'Tis the Season...

...to decorate! (Especially if there is a prize for the best decorated balcony!) Thanks Sarah!

...to go a little overboard with the inside decorations, even though we're the only ones that will see most of our holiday decor.

...to bake Christmas cookies (and forget to take pictures of them before they disappear).

...for SNOW, lots and lots of SNOW!

...for gifts that keep on giving (Enjoy your quesadilla maker Sarah!).

...for company Holiday parties! (With lots of free liqour, right Dan!?)


...to spend time with friends and family.

...to be grateful for all we have!

From our home to yours...

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

-Dan & Jen Amaro

Thanksgiving

For our first official Thanksgiving as husband and wife, Dan and I are doing something a little different. Since we have to work both jobs today and Friday it didn't make sense for us to drive down to Illinois Thursday morning & then turn around and drive back that evening; or for Dan's parents to come up and spend the day & head right back down afterwards.

Tonight after Menards we're going to drive up to the Dells and spend the evening at Ho-Chunk. We saw a special winter room rate online and figured it was worth it for a quick get-a-way. For those of you not familiar w/ Ho-Chunk, it's a casino :) So yes, not only did we spend part of our honeymoon in casinos, we're also spending Thanksgiving in one! They offer a Thanksgiving Day buffet, which Dan is very excited about, LOL!

We'll probably head home tomorrow afternoon to work on cleaning up the apartment and getting it ready for Christmas decorations.

We hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and a great weekend! We'll be thinking about you while we're sitting at the poker tables :)

Pictures....FINALLY!

This has been saved and resaved and resaved so I can add pictures...I'm just going to post now! :)

I'm having a hard time putting our wedding into words....I guess the only one I can come up w/ is "perfect". The weeks leading up to that day I was worried sh*tless that everything would go wrong and the bad dreams I was having weren't helping the matter. But that Saturday everything appeared seemless, everything was perfect :)

I'll let the pictures do the talking!

Updates

I know everyone is anxiously awaiting a post and pictures from the wedding. Please bear w/ me, we have 3 discs w/ over 2,000 pictures that need to be gone through....so I'll get a post together hopefully by the weekend :)

Thank you to everyone one for all the love and support Dan & I have received....we are lucky to have such great friends and family!

Its been hard to come home and go back to work ( I really wish we could have stayed in Vegas...or anywhere other than here :P)

Sassy Shoe Week

This week was designated Sassy Shoe Week by one of my co-workers here at Z. Now, I've never been big into shoes...in fact I think Dan has more than I do!

But, I didn't want to sit this festivity out, so last Friday after work I went shopping. Another thing I'm not big on is spending a lot of money on my shoes. When I lived in Texas the $3.00 flip flops at Old Navy would last me a long time (and could be worn year round :) However, now that I work in a professional environment those flip flops no longer serve a purpose. I have a few, and I'm talkin' a few, pairs of comfortable work shoes that in NO way would be classified as sassy. So I thought "out of the box" and went outside my comfort zone! (Everything I bought was on sale too!)

Take a look at our Sassy Shoes....can you pick me out?

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

While I have have one pair of feet, Friday's picture boasts two pairs of my shoes :)

(Co-worker wore the same pair twice and didn't want to be in the picture, so I lent her my favorite heeled sandals I keep under my desk)

Updates

(I started this post last week sometime....as you can see I never got it posted :)

Last weekend Dan & I had our bachelor/bachelorette parties (separate of course!). Dan went go-karting w/ the guys at Sugar River Raceway in Brodhead, WI. I went down to my cousin Shannon's and had an evening in w/ the girls and watched (some) of Sex and the City. It was a perfect night...exaclty what I needed/wanted! I lost my ability to bar hop several years ago, so sitting around Gormley Pub, sipping champagne and munching appetizers made for a great evening. Being the wonderful people that they are, Shannon & Michelle & my Aunt Sue (and Ann!) created a table full of yummy finger foods. Michelle had a photobook made for me w/ pictures from the shower and I got the cutest luggage tags and the movie, Sex and the City (which I'll have to watch again!). I'm getting together w/ two of my bridesmaids next (this) weekend for dinner & a few drinks...which I'm really looking forward to because I haven't seen either of them in what feels like months!

