Paul and Erica's Wedding

We travelled back to Colorado over Memorial Day weekend to attend the wedding of one of Will's good college friends. We stayed in a house with 16 people, which was awesome. It was so nice to have a big enough space for everyone to hang out in, and it was great to not have to pay to eat out all weekend. Some highlights of the weekend:

• Being back in the mountains! It was overcast and rainy most of the weekend, but the views were still spectacular.


• Taking full advantage of the state-of-the-art kitchen at the house. We spent most of the weekend hanging out there (naturally- why is it that people always gravitate towards the kitchen?). It was comfortable enough for all 16 of us staying at the house to be in, along with extra guests that were hanging out throughout the weekend.


• Food and drinks consumed over the weekend included: 16 party pizzas, 2 kegs, a 12 pack of Sunshine Wheat beer (my favorite!), 1 bottle of Glen Livet Scotch, multiple rounds of margaritas, Grilled pork loins, Corn on the cob, salad, garlic bread, 4 dozen eggs, 2 blocks of cheese, lots of crackers, a bag of chips and salsa, a package of bacon, a tube of sausage, lots of fruits and veggies, and a few packages of bagels and english muffins. Whew! That's a lot of food!


• Being introduced to a new "move" by the recent college grads- it's called The Gargoyle. I guess the keg stand is out these days. Now you have to perch on top of the keg in the crouched position, drink the beer from the tap, and flap your arms as though you were a bird. I have included a picture of the bride, Erica, demonstrating the move for you, in case you aren't able to picture how truly spectacular this sight is.


• Lots of dancing all weekend- at the house, at the rehearsal party, and of course, the reception!


• Manis and Pedis with Bonna and Mary. Great girl time, and a relaxing way to spend a rainy mountain afternoon.


• The Karaoke Rehearsal party was hilarious. Especially funny was a stirring rendition of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" by Paul and the guys ala Top Gun.


• A pretty ceremony- the rain was unfortunate, but it did make for a nice backdrop at the church. And luckily it stopped after the ceremony so Paul and Erica were able to take some pictures outside.


• A fun reception. The dancing didn't stop all night!


• After parties every night at the house. We took full advantage of both the indoor and outdoor space, including a hot tub and sauna room!

Some pics from the weekend:

Paul and Erica singing everyone's favorite Neil Diamond song- "Forever in Blue Jeans"

The ceremony

First Dance

The Gargoyle, a popular move over the weekend

Lots of dancing, all weekend long...

Home Sweet Home!

It's finally official! After a couple days worth of delays in closing, it happened today. No popping of champagne tonight, though, as we have a busy week ahead of us. We have painters coming in on Thursday morning to give our new home a facelift, and then we take off for Colorado that afternoon to go to our friends Paul and Erica's wedding. We aren't planning on moving in until the painting is done, but we did spent part of the evening in our new place...lining the kitchen cabinets. Ahh, the exciting life of a homeowner. :)

Seriously, though, we are really excited to not be renting anymore. And we are equally as excited to have company come stay with us once we're settled!

And finally, some pics of the place. Now that it is officially "ours" I can poste pictures. After all our bad luck we were scared that we would jinx it if we posted pics before closing!

Birthday and Closing and Moving...oh my!

This is a busy week for us! Today is my birthday, which has so far (at 8:30 this morning) been a nice one. I got out of the shower to find Will walking through the front door with breakfast burritos and coffee (from McDonalds, obviously). Not quite breakfast in bed, but I'll take it! Breakfast burritos are so darn tasty!

Yesterday I had stage 1 of a 2 part process to put a crown on one of my teeth. With all the dental work I've had done lately, you'd think that I just never brush my teeth or something! I now have a temporary silver tooth until the permanent one comes in. Will and I were joking last night that I really am getting old- I'm losing my teeth and getting fake ones! :)

Tomorrow is the final walk thru of the new place, and then Thursday morning is the closing. Will didn't want to stay there until we had everything painted and were actually moved in...but I played a well-timed "it's my birthday" card and told him all I wanted from him was to sleep on an air mattress in our new place the first night. So that's what we're doing. :) Cari and Curtis are going to join us for celebratory champagne at the new place, and then we'll head out for birthday/closing celebrations.

