Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Francis!!

We spent the weekend celebrating the marriage of Melissa & Pete, and in spite of the rainy weather, it was perfect!  We had such a blast celebrating with them and everything was beautiful!  Hope you both have an amazing time in Hawaii!!!

One Year Ago Today

• The sun was shining and the weather was perfect.
• He wore a tux and I wore an ivory dress.
• We met on the lawn to have our "first look". It was one of the only times that we were truly alone that day (well, other than our photographer), and we savored every minute.
• We promised to love each other til death do us part.
• We put on 2 shiny rings as a symbol of these vows.
• We had our first kiss as husband and wife.
• We were completely overwhelmed (in a good way) with love from our friends and family.
• We partied with those friends and family until the DJ said no more (and wouldn't play Shout for us).

The past year has been one of the best so far. Perfect in our own way. I can hardly believe it has already been a year. The day that I married my best friend was by far one of the best days of my life. Happy Anniversary, Ryan!

Oh, and by the way, our year-old wedding cake was surprisingly not too bad considering it had been in the freezer for a year! Did I eat 2-3 pieces like I did on our wedding night and the morning after? No. But the one piece I had was actually ok.

San Francisco in Pictures

Just over a month later, and I am finally getting around to posting about our trip to San Francisco. It was a great trip. We had pretty decent weather, and we got lots of exercise from all the crazy hills! The pictures below are just the highlights - if you want to see all the pictures I took, just click on one of the pictures included below and it should take you to our flickr page. Or you can just click here.

First stop, Alamo Square to see the houses that were used at the beginning of the Full House episodes.

After that, we headed to our hotel which was at the top of a really steep hill. This is a picture of one of the streets that Ryan had to drive up (and sit at the almost-top waiting for a red light to change) to get to our hotel.

Dinner at a restaurant called The Stinking Rose. Their motto was that they season their garlic with food - hence the strands of garlic hanging from the ceiling.

One of my first pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, taken on our way to Muir Woods.

Ryan and me at the Golden Gate Bridge.

The entrance to Muir Woods.

Ridiculously tall and perfectly straight redwoods.

Back in San Francisco, one of the old streetcars.

The Bay Bridge that goes to Oakland (the one that they just found a big crack in).

Ryan on the cable car on our way back to our hotel one night after dinner. We wouldn't have survived without the cable cars!

Ryan and me at the Phillies/SF Giants game.

A picture for all the Phillies Fans. We had great seats that were right near the bullpen, and I couldn't resist taking a picture of Cole during the National Anthem.

After the game, we went to Fisherman's Wharf. It was a total tourist trap, but still one of those places that you just have to see.

Ghiradelli Square (in case you weren't sure what this is).

From Ghiradelli Square, we took the LONG walk up to see the crookedest street in San Francisco - Lombard Street.

A cable car in front of our hotel.

Another picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, taken from the ferry to Sausalito. Notice how cloudy it is in this picture.

A picture of Sausalito from the ferry. Sausalito is less than 10 miles from San Franscisco, but had completely different weather (notice the blue skies and puffy clouds). This picture was taken about 10 minutes after the picture of the Golden Gate Bridge above.

That afternoon, we took another boat out to Alcatraz for a tour.

Ryan in one of the cells at Alcatraz.

We came back from Alcatraz and got dinner at Fisherman's Wharf before we headed to the airport for our flight. While we were wandering around, we found Pier 39, where the Sea Lions hang out. It smelled really bad, but we suffered through so I could get a few pictures of the sea lions.

Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Mooney!!

We spent the weekend celebrating the marriage of Alexis and Tim! Despite the crazy weather with timing that could not have been more perfect - the monsooning started as soon as we got back on the limo bus to make our way back to the hotel for cocktail hour and then stopped as soon as we got back - everything went off without a hitch. Alexis covered every single detail, and she was an absolutely beautiful bride! Tim didn't look so bad either. Congratulations to you both! We love you and hope you have an AMAZING honeymoon in Greece!!

Droopy

This is exactly how I felt today.

It was so hard to go back to work after spending an exhausting wonderful weekend with our families. We were able to say it in person yesterday, but I'll say it again. Happy Father's Day to two absolutely amazing dads! We are so lucky to both have such great role models in our lives, and we hope you both had a great day yesterday and know how much you mean to us! I have included a couple pictures of each of us with our dads below.

Me and my dad (without his beard!)

Dad and me at a freezing cold O's game last year.

Ryan and his dad - Aren't they cute!?

Ryan and his dad on our wedding day.

I Heart NYC...

