A Crazy Fortnight

Today begins a bit of a crazy fortnight.

Tomorrow is the internment of Husband's grandpa and grandma who passed 7 years ago and 3 years ago respectively. They were cremated and never interned. My MIL secured a site for them at Jefferson Barracks in South County, as Peepaw served in the military for many years. The Husband's cousins are coming in for Thanksgiving and it was a good time to have the ceremony when most everyone is here.

We have a luncheon scheduled afterwards so we can spend some time with his extended family since we won't be here for the holiday.

Because after the luncheon, we head to the airport for a flight to DFW! I am so excited to see my family for Thanksgiving even if we may end up eating out instead of cooking a big fancy dinner. I still want to stuff my face with desserts when I get the opportunity.

Not sure about the Black Friday shopping - lounging on the couch in my PJs with a hot cider and shopping via my iPad sounds like it might be more my speed this year for some reason. {Side note: who AM I that I'm not psyched for shopping?! I am getting old.}

We come back home on Sunday evening and spend three days doing laundry, cleaning my house, setting up Christmas decorations (I hope) and then head to Walt Disney World on Thursday morning!

Yup, it's another trip to the House of the Mouse with only me and Husband. We're staying in one of our favorite resorts, Port Orleans French Quarter and have tickets for the Christmas party and the Candlelight Processional, neither of which we've done before. It's five days and four nights of a vacation that we've been looking forward to since April - he passed the bar and we decided this would be our celebration.

So for those keeping score, that's December 10 when we are finally back in town and ready for Christmas. We are hosting our first holiday in the house - with my mom and brother and his family - and there's some major decorating, tree buying and setting up, plus menu planning and executing to do.

How's your next fortnight shaping up?

Adventures in House Tours, part one

Welcome to our new home!

Since we closed on our first house back in July, we've been slowly getting the place in order. Unpacking boxes, moving furniture around, hanging pictures and slowly removing every single decorative flower in the house. The woman who owned the house before us had a thing for pink tulips and they manifest themselves everywhere - in the sidelights next to the pink front door, wallpaper and its borders in multiple rooms, window dressings, shower curtains and even toilet seat covers. It's quite impressive, actually. I have a whole collection of soft goods in the basement if you're interested!

I promised a house tour and I finally had part of the house clean enough to take pictures last weekend.

I can see lots of fun decorations on our front door in the coming seasons! However, that mauve pink on the door and the shutters will be going away next spring, I hope. Now, to choose a color!

When you walk in, the dining room is on the right hand side. The painting of Paris has been with us since our rental house a few years ago and we love it. It makes us want to go back every time we see it!

The dining room has a cut through into the kitchen. The wall with the painting on the right has the garage on the other side of it.

The dining room table and chairs, with the cabinet, came from my in-laws. That has been their dining room set for years and now its ours! Lots of memories with this furniture. The china in the hutch is also from my in-laws - so excited to have service for 12 now! I loved the Noritake pattern we chose for our wedding but we only have service for 5 in that one, and not nearly all the pieces. I hope that we can grow that pattern over the next few years because it would be great to have two! The blue china from our wedding would be amazing for Christmas, with blues and silver.

So when you walk in with the dining room on the right, this is the stairs to the second floor and the hallway to the back of the house, with the sitting room, powder bath and master suite.

If you turn left instead of right, that's our living room.

Complete with our family shrine - I am pretty sure that between the pictures displayed on the cabinet on the left and the table on the right, we might have everyone represented.

This is a good look from the corner of the living room across the whole front of the house. We love the double windows in both rooms and the great light it gets. We installed black out blinds in the living room so we can close 'em up and get it nice and dark for movies on the couch. It's the best.

One thing the old homeowner left behind (besides the window treatments and pink tulips everywhere) was this picture. It's an ink drawing of the house when it was about 10 years old. We absolutely love it! It's hanging in the main hallway and I think we'll leave it there until it's time for us to sell the place. Then, it will be there for the next owner. It's a really nice touch.

At the end of the main hallway, we have a small cabinet and more pictures. There's a castle cutout with the quote "To all who come to this happy place, WELCOME!" My in-laws presented me with this at our housewarming. I definitely cried.

Around the corner from the cabinet above, and in the back of the house is our yellow sitting room. I'm in love with our white fireplace that was like that when we moved in! We left the window treatments and decorated around them.

This is where our books live and the chairs from Weekends Only makes it a perfect nook for hanging out. It also opens into our kitchen which is exactly what we wanted.

