I realize that I haven't posted a blog in a few months so I thought I'd post one tonight. I was checking my stats on my blog and for some reason I got 58 hits on October 8th! No clue why! But that's neat... I'm glad to see someone is checking out my blog.
In September we went back to New York for Cody's second cousin's wedding. Here we are on Cody's mom's deck. You can tell that this is her favorite spot to take pictures of us. It's so funny we have so many pictures that are posed exactly like this in this spot. Here is another one for the records.
I think that Cody has finally given in to my picture taking. He was telling me to hurry up and get ready so that we could come by his dad's and take pictures by this lake. Unfortunately, it took me FOREVER to curl my hair so we didn't get too many pictures here.
Here we are right as we got to the wedding. I'm glad that I brought my jacket with me. It was an outdoor wedding, and it was a little cold out that night.
Here is Cody's sister, Krista, and I. We were twins! We both had curly hair and black dresses. Isn't the scenery beautiful behind us? I bet they got gorgeous wedding pictures.
I can't remember what Cody said... but you can tell I'm not happy with him. Haha.
We got him to jump in with us. I loved that he actually wore the tie all night long. My handsome Bebesee.
Here are the girls. Cody's aunt was so much fun all night.
Brandon walking JoAnn to her seat.
Here comes Bridget and her dad. She was such a beautiful bride.
I loved the bridesmaids' dresses too. They were gorgeous dresses... the color scheme was really clever, and it looked so pretty. The ceremony was outside, and we were lucky that the rain held out until after they took their pictures. We were inside of the tent getting ready for dinner when it started to rain.
Here is my new favorite picture of Cody and I. Hrmm I think I'm going to have to start curling my hair more often.
Here were our party favors. That was a neat, personalized idea. I bet it took them forever to make them for everyone at the wedding. I have this on my desk at work, and every time someone sees it they ask me who "Charles" is. They think that it's our dog or something haha.
I LOVE the idea of the cupcakes. Instead of serving pieces of cake they had cupcakes, and then they had boxes for them for the guests to take home with them later on. I thought this was a great idea. I'd much rather eat a cupcake than a piece of cake.
I also liked that the bride and groom were the only ones that sat at the head table. This allowed the bridal party to sit with their significant others. I think this was a great idea. Cody and I were discussing doing something like this or at least not having a head table at our wedding. I really liked what my cousin, Aaron, did at his wedding too.
Here we are with Cody's dad.
The bar... that's where Cody spent most of his time at the wedding. I swear, I tell him that I'm going to DD for him and he drinks like a crazy person.
After the wedding we went to Lydia's and they had a couple beers. The drive from the wedding to Lydia's was the scariest thing that ever happened to me... It was raining, dark, and the roads were twisty and turny. I was so scared driving on those roads. I don't think I'd been that stressed driving in a long time. But I was happy once we got to Lydia's and hung out with everyone.
Here we are. You can tell he's been drinking all night in this picture.
A couple months ago I went through all of my old pictures and made them digital. I told Cody's mom that I wanted to do the same thing with Cody's old pictures so when we were there for the wedding she gave me a bunch of old photo albums to look through. Here is Cody, Chance, and Sky. I thought this was too funny.
Here's Cody and Chance
The boys with their grandpa.
Cody's grandma and grandpa. I wished that I would have gotten to meet them.
Cody's old favorite cat and Lucy.
Hrmm... this is about the reaction that I get from him now. Haha.
Here he is in 2004. He still wears that jersey he has on in this picture on a daily basis now. I thought it was funny that I came across this one. I guess the last two pictures prove that things don't change too much.
You can see his long hair better in this picture. Hehe I was teasing him about the long shaggy hair that he used to have.
Usually guys change a lot over the years, but looking through Cody's old pictures I could easily pick him out through the years. He hasn't really changed that much, especially since his senior year. I think that he might weigh a little bit less now, but you can still see that it's him.
Awwww this was my absolute favorite picture of him!!! It's SO freaking adorable. I love this picture.
Cody and his brother and sister at a pumpkin patch. Cody's mom was talking about how people take pictures now, but they don't really get them developed anymore. I know that I am definitely guilty of that. I do a good job of posting my pictures on Facebook and then blogging about them, but I can see the value of having hard copies of special pictures printed out. As we were looking through all of these albums it was hard for us to remember when pictures were taken or where they were when they took them. This made me really want to start making a scrapbook. I told Cody that I want him to get me scrapbooking supplies for my birthday. I love my blog, and I think that is truly the best way to remember all of the details that happen... but I think having a scrapbook would be fun too. I just hope that I'm creative enough to make it look good! I think the key for me would be to put the date and then a short description of the pictures on the scrapbook page. I think that I would stay with it, because I've done well with keeping up with this blog. I'm a memory preserver... it's something that I definitely see the value of having in the future.
