Dad's Home!

Guess who drove dad home from the hospital yesterday?! Hooray!! He's home and doing well. That man is an ox when it comes to recovering from surgeries. Thank goodness! Christmas will not be spent in the hospital. He's doing much better now - eating solids and not in pain. Now, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that his hospital roommate Peter gets out for Christmas too....

Thanks for all the love and well-wishes. "Home for the Holidays" never meant so much to our family.

Just for Paul....

Paul showing off mad jumping skills...
--Ry

Laughter is the best medicine

So my dad's been in the hospital for almost a week now. His health is progressing so well everyday. Thank goodness!! One of his friends from high school made a jib jab thing for him. Hilarious. I just had to share.

Some background - my dad, Mark, Lee and Jeanine all went to Leigh High together. Mark and Jeanine actually married after high school and are still together! So Jeanine made this, and sent it to my dad. She told him that just because he's in a hospital bed, doesn't mean he shouldn't study up on the choreography, lol.

http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/neh6oifLT5l7gspNmVrQ

I was laughing so hard when I saw this.  I think I'm going to watch it every day.

Bears

Ok, some pics of Reyna Bear. And then I will officially stop being the cat lady. Promise.

Love my Little Bastard.

Both our cats love the Christmas tree. Reyna's not much for pics though, so it seems like we're obsessed with Kitsune. She's also the sweet little girl who doesn't like to be bad on purpose. Kitsu is the roudy little boy who sometimes has likes to push the limits. Kitsu's been a little brat in playing with the Christmas tree, but what else can we expect? This afternoon he succeeded in climbing inside and sitting in there. Little bastard. It was funny though.

November 2008: Best.Month.Ever

There's a really good chance that November 2008 was the best month ever! We got married. No work for almost two weeks. We went to the beach a bunch of times. We put our Christmas tree up early!! We went to Disneyland at Christmastime. My nonni turned 85. We had a wonderful recepton with Ryan's family. We went down with my parents to SLO for Thanksgiving, and had four awesome days. And, because of how my vacation was scheduled and with the holiday, I managed to not work a single full week in all of November. Awesome. Some pics...

One more wedding pic

The Tuesday after the wedding...some beachtime

Our 12 ft artifical Christmas tree took us 6 hours to put up!

I say, "Thank you Dad, for the free tree from your work last year!"

Ryan says, "Somehow...I will get back at you!"

Reyna was under the bed all day...no where to be found.

Kitsune...loves Christmas almost as much as me.

Some funny pics of him on the ladder.

Laying in the branches as they were scattered on the floor.

Finished product - HUGE!

I heart the Canon PowerShot's color accent feature!

Ryan took this awesome pic.

Thankful

Thanksgiving just came and went - November itself flew so quickly (Gee, I wonder why!?). I wanted to take a moment to jot down some things that I'm so thankful for this year:
I'm thankful for my amazing husband, who pretty much gives me whatever I want (including the ability to now call him "husband!"). I'm thankful for my dad's improving health and for my mom's emotional strength. I'm thankful that I have the best sister in the world and for her loving hubby. I'm thankful that they live in SLO and that we get to go down there whenever we want. I'm thankful that I am pretty sure I have the best in laws in the world (which includes extended in-laws). I'm thankful that my nonni is still in good health and as spry as ever. I'm thankful that my dad got us a free 12 ft artficial Christmas tree that looks amazing in our cathedral ceiling living room. I'm thankful for the best friends that a girl could as for. I'm thankful that I'm so close to my extended family. I'm thankful for yoga. I'm thankful for books. I'm thankful for life. And I'm thankful for love, in all its many different forms.

Official Wedding Slideshow!

It's here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
View it below, or click on the link to the right.

http://yongstudio.com/showit/nikkiryan

So excited.

DISNEYLAND!!!!!!!!!!!

Sigh. I just love Disneyland. Some great photos in completely random order...

Christy & Nikki

Main Street at Christmastime (and fire season, apparently)

Fires were just 10 miles away and smoke covered the skyline

Christmas tree!

When you wish upon a star...

Dumbo...always cute

Jolene & Tony

Excited!

Newlyweds!

Posing!