I'm still working on finishing up the programs & pew decorations. When I go down the 19th for my hair/makeup trial I hope to have it all finished & be able to take everything w/ me. Friday was our RSVP cutoff off, and I think we've received about 95% of them. We'll probably wait another week and then start working on the seating chart (UGH!)

Otherwise, things are moving along quite smoothly. Mom & Dad are going to drive up to Madison and stay w/ Dan & I for 2 nights before heading down to Illinois for the wedding. I'm super excited about that! The last time mom was in Wisconsin was back in 2003 when she brought me furniture and most of my possessions :) and Dad has never been up here to visit!

One Month!

Looks like the countdown has reached the one month mark! No longer will I be counting down the months, to me its a matter of days now....30 to be exact :)

I'd like to give myself a pat on the back for not going completely ballistic during this entire process (even though I wanted to turn Bridezilla on some people). However, looking back there are quite a few things I would have done differently!

Last night I took my wedding bands & engagement ring to the jeweler to be soldered. I'm wearing my promise ring because my finger felt completely naked and exposed w/o something on it. I also hooked up our new printer so I can finish printing the ceremony programs.

This weekend is Dan's bachelor party at Sugar River Raceway, its bound to be a blast! I have to work at Zimbrick and then I'll be heading to Illinois for my bachelorette party (thanks again Shan!). I'm bummed that my bridal party wont be there, but I'm hoping to get together w/ Porsche & Amanda a different weekend, just the three of us (and Aislinn in spirit).

It was 43 degrees this morning on my way into work and it doesn't sound like its going to get above 55 today.....so it appears that fall is definitely here!

Well, here I go, marking the days off on the calendar. I don't know which I'm more excited for....the wedding or the honeymoon! (Disneyland here we come!)

Dan sent me an email this morning w/ this link in it. It's not something I would be able to do (I embarrass easily :), but we found it very entertaining! http://www.snotr.com/video/1299

Death of a Printer

Our printer finally decided it has had enough!

From save-the-dates to invitations and scanning pictures and now ceremony programs our printer has done it all! That was until I decided to try out the placecards. We've pretty much done the print-your-own for everything, so why do anything else for the placecards? Well, our printer had other ideas.

Earlier in the day I printed the test page for the placecards and it came out okay. Then I put the placecard paper in and the printer did not like that. So I gave up and went back to the programs.

Around 9:30 this evening, with the Bears game on in the background, I thought I'd try the placecards again. Well, that was when the printer said F-You!! The paper jammed and the printer shut off completely. I tried turning it back on....no go. I unplugged it and replugged it back in....no go. I unplugged it and let it sit for several minutes, then tried again....no go. Dan fiddled with the wires....nothing....

HP F4140, pronounced dead at 9:50pm. We were served well for over a year.

(To add insult to injury, I just replaced the black & color ink cartridges earlier this evening!)

Wonderful Weekend!

I couldn't have asked for a nicer weekend. Saturday was such a beautiful day to attend a bridal shower....my bridal shower :)

My Uncle Ken & Aunt Sue kindly opened their home & back yard for our shower this passed weekend and we had a wonderful time!

The best part....my mom was there!! HUGE SURPRISE!! Apparenlty a lot of people are good at keeping secrets. It was so great having my mom be a part of the shower. I was secretly hoping that she'd be there, but never really thought she would. Thanks to Monica (who I owe big time!), she made my wish come true :)

Dan & I had a great time visiting with everyone and we got a lot of great stuff for our new life together. We haven't the slightest idea where to put everything....but that's my mission this week, to find places for everything! Hopefully in the process I'll find old stuff of ours to get rid of, thus making more space for all the new goodies.

Unfortunately, the memory card for our camera decided to die, so I don't have any pictures from the shower. So I'll have to depend on others who took pictures (please send copies :)

Well, as usual I'm posting from work, so I'd better get back to pretending to be busy!!