As I was going through the pictures the kids were trying to help me.
Little Dave was showing me his favorite picture that he picked up. You can see that it's sticks and dirt. He's a true boy right there.
Shockingly the kids helping me didn't end up too well...
He realized that I was taking his picture and he hated it. He hates it when I try to take his pictures. To get pictures of him I have the sneak them. Overall, we had a good trip to New York. It was a long weekend, and we got to hang out with Chance and Amber quite a bit. We stayed over their house until 3 am the day before the wedding. We were playing a categories game where you put your phone on your forehead, and then a word comes up on your phone and everyone has to get you to guess the word, and you try to get as many words as you can in a minute. We had a blast with it. The long weekend was a good time frame to be there. We got to spend time and see everyone, but the only part that sucked was having drive home so quickly.
Our house!!! Yaaay! I love that we now have our drive way and yard in! I feel like we have a finished house now, except that we don't have our deck yet... We debated on whether or not we wanted to put the yard in ourselves or if we wanted to hire a company to do it. We had so many rocks in our yard, that we would have had to rent expensive equipment, a rock hound, to get rid of all of the rocks so we decided to just hire a company to do it. We went with Calanni landscaping. The owner was an Italian guy, and they did our yard. We are pretty happy with it. We haven't put any flowers in yet, because we put our yard in right before we left for New York. We figured that anything we'd plant would get frozen in a couple weeks, so we didn't want to waste our money. That's the same reason why we didn't put a deck up this year. We figured that we would get it built and then winter would come and we wouldn't be able to use it anyway. We decided to wait for the deck until the spring so that we can build our money up for it. It's amazing how much money goes into a house! It just seems like it's one expense after another.
Speaking of... Cody gave me a lot of crap for it, but I love my pole decorations! I am now a Pat Catan's enthusiast. We went there the other day and I browsed around for hours trying to figure out how I wanted to decorate my pole. I love the big bow and my "Give Thanks" sign. Luckily I already had the garland from previous years.
By our door you can see our two Aldi's pumpkins and our scarecrow guy. He kept trying to blow away, so I had to use the pumpkin to keep him in place.
My decorations for the inside of my house are a little bit weak. I don't have a ton of Halloween decorations yet. I'm excited to decorate for Christmas, because I actually feel like I might have enough decorations to decorate our whole big house.
I put my Thanksgiving decorations up too. I really like how this serving wear looks.
Our table. I love the pumpkin centerpiece. I actually won this at Jacqueline's bridal shower last year.
Hehe! My turkey! I just got him at Cracker Barrel this year.
Isn't he cute?
My fireplace. :) I love my witch. She's so pretty. But like I said... I need to expand my Halloween decorations over the next couple of years. Just wait until Christmas...
One really cool thing that I got to do this fall was go back to Bowling Green to recruit students to work at Swagelok! It was so neat to be on the other side of the career fair. It was interesting to see how students approach employers, and what students resumes look like. At first I was a little nervous about it, but towards the end of the day I felt better about judging whether someone should get an interview or not. There were a couple of great candidates that came by. I don't know who got an offer yet, but it will cool to see who our interns are next summer.
Cody and I went to our first haunted house with each other this weekend. I can't believe we've been dating for over two years and that we've never been to one yet. We ran into Hannah, Kyle, Sam, and Steph at Giant Eagle on Saturday and they were going to one later that night so we decided to go with them. We had fun together there. I have a love hate relationship with haunted houses. I don't like haunted houses that are more than people just jumping out to scare you. I hated Mansfield prison... but the one last night was pretty fun.
Today we hung out with a bunch of our neighbors and tailgated/watched the Browns game. It was fun to get to meet and hang out with people around the neighborhood. Our next door neighbor, Dave, was teasing us that we were going to have a baby soon. He was holding one of the neighbor's 7 month old baby, and he gave him to me to hold. And he kept telling Cody "Uh oh you're in trouble now buddy. There's something about a woman when she holds a little baby. She's going to want one." And we were kind of laughing and I told him that I wanted a ring first! Haha. We took stuffing balls over for everyone and they were a big hit. I swear they are the easiest best appetizers that you can make. 1 bag of stove top stuffing, 1 lb of the ground meat of your choice, 1 cut of water, 1 egg, and 1 can of cranberry sauce. You brown the meat and then mix all the ingredients together. You place them onto a baking sheet in the shape of balls and cook them for 20 minutes. They taste great hot or cold. Super easy and super tasty. We didn't have any left to bring home. We had a fun time with everyone. So far we've had a great fall. I can't wait to see what Halloween is like in our new development. We are gearing up for needing lots of candy! We are also preparing for our trip to California and Las Vegas in December... we can't wait for it!
