Mexico!!

Hello lovely readers :) Hope the past two weeks have treated you all very well. I'm disappointed in myself for not updating sooner, but to be honest I've simply been far too busy.

Not this past Friday, but the Friday before (Oct. 1) my office moved. There's only so much preparation that you can do for a situation like that, most of which is physical. You can pack, you can label, you can organize and clean, but in the end it's still going to be stressful as hell. And it was. We started at about 8:30 in the morning. J and I left the new site around 12:30, after I had basically unpacked my entire office and most of the moving had been finished. It was a shit show to say the least. Extremely busy, hectic and disorganized. Unfortunately for all of us, our office is filled with very strong, opinionated personalities, and as I predicted, they clashed during the move. Stress was high and patience was low, but luckily, we survived.

J and I spent the rest of the day talking about wedding stuff and decided to research a potential caterer. We ate at the Ono Cafe here in Boise, ID. They advertise themselves as a "hawaiian" restaurant, but their fabulous chef can make food to suit all different types of palates that will satiate even the pickiest eater. Friday is their buffet day, so we got to sample all of their most popular dishes. We were immediately in love. Their pork and chicken melt in your mouth, with their own unique blends of spices that are complimented by the other menu items. They even make their own salad dressing, both of which were tested and approved by J and I . :) Granted this is the only place that we've researched as a potential caterer, but taking into account the variety of dishes they can provide and their more than reasonable fees, we may have found the one on the first try!! A giant thanks goes to my very good friend and coordinator, Q, who recommended us to this culinary haven!

The last two weeks have also consisted Halloween costume planning, vacation planning and honeymoon planning. J and I are trying to figure out what we're going to be for Halloween. We can't decide between being an old-West bartender and a saloon girl or a Prohibitionist gangster and a flapper girl. So we're debating on that. Additionally, we're planning a weekend vacation to Seattle for this weekend, which we are both very excited about!! I've never been to Seattle, and J has never been on his own and hasn't been for a really long time, so we're really looking forward to exploring the city together. We're definitely planning on visiting the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, the original Starbucks and hopefully the Fremont Troll. I'm definitely planning on sampling some Washington wine and excellent fresh seafood. We got the idea for the trip from a friend of J's. There's a snowmobiling expo going on in a smaller town just outside of Seattle that this friend is going to, and he asked us if we'd like to go and carpool with him. This works out well for us because it saves us on gas money, and we leaped on the opportunity. J also has a cousin that lives in Seattle that said that we could crash with him, which saves us a ton of money on lodging!! We can't wait to get out of town together and experience some new things together!
And that brings us to the honeymoon plans - finally! J's father and his partner, S, have been generous enough to offer to provide us with lodging for our honeymoon! S has a contract with a timeshare company, and has offered us a 7-day stay in either Maui or Mexico. After a short discussion, we both decided that Mexico was where we really wanted to be. The condo is in San Jose del Cabo, the quieter of the two Cabo's. :) It's about 20 miles away from Cabo San Lucas. The condo resort that we'll be staying at has a ton of amenities to offer, and with all of the public transportation, getting to Cabo San Lucas for some additional adventures will be a piece of cake! We can't wait to fly off on our Mexican adventure!! I simply could not thank J's dad and S enough for their very generous contribution to our honeymoon!! We're planning on leaving for our honeymoon on the Monday following our wedding. The reasons for this are that we have a lot of out-of-town family coming to Boise for the wedding, and we'd like to get to spend the entire wedding weekend after the wedding (on a Friday) relaxing and unwinding and visiting with our families, having our post-wedding brunch and opening our gifts with our families. :) Another reason is that J and I are going to need some time to relax and re-group after the insanity of the wedding and before flying away for an entire week. It just seemed like a much safer plan for us, and would provide us with a little more time to make sure that we have everything together for the honeymoon rather than rushing off from the wedding or the morning after the wedding, and possibly forgetting something! Having our lodging taken care of my J's dad and S, in addition to the fact that we'll be paying for our round-trip tickets with J's points that are linked to his credit card (we're estimating that it won't cost us anything!!) means that we can save up to have funds to really experience the shopping, eating and adventures that Mexico has to offer us. I can't wait for our honeymoon!! It's going to be so exciting and romantic!!

Other than that, the wedding planning and homemaking continues as usual :) My next update will probably come after our Seattle trip, to share the adventures (and possibly pictures?) from that trip. Speaking of Seattle... I checked the weather report for next weekend in Seattle and it's supposed to be in the mid-50's with an 80% chance of rain. After discovering this information, J and I decided that an umbrella would be a valuable item to have in advance, so I went to find one today. I wanted a shorter one that I could put in my bag and carry with me while we're walking around the city, but the only one that WalMart had was leopard print. Something deep inside me told me that J would simply refuse to carry a leopard print umbrella in Seattle (hahaha) so I decided to check Walgreen's. I found one that was the right length in a teal/aquamarine color that I think J will find acceptable but isn't the typical boring black that I can't stand, but I was shocked to find that it was $13.50!! Who knew umbrellas were so expensive?? I was really surprised. I suppose that umbrellas are an example of those products you don't buy until you really need them, and at that point the manufacturers can charge pretty much whatever the hell they want because you really do need it and so they know you'll pay it. In this case the truth was expensive, but I bit the bullet and swiped my card. I'm sure I won't regret it when I don't have to stand in the cold rain in Seattle. :)

Have a wonderful week!! :)