At the reception

We wanted to wish, MaryLee, the mother of the bride, a very happy birthday today!  We won’t say how old she is, mostly because it gives away how old the bride is as well!

Today is Mom’s birthday and not only did we want to wish her a very happy birthday, but to thank her for everything she did for our wedding from touring endless wedding venues crammed into a very short weekend, buying the beer for the engagement party, trekking all that wine home from the shower (8 or 10 cases!), letting the house become wedding central (hotel gift bags in the kitchen, wedding flowers in the living room, menus in Jennifer’s old room, steaming the rehearsal gown (unsuccessfully with Dad, Patrick, and Melissa – no one knows how to use that thing), and sucking it up to buying a dress for the big day.  (Anyone who truly knows MaryLee knows what a chore that actually was…)

Mom, Bride, Maid of Honor

On this very day last year, not only was it Mom’s birthday, but it was a very wedding-oriented day.  I found all of the bridesmaid dresses at Gainesville’s Urban Thread! (Gorgeous J. Crew wedding gowns for the girls and I picked them up for a steal for all 4 bridesmaids – another post on that sometime.)  After picking up the dresses and hitting the turnpike, I also had a genius wedding moment and stopped at the service plaza and cleared out all the “Things to Do in South Florida” packets to include in the wedding welcome bags!

Happy Birthday, Mom!  Hope you’re enjoying the day!

XOXO
M, J, and S

P.S.  The box with your birthday present is still sitting by my front door!  It will make it there eventually!

My sweetie sent me a “will you marry me” e-card which I loved, loved, loved!

Then we had a fun dinner at a little place in Brooklyn called Moto.  Sam (Melissa’s little sister) is up in the city visiting, so she joined us.  It seemed only right to have a member of the Baum and/or Haley family as part of an anniversary…

We had a perfect day, all on a Friday the 13th…which was the day of our first date, too!

XOXO
M, J, and S

Our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple was a fantastic day, so we thought, “all the better to come back to the blog with it.” Our plans weren’t as exciting as they could have been, but we had a really good day.

We hope that all of you had a great day, too.

The day started off with a surprise…our buzzer rang and it was Ikea delivering a piece of furniture (the Stockholm glass-door cabinet – in golden-brown) that we were not expecting for another week or two! In the excitement of knowing that we would be doing a little reorganizing, we changed our plans to hurry home.

The day started off with a fun lunch at Lombardi’s in the city – the oldest pizzeria in New York City. It’s very good to say the least. We had a few small errands to run and ended at Dean and Deluca (Melissa’s favorite spot on the corner of Broadway and Prince) to pick up the last few ingredients for our very special dinner.

We weren’t going to go out on the town this year – we wanted to enjoy our time together at home, something that rarely happens these days. Our big plan was a special Valentine’s Day dinner, which I had been planning for a while. We enjoyed couple of filet mignons with a Roquefort sauce, braised Swiss chard with bacon, sautéed snap peas, and parslied potatoes all with a nice bottle of 2003 Winemaker’s Reserve Calloway Sangiovese that we brought home from our honeymoon in California.

As I cooked, my sweetie built the cabinet, hung some picture frames in our bathroom, and did a little cleaning.

The dinner was fabulous!  My sweetie hasn’t stopped thanking me yet.  Star even had a little taste and was very, very purrrrr-y all evening after that.  Just see this kitty bliss…

Very exciting.  I was so tired from the cooking and excitement of our day that I actually almost fell asleep at the table.

It was my favorite Valentine’s Day yet.

XOXO
M, J, and S

Happy Birthday to Star
Happy Birthday to Star
Happy Birthday dear Star cat
Happy Birthday to Star

Today is Star’s birthday. She is a Halloween kitty in every sense of the word. (She has a new costume for this year, but since I am in Panama and my sweetie is on a long shoot, we might not get to see her in it until I get back!)

Star is 11 years old today!

We love you Star! Happy birthday, kitty. Happy Halloween!

XOXO
M and J

It has been exactly one month since we tied the knot!  I can’t tell if it feels like forever or no time at all!  Either way, we are both very happy!

XOXO
M, J, and S

Carrie and Towson’s newest addition to the family, Jack, was born tonight at 8:05 PM EST. Mommy and baby are doing fine. He weighed in a little bigger than Baby B — 9 pounds, 2 ounces — but he’s just a smidge shorter, at 21.2″ tall. Maybe he’ll play football!

We couldn’t be happier for you guys! Caroline has a big new job as big sister!

Congratulations! We love you!

XOXO
M, J, and S

We’ve just finished round 2 of the thank you notes. And oh yes, there will be a round 3.

To all of you who have not gotten theirs yet, it is coming…and we do thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being a part of our special day, sharing our celebration, or sending your warm wishes.

XOXO
M, J, and S

I had asked the Sundy House wait staff (two of them) to keep them for me so we could have a few for a memento and they ended up throwing them all out.

I’ve looked through all our boxes and folders from the wedding and definitely don’t have any.

We wondering if any of you had one that you could send us, please? It would be greatly appreciated.

XOXO
M, J, and S

So you’ll all have your own personalized, autographed thank you note!

So the procrastinator I am waited till he was home from his shoot in Massachusetts to officially start them. What that means is I wrote till my hand cramped and I couldn’t read anymore. All while watching some more movies for our wedding movie marathon…

We’ve completed about a thousand.

We’ve got a million to go.

XOXO
M, J, and S

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday dear Jennifer!
Happy Birthday to you!

Today is Jennifer’s birthday, if you didn’t already figure that out.

I think she has some pretty awesome plans with Melissa, Sam, and some other people in Gainesville.

Happy Birthday, ET…oops, I mean Jennifer!

XOXO
M, J, and S