Castle's reflection in the moat

Tony & Jolene at the Blue Bayou

Christy and Mike waiting for the monorail

Castle & Minnie Mouse

Ryan giving me a boost to try to grab a rope ladder...

totally not allowed.

Moderators of the Clipboard of Fun

Ryan hitching a ride

Mike getting revenge on Christy for throwing water all over him.

Totally compelled to disclose that those are not granny pannies - Mike just has an

unbelievable ability to strech undies with spandex in them!

Ryan & Nikki at the Blue Bayou

Pictures!

Thanks to sooo many people, I've now been able to pull over 260 pictures of the wedding! Awesome! You can see them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/nekiki130/OurWedding#

Thanks to everyone for posting or sending these! I love seeing them!

Yeah....blood on my dress.

We got so close to having absolutely everything go right! There were just two small things...one of which resulted in my sister having "elephantitis" (see story here: http://puckandnugget.blogspot.com/2008/11/elephantitis.html). And I was pretty calm, with the exception of two small freak outs. One isn't interesting - it lasted about two minutes and regarded my hair two hours before the ceremony. The second one, though - I got blood on my dress. The flowers behind my hair had a pin in them, and I didn't know it. The ceremony was supposed to start at 3:30, and at 3:20 I adjusted my hair and felt a prick in my finger. I looked at my thumb and no blood. 3:25 comes and I look down, and I have a teeny tiny bit of blood on my dress, at the seam on the right side. "CHRISTY! CHRISTY! I HAVE BLOOD ON MY DRESS!" ensues. She comes and dabs it off with water and the stinking blood actually comes off! Then, about two minutes later, I look and the very front of my dress has blood. I was still dripping a bit. So she had to clean that up. A second later, I had a bandaid on and checked my dress every other 10 seconds. Good thing we ended up waiting for late guests and starting the ceremony late. Holy cannoli. Thankfully the slippery nature of my dress did not absorb the blood!

One of my New Favorite Blogs

Check out our fabulous photographer's blog! Our wedding post is from Nov 11th :)
http://blog.yongstudio.com/

Among the many many things that went perfectly on our wedding day had to be the photographers. Actually, I should say, that things went so well with them even before the wedding! Yong & Bin are husband and wife - Bin assists Yong as he takes the photographs. They are a riot - total husband and wife! They just click though. If you look at Yong's website - his talent is amazing. Actually, it was his wedding picture postings of a wedding at our venue, Casa Real, that initially caught my eye! I have to tell you, there is almost nothing more soothing and reassuring about your wedding photographers than seeing what they can do at your future venue. From the moment we met them (my mommacita came with me), it felt right! Bin asks so many questions and I love love loved that about her! Things I didn't even think about but appreciated! They even started a wedding registry for us to add to our gifts! A few weeks before the wedding, I was supposed to meet them and had to bail a half hour before when my dad was sick. They were so supportive and understanding. They even came to my house to pick up the check when I spaced on sending it in on time and was too crazed to drive over there. They are simply awesome. And their professionalism on our wedding day didn't disappoint! I can't wait to see the wedding pics!


When they are ready, you can view them too - at http://yongstudio/showit/nikkiryan. I'll keep you posted!

Here are some pics of Yong & Bin in action:

Stories - The Ceremony

I'm going to post some blogs with random stories from the wedding...stories to share but mostly so that I can actually remember them in the time to come, LOL.

Ok! So to start off - I officially think (and I know I'm biased...) that we had probably one of the most fun weddings EVER! Even the ceremony was fun. If you know the two of us, you know that we're not exactly the ishy gooey gushy types. And for some reason, I was hell bent on not crying during the ceremony. I wanted so bad to be a happy bride! I managed to keep it together. We had our little jokes during the ceremony...from play punching Ryan when he remarked something to the effect of "I guess so" when asked if he was ready, to the "and Halleliuia" after I said the "Amen" in my vows. We had grandchildren jokes when Father Robert said he had been talking to our families in his homily. And after all was said and done, I was so excited that I raised my hand in the air and screamed "woohoo!" before we walked back down the aisle. It was so much fun and it was so us. I wouldn't have had it any other way!

The wedding itself was spectacular and fun as well! More on that later...