Because that is where Becky & Jordan live! This past weekend Val and I drove to NJ and hopped on a NJ Transit train to spend the weekend with Becky & Jordan. From the start, this trip was a bit of a debacle. Val and I both work downtown (in Baltimore), so we decided that I’d pick her up and we’d drive up to NJ together. I picked her up around 5, and we attempted to leave the city and get on 95. Traffic was a nightmare. What should have taken about 15-20 minutes to get through Baltimore ended up taking about 45 minutes. All because no one knows how to drive in this freaking wonderful city. We finally got onto 95 and stopped to pick up a quick dinner (Chick-fil-A, Yum!). We got back on 95, and it started to rain and about 20 minutes into the drive, my phone rings. Of course, I am expecting it to be Becky asking where we were and when we thought we’d get to NYC. No such luck… It was a slightly hysterical Ryan calling to tell me that our basement flooded again. Yes, I said again. You see, while we were on our honeymoon, our sump pump failed and the basement flooded. Thankfully, my sister was taking good care of our house while we were gone, and she and my brother-in-law dealt with it. Dealing with it meant having to rip up perfectly good carpet that was soaked by the water overflowing from the sump pump. We were fortunate enough that not much else was really damaged, and it was kind of a blessing in disguise because we were able to re-do the basement the way we wanted including painting it a new color without having to worry about dripping paint on the carpet. About a month ago, we finished re-doing the basement, and we were really happy about it so to hear that the basement was flooding again on Friday was a little devastating. Probably more for Ryan than me since he was there seeing it firsthand, but still depressing. Once I talked to Ryan, I called my dad to ask if he’d go and help Ryan with whatever he needed to do to stop the water. My dad dropped everything he was doing and headed over to our house – Thanks, Dad!! We are so lucky that he is always there for us and is so helpful! Val quickly texted Becky to ask her to have the drinks ready when we got there – what a good friend for knowing just what I needed! So, you’d think that this story gets boring now, but no, it gets better. We had planned on taking the 8:35 train into the city and arrived at the train station at 8:20 with what we thought was plenty of time to spare. We should have known better when we saw a train departing the station for NYC at 8:25. (It was the train before ours and it was running a little late). We bought our tickets and hung out for a little while thinking that our 8:35 train would be arriving shortly. 8:35 came and went and no train. Finally, I looked on my blackberry to try to figure out what was going on and it said that there was a trespasser fatality at the Princeton Junction station (the station right after ours) and that the trains were running 15-20 minutes late. No big deal, we thought. 15-20 minutes came and went. After waiting for a while, they announced that our train would be arriving shortly and to begin walking to the end of the platform to board. As we were doing this, we talked with a few of the girls getting on our train and they said that there had been a suicide at the Princeton Junction station and that this actually happens quite often. How sad. We finally boarded the train at 9:30 and all was well (well, kind of). Both Val & I love to read, so we pulled out our books and started reading on the train which seemed to be barely moving. The ride to Penn Station was supposed to take about an hour and 20 minutes or so. By 11:00, we were still not there yet. In fact, we were stopped in Secaucus. A train in front of us had broken down and we had the red light, and there were 3 trains in front of us that were waiting for a green light first. Around 11:20, we finally got the green signal and made it into Penn Station around 11:30. What a trip! Once we arrived in NYC, we hailed a cab to Becky & Jordan’s apartment. The drinks were cold, and the company was even better. We stayed up until 1:30am looking at the wedding album and watching the raw footage of the wedding dvd. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time.

Saturday, Becky & Jordan cooked us yummy pancakes for breakfast and then we headed to Central Park for a picnic and wine. The weather was beautiful – we couldn’t have asked for a better day. We left the park in the afternoon and headed to my favorite bar, Third and Long which had $2 beers from 4-8pm. Perfect timing. Since Third and Long doesn't serve food, we had a pizza delivered to the bar (only in NYC!) and had dinner there. After a long day of drinking, we headed back to Becky & Jordan's apartment to change and go back out to a bar that was playing 80s music videos. Slight snag in the plans... Becky & Jordan decided to take a 30-minute nap at 8:30pm. Val & I knew that there was no way we'd be going back out, so we just hung out with the cats for a bit, and we fell asleep around 9:30pm since Becky & Jordan were still "napping". Around 11:45, Becky woke up and decided that it was time to go out, but she was out of luck. Val and I had retired the party pants for the day. Sorry, Becky! The next day, we went to brunch at Regional, and it was amazing. The food was great, and we even got to sit in a window seat and people-watch while we ate. After brunch, it was time for us to say goodbye, and Val and I headed home, this time without any major issues. We did stop for a quick caffeine break in NJ at a Dunkin' Donuts and found that it was a Dunkin' Donuts in a huge liquor store. So strange... Since no post is complete without some pictures, I have included a few below.

Val and I waiting at the train station for our train to arrive.

Val and I on the train after we found out that our train was stopped because of the broken down train ahead of us. Notice that we are still smiling...

Becky & Jordan's cat, Murray (the kind-of crazy one). He really wanted to hang out in Val's purse.

See? I told you. Becky had to bring out one of her bags so Murray would get out of Val's purse.

I promise, this was not staged.

Olive, their other kitty. She was so chill, just hanging out in her clothes basket.

Becky & Val in Central Park.

Becky & Jordan in Central Park.

On the escalator in the subway.

We heart Val!

The rose between 2 thorns. Just kidding, you guys! :)

Naptime. Notice that Olive is sitting on Becky's back.

Thanks, Becky & Jordan for your wonderful hospitality. And, can you please hurry up and move home so we can hang out more often?!?!?!

A Weekend Away.... Without the Husband

OCL 9.20.08 113
Originally uploaded by lenoirwedding

While Ryan is fully immersed in Philadelphia/Pennsylvania sports this weekend, I will be spending my weekend in beautiful Greenville, SC with this cutie! Can't think of a better way to spend my weekend (especially since Ryan would be ignoring me anyway...).