Happy Father's Day...

... to the man who taught me how to tell a story.

... to the man who always believes in me.

... to the man who introduced me to my passion.

... to the man that keeps my head on my shoulders, and my feet on the ground.

... to the man who always makes me laugh.

... to the man who loved me first.

Happy Father's Day to all fathers in the world, but especially to mine.

Where the heck have you BEEN?

I think that this is my longest time not posting since I started this blog.  First, I will apologize.  Since we got back from the honeymoon, I've been meaning to write a blog post, but then I would get distracted or busy (you'll see why further down), and not write.  Oh, and my cute little Dell Mini has a really little brain, and since it's two and a half years old now, it decided that it should move slower than a little old man.  It's really annoying.  


Anyway, this post is going to cover quite a few topics, so I'm going to keep each topic as short as I know how, and I'll include pictures (real camera pictures, not drawings...).


I'll start with the wedding, since it was a pretty big life change and all.  In short - you all did an amazing job planning our wedding and we really couldn't be happier.  The day was more perfect than I could have ever imagined.  There weren't any problems throughout the day, but to be fair - if there were, someone else handled them which was awesome.  Anyway, our photographer and videographer did the most AMAZING job.  I seriously could look at the pictures ALL THE TIME.  


Here is the website for ALL of the wedding pictures: 


http://www.pictage.com/1235231

Event key: love

There is only a week left for you to see all of the pictures, so if you'd like to order them, you only have a week.  Unfortunately, I can't put the pictures on my blog right now because of copyright, but eventually I'll be able to show them to you!


Here is a link to the blog post that the photographer did with a sneak peek of the photos.


And here is a link to the wedding video.  I could watch it all the time!! 


So yes, it really was one of the best days of my life, and it went as quickly as everyone told me it would.  It's kind of funny because I only actually remember bits and pieces of the day, almost like I was in a trance.  I CAN tell you that one of my absolute favorite parts of the day was when the priest introduced us to the church as Mr. and Mrs. Peter Romenesko.  Looking out at all of the people clapping and seeing how happy everyone was.  That was my favorite.  The priest said it very well to us - he said that this is one of the only times in our lives that so many people who love us and care for us will be in one place, and we'll be able to see all of them.  I'm smiling just thinking about it!!


One of the BEST decisions that we made in the two and a half months of wedding planning was going on our honeymoon the day after the wedding.  Seriously.  SUCH a good decision.  Peter and I were so busy between planning and work that we both needed the entire week (I could have stayed for another!) to wind down and do nothing.  It. was. amazing.  We went to an all-inclusive resort in St. Thomas.  I can't even start to say how great it was.  SO great.


The weather was really nice while we were there.  It was overcast every day, and only one day of rain.  At first I was a little depressed about all of the clouds all the time, but then my skin was very happy, because I would wear a lower SPF to get some color, and I didn't get burned at all because of the cloud cover.  The last day and a half that we were there had zero clouds and 100% sun.  It was actually quite beneficial to have the last part of our trip in the full-on sun because I was able to sweat off all of the pina coladas and strawberry daquiris that I drank junk that I ate during the week.

Someone didn't listen to his wife when she told him to wear sunscreen.  Poor Peter's legs were RED HOT SUNBURNED, so for the entire week he had to have a towel over them.

Since there were only 2 of us, we had to take a lot of self-pictures.  We got pretty good at it!

The hotel had a pool bar, and the iguanas always relaxed there.  So we didn't.

Sick.

The ocean was SO beautiful.  Amazingly clear.  We spent 90% of our time laying on the beach.

The view we had from the beach every day.

This was the rainy day.  Note my hair.  So gross.

The REAL reason that we were never at the hotel bar was because  there were a lot of other honeymooners there that were way more fun than Peter and me.  While we were reading on the beach and making friends with couples that have been married for 15 years, the other honeymooners were doing body shots at the pool bar.  Clearly our scene, but we decided that since we were married now we shouldn't do body shots anymore.  

Even though I made fun of him at the time, I'm really glad that Peter did this - he made a little video every day about our trip.  He just has such a great voice for voice-overs.  My little MC.

