new house and he was upset that I agreed to host a party in it about a week after we had moved in without consulting him first.  We ended up making up and Hannah's wedding shower turned out gorgeous and nothing ended up happening to the house.

 

Hannah's bachelorette party was in Put In Bay.  This was the first time that I had ever been there.  Minus our mean hotel people who wouldn't let us all stay in the same room and didn't have any more rooms (Hannah and two other girls ended up having to stay at a different hotel), and our limo breaking down on the way there....  we had a blast on Put in Bay!!  There were a ton of bars to hop around to and we all had a lot of fun.

Hannah and Kyle got married on June 8th 2013.  Hannah and I had been through so much together and I was so happy for her on her big day.

Cody and I celebrated our 2 year dating anniversary at Carrie Cerinos, where we would end up getting married two years later.

 

Krista, Deb, and the kids came up to hang out with us for Memorial weekend and we had a blast!!  We went to the zoo, played at the mall, went to the Berea rib cookoff, and just overall had a fun time together.  We loved having them over and it was so much fun to get to go around to places with them.

This is probably my favorite picture I've ever taken (yes even two years later) of Kelsie!  I just love this picture from the rib cook off.  She went into a giant ball and ran around in it.  As she was getting out I snapped this picture of her, and I've always thought it was super adorable!

We had a big Mother's Day celebration in the new house with my grammy, mom, and aunt Karen.  This is probably one of the best recent pictures that we have of the four of us.

We went to Hancock over the 4th of July for Kelsie's birthday.  We took a TON of pictures with all of the family that day too!!

We went back to Hancock again in the fall for Bridget's wedding.

Hannah, Kyle, and Sam came over to help us pass out candy for the first Halloween in our new house.

 

We hosted our first family holiday and started the tradition of having Thanksgiving at our house.  Our families blended together and shared the holidays together.  We stayed and played cards all night which has also turned into a tradition.

 

We went back for a short trip to Vegas, and we stayed in a wrap around balcony suite at the Cosmopolitan.  It was the most amazing view ever!!  I think that this was the most impressive hotel room that I've ever stayed in my life!

The BIGGEST event of 2013!!!  Cody proposed to me on 12/23/13 at Prime restaurant in the Bellagio!  His proposal was so sweet and so well thought out.

After Vegas we went to California for a couple day trip.  We went on our first ever trip to Disneyland.  I really enjoyed the day, but boy were we tired afterwards!  We went super hard all day and rarely took breaks.  I like to think I've learned my lesson from the pace we took that day, and I hope our future trips to Disney are less tiring.

We spent a couple days in LA.  Had fun, but the traffic and parking was crazy!!

We went on a tour of Warner Brothers Studios.  I think this was the most fun that we had during our trip and it made our trip to California for us.  We'd love to go back on another tour of Warner Brothers because I think the tours could be different every time you go on it.

We also went to Universal Studios Hollywood for a day.  We mostly wanted to go on the back lot tour.  I think we went on a few other attractions, but that was the main one we wanted to go on.  It seems like for such a big park there really wasn't a whole lot to do at Universal, but hopefully they'll keep expanding the park and adding things to it.

Overall, 2013 was a huge year for us.  We finished building our home, had tons of great memories with our friends and family, and we got engaged to each other!  You can't really ask for a better year than that!