Jon and Lauren Are Gettin' Hitched!

Our friends are getting married!!! Eeeeek!!! I am over-the-moon excited for them!

They're gettin' married!!!

 Miguel and I really wanted to celebrate with them so we threw a little cookout at our house! It was thrown together pretty quickly so we just invited everyone with a Facebook invitation, but I created this in Photoshop to use as the picture in the event page. I was, of course, inspired off of something I saw on pinterest!

I love being crafty, so I made a banner using the cricut my parents gave me for my birthday! It was so much fun learning how to use that! Holy cow! I cannot wait to do so many more things with it! 

grrr, I didn't notice that the H and E in SHE were flipped over when I took this picture...

I also got Jon and Lauren's families involved by asking them to send me photos of the lovebirds from over the course of their relationship and from when they were little and . They really delivered and I had tons of fun looking through all the photos! If only I had had more time to do more with them! I had an open frame at the house (I was planning on making a jeweler y holder out of it, a la the one Mrs. Mills did) that I took and glued some twine to. Then I printed out some of my favorite photos of the future Mr. and Mrs. and clipped them to the twine using tiny clothespins. Two of my favorite pictures are of Lauren and Jon as children dressed in a wedding gown and tux! How perfect?! 

I couldn't stand not to use more of the pictures, so I created a slide show and had it playing on a loop on our TV during the party! I really got a kick out of surprising Jon and Lauren with this! I think they were genuinely tickled and surprised by it. Plus everyone else at the party enjoyed seeing a glimpse of Jon and Lauren from a time before we knew them! I had other songs playing on the slide show so there was never a lapse without music, but for some reason when converted to the YouTube video it only picked up one... but if you want to see the cuteness check it out below:

I was pretty worried all week that the party was going to get rained on since we were still dealing with the aftermath of Tropical Storm Beryl, however, the rain storm seemed to part around our house like the Red Sea. People got to our house and said they had actually driven through bad weather on their way there. We only briefly got sprinkled and that even wasn't bad enough for people to go inside!

I was actually pretty good about enjoying the night and didn't focus on taking an overwhelming amount of photos. But I did snap a few.

I love this moment captured here!

I got a top hat for Jon to wear and made a veil for Lauren... but at some point in the night I borrowed Jon's hat =)

Love this girl!

The dogs had fun too!

We had a good time celebrating with friends! I'm so thankful that Jon and Lauren chose to start their lives together here in Savannah and that we have had the pleasure of getting to know them over the past year and a half! I'm excited to see what the future holds for these two! =)

Plus, isn't Lauren going to make a beautiful bride?!

Puppy Crutches?

Emma and I have spent the morning at the vet. Unlike Jack who thinks the vet is a great opportunity to make new friends and investigate all sorts of interesting smells, Emma chooses to have panic attacks. So basically I spent the last hour on the floor of the vet trying to comfort a very upset dog while at the same time gallons of dog saliva and pounds of tiny black dog hairs collected all over my clothes.

Yesterday Jack and Emma were rough housing and Emma ended up hurting her leg. For the past 24 hours she hasn't put any weight on it and has been hobbling around like a three-legged dog. Actually, Emma is pretty impressive and agile with only three legs, but I'd still prefer her to have four working legs!

Emma protested to the vet in every way. She whined and whimpered so much that it brought tears to my eyes and gave the vet a very hard time trying to determine where exactly it hurt on her leg. We ended up having an X-ray taken of her leg and paw. Thankfully there are no breaks. The vet has Emma on some anti-inflamatories for the week to help the swelling and pain go down. He also told Emma to "take it easy". If anyone knows a good way to explain this to Jack I'd be eternally grateful... =)

I've put a blanket down on the couch and let Emma get up there to rest. It seems to be the only solution I've come up with so far to separate the dogs. In theory they know they're not allowed on the couch so Jack should leave Emma alone up there...

... unless you go to grab something from the other room and come back to this...

Invisible Fence UPDATE

A while back I wrote about installing our invisible fence for the dogs. Someone recently asked for an update so here one is =)

The decision to get an electric fence has definitely been a good one for us. We only have a small section of the driveway where the dogs might run off, the rest of our backyard is blocked. 

The dogs respect the fence. They've only zapped themselves right at the beginning when they were learning how to use the fence. Now they put some space between themselves and the fence. So much so now that we let them outside quite often without their collars on. 

Emma modeling her collar-free neck while looking down the driveway at our neighbors

Jack modeling his collar-free neckline.

I will say that Emma did run over the fence last month. We hadn't put her collar on her in a couple of weeks and I think she had been testing how far down the driveway she could get without getting zapped. Well, a man walked his dog in our yard and Emma decided she couldn't stand his taunting anymore. I don't know if it was the fact that she hadn't been zapped in a while, or the fact that a dog was marking "her" yard, or a combination of both, but she took off after the dog. Jack, being a follower, took off after Emma. I have seen other dogs walk by our house, and have seen squirrels and cats in our yard without Emma running after them... so all in all I think the fence has been a great choice and has served us really well!