If you can believe it, this was the view straight down from our balcony on the second floor.  You can see the bottom of the ocean!  Isn't that so great??

I FORCED Peter to go snorkeling one day.  Maybe sometime he'll tell you the story about why he is afraid of snorkeling.  It has to do with snorkeling in Disney World when he was 12 and getting yelled at and swallowing a bunch of water.  After he told me that, he kept expressing that he did NOT want to snorkel, and after I had FINALLY convinced him, I told him that I changed my mind and didn't want him to snorkel.  I was very afraid that he would have a panic attack in the middle of the ocean.  So, loving wife that I am, I told him that although I am a good swimmer (ten years of swimming lessons at Badger High), I wasn't a good enough swimmer to save him if he had a panic attack.  And I would be very sad if he drowned on our honeymoon.  (He didn't, so that's good news.)

Look at us looking all nice on the last night of our honeymoon.  We were all set to go on a sunset cruise, but then it was lightning and stuff, and I read somewhere that it was kind of dangerous to be out in the middle of a body of water on a hunk of metal while it's lightning.  Needless to say, the resort cancelled our cruise.  But at least we got a nice picture! 

When we got back from the honeymoon, we had to get back into our real, non-inclusive resort lives where we had to pay for drinks and ice cream.  Bummer.  


The good news is that it was much less difficult than I had anticipated returning to work.  During all of the wedding planning madness, I got a promotion at work - so that's exciting!!  So I was not only returning to work with a new last name, but a new job title and office.

Getting back into the real world also meant that there wasn't a maid to clean our living area and make the bed every day.  Lucky for me, I am a REALLY organized person, so parts of our apartment looked like this within like, one day of being back in the real world.

Unfortunately, MOST of our apartment looked like this:

Why is it so hard for me to put the squirt bottle back in the closet after I iron??

Maybe because I can't even put the ironing board away after I iron (right side of the picture).  And I just KNOW that there's a carpet under all of those boxes SOMEWHERE...

Absolute WORST part of coming back from vacation: unpacking.  

Nevermind.  REAL absolute worst part of coming back from vacation is all the LAUNDRY.

We spent about a week jumping over boxes with our dinner and eating in front of the TV.  Mom, I'm so sorry.

Where did these things even COME from??  

For approximately one week I just dreaded coming home from work because of the above was the mess that I had to come home to.  It was so much stuff that I just didn't even know where to start.  So I dedicated myself to unpacking one box at a time.  And then, it was super motivating when I could see the ENTIRE living room floor.  So once that was taken care of, I was ready to take on everything else.  


And then Peter's parents came up to finish moving ALLLLLL of his stuff from his old apartment into our apartment.  So we started all over again.  But that was all taken care of fairly quickly, because I was sick of having stuff all over the place all the time.  


So now, Peter and I are 6 weeks into wedded bliss.  Things are going very well, although it is quite an adjustment living with someone after you've had an entire two bedroom apartment all to yourself for a year and a half.  


Because Peter and I are so used to being apart, we thought it would be best to be apart as MUCH as possible.  So this last week I went to Mexico for a work conference, this coming week Peter will be in Washington state for three days, and then next week I'll be out west for 10 days touring beef ranches with a group of Brazilians.  You know, we thought it would be best to ease ourselves into the whole roommates for life thing.... 


While I was in Mexico, everyone was giving me a hard time for being away from my new husband so soon.  My friend from Brazil told me that it was better this way because then when we're together it will be like we're on our honeymoon all the time since we're not together all the time.  Good thing we don't have much of a choice but to test it out!


I'll be perfectly honest - I do miss Peter when I'm traveling.  (And he SAYS he misses me, but I think that he REALLY likes being able to play video games all the time and eat as much frozen pizza as he wants.)


So, that's been the last six weeks in a nutshell.  I'm going to try my best to post more, because I actually dislike very much having to do such a long post about so many things.  But you get the picture.

Our first formal appearance as the Romeneskos at my dear friend Libby and Sam's wedding.

I really do love being a Romenesko.