Wedding Blizkrieg

The definition of a Blitzkrieg is "a swift intensive military attack, especially using tanks supported by aircraft, designed to defeat the opposition quickly."

That's what we have to do with this whole wedding planning business.   Blitz the heck out of it with a
 "swift, vigorous attack, barrage, or defeat."  That was the plan for this weekend and I wouldn't say we lost but we definately didn't win.

Saturday morning started out with catch-up calls with family and a breakfast of champions.

Then we took a good long look at our total invite list and addresses for Save the Dates and decided how we would determine the total head count. Stressful.  We need to guarantee that, like, 130 won't show. 

I printed the labels I had spent hours on creating only to find out that I had bought the wrong kind of label (laser) for my printer (ink jet) and all the labels smudged.  I'll never make that mistake again. 

So Dan decided we should go to his office and use the printer there.  Once we got there and struggled with the computers we realized that the font I had used wasn't available on his work computers and so we couldn't print there.  So we headed into the city to hit-up a Staples before our second pre-marital session.

The F train took forever to arrive so we didn't get to the city in time to stop at Staples before our session.  But we did stop at Starbucks which was a good thing because ya'll know girlfriend gets real cranky sometimes...

Anyways we had our session which was about "communication" and we practiced assertiveness and active listening.  Afterwards we stopped at Staples and got the right labels and made it back to Bay Ridge in wicked fast time.

We tag teamed dinner and Dan made chili all by himself with only a little coaching!  He's getting real good at the occasional dinner prep which I truly love since it is such a nice treat to have someone else cook.  Thanks Buddy!

The rest of the night I made muffins for church the next day and we labeled all the Save the Dates!

Other wedding blitz accomplishments: we narrowed our catering options to three and requested quote info from two, added stuff to the registry, and I think that's it.

So the blitz was mildly successful.  We're moving faster than a snail now.

We're cultured

So last Saturday was fun.   We did our first pre-martial counseling session and then went to Papyrus, Barnes and Noble and Chipotle.  Then we went to the ballet!  

That's as far as Dan got in this post...I'm gonna finish it...

So I (Stephanie) purchased a subscription to the New York City Ballet every year and gets two tickets to three different shows for a steal of a price.  This was Dan's third time seeing the ballet since we started dating and it was probably the most entertaining one we've seen so far.  It was Coppelia which is a comic ballet about a doll maker who creates a mechanical doll that he loves.  A village girl and her pals sneak into his workshop and the girl pretends to be the doll, convincing the doll maker that she came to life.  There is a whole romance thing in there too but that was the idea.   

The ballet was in three acts and we watched the first two and then left.  The thing about the ballet sometimes is there is a whole lot of dancing and not a lot of plot.  So sometimes it is boring, I'll admit.  Also Dan had to preach the next day so we didn't want to be out too late.  

We agreed the best part of this ballet was in act two which took place in the workshop.  There were several dancers in costumes to make them look like different dolls, a Chinaman, jester, wizard, etc.  When the village girl dancers touched them they would animate in this robotic way making them look mechanical.  Then when they stopped they had to sit perfectly still for, like, 20 minutes while the rest of scene played out on the stage.  It was crazy awesome that they could stay in character and not move at all.  

This was the view of the art thing on the floor in the lobby.  

For all those people out there who think I have to twist Dan's arm to go to the ballet and how could I make him do that?  Just hush.  He liked it fine and I watch five times as much sports for him, so there.  

It's a little hard to tell from this picture but it was snowing out and the fountain at Lincoln Center looked really pretty in the dark, with the snow falling. One of those rare moments where snow in New York isn't nasty and dirty

Breaking Radio Silence

Okay, so yeah, we know...there haven't been any posts in awhile.  And we're sorry for that.  I did not want this blog to be one that only had occasional posts every few months or so because I HATE following blogs that do that.

But I get it now.  Life gets busy, or boring, or sad and there isn't much to say that I think anyone would be interested in, really.  But busy, boring, and sad are all still part of life and just as important to document, I suppose.  So here are a few things that have been happening lately.

We've gotten a lot of rotten dirty snow.

Hey, Midwest, you can have your winter back, we're not equipped out here on the East Coast.  

I've decided that snow in the city is only romantic when it's falling at night and snow is only pretty in the hour after it first falls.  After that it's simply ugly, dirty, and terrible in the city. It's times like these when I miss the wide open fields of Iowa all blanketed in white.  I do NOT, however, miss digging my car out of the snow and clutching the wheel hoping not to skid off the road.

Here is what our sidewalks have looked like for the past few weeks:

Dan and I have both had the misery of wearing inadequate footwear and ending up with cold wet feet and pants.  Do not be deceived by the pavement that appears to be simply wet.  It's a 3 inch deep puddle of water.  Ack!

We have stayed inside a lot due to the snow.  And since my TV is no longer providing any channels whatsoever (time warner is the scum of the earth) we have been binging on Breaking Bad (thanks for the suggestion Mandy) and being mildly productive on the wedding front.  Last week Dan stamped all the save the dates! 

I tried a new recipe for baked potato soup.  It didn't have a lot of flavor but it looks good right?

Right now I've been working on making the mailing labels for the save the dates.  Hopefully they'll be in the mail by the end of the week! 

Valentines Day

This is what a true Valentine looks like:

I think the youth group teens could convince him to do anything that makes him look super silly.  What a guy!

On Valentines Day we had the youth group party and afterwards Dan surprised me with a couple of roses and chocolate.  I got him a new dress shirt and a box of jolly ranchers. Here is a look at our holiday loot: 

And some love notes to boot

Dan started it...

Fun Gift

So Stephanie likes to spoil me.

On Friday Stephanie treated me to a  NBA basketball game between Brooklyn Nets and OKC Thunder. It was an anniversary gift from way back in September.

The evening started at a crazy busy Buffalo Wild Wings.   We both got some delicious wings although I kept getting bumped by the waiter and waitress trying to get to tables.  We survived the craziness and went over to the basketball arena.

 We had good seats and could see everything in the arena.

Here is a picture of us at the start of the game

And here is a picture of the court

Anyways, it was a great game.  Kevin Durant from OKC put on a show and made several amazing shots.  It was so much fun and Stephanie made me feel so special. Glad we can share moments like this. 

On a side note we were disappointed that they had no kiss cam this game we were ready!!!

Here is a final picture that shows how happy I was