Engagement Photos Part II

For those of you who are not on Facebook and have not seen our engagement photos yet I uploaded them on Snapfish.

Click the link to view.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday To Me

So, tomorrow is my 31st birthday and for the first birthday in history I have not done the Jaimi birthday dance, thrown a party or made any kind of a deal out of my birthday this year. That is unusual for me because I do like my birthday every year as I do believe it should be a celebratory day, but for some reason I just wasn’t feeling it this year. Maybe it’s because 31 means I am now “in my thirties” instead of just being 30. It’s something that is hard for me to swallow…being “in my thirties.”

One year ago Andy and I went to Vegas with nine of our good friends to celebrate the big thirty. It was a great time and one year ago I was whooping it up at the piano bar screaming to every song at the top of my lungs while the clock was ticking away to 30. The year prior to that, we had a Christmas in July party in our backyard to celebrate my 29th birthday with jell-o shots and Christmas decorations throughout the backyard. Years before that, it was a mixture of parties and spending late nights in the bars with good friends.

This year, not so much! I am not feeling celebratory. All I wanted to do this year was chill with Andy for sushi dinner and relaxation. This weekend I got to see Eclipse with my girlfriend Amber. Great movie since I love the Twilight series. The gorgeous hunk, Taylor Lautner, definitely made me feel a little old as I was goo-goo eyes over his shirtless scenes…and he is only 18. Then we went to the Diamondbacks game today with some friends and came home to call it a weekend. Tomorrow night I will get my quiet sushi dinner with Andy and that is all I could ask for this year as I turn 31!

Laid Back Weekend

This was a great weekend as we did nothing. We lounged by the pool, shared some margaritas and put together our budget for the wedding. It has been around 110 degrees every day lately so our pool is sitting at a chilly 90 degrees. It pretty much feels like a bathtub and for some odd reason I like it like that. Normally Madison loves to be outside and hang out with us in the pool, but this weekend she just was not interested. She would come outside for about 5 – 10 minutes and then want to go right back in and lay on the couch. I think she was enjoying the lazy weekend too. Maybe Madison is over the hot weather already. Izzy on the other hand loved being outside and we had to make her go in because she was over heating in the 110 degree heat. Boxers can’t handle the hot weather.

The only other thing we did this weekend was watch Perfect Getaway. I don’t want to ruin the movie for anyone but if you like thriller’s you will really like this movie. I recommend renting this movie.

Other than that we didn’t do much here in Phoenix this weekend, but sometimes it’s better to do nothing than do everything.

Engagement Photos

So, yesterday we had our engagement photos taken. We scheduled it for 8am because of how hot it is right now. Honestly, though, I am not sure how much 8am helped as it was about 95 degrees at 8am. I was referred to Photos by Ali and I was very pleased with her. She was very upbeat and knew what she was doing. I was very thankful for her because for the past few weeks I was struggling with other photographers returning my calls or emails. I thought that was crazy. I don’t know if the photographers just weren’t interested because they were only doing the engagement photos and not the wedding photos since we are having a destination wedding. I also thought that maybe they just don’t want to do engagement photos in this heat, but whatever the reason its bad business to ignore requests. After the few weeks of bad luck it was refreshing to speak to Ali on the phone and hear her excitement about doing the photos. We did a last minute shopping on Friday night because Andy needed a couple new shirts. I wanted one outfit with jeans and a nice top and another shoot more relaxed with me in a sun dress and Andy in shorts.

We woke up Saturday morning to clouds in the sky. I was extremely bummed because I wanted the Arizona blue sky and she sun shining bright, but no; with my luck I get one of the 15 days out of the year where it’s not sunny. How does that happen? It’s sunny here, on average, 350 days a year. How do we get the cloudy day? I figured, oh well, the show must go on.

We met the photographer in downtown Phoenix for the first location and the first thing Ali says is that we have the best day for a photo shoot. I told her how I was bummed about the lack of sunshine, but she said the clouds make for the best pictures, so that put me in a better mood. Once we arrived at the location I realized that Ali hit the spot when she chose this particular location. It was so adorable with interesting looking old buildings and I am just so excited to see the photos.

After we were completely sweaty we traveled over to South Mountain, where we changed in the car, for our second shoot. This was also very beautiful for the photos. Ali sure knew how to pick the locations for the photo shoot. I wasn’t sweating as bad once I got the jeans off and was chilling in the sun dress. I was just worried how my hair was holding up. Ali took some more great shots that we got to see on her camera. Now I just can’t wait to see the final photos. She is going to drop the disk in the mail at the end of the week as we purchased the rights to all the pictures. I can’t wait and I am so excited to see them. I will share them once we get them.

Happy 4th of July Weekend

Ok, I am a little late on my 4th of July Weekend wishes, but I still hope everyone had a great weekend. We went camping with our friends in Woods Canyon. I must admit I just wasn’t that into it this time like I was for Memorial Day weekend. I definitely was not pumped and not interested in packing the car for a few days in the woods with no toilet and no running water. I decided to suck it up for Andy’s sake since he was pretty excited to go. I am guilty of not helping him pack much. I did pack my clothing and the Tupperware tub of the kitchen necessities, but that was about all the effort I could muster for this trip to the woods. Andy was a trooper since he did the rest of the packing. I was hoping that once we got to the woods that I would get into it and be a superstar camper again, but I just couldn’t get in the mood. I must say that I did have fun with our friends even though I wasn’t feeling it. We left town on Thursday at 5pm after work and were supposed to return on Monday; however, we had a change of plans thanks to our friend Amber. On Saturday morning she woke up to a deflated bed in her tent and she was not interested in staying until Monday with poor sleeping conditions. Once I heard her make that statement I was completely 100% on board with her. Our other friends were planning on leaving on Sunday morning anyway, so if Amber and Brian were also leaving that gave me the ticket to go home too on Sunday. SWEET!!! I was hoping she wasn’t joking as my excitement level just went through the roof in about 2.5 seconds and I surely did not want to be disappointed by her saying she was just kidding. I soon found out that she wasn’t kidding and they were also going to leave on Sunday morning. I suddenly felt like Charlie on Willy Wanka and the Chocolate Factory with the golden ticket. That was two couples down and so that made no sense for Andy and I to stay in the woods by ourselves. So, we packed up our stuff on Sunday morning to head home to a nice warm shower, a running toilet and a soft bed.
Since we got home a day early Andy decided we needed to go to the Cubs game on Monday. Of course I didn’t argue since I just dragged (sort of) him out of the woods. I went to the game with him to cheer on his beloved Cubs and they did win…I believe it was 9 to 4, or something like that. All that matters is that they won. Go Cubbies!