Not quite as much counter space or cabinets as we would have hoped for but with those stainless steel appliances that were bought for the house before we put our offer in, how can I complain?!

The kitchen also has an eat-in kitchen. Love!

The door to the left is a double French door that leads out to the back patio.

We haven't done a lot to the outside, other than our small patio furniture and Hubs' new grill, but we will.

We've noticed that there are a ton of leaves that gather due to that big tree in the middle. It was so beautiful when the leaves turned but they fell so fast I couldn't get pictures. There's always next year!

There is plenty of space back here for expanding the patio or installing some kind of garden. We are really excited about the space!

The bedrooms and bathrooms are next!

Adventures in New iDevices

It's been a week without my iDevices and I'm going through withdrawal.

I mean, it's only a phone, right? It's only an iPad? What's the big deal?

It's a major #firstworldproblem and then some, I understand. But every time I come back to my desk and reach for my <fill in the blank iDevice> I am reminded all over again that someone came into my space and took something that wasn't theirs.

I spent the week updating the new phone, changing passwords, answering questions from the police and providing them with serial numbers, and borrowing my husband's iPad so I can watch Drop Dead Diva on Netflix from the comfort of my own bed.

Even with the office's new security policy and the increased awareness, it's still like someone broke into my home. And now I'm back at the desk every day and wonder who in the world could have stolen from me.

The police have used the word "victim" a few times when referring to me and my co-worker. I realize that that word technically does describe me now - a victim of petty theft. But it just seems that they're talking about someone else when they use that word. It almost makes me cringe. I never really thought of myself as a victim and I don't want to be.

Whatever they call, whether they find the stolen property or not, we're moving on. Nothing to be done - no Find My Phone feature to be activated - so we are pressing forward. We're working on the house, I'm running my events and getting excited about the fall and all the holidays. Life does go on, with or without iDevices.

Adventures in Stolen iDevices

With such a great weekend with my cousin and his wife in town, I was feeling pretty good on a Monday morning. I started the day with a good physical therapy session for my strained sacroilic (SI) pain that I've been experiencing in my lower back for the past few months and even was able to get coffee on the way into the office. Meetings went well, and then lunch at Pappy's Smokehouse with my cousin on their way out of town. All in all, good stuff.

I was back in the office for an event debriefing and was feeling pretty good about the productivity level of the day. Had even texted with the husband and confirmed some fun house shopping items for the evening - namely, a programmable thermostat and light switch plates! Awesome stuff, really.

When I got back to my desk, I noticed that my iPhone 3 in its pink silicone case was missing. It wasn't plugged into the headphones that were still lying on the desk where I had dropped them an hour before, pausing my music and headed into my 2 pm meeting.

I thought that was strange and started looking around. It was then that I noticed my iPhone 5 in its green and white polka dot case wasn't on the stand where I had left it. So I called it from my office phone but it rang and rang and went to voicemail, without me hearing the familiar "In the big, blue world!" from Finding Nemo the Musical at Disney World.

Huh. Maybe I left it in my cousin's car? I found his number via Google contacts and gave him a call from the landline. He and his wife looked throughout the car and it wasn't there. I called the smokehouse and no one had a lost phone there either.

I started to panic a bit. I opened every drawer around and enlisted my intern for help. Was it in the board room where I just was? The coffee closet? My car? The downstairs bathroom for some reason? Did anyone turn it into the front desk? No, no, no, no, no.

It was when I was describing to a co-worker what to look for when I realized my iPad in its purple stand up case wasn't on the carnival tickets I had purchased for this weekend's event and dropped on my desk this morning.

Three iDevices were sitting on my desk and all three were GONE. I called my phone number again and now it went straight to voicemail. Someone had taken it and turned it off, tired of the ringing.

Losing your phone is awful. Having it stolen truly is a violation. I feel like my arm has been cut off. I've lost about 500 photos since the last time I backed up and I've been working all afternoon to change every password I can think of.

We suspended the number and went to the AT&T store this evening to get a replacement. The store manager was able to approve a new phone for me, even thought I have a year left from being eligible for an upgrade. I had to sign up for the Next program, but even thought it's more per month, I can get a new phone in 12 months and go back to the 2 year contract if we want. But I have *MY* phone number. That's what I was most worried about. I've had this number for over 10 years and so many friends, family and event planning vendors have that number! When the customer service lady on the phone said I couldn't get it back without the physical phone, I freaked. Thank goodness for the store rep who set me straight and got everything set up.

