Zac's First Father's Day

On Sunday, we celebrated Zac's first Father's Day. How adorable are my boys?!

I'm quite fortunate. Not only is Zac an amazing husband, but he's also an incredible daddy. He was so fantastic throughout my whole pregnancy. I am grateful that he was able to make it to every doctor visit, happily took my picture every week to document our growing baby, made sure I had vitamins and plenty of water, took care of my cravings when appropriate and wasn't afraid to deny me cravings when I wanted something super sugary or fatty, and told me I looked beautiful even on days that I felt like a moose and bawled my eyes out. I couldn't have gone through the delivery without him and after we were home, he was the best caregiver in helping me through recovery. Seeing him with Zane is incredible. The love I have for my family is overwhelming. Zac is great with our little guy and I look forward to seeing their relationship grow. Zane is a lucky little boy to have a daddy who will teach him to be handy, to be a gentleman, the importance of hard work, and who will no doubt be a great role model and show him how to be a good husband and daddy.

Our celebration started with a Sunday brunch at home cooked by me. I nursed Zane and then left my boys to sleep in while I got everything ready. I was able to get a trip to the store by myself this week in between feedings. (That was the quickest trip to Target I've EVER had!) I picked up some streamers and balloons to decorate our dining room for the occasion. I also picked up a couple of Father's Day cards. (One from Zane of course.)

I'm not a good cook so I opted to keep the breakfast items simple. I also made a few different things so that Zac could have options. I wasn't above making a quick run to Uncle Harry's if none of my items turned out delicious. (I'm not kidding when I say that I am not a good cook!) So while the boys slept I made turkey bacon, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, and waffles. To go along with the waffles I put together a little waffle toppings bar with blueberries, strawberries, banana, honey, cool whip, butter,and peanut butter.

As a gift from me, Zac recieved a bottle of Gentleman Jack as well as a few metal yard stakes that hold drinks. I've come home from work on more than one occasion to find Zac in the backyard laying on the day bed, reading a book, and drinking a beer. I thought it might be nice for him to not worry about spilling his beer in the grass.

Zane's gift was a little more personal. Somehow he managed to get a few wooden letters, set up the camera, and snap these amazingly adorable little pictures of himself to give to his daddy. Okay, so he may have had a little bit of help. I found this cute idea on Pinterest while looking around for Father's Day ideas and knew that this would be the perfect gift for Zac. One afternoon while Zac was at work I got Zane all set in his nursery and snapped a few photos. Unfortunately, those original photos didn't work out. I used my camera to snap them and when they were printed they came out a bit blurry. I wasn't happy with them, so Zane and I had a reshoot. I found a cute white frame at Michael's Craft Store and with a coupon was able to swoop it up for for just over $2! To see Zac's face when he saw the gift, I would have paid $200 for that frame. Zac had tears in his eyes when he spotted the frame on the breakfast table (I didn't have time to wrap it) and insisted that we find a place in the house to put it where he could see it every day.

After breakfast, we headed to the grocery store for some junk food and a few items to complete our dinner menu. Zac's parents brought down some of their Chapman beef a while back and we've slowly been pulling packets of meat from our deep freezer in the garage for meals here and there. For Father's Day Zac thought that it was only appropriate to get his grill on so we were having steaks. We took it easy that afternoon just hanging out at home and taking a little nap. That evening we enjoyed our steak and potato dinner and waited for the sun to go down and the summer air to cool off a bit. When the night was finally cool enough we headed to the backyard to lay on the daybed with some strawberry shortcake dessert and watched a mini marathon of The Office on our iPad. Our backyard is softly lit by paper lanterns that hang from our awning to the trees along the back fence. With the lights and the sound of the water rolling down the fountain into our pond, our backyard is pretty magical. It was the perfect way to end a fantastic day.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there!

To my dad: a man of few words, who gave an amazing speech on my wedding day and brought me to tears.

To Zac's dad: one of the sweetest, and kind hearted men I have ever met, and a man that Zac admires greatly.

And to the newest daddy, celebrating his first Father's Day! Happy Father's Day Zac!

Today is going to be a great day. I can't wait to share my little surprise with him this morning.

Our First Anniversary Celebration

On Saturday May 4 Zac and I celebrated our one year anniversary. It's incredible how quickly this year has gone by. We weren't sure if we were going to end up at the hospital on our anniversary since Zane could be arriving at anytime, so we opted not to make plans that were too crazy. We weren't going to be heading out of town and obviously being nine months pregnant wine or beer tasting was out of the question. (Ha ha.) And we didn't want to have some incredibly expensive dinner at a restaurant. (I don't have any cute dresses that fit as dresses anymore, anyway.) We talked about what to do for our anniversary as it grew closer and after realizing that this could potentially be the last full day that we both had together just the two of us (Zac works 5-6 days a week) we thought that it would be wonderful to have a romantic day at home.

