4 days and a wake up

We're almost there! We've had a relaxing weekend in Chicago getting ready for the craziness of next week. Everything's printed, we're almost packed, all errands have been run, and I really think we're all ready to go. The weather report looks great - let's hope I don't jinx anything by saying that - but right now weather.com says it'll be 70 degrees and sunny!

But as they say, "no rain, no rainbow": Let's hope we don't need a "stunt groom"!

Two Weeks to Go.

We are two weeks to go and dare we say we are ready. We have one craft project left and then some final organizational stuff. We have to pull together some stuff once we are in Avalon but the to do list for Evanston is just about non-existent. But it was a busy weekend to get us here.

We did have time to try out a few early wedding gifts after writing thank you notes. We are using the policy our parents set for use when we were little: you can't play with the toy until the thank you note has been sent. Should help keep us motivated to keep up with them, otherwise the pile of boxes in our dinning room might eat us alive. Although finishing up the craft projects has helped clear out the dining room already.

We cracked out our new crock pot this weekend and made some pulled pork with homemade BBQ sauce. Pretty good if I do say so myself (pictures included for your enjoyment). Claudia made rhubarb cake and Patrick made bread, both pictured as well. We skipped the picture of the corn bread that was a team effort and did not work out so well for us.


Pork in the new crock pot

Pork has been pulled.

3 Weeks To Go

Two weeks ago we got our last piece of paperwork to get married according to the Catholic church and this weekend was our big trip to Avalon, NJ to start the process of getting the paperwork to let the State of New Jersey let us get married. Included are a couple of pictures of Claudia and I after we submitted our application to get a marriage license. I would say we have nothing to show but you can see the lovely shovel and bucket they gave us along with two kisses (Hershey) and a heart shaped bottle with some shells in it that we can put some sand to.

We also met with the soloist for the ceremony, the florist, and the caterer for the rehearsal dinner. All were pretty uneventful. We also stopped at the grocery store on the way in and picked up the making of a few quiches for the morning-after brunch.

Tomorrow is hair tryout day for Claudia and we are meeting with the catering guy for the reception. Although the real story there is that we are tasting cakes. We have been looking forward to this since long before we got engaged. How can you not like cake testing? Everyone loves cake, or at least the two of us love it, or at least frosting. We will report back on the details the the cake test later this weekend.

What I forgot about this weekend when I wrote this was that it was arts and crafts weekend as well. Time to assemble postcards oh the joy.

Claudia & Patrick

The Planning Continues

Planning Continues, the to-do list grows and shrinks, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are now less then a month away and we have much to do but things are coming together. We are working on the final details of the schedule of how things will go so that we can get our craft projects completed. I guess in the sense of full disclosure I should say Claudia is working on all this and I am trying to help. The craft projects are definitely hers, although she has discovered I am very good at trimming edges off of things, or filleting them as ACAD would call it.

Last weekend we went the Catholic Camp and now have a diploma that will let us get married in the Catholic Church. The weekend was very good, Claudia liked it a lot and we are both glad we chose the longer but more "us" centered pre-Cana. We have heard that other marriage prep classes are basically you being talked to for most of the time and tales of 45 minutes on Natural Family Planning. The goal of the weekend seemed much more to teach Claudia and I how to communicate with each other then what we really needed to talk about.

This weekend we have lot of errands to run as we are going to be away next weekend to get our license so that the state of New Jersey will let us get married too. We have lots of stuff planning for that weekend. I think that is going to be visiting vendors and arts and crafts weekend. Which means Patrick will be an assemble line. Unfornately I have a test shortly after we get back and Claudia is gone for business in the middle of a couple of weeks there. We feel good on prep but also think things are going to get pretty crazy.

Hope to see you all in under 30 days.
Patrick & Claudia