Time to catch up!

After the wedding/honeymoon, most of my summer has been devoted to:
- trying to organize the house
- my graduate classes
- changing my name
- working out

I slacked BIG time on keeping up with my blog: ( I just went through my pictures, and I do have some photos to mark some of the more exciting moments of my summer!

The Thursday after we returned from our honeymoon, Nick and I went to the Royals v. Diamondbacks game with Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Lisa, Dave, Claire, Timmy, Paul, Diane, and Hayley for Grandpa's 80th birthday. Sarah was there, so she stopped by to say hello and snap a photo: )

SJ and LA

Grandpa and Me

For a late birthday dinner for Lisa and for Lisa and Dave's last night, we went to Tres Mexicanos - YUM - and then we stopped by the Sandbar. After the Sandbar, we went to our house and stayed up too late playing Wii! SO fun! This was one of my favorite nights of the summer!

Mom and Dad

Lisa in the birthday sombrero!
Mom and her troupy for winning the March Madness tournament bracket! She followed President Obama's bracket!
Me and Nick at the Sandbar

We spent the 4th of July in Parsons, KS, at the Adams Family Reunion. We had a GREAT time! There were at least 90 people there - and over 40 others who were unable to attend! We had TONS of food and plenty of laughs. It was good to see everyone!

Marrah and Me

Tim and Jenny

Judy and Jenny

Butch and Nick

Bubba and Sissy: )

Jenny, Pam, and Nick

Sisters: )

N and L

I also spent some time this summer baking! I was able to use some of our wedding gifts to help me try out some recipes!

banana bread

zuc. and squash from Nick's Aunt Kathy and Uncle Gordy

zuc. muffins

zuc. bread

squash bread gone wrong: ( Callie after eating some of the squash bread

(She also ate 4 zuc. muffins!)

One of my friends from college, Katie, is having twin boys in a few weeks! We are all SO excited for her! She looks great and has not complained at all! I know she and Nathan will be AWESOME parents! In July, we went to a cute, Dr. Seuss themed shower for her. SO fun! (After the shower, I stopped at Archiver's and picked up some supplies for our honeymoon scrapbook!)

Amy, Sarah, Katie, Me

Sarah's bachelorette party at the end of July was just the break that I needed! I am SO excited for Sarah and Steve's wedding (about 50 days away!), and the float trip was a great pre-celebration! I rode with Sarah and Amy, and before we left we looked at some of Sarah's flower ideas for the reception. They were beautiful - I can't wait to see them in action! We drove to Rolla on our way with hopes of grabbing a beer at our beloved Grotto. Unfortunately, it was closed: ( Friday night we all sat in the water/around the campfire and chit chatted. It was SO good to catch up! Saturday we floated 7 miles! It was a little rainy in the morning, but it turned out to be a beautiful day! Sarah looked AWESOME in her b-party flaire: ) We ended the evening with a dance party to all of the mix CDs that people had brought to share! SO SO SO fun! I can't wait to see everyone again at the wedidng! YAY!

SJ at The Grotto

L-Dub and K-Dub

KW and SJ

For my half-birthday, Dad made me AWESOME shelves! We will FINALLY have our wedding gifts out of the dining room! I bought 20 containers for all our "stuff!" Mom made me a half-birthday cake, too! HAHA. It was delicious: )

Me and my 1/2 birthday cake!

This week, we had Tiffany, Brad, and Elsie over for dinner! SO much fun! Elsie is adorable! She played with all of Callie's toys (ha!), and Callie shared several "kisses" with her. Nick grilled hot dogs and hamburgers to go with fruit salad, Doritos, and corn on the cob. For dessert, we had oreo pie...that they had left in our freezer at New Year's!!! Ha ha: ) I hope we can get together again soon!

Me, Elsie, and Tiffany...and some oreo cake!

I am SO sad that summer is over! I can't believe that I will be back to work in 36 hours: ( I still have so much left that I had wanted to do, but I do think I had quite a productive summer overall. Only 9.5 months...and it will be summer again!

Honeymoon - Day Five

Friday (The Last Day)

We started the morning with room service - it was delicious! Then, we put on our swimsuits for a dip in the hot tub and pool while we drank our coffee.

Notice the "June gloom" above the trees!

After a shower, we went to Trader Joe's for some "Two Buck Chuck" and then headed to In-N-Out Burger. We had heard so much about Two Buck Chuck, but we had never tried it. We purchased the cab, and we can now saw that it was truly delicious! We would have paid much more than $1.99 for a bottle! Believe it or not...Trader Joe's has cases of Two Buck Chuck for $23.99!!! Wow - definitely a deal!