Hopefully my next post will include pictures!

Checklist continued...

We managed to get a few more things accomplished over the last two weeks:

• finished invitations and mailed out!
• gave in and ordered real flowers (at a set budget)
• finalized menu for the reception
• picked music for ceremony

Two months to go!!

Relax?

Dan is down in Illinois for school and tomorrow he flies to Las Vegas for his Infiniti Master Certification Awards Ceremony and wont be back until Monday :( I was supposed to go with, but seeing as I'm taking 10 days off for the wedding in a couple months work wouldn't let me take another 3. Oh well....so I'll just work, work, work and hopefully that'll pass the time until Dan gets back. I've also got invitations to put together and wedding favors to make.

Speaking of work....I can't wait to move to Illinois! Hopefully I wont have to work nearly as much as I am now. I'm sooooooo exhausted and sick of everything! We just hired a new girl here at Z and she worked for a whopping 3 weeks and then decided not to show up on Monday....basically she screwed us royally. Ugh!!!

I would love to be able to go home right from Z and relax. Dan told me last night to enjoy my nights off from Menards and not to worry about invitations or anything....to basically relax. I'd love to, except tonight there's a front end meeting at 9pm that's mandatory, so I'll get to enjoy maybe an hour of relaxation before schlepping myself to the meeting. And by the time its over I'll drag my butt home and go to bed. I had planned on doing something nice for myself tomorrow (getting my hair done), but when Z-*itch didn't show up we had to rearrange the schedule so I cancelled my appointment. When we worked things out I called to reschedule but my time slot had already been taken & they were booked until next week...Ugh (again)!!!!

I need a drink!

3 Months!

OMG!! Where did the time go.....exactly 3 months to go before the big day! Now I'm really starting to stress.

My first dress fitting is Thursday, lets hope it doesn't have to be altered too much. I was hoping to have lost quite a bit of poundage before this fitting, but it just hasn't happened. I'm having 2nd thoughts about the flowers I bought for the bridesmaids bouquets, so I'm turning that over to Aislinn...she's way artsy-er than I am. The invitations we had planned on doing didn't work out, so we bought the pre-made print-your-own kind...which are actually working out sooo much better and look a lot more elegant. I started hand-addressing the inner envelopes and sticking return labels on the response envelopes yesterday.

I still haven't the slightest idea what to do about the ceremony. Dan has basically given me that task since I'm more "religious".

To top off all my stress, we literally have 3 free weekends to get everything done between now & November 1st. I work every other weekend at Menards and one weekend a month at Zimbrick....UGH!!!

I feel like a need a paper bag to breath into right now!

Sunflowers

When Dan & I first moved in together I bought some gerbera daisies and put them in a corner and basically forgot about them. Needless to say, they didn't last too long :-s

So when we decided to move to Verona and into an apartment with a balcony I was very excited that we'd have that outdoor space and quickly said I wanted to get some pots and flowers. Well Dan, remembering the daisies, said we weren't going to go spending any money unless I could prove I could keep something alive for longer than a day or two.

In April we each got a little starter pot w/ sunflower seeds from the Dollar section in Target and planted them at the same time. Dan said if I was able to keep mine alive then I'd be allowed to further expand my garden.

Well....I have to say....I think I'm doing pretty darn good!

Sadly, Dan's sunflowers didn't survive to have their picture taken. They had an unfortunate mishap w/ some MiracleGro (not my fault!)

I'm proud to say the geraniums and roses are doing quite well. However, my lilies didn't survive the massive amount of rain we got just after planting them.

Couldn't wait!

Is it bad that I couldn't wait until my first dress fitting to put my wedding dress on w/ all the accessories?

Seeing as I was home alone tonight I couldn't help myself! I pulled out every single piece of the wedding day ensemble and put it on (except for my wedding ring, that's probably pushing it a little far). I truly understand why brides don't get dressed alone.....ITS IMPOSSIBLE!