We aren't going to move anything officially til everything is painted, but we're hoping to get that done ASAP. We just need to finalize our color choices! Such big decisions.

Oh! This is worth mentioning, too. After what seems like an eternity of cloudy, overcast, and rainy days in Nashville, we woke up this morning to SUNSHINE!!! Yay! Off to a great birthday start!

Weekend in Chicago

We had a great time in Chicago this weekend. The whole family was able to make it up to celebrate all the May birthdays and Mother's day together. We didn't have a big agenda planned but had a great time! Lots of walking and shopping, a trip to Navy Pier, drinks at the Signature Room at the Hancock, dinner and a show with Tony and Tina's wedding, and catching up with some of my old friends up in Wrigleyville. It felt good to be back in the city again! Here are some pics that highlight the weekend:

Mom and Dad on Mother's Day:
Mom with all her children...and grandchild on Mother's Day:

At Tony and Tina's wedding:

Fun with the "Bean":

Ella trying on some Christian Diors at Nordstrom Rack. That girl loves her shoes!

Meeting up with the girls in my old neighborhood:

Shelley's Visit

We had a fun weekend with Shelley in town! Unfortunately it rained the ENTIRE weekend, but we made the best of our time. Some highlights of the weekend:

* Exploring the Opryland hotel with Shelley, complete with a boat ride around the atrium.

* Shelley got to experience life in the inferno first hand. It was too cold for carpenter bees to be out, but she did get to see how we deal with flooding when it rains hard, as it did every day she was here. Fortunately we were able to show her where we are moving, so she will still want to come back and visit!

* An evening at the Grand Ole Opry. We had a blast! The show itself is definitely geared more towards the older crowd, but we enjoyed ourselves. The GOO is an event that everyone should experience, at least once.

* Spending Saturday morning exploring Andrew Jackson's plantation. It was like stepping back in time, complete with characters dressed in period costumes.

* Boot shopping! Will, Shelley, and I took advantage of a "Buy One, Get 2 pairs Free" deal. We all got new boots to wear honky tonking on Saturday night.

* Honky tonking at the bars along Broadway. It was my first official time going out to the honky tonks, and Shelley had never been either. We had such a blast, despite the rain. It is so fun to be able to bar hop and see live music at every bar. Shelley and I also had to take a shot every time we saw a Canadian tuxedo (denim jean jacket worn with denim jeans). The night started strong- 3 shots at the first 3 bars, but luckily we didn't see any more at any of the bars that followed.

* This pic of Shelley was taken at Trailer Park Resort. This bar is a riot! There are old parked cars in there that people literally stand and dance on. The floor is made of astroturf, and they use outdoor plastic patio furniture instead of regular tables and chairs. It's a real classy joint.

* Coming home from the bars to a power outage in the apartment, and proceding to try to eat the contents of our fridge in the dark, so the food didn't go bad. This was hilarious to us for some reason. We found out the next morning that the power outage was due to a car accident, not the weather.

All in all, a great weekend. It was so fun to take Shelley around and show her our new town. After spending Saturday night downtown, we are even more excited to be moving closer to the action. Just a couple more weeks!

First Communion and Ronald McDonald

We spent Saturday up in Bowling Green, KY with Will's family. His nephew, Luke celebrated his first communion. Luke looked so adorable in his little suit, and you could tell he enjoyed dressing up like the older guys. Unfortunately his dad, Pete, was unable to join in the festivities. He caught a stomach bug and was quarantined to the bedroom for the whole day. During mass the entire family was able to join Luke when he received communion for the first time. I had never seen it done that way before, and thought it was neat that the family was included in the celebration. Luke looked so nervous right before he went up- I wonder if I was as nervous the first time I had communion?

We had a little party at Sue's house following mass, feasting on the guest of honor's choice for dinner- Chick Fil A. :) And, as evident by his smiling face, Luke seemed to enjoy adding all the money he received to his own bank.

On Sunday Will and I attended a fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald House. It was a nice networking opportunity for Will, and an excuse to wear a dress 2 days in a row for me! Will bid on and won 2 luxury suite tickets to a Cardinal's game in September- happy birthday to me! I can't wait to go back to St. Louis, and I'm especially excited to check out this suite- apparently it is directly behind home plate. If only there was a show at The Fox that weekend. I so miss working there and was really hoping I could take Will to see a show. As it stands right now, we might just have to settle for the Saturday morning tour with all the retired folks.

