I feel like everyone and their brother has started blogging about food and recipes and yummy things, and I’m sitting here like, “I like to bake, but not my own recipes soooooooooooooo…”  So if you still read this blog despite my two and a half month hiatus, I’m thankful for you and happy that you haven’t given up on me.  Also, I’m still just writing about my life, so if you’re looking for a blog about food you’ll have to look elsewhere.  But if food will make you stay, here’s a picture of a pizza that I made:

And was like, “Awwwwwwwwww I have the sweetest mom in the whole world!!”  And Peter was all pouty because there was nothing for him.  Then I used more self-control than I’ve ever used in my life to wait until Sunday to open my gift for day 2.


On Sunday morning right after I woke up, I went to the kitchen to open my gift:

These are those things that you put in a vase and are supposed to be decorative and not touched, but then you can’t help yourself and you submerge your hand in the vase and it feels awesome.  Needless to say, I’m excited for my new springtime decoration.


Then, day 3 came along and I thought that my mom forgot about me because there wasn’t anything in my mailbox.  But when I went out to the front porch there was a really big box out there!  And it was addressed to me!  And I was SO happy and excited!!!!  


And then I opened the box.  And plugged this in.  And stared.

I made that wreath!

After many attempts, at a nice picture in front of our new house all decorated for Christmas, we decided on this one.

Can’t you feel my love for him just radiating from my eyes?

When my hair used to be short, I would get my hair cut every 6 weeks so that it would keep it’s shape and I wouldn’t look like an overgrown mess.

I have some news.

The next morning, after a night of no sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I didn’t have any more excuses to delay a house (Before engagement: “There is NO WAY I’m buying a house with you if I don’t have a ring on my finger.” … Immediately after engagement: “We can’t afford a house!  We are going to be engaged for a year and a half because we are poor and need to save for the wedding!” …  Immediately after wedding chaos: “I just had 9 of the most stressful weeks of my life and now you want to buy a HOUSE??” … Three weeks after wedding chaos: *crickets chirping* [which coincidentally we hear all the time at the new house.  They sound much better there then they did when I was trying to think of an excuse not to buy a house]) I IM-ed Peter.

May 17th.
me: I made a decision this morning on my way to work.

 Peter: ok

 me: I think that we shouldn’t get a bedroom set right now and we should move your dresser from the old apartment to our apartment. And I think that we should get a real estate agent and start looking at houses.

 Peter: Wow. That was not what I was expecting your decision to be

 me: What were you expecting?

 Peter: I don’t know

  That I should get my haircut today instead of tomorrow

  me: Well, it’s a fact that interest rates are slowly starting to go up on houses, so I really think we should start looking.

 Peter: I agree

 me: So I’m putting you in charge of figuring out a real estate agent and all that stuff.

 Peter: got it

Three hours later, I got an email from Peter.  “I got a real estate agent!!”  Well THAT happened faster than I thought it was going to!!


A few days later, Peter asked me what we were doing the following Tuesday.  “Nothing??  Great!!  We’re going to look at 4 houses!!!”


I felt a panic attack coming on.  This was happening WAY WAY WAY faster than I thought it was going to.  I knew that Peter REALLY wanted to start looking at houses.  So I agreed.  Because I knew that we wouldn’t be buying anything because there was NO WAY that I was going to sign those papers Peter is so wonderful and I just want him to be happy.


Over the next few weeks we looked at about a dozen houses.  


And then something completely unexpected happened.


I fell in love with a house.  It was love at first sight as we were pulling up the driveway.  The brick outside. The beautiful inside.  The partially finished basement.  The yard, oh my, what a yard.  


And suddenly, I had to have this house.  So Peter started working on it.  He researched loan rates, did the math on how much we could afford, made phone calls, and had meetings.  I went to Mexico for work, and my busy little bee kept at it.  When I came home from Mexico, we went to see the house again.  And we decided to make an offer.  And then I had a heart attack.


June 19: Sara and Peter make offer.
June 20: Sellers counter-offer.
June 21: Sara and Peter make final offer.
June 22: Our offer was accepted.

Picture taken moments after we pulled ourselves together after speechlessly staring  at each other because the real estate agent just called us to tell us that our offer was accepted.

June 23: Sara left on a 10 day trip for work.


Our entire summer has been filled with signing papers, being afraid that we would get denied a loan, signing more papers, packing, thanking the Lord that we didn’t get denied the loan, and finally, on August 27, four months to the day after our wedding, moving.  I know that I committed myself to Peter before God and the church and our family and friends when we got married, but I only had to sign my name once for that.  ONCE.  Now that I’ve signed my name a kajillion times and we’re locked in to paying for this house for the next 30 years, I REALLY feel committed to Peter.  SUPER committed.

Our first photo as official homeowners.  My palms were so sweaty that there was condensation on the table when I lifted up my hands. But hey – we’re homeowners!

So, this is our house, and I am so scared beyond belief to be a homeowner because now I’m REALLY an adult  thrilled about it that I could just look at it all the time.  I may have to quit my job because I just like being inside our new house so much.  But I can’t do that because we have a mortgage payment, and if I quit my job we would lose the house that I already love more than almost anything in the world.  I didn’t know it was POSSIBLE to love an inanimate object so much.  

Isn’t it adorable?

I could look at it all the time.

In love with the yard (but not with the idea of mowing the lawn…)

 I sure am happy that we didn’t buy that dresser.

Fun fact about me: I change my desktop background at least once a week.  I also change my phone backgrounds a lot.  I don’t know, I just need a change of scenery.

Then I looked at my blog and decided that I wanted a change of scenery there, too.  My dad didn’t like the pink anyways.  

Anyways.  Guess what we got a few weeks ago in the mail but I just decided to do something about it today!!!  Our engagement pictures! 

I love them so much.  And since I love our engagement pictures so much, I decided to share them with you.  Let me tell you – if you are getting married and you need a photographer, please contact Ebley Photography.  They’re amazing.  Not only do they take awesome pictures, but they are super awesome to work with.  

Even before When Peter and I got engaged, I knew that I wanted engagement pictures done.  And then we won a wedding, and I decided that engagement pictures were going to be