Saturday, March 28, 2009

Countdown to the Carnival Dream!


Let's see if this works...I am a cruise ship addict, per say. I read the cruise news nearly daily and stumbled upon this awesome site that compares ships, tracks the current/past ships, etc etc etc. It's quite cool. Nauticalcities.com

So, here's a tracker (countdown) to our cruise!

Friday, March 27, 2009

Best Cake Ever

So I don't want to turn this into a food blog, but I just have to tell everyone about the cake I made for our Anniversary. It was a triple layer chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and a chocolate ganache drizzled on top. I got the recipe from a co-worker (Thanks Jen), but you can find it online at smittenkitchen.com blog

I thought it would be really hard to make, but it wasn't too bad and the blog gives lots of hints as to icing the cake. 
 
Here is a pic of the final product...Yummy!


Tuesday, March 24, 2009

It's been a while, but we've been busy!

So, last time we checked in it was February 26th. Nearly a month. But since then, we've been extremely busy with travels, works, wedding plans, and this past weekend, a retreat!
At the end of February, Debbie and traveled up to St Louis to work on our wedding punch list. By close of the trip, and the days following, we (and when I say we in regards to the wedding, 97% of the time we=Debbie) found our cake, florist, hotels for guests, ice cream caterer, DJ, videographer, and met with our priest. Not bad for a quick trip to Missouri! Currently Debbie is still working hard at the wedding plans! A little over 6 months out, and oh so much to do!

I like how I summarized hours and hours of effort, all that driving time, phone calls etc etc etc...all into one little paragraph. Too funny.

On February 28th (really the 29th, but not this year), Debbie and I hit 5 years together. Celebrated by staying in. See, Debbie and I gave up going out to eat (lunch, dinner) for lent, so we haven't enjoyed any restaurants in some time. (We are working on figuring where that meal will be on April 13th!)
Two weekends in between, we got our registry kicked off. Spent a few hours in Macys and Target, had a great time. That info is not here, rather at debbieandterence.com. Again, I credit Debbie to all the effort over there.

So, this past weekend we took care of one more piece of the wedding, we went to a weekend retreat at the Cameron Retreat Center, at St. Dominic Archdiocesan Center. We arrived on Friday at 7pm, which was the start to a very loooong weekend! We were in workshops through 1130 on Friday, wakeup at 7 on Saturday, workshops closed out at 11pm, then another 7am wakeup on Sunday. By afternoon, when we were released, we were quite exhausted! Sleeping dorm style, sitting on uncomfortable chairs, and the long hours definitely caught up to us. But, as uncomfortable the weekend was, it was far more valuable to Debbie and I. We've been together for over 5 years, but some of the things we got to talk about will stick with us and help us get through the decades ahead of us!

Last night Debbie and I made our next honeymoon plans, our first night in Rome before the cruise. We booked our hotel at the Casa Montani, a luxory townhouse in the Piazza del Popolo. When I was reading Travel & Leisure, they give it rave reviews...best part, it has only 5 suites! It's more of a bed & breakfast, so it'll be perfect for day 1 of our honeymoon.

View from one of the rooms out onto the Piazza, we'll cross our fingers for this one!

View of the Piazza from the street? I don't know...but it's right there somewhere!

So, let's hope it doesn't take a month for the next update! If it does, I'm sure I'll come with some sort of valid excuse or atleast a well thought out one!