Hope that is a helpful update!

Twenty-Six

I just want to do a quick blog post about my 26th birthday! My parents came into town to visit and celebrate the weekend after my birthday (since the actual day fell in the the middle of the week). Friday night my parents tagged along with Miguel and me to a work event. The event was a silent and live auction/dinner to raise money for our Priceless Gifts Campaign. I'm so glad my parents were able to attend. We had a blast and I enjoyed introducing my co-workers to my family. My parents won some fun items including a vacation rental property for a week on Prince Edward Island! Can't wait to take that trip with family! I'm going to pretend I'm Anne (that's Anne with an E) while I'm up there! A friend of mine, Izzy, generously donated a photography session for the auction and my parent's won it as an anniversary gift for Miguel and me! We are super pumped! You should totally check out her work!! (Is 26 too old to say words like "totally"?)

I feel completely overwhelmed with love from my friends and family! I got spoiled with lots of cards and gifts and even two birthday cakes! Miguel surprised me with a cake from my favorite bakery (YUM)! My co-workers also brought an amazingly delicious cake to work to celebrate and they even decorated my desk too! 

 

I also love how everyone embraced my princess-themed birthday! Look at all these pink, girly, glittery, cards I received! =)

Like I previously said, I am overwhelmed with how blessed I am in my family, friends, and co-workers! I got totally spoiled! I want to brag about all the cool gifts I received but will limit myself to two (because these took cool pictures)...

Amy was so kind and brought me a beautiful hanging plant for our patio. I love this! It makes me happy every time I see it! You can see it from our family room which is an extra plus!

I also opened this cute wooden block that says, "All you need is love... and a DOG"! LOVE it!!!! I wish so badly I could say I remember who gave this to me (if you did please, please let me know!!!). I was too eager opening all my gifts that I was a bad birthday girl and didn't keep track of what came from who... sorry! 

I am so blessed. I thank God for 26 wonderful years and pray that the next 26 bring more blessings and joy and that I learn to love God more deeply!

OH! And Happy National Princess Week! Remember... Princess is a state of mind! ;)

"What Is A Weekend?"

Last weekend my mom introduced me to the wonderful show Downton Abbey. If you haven't heard of it, quickly go to PBS.org and check it out! To quote one of my favorite characters, Dowager Countess of Grantham, "What is a week-end?". Well, Dowager Countess, a weekend is my favorite part of the whole week and Miguel and I spent Saturday morning enjoying it thoroughly! 

To start, we headed down the street to Thunderbolt and took some pictures of the shrimping boats and dock. We love our new lens! Thanks again Amadors! We hadn't spent time down by the water in a few months and it was so nice to soak it all in again. The weather was so perfect too! A January day in the 70's! 

I did some construction work while we were taking pictures too... thought I'd help out a little, you know?

Next we headed on to the farmers market at Forsyth Park. Miguel and I like to go there every Saturday morning and pick up some local greens and meat. This week we picked up some eggs that we just scrambled this morning. YUM! We also picked up some potatoes and cherry tomatoes that we are planning on making a meal out of tonight!

After the farmers market each weekend, we head to Zunzi's for our traditional Saturday lunch. We had some time to kill before it opened so Miguel and I walked around Forsyth Park and enjoyed the nice weather for a bit. We still had the camera with us from the marina so I snapped a few pictures.

I love all the Spanish Moss that hangs from the trees here in Savannah!

The weather was so nice and there was just a really good vibe and energy in the park yesterday! I want everyone to visit Savannah and experience the park on a good Saturday morning! I think it would be very hard not to fall in love with the city after such a visit! Families hung out enjoying the play ground and riding their bikes, SCAD students were filming, people read books on the benches, and there was a Zumba class taking place at the pavilion.

This picture makes us look like we were the only people in the park =) I just keep thinking how much fun the dogs would have if they had free reign to run here!

After lunch (OMG YUM!) Miguel and I took our traditional after Zunzis nap and slept really well and hard! After we woke up with took the dogs to the new dog park. The dogs always have so much more fun when Miguel goes with them because he plays with them much more than I do. 

The park was really busy! Everyone was enjoying the nice Spring Winter weather! Jack is always more social at the dog park and Emma seems more interested in chasing tennis balls or running around investigating things.

Miguel, the dogs and I really enjoyed our Saturday! Ughhhh, why do Sundays always come so fast?!? I'm going to stop blogging now and try to enjoy the last day of the weekend! It's rainy here today, so it looks like it may be a lounge in PJ's and watch movies sort of day! Happy weekend everyone!!!

Daffin

The dogs and I ventured out today to check out a new dog park that opened up right around the corner! They loved it! It's shady and has loads and loads of space to run around. I tried to snap some pictures of them playing, but Jack was really just to quick and busy running around to let me get many of him. 

Look at all that space!

I'm looking forward to taking Emma and Jack here more in the future! So much fun!