Life's been busy as heck lately and starting this weekend, it will only get crazier. I'm TIRED. And I need SLEEP. Thank goodness I'm off from 12/24-1/2! Mama needs it.

I just wanted to stop in and say HI! I also wanted to share a few of the pictures from our Family/Christmas photo session this past weekend with my way-too-awesome friend Elizabeth. We all love the Pearl Brewery so when she recommended it for pictures, I was all for it! (I've talked about the Pearl before here when we double family dated with Elizabeth :) It was around 4:30 and V had JUST fallen asleep in the car on the way over so needless to say, she was pretty grumpy at different times during the session. Yeesh. But Elizabeth is a pro and got some good ones!

Some of the pictures were taken in the book store just for something different and to kill some time until the Christmas lights got turned on around the Pearl. We had a good time with the shoot even if I kept on begging her to not take a shot of me with full on double chin or bent over. hahaha. She's patient though and understood :) We used four pictures on our Christmas card so I'm not posting those yet but here's a few of the rest. Elizabeth sent us like 30 images! She's amazing, to say the least.

This candid shot just makes me laugh. I have NO idea what we were doing here.

weekend update

This weekend...

• We coffee tasted at the SA Coffee Fest. It was so fun to go downtown and do something different! Things can get stale when you live in the same city your whole life so we're always up for fun, new outings! And how often do you get to do coffee tastings, right? It was free admission and just $5 for a four-cup tasting! I could only handle 3 cups so my big strong man took one for the team and had a total of 5 cups ;) He wasn't even wired afterwards! The fact that it was 80 degrees out was kind of annoying but we stayed in the shade and had a good time!

• I took V to her first wedding. I wasn't in the mood to go but I went anyway and even let Ronnie off the hook so he could stay home and rest after a long week at school. I was glad we went when I realized many of my out-of-town cousins were there and hadn't met V yet! She did ok for a while but as it got later and she got more tired, combined with loud music, hoards of people in her face and teething - so long to my quiet kid. We managed though and had fun spending a little time with family. Since I forgot my good camera at home, you get these 2 crappy pics of my mom, sis, me and V ;)

• V said "dada" for the first time and of course, it made his entire life. I put her in an I Love Daddy onesie yesterday to commemorate the occasion ;)
• I put up my little DIY Christmas letters that I made last week and it finally put me in the Christmas decorating mood. (mini tutorial on the blog later this week!)
• I got to spend some cuddle time with the dogs. Poor guys are starving for attention since V came along :/
• I did get some time alone when Ronnie took V to the grocery store and I organized her mountain of clothes. Her room finally doesn't look like an episode of Hoarders.

Mondays get here way too fast, man. I could use some more time at home. How was your weekend?

Champagne taste on a kool-aid budget

So a friend of mine put this crazy idea in my head this past week. He's a pastor and said he would be performing (is that the right word? ha) a wedding on the Friday after Thanksgiving, downtown at a RiverWalk hotel and it would be right at the the time of the Christmas tree lighting and when all the lights along the river get turned on, along with the River Parade.. How perfect, huh?!! So I thought, what better of a day and place for US to get married next year! I've always loved downtown so I was shocked that I never thought of the idea myself. Especially with how much I love downtown during Christmas time!

So Ronnie & I had plans for a double date on Friday to actually go downtown for the Christmas River Parade so we were excited to have the chance to really look at which hotels had the best view, etc... Once we got there, I took note of all of the hotels that face the river, lighting, etc.. And I started researching pricing as soon as I could..and just as I suspected, with a wedding my size, to have it at one of these hotels would be around $20,000. Yeah, not so much.

So my dream was short lived and now I'm on the lookout for ANYONE who has connections at these hotels. Because what I'm hearing is that the Friday/Saturday after Thanksgiving is a perfect time because it's usually wide open availability. (Which would mean changing dates but that's OK w/me!) But as far as pricing? I need help! I either need to hit the lottery, find a hook-up or just move on.. I have a feeling it will be the latter.. I will be sprinkling some fairy dust or maybe some fake snow in hopes that we can find a way to pull this off!

I want so badly to get married downtown at that time...because of this:

(Source)

and this:

(Source)

and super romantical things such as this:

(Source)

These are all pictures I found of our downtown and just looking through all of the ones I found really sealed the deal.

WE.MUST.GET.MARRIED.DOWNTOWN....

ON 11/26 OR 11/27/2010 :)

I'm hoping for a Christmas miracle!!! :)