We knew that no matter what we ended up doing throughout the day, at the end of the night we wanted to cut into the top tier of our wedding cake. The small red velvet cake wth buttercream frosting had been wrapped up tight in our freezer for the last 365 days.

We were happy to find that when we finally unwrapped it from the box and set it out to thaw that it had held up very well. It had only lost a few of its pearl details and still looked gorgeous and tasty.

Zac thought that it would be fantastic to recreate the dinner from our wedding. We had an amazing dinner that evening so I was all for it! We looked up the menu we had chosen from our venue and made a shopping list. The day before our anniversary while I laid in bed resting with my feet up, Zac went grocery shopping and spent the afternoon prepping food for our anniversary dinner before he headed off to work for the night. (I seriously have the most amazing husband ever!)

Zac and I spent the afternoon of our anniversary hanging out together. It was nice to have an entire day to spend with my love. For lunch we enjoyed a recreation of appetizers served at our cocktail hour. The bbq meatballs were fantastic! We pulled out our guestbook that was made up of photos from our photobooth. Guests were able to take pictures in the booth and leave messages for us. Our photographer, Tess, of Van's Studio caught the fun and excitement over at the photobooth. It was a big hit and we were so happy that we had it at the reception.  

Zac and I were cracking up as we looked through the guestbook. The faces that were being made, the costumes, and the comments are all priceless. It's such a fantastic keepsake from our wedding.

That evening, Zac started dinner and I pulled out our anniversary china we received as a wedding gift (Mikasa Love Story dinnerware found here) and our wedding toasting flutes (Waterford Wishes Happy Celebrations found here) for the occasion.

Before dinner Zac and I sat down to watch our wedding video. At 5:00pm (the same time that our wedding was scheduled to begin) we pressed play and took in the whole day. (Check out our wedding video at the end of the blog post here or our highlights video in this post here.) I can't explain how happy we are that we have this record of our wedding. It was so great to be able to watch us say our vows to one another and remember how excited we were on that day.

Dinner was AMAZING! Zac did a fantastic job recreating the meal. The salmon, the steak...everything was delicious! Zac will have to pass his cooking skills on to Zane because that is not a skill he will be able to pick up from me. When we had finished dinner we used the cake knife from our wedding to cut into our cake. The Michael Buble station on Pandora had been playing throughout our dinner. Right as we cut the cake "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch" by The Temptations started. We laughed because this was the song that played when we cut the cake at our wedding. Nicely done Pandora...nicely done.

When dinner and dessert were complete it was time to exchange gifts. The first anniversary is traditionally the paper anniversary. I'm not going to lie. This had me quite stumped for a while. I like to think that I'm a pretty good gift giver but when restricted to a material I felt a little lost. Giftcards were lame and most were plastic anyways. There were no concerts or events coming up that I could get tickets for. With baby on the way buying train tickets for a trip out of town was not a smart idea. In the end I turned to Pinterest for some ideas (big shocker!). I found a fantastic idea (and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't bookmark the link!)....a gift that kept on giving. For Zac, I created a "Sunday Jar". In the jar I placed 52 pieces of scrapbook paper. On each paper there are date ideas, gifts, treats, activities, etc.. Each Sunday, Zac will be able to pick out a paper from the jar to redeem that day or to use throughout the week. The papers have things like: get a bag of coffee, go for a family walk, Daddy needs a new shirt, beer tasting date with the wifey, lazy day in bed. I was happy that Zac's smile got bigger and bigger as he read through each piece of paper in the jar. He pulled his first one, "get a new book" the following day.

Next was my turn. Zac had me stay downstairs in the dining room while he ran upstairs to get my gift. A few minutes had passed and I was beginning to wonder what was taking him so long. A few minutes after that he came down with a smile on his face and extended a hand for me to take. He asked me to close my eyes and he carefully led me up the stairs. Once we reached the top of the stairs and made a right I knew that we were headed into Zane's room. I stood in what I could only assume was the middle of the room for a few moments with my eyes closed as I waited for permission to open them and take a peek at what Zac had in store. I could hear Zac moving around and after smelling matches I knew that he was lighting candles. Soon I could hear "A Kiss to Build A Dream On" (the song we had our first dance to) and Zac told me that I could open my eyes. There in front of me was Zac on one knee, holding out a ring box, a "Marry Me!" banner hung behind him. I couldn't help but cry. Here was my husband, proposing all over again in the same way that he had proposed the first time, using the exact same banner. (I had no idea that he still had it.) (Read all about how Zac proposed here and see how he surprised me a year later here.) I was so blown away by the romantic gesture that I hadn't even taken a good look at my ring.