Staying up late

Lately the latest I've been staying up on a work-night has been midnight, and that's even pushing it. I've found that I really enjoy my sleep. I'm thinking I missed out on so much of it when I worked 3rd shift at a resort and went to school full-time; so I'm making up for it now. However, there are those rare occasions when you can't help staying up because theres something you want to do.

Last night, for instance, was the opening night for The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie. I've never been a huge fan of Batman. In fact the last Batman movie I saw had George Clooney & Chris O'Donnell in it. Luckily for me, Dan owns the entire Batman collection (as far as I know), so I plan on starting at the very beginning and work my up to the present.

So anywho, back to last night. Dan, Adam & I had dinner at the Tilted Kilt (a Scottish version of Hooters I'd say) and walked around Wally World until 10:30. We got to the theater in time to get a decent parking spot & actually made it through the door in less than 5 minutes. Of course as soon as we got in and went to get seats we found out the line we were in was for the IMAX showing, which was sold out when I ordered our tickets. The theater "police" questioned us about how we got in, and I told her we stood in the line and handed over our ticket. I said if there would have been signage then we would have known we were in the wrong line! Oh well, we hung around the lobby for 10 minutes & as soon as they started letting the other line of people in we went and found our seats. So of course we sat for about an hour waiting.

It was definitely worth it though! I was not expecting to enjoy the movie as much as I did! We were even home by 3am!

Needless to say, it was a loooooong night.

I have to give KUDOS to the theater too! Everything was so organized. I was expecting a mad rush to get in and find seats and people being trampled over. But they let in groups of people at a time and it made for a very laid back atmosphere.

So...yea....I highly recommend The Dark Knight. It was awesome! I highly doubt we'll be taking in any more midnight premiers any time soon, but I'm glad we got to do this one. It was worth the lack of sleep!

Hooray for Family!

The last weekend of June was spent with our families....


My parents were up from Texas....and I was especially excited to see my Mom...who has lost 122lbs!! I almost didn't recognize her when we picked her up from the airport.

We had a great day on Friday, shopping and getting pedicures. We managed to find some ivory satin for the ring bearer's pillow and lots of yarn for favors (which I really need to get working on). We had dinner w/ Mom & Dad at Fox's and went back to Aunt Sue & Uncle Ken's for a graduation party for their niece. Dan & I had a good time getting to hang out w/ my cousins...and their adorable kids! Dan had so much fun he didn't go to bed until 6am Saturday morning.

After a great breakfast w/ Mom & Jack we picked Dad up and headed to Mt. Prospect so Mom could meet Dan's parents. We had a nice quiet visit before more of Dan's family came over. All in all it was a great day!

Sunday we all went to the church where Dan & I are going to get married and then stopped at the reception hall so Mom could see it. We even got some more of our questions answered while we were there. Afterwards we took Mom & Dad back to Gramma Red's where they stayed until leaving on Monday. We got to spend more time w/ Dad's side of the family and it was definitely great getting to see everyone.

The visit sure was short, but we managed to get a lot done. I'm soooo glad my mom got to come up before the wedding; I was sad to see her go so soon :(

Tooth Tragedy

I was having such a good weekend! My parents were up from Texas and I got to spend all weekend with my mom....all of which I'll post about later (w/ pics)

However, by Saturday evening a tooth that had given me problems previously, decided it was time to give me major problems. I was up all night Saturday in pain and barely ate anything Sunday because the entire right side of my face hurt. Sunday night was even worse. So bright and early Monday morning I called the closest dentist I could find that would get me in ASAP. I was seen by the dentist around noon and the diagnosis wasn't good......

ROOT CANAL!!! Just hearing those words made me cringe....even though I knew that was a definite possibility.

So the dentist prescribed Amoxycillin and Hydrocodone along w/ some 600mg Ibuprofin for the night until I could come back on Tuesday. I felt pretty good Monday night & actually slept. I went into work for an hour before going back to the dentist. The actual procedure wasn't too bad....the worst was all the needle pricks needed to completely numb my jaw. Afterwards I went home and took all the medications and zonked out for several hours. I wouldn't have been very productive at work, seeing as I couldn't talk and the room kept spinning every time I opened my eyes.