Nick had never been to an In-N-Out Burger before (and neither had I), but he had always wanted to try it. He was pleased overall: ) I REALLY liked my strawberry milkshake!

\ After lunch, we went to State St. to do some shopping, but we did not have much luck. I was hoping to find something for our house to remind us of our trip, but there was nothing that really stood out to us. I guess we will have to go again and spend more time looking: ) We were pretty tired, so we had yummy white chocolate mocha drinks from Java Jones and went back to our room. We FINALLY finished our movie, and we packed: (

For dinner, we headed back to the beach for dinner in the harbor. We ate outside at Chuck's Waterfront Grill. Nick had a steak, and I had steak AND lobster - SO SO SO good! The atmosphere was amazing, and it was a beautiful evening!

After dinner, we went to McConnell's Ice Cream. It was the perfect way to end our last night out!

On the way back to our hotel, we picked up the movie Taken. We shared a bottle of wine and actually stayed awake for the whole movie!

On Saturday, we woke up and made our way back to LAX. We were able to see the ocean some of the way as well as the beautiful mountains. Our honeymoon was perfect (aside from Nick's allergic reaction!), and I wish we could spend that week together all over again!

Our wedding and honeymoon was the best way to start the summer!

PICTURES!!!

The pictures came in the mail today!!! YAY!!! I have spent WAY TOO LONG looking at them today, and I still am no where close to having them separated, uploaded, etc. : ( If you want to take a look, check out our share site - nickpluslauren.shutterfly.com

Honeymoon - Day Four

Thursday

We woke up before our alarm - again - and began the day with a long walk. On our way back, we stopped at a Jack in the Box for breakfast and coffees. We showered and prepared for our wine tour - it was also included in our hotel package! This day was an absolute blast! For once we both were able to look out the window on the way to the vineyards!

We saw Firestone Vineyard from the bus window, but we did not have a chance to taste there: (

Our first stop was Koehler Winery first. Check out Nick's technique!!!

Koehler cat

the grounds

Our second tasting was at Roblar Winery, and it was probably the most beautiful vineyard and tasting room we visited. After our tasting, we ate an AWESOME boxed lunch - HUGE sandwich, pasta salad, chips, fruit, and brownies! (We were smart enough to save a little bit of our lunch for later!)

Buttonwood Winery was next on our tour. This one was not our favorite, so we sat outside in the beautiful gardens.

The last stop on the tour was Lucas & Lewellen's tasting room, but since we had already been there our tour guide set us up with a personal tour at Presidio's tasting room (everyone else went to L & L). We purchased a bottle of ? (I have to go check!), and we bought a shipping box to check on the airplane with all of our wine bottles and tasting glasses!

While driving during our tour, our guide also pointed out the Raegan's ranch, Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, the Hidden Valley Ranch (where they invented ranch dressing!), and the fire damage from the fires a few weeks before our visit!

view from the bus

fire damage
(We found out our hotel had been evacuated!)

We enjoyed a glass of wine on our balcony before dinner, and tried to take some artistic photos: )

We took a taxi downtown, and then we enjoyed dinner at the Santa Barbara Brewing Company. Dinner was fun because the Lakers were playing the Nuggets in the NBA finals and the game went into overtime! It was a great atmosphere with all the Laker fans!

After dinner, I had some frozen yogurt - YUM!

Nick stopped into a movie theatre and bought some nachos - ha! We took a cab back to the hotel and fell asleep without saying goodnight - again! We has such a wonderfuld day together, but we sure were tired!!!

Honeymoon - Day Three (Part II.)

Wednesday night we went on our sunset cruise! It was included in our hotel package, and it was AWESOME! We rode on one of the Double Dolphin cruises with six other people and three sailors. It was truly beautiful!

coastline...WOW!

sailboat

sea lions - LOVE them!!
They were EVERYWHERE! We could see them/hear them the whole time!

smiles: )

sunset = beautiful

dolphins - Do you see them? Two of them are just to the right of the second vertical post from the left side of the picture. We saw about 20 of them!

coastline at sunset

reentering the harbor

The cruise was from 6-8, and then we went to an AWESOME dinner! We had Hitching Post's Pinot Noir 2004 while we enjoyed dinner at Aldo's. SO good! We sat outside (almost all of our meals in Santa Barbara were outside!) and truly soaked in the atmosphere.

Wednesday was amazing! After dinner, we went back to the hotel and tried to watch the movie...but I fell asleep AGAIN!