Zac explained that the banner was the paper part of my gift. The other part of my gift was the addition of a band to my ring that represented our first year of marriage and our first baby. He said he hoped I didn't mind that he killed two birds with one stone giving me something that was both an anniversary gift and a push present all in one. I told him he killed three birds....no Mother's Day gift needed! The ring is absolutely stunning. My poor hands are still crazy swollen and unfortunately the ring only fits on my pinky right now. I can't wait until my hands go back to normal and I can wear this gorgeous, sparkly number on my hand again. I've missed it these last ten weeks. Zac thought that I for sure knew what my gift was. As we were watching our wedding video I had made a comment about how pretty my ring was and how much I missed wearing it. He figured that I had found my empty ring box and put it together that he was adding a band to it. He was wrong. I had no idea... I just really love my ring!

We ended our evening relaxing in bed together watching a movie. I've been exhausted lately and at around 8:30 my eyes started to feel heavy. We got a good giggle thinking that we were laying in bed when at that time one year before we were getting the party started on the dance floor at our reception. Next year we'll probably be having our bedtime routine with our almost one year old.

I couldn't have asked for a better year or a more perfect anniversary with my Zac. I know that we only have more great things in store for us. I'm so lucky to have him!

Post Valentine's Day Wrap Up

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day yesterday!

Zac and I decided to spend a casual afternoon together. Since we have less than 80 days left until the wedding (so exciting!!!) and with so much left to do it would be really silly to spend a bunch of money on expensive gifts, a fancy dinner, etc. Zac and I both work in restaurants so we normally work on this holiday. I was lucky enough to get the day off this year but Zac had a closing shift in the evening. Working in restaurants we know that its better to stay away from the craziness and we typically eat at home on Valentine's day, but yesterday we decided to get some lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant before getting some fun wedding related things done. At lunch Zac gave me this adorable card:

The next stop on our Valentine's Day afternoon plan was to Rogers Jewelry to pick out Zac's wedding band. While Zac tried on rings his smile got bigger and bigger. In the whole 6.5 years we've been together I've never seen Zac wear a ring. There were a couple that looked good on him but in the end we chose this one:

Zac loves it and is excited to wear it. As soon as we got in the car to leave Rogers, he opened the box and put the ring on. I asked him what he was doing and he told me that it wasn't fair that I've been able to wear my engagement ring for over a year now and he hasn't been able to show off a ring of his own. We decided that Valentine's day was his day to wear his ring. He took it off before he went to work but as soon as he got home at 10:30 pm he put it right back on because he still had 1.5 hours until the day was over. I thought it was the cutest thing ever. 

From Rogers Jewelry we headed to the post office. Our invitations are completely done (I'll be sharing the details later) and all they need are stamps to be sent out. We needed stamps for the RSVP card envelopes and we took a sample invitation with us to be weighed so that we knew what the postage would be to send the invitations out as well. The lady at the post office was very nice. After getting us a coil of stamps for the RSVP envelopes, she brought over a few selections of $0.65 stamps for us to choose from for the invitations. In the end we decided on a butterfly print. (It was much better than the cartoon dogs option.)

By the time we were done with the post office, Zac and I had just enough time to snuggle and watch a movie before he had to go to work. When Zac left, I got to work on our wedding invitations. It took me an hour and a half to stamp each rsvp card, stuff the invitations, and stamp and seal each envelope. I felt quite accomplished when it was all over.

It's exciting to see all of those invitations ready to be mailed out. It means that our wedding day is getting closer and what could be more exciting than that?! Pretty soon the RSVP cards will be coming in! I love getting mail, and hearing back from our guests will be the best mail, ever!

To celebrate my accomplishment, I snuggled on the couch with my little Valentine, Jim, had a fire roaring in the fireplace, enjoyed a glass of champagne, and caught up on The Bachelor.

It was a fantastic Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day - Love, Jim

Happy Valentines's Day!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day today! Zac and I are going to be spending the afternoon together, looking at rings for the mister, getting lunch, and sending out our wedding invitations. :)

We aren't the only ones celebrating this lovey dovey holiday. Our own Mr. Jim has sent out a few Valentine's Day cards to some of his puppy friends (all ladies of course). He thinks he's quite the ladies' man. Here is one of his girls, Molly Monroe.