Tuesday night wasn't too bad....I did wake up around 3am in pain, so I popped some more pills & went back to bed.

What a horrible end to such a wonderful weekend!

Crochet

The original intention of this blog was to showcase some of my "masterpieces" of crochet. I was thinking about this the other day while working on a baby blanket for Dan's co-worker Erik & his wife Amy. They just welcomed the arrival of a beautiful baby girl, Grace. I'm slightly behind on my baby blankets, but Dan asked me to make a specific blankie especially for Grace. Erik & Amy are big sports fans...in particular UW sports. So here's what I was able to come up with:





Hopefully I'll find all of my pictures from previous baby blankets (those seem to be my specialty) and create a post w/ them. While I love everything I've done, theres a particular few that I'm most proud of.

Ava crawls!

This is actually old news, but I'm just getting around to posting pictures.

Amanda & Ava came over a couple weekends ago to help me finish unpacking. Dan was off playing golf w/ Adam & Dan (the other Dan :) So it was just us girls.

I think Ava had more fun w/ Reilly than she did unpacking :)

The Wedding Season

Wedding season has officially hit. Dan & I attended the wedding of our friends Dan & Lana on 06/07/08. The ceremony was supposed to be outside at Olbrich Gardens in Madison, however some severe storms pushed the shindig inside. Nevertheless, it was beautiful! The reception took place at the Howard Johnson just a few miles away. We sat at the "Cheddar" table w/ Amanda and Kristin (Adam and Chuck were part of the wedding party). For me and Amanda it was an opportunity to drink, drink....and drink some more......although Amanda had a lot more than I did.

Of course, going to someone else's wedding always has you thinking about your own. I couldn't stop myself from worrying about favors and decorations, the dj, the food...UGH!

Now, as most of you know the Cotton Eyed Joe is like a tradition for weddings....at least in the south :) The DJ played it (the techno-version) and I was not surprised to a see that no one knew how to dance to it.....Dan & I attempted, while Amanda and Kristin made up their own rendition.

We all had a great time! Thank you Dan & Lana for sharing your special day! We wish you the best!

A weekend off

Even though I only work at Menards every other weekend it never seems like I actually have a weekend off. There's always something going on. My schedule works out that one Saturday a month I work at Z, which is always during my off weekends from Menards. So right away that really only gives me one weekend a month to actually relax.

This passed weekend Dan & I drove down to Illinois to celebrate Mark's high school graduation. It was also an opportunity for Dan to help work on his dad's 70 Chevelle before he and Mark leave for the Hot Rod Power Tour.

Meanwhile, myself and my future mother-in-law went shopping! :) I grabbed a few things for the invitations (which I have now changed the design of) and some flowers I was going to use for my bouquet (which I changed my mind on too). So I have a few things to take back to a couple different stores.

Mark and I detailed the inside of Dan's Impala just in case the Chevelle was not ready for the Power Tour and they had to use alternate transportation. Hopefully one of these weekends I'll get to detail my car. I hate having a dirty car!

We had hamburgers for dinner from the grill. And of course, the day was not complete until Dan's best friend Kevin showed up with his firetruck siren and scared the crap out of the neighbors two doors down. If I can figure out how to get the video on the blog I will :)

Adam is standing in front of the siren that Kevin is holding, with Mark about to start the car.

Below is the infamous firetruck siren.

After dinner Mark and I fired up the fire pit for smores :)

Kevin thoroughly enjoyed being hand-fed his smore...It was a long day, but all-in-all it turned out pretty good. Except for the Chevelle....she didn't fair to well so Dan's brother and dad had to take the meticulously detailed Impala. Dan will get his car back on the 14th when the Power Tour ends at the Alliant Energy Center here in Madison. Of course both Dan & I work at Z that weekend, but we plan on heading over afterwards.