Now I have to go back it up and reinstall things... so how's your Monday going?

Adventures in Warming a New Home

My new home is very, very, very warm. :)

We had our housewarming party yesterday and saw so many wonderful friends and co-workers happy smiling faces filling our new home. I feel very loved.

Everyone came bearing gifts - which I totally did not expect! We have a great supply of wines of all colors, little Disney knick-knacks to decorate our mantle and bookshelves, gift cards to the home improvement stores, and a very sweet set of things that might seem incongruous, but with the poem really made me cry.

Blessings for a New Home:

Bread - that this house may never know hunger.
Salt - that life may always have flavor.
Wine - that joy and prosperity may reign forever. 

There of course was bread and salt in the bag, and the biggest magnum of Riesling wine I'd ever seen! Along with those things, there were fall-themed kitchen towels and a pot holder. To add to it, she gave us a fluffy blanket to "warm" our new home. 

The blessing is from It's a Wonderful Life which I guess I should go watch now, huh? What an incredibly sweet present. I think I might end up making this my go-to housewarming gift.

P.S. I promise when my house is cleaned up after the party, I will take pictures and show you the new place!

Adventures in a New (to me) Decade

Today is a very exciting day.

At 10:57 p.m. this evening, I will have been on this earth for exactly thirty years.

30.

That seems like a huge number. It's a new decade. There's a new bigger number at the start of my age. I am no longer in my 20s.

A few weeks ago, I was apprehensive. People kept asking me what I wanted for my birthday (I never know) or what we should do to celebrate (I never have any ideas, even as event planner). The big 3-0 seemed to be looming and I didn't know what to do about it.

Growing up, I think that everyone looks to the ages of their friends parents or cousins or what have you and you imagine where you'll be at their age. 30 seemed very far away. But then again, I feel like I just turned 21 and made some really bad choices by accepting the Humphrey's birthday plunger that evening and then having to make it home up the hill outside the Laclede garage. ;)

I don't quite know where I thought I would be at 30. I always thought I would be married and perhaps I thought we might have kids at this point.

But in 30 years, I have had some amazing adventures. I've met the love of my life, traveled to Europe and Africa and all across the U.S, discovered my absolute obsession in Disney. I've been planning events (the ideal job for me, even if I didn't know it growing up) full time for almost six years. I've been a small business owner planning weddings for a year and a half. I've put a husband through law school and seen the joy in my love's eyes when he comes home happy from his day at the office. I bought a house.

Who knows what the next year, ten years, thirty years, sixty years holds? I know that I want to enjoy it. I want to travel the world with the love of my life. I want to expand our family. I want to end a day and actually complete all my to-do list.

I think I can make that happen.

Adventures in Disney's Missouri

It's been a crazy few weeks, but what's new?

After the funeral in northern Missouri, we were driving home on the state highways and saw the above sign. We knew we were close to Marcelline, but I had no idea where exactly it was! One of my mom's grandparents actually moved from the farm near the cemetery to Marcelline back in the day. So of course it would be relatively close and not clear across the state.

With my in-laws following behind us, we had to stop by the original Main Street. I had read a few blogs and heard some podcasters talk about their Marcelline experience. Even though we were having sort of a somber day, we had to stop by!

There's actually a museum right in town, a few blocks off the original Main Street. That was our first stop and there was a photo op (obviously!)!

The museum wasn't huge but started with a tour guide who gave us a brief overview of why a museum in the middle of Missouri and why Marcelline is important in the Disney story. The rest of the museum was a self-guided tour. 

For a Disney fan like me, I actually knew most of what the tour guide and the placards said. But still, a bit of Disney in Missouri?! I'll take it any day. 

The connections to the trains was really fun. The museum is situated right next to the tracks and over 70 trains per day come through! A few came barreling by while we were on our tour. One interesting fact? If the conductor is a Marcelline native, you'll hear additional train horns beyond the standard four that have to be given when coming through a town. If there are any more 'toots', it's a conductor saying hi to mom and dad! Isn't that fun?

 

After the museum, we drove the few blocks down to Main Street. This view really says it all. It's much wider than I anticipated but it does kind of feel like the one in Disneyworld! I can see the inspiration, definitely. Can you see the Uptown Theatre towards the middle and beyond the mini van? So neat.

 Such a fun view!

Zurcher's was the inspiration for Walt's Coke Corner or Casey's in Disneyworld, I believe. Behind this newer building, there was a Victorian facade that was there during Disney's time. 

What a road trip!