This week we are both recovering from not feeling well yesterday, and looking forward to our visit with Shelley this weekend. We have our walk through of the loft tomorrow to fill out our "punch list". Hopefully we don't find any major problems that will prolong our move-in date. We are also getting estimates from some painters. We are REALLY hoping that they aren't too expensive to hire. With 18 foot ceilings, we would much rather leave the painting to the professionals. However, we aren't afraid to tackle the project ourselves if the price isn't right! May 14th is just around the corner- I'm looking more forward to that date than I am my birthday!

Updates...

Here's an update on some things that have been happening lately:

• Ale had a beautiful baby girl on April 1st. I've chatted with both her and Francisco a couple times online since Isadora was born and she has been sending us pictures of Isa. So far, everything is going well with both Mama and baby girl. Isa is about the cutest stinkin' thing I've ever seen! I can't wait to meet her when they are in the states for Andy's wedding.
• A good friend of ours from Chicago, Shelley, is coming down to visit us next weekend. We are pumped to have her come down. She will be the first of our friends to stay with us since we've lived in Nashville. We have a busy weekend planned, from visits to the Grand Ole Opry to hitting up the honky tonks downtown. I'm really looking forward to doing "touristy" stuff around town. And I can't wait to have a girlfriend come visit!
• I am meeting the family up in Chicago over Mother's day weekend to celebrate Andy's 30th birthday, my, Molly, and Shaughn's May birthdays, and of course, Mother's day. It will be the first time since Christmas since we've been together, and an added bonus that I get to head back to Chi-town for the weekend. I can't wait!
• Will and I went on a home tour around downtown Nashville on Sunday. The idea of the tour was to promote "urban" living. There were about 10 buildings on the tour, and most of them were right downtown. Some of the buildings were brand new highrises that have started defining the Nashville skyline, but there were several older buildings that have recently been renovated into lofts. We were especially excited to see this building...
  

...because it is soon to be our new home! Yes, the big news on this blog...the home search is finally over! It was quite the whirlwind weekend for us. To catch everyone up on the happenings: we have had a lot of disappointment on the home search lately, especially after our offer on the townhouse we liked fell through. It's very disheartening to get excited about living somewhere and then lose it.

For the past month our typical day has gone something like this: work, eat dinner, look online for a place to live, and repeat. On Friday night we were keeping with the trend, when we came across a new listing for a loft unit right downtown and within our price range! We knew better than to get our hopes up, but we did get in contact with our realtor right away. The unit was scheduled to be on the home tour, but we didn't want to wait until then to see it. LOTS of people were going to see it then and we wanted to be ahead of the game.

So we saw the unit on Saturday morning, put an offer in on Saturday evening, and it was accepted on Sunday morning! YIPPEEE!!! We're under contract! What a relief! We were in a competition with someone else who put in offer in on Saturday as well, and we won (barely)!

The building is called "Art Avenue Lofts" and it is truly right downtown, in the heart of everything. The building itself is part of the "art district" that's becoming popular in Nashville- the first floor of our building is an art gallery, and they decorate the main entrance to our place, so the artwork will always be changing. We are so excited to be living downtown! And I am especially looking forward to being in a walkable neighborhood again. I've decided that I'm just a city girl at heart- I'm happiest when I can walk to where I need to be. This place meets all of our major criteria: great location, unique floorplan, stainless appliances, and lots of potential.

Since our unit was already scheduled to be on the downtown tour it was too late to take it off, but I must admit, it was a fantastic feeling to walk into the building and hear the people who direct you on where to go announce that the unit on the 4th floor was just sold. Seriously, like poetry. We "toured" our new home and really enjoyed listening to the other tour-goers giving their approval (without knowing that we were the future homeowners!).

So, that is the exciting news! So long as everything goes smoothly with the final negotiations, we are set to close on May 14th! I know this blog is long, but really we can hardly contain our excitement, so if you're still reading, thanks for sticking it out! I don't want to post any interior photos until the walls are painted and we are more or less settled in. So, stay tuned! More pictures to come!

We are looking forward to starting a new phase, and are especially excited to host visitors as soon as we're settled in! We have lots of room, so all are invited! :)