Isn't she quite the cutie? Jim thought so, too. He sent her this little card to wish her a Happy Valentine's Day.

Oh puppy love!

1 Year Anniversary

January 14th was the one year anniversary of the day that Zac proposed. I can't believe that a year has gone by so quickly. Zac and I definitely wanted to celebrate the occasion, so we headed out for a champagne breakfast that morning before I had to go to work.

While I was at work, Zac and I texted one another and discussed what we thought we should do to celebrate. We decided that it would only be fitting to get P.F. Changs takeout and have a candle lit dinner like we had done that same day just one year earlier.

After I got off work, I came home and had a chance to relax. Zac told me to hang out in our room because he was preparing a surprise downstairs and he didn't want me to see it just yet. After a while we headed out to pick up dinner and dessert.

When we got home, Zac had me wait in the car for a few minutes so he could finish setting up the surprise. When I was finally allowed to come into the house, I was greeted by candles and a beautifully set dining room table.

As beautiful as the table was, I had no idea that it wasn't the real surprise. In reality it turned out to be a decoy dinner table. Zac started to get the food plated and as we were about to sit down to dinner we headed into the garage instead. There in the same place that Zac got down on one knee was a table set for two. The floor of the garage was covered in white balloons and there were candles everywhere.

Zac had soft music playing in the background and the room was decorated with our wedding colors. It was the sweetest thing!

It was the most perfect way to spend our proposal anniversary together.

Love is in the Air

We all know that weddings can get to be pretty expensive. Zac and I have been watching our spending and resisting the urge to splurge on big items or go out to eat often. Our families are also giving us some help (which we are unbelievably grateful for!!!) in having a beautiful wedding. Though we couldn't afford to splurge and take a mini vacation or road trip, Zac and I weren't going to let our budget get in our way of having a good time on our anniversary. We decided to have a laid back celebration together at home. It's nice to think that this time next year we will perhaps be on our honeymoon. Plus years from now when we're married with children we'll look back on the celebration of our sixth year together and remember it as the year that we were saving for our wedding. It's a sweet thought.

Before we settled in for a nice evening in we had a whole afternoon of fun planned. First we went shopping for supplies to work on what we're calling 'Project Wonderland' (don't worry...we'll be revealing details later about this fun project in the near future) and secondly, we were meeting up with some friends and co-workers of mine to have some drinks and celebrate the union of Josh and Matt who are newly married. After a little rearranging of plans we all met up at Chevy's to celebrate over margaritas. Here are some shots from the afternoon.

Gabe and Danielle being goofy.

I love my Mattie!

Josh and Mattie as cute as ever! Congratulations guys!

Claire-bear enjoying a margarita.

Just the girlies....Danielle, me, and Claire.

Bailey and Jeremy just started dating. Aren't they so cute.

Love was definitely in the air.

Miss Kelly giving us a cheesy smile.

Hey, hey, Natalie!

This was a fun moment. Anyone want to guess what was going on in Mattie's mind at this moment?

A little goofy after one margarita.

Danielle always does a self portrait at ocassions like this.

The margaritas really were yummy.

Anniversary kisses...even if he was eating chips and wasn't ready for it. \

Of course we couldn't end the afternoon without a silly moment from Mr. Mattie.

I just love him.

We had such a good time catching up with everyone, joking, laughing, and celebrating.

When the afternoon of margaritas at Chevy's was over, Zac and I began our prepping for our anniversary date night in. We decided that rather than making a big dinner at home we would put together a bunch of little treats to snack on during our movie. Having never been into Whole Foods (I'm sure a hear some gasping out there...no we've never been to Whole Foods) we decided to venture into the grocery store to get everything we needed for a yummy spread.

Fresh ciabatta bread, a variety of cheeses (swiss, smoked gouda, mounster, sharp cheddar, pepper jack, and a goat gouda), and an assortment of crackers.

White chocolate, milk chocolate, dark choclate.

Strawberries, apple, and wine to go with the chocolate.

Zac also made some yummy bruschetta using the ciabatta bread, tomatoes, basil, and olive oil.

In the end we had quite a spread that included 2 mini pizzas (one that had some delicious egglplant on it), ciabatta bread, bruschetta, organic white bread, chocolate, apple, strawberries, hummus, cheese, wine, and champagne.

Zac and I had a wonderful night together just hanging out in our house, watching movies and snacking. It couldn't have been a better way to spend our 6 year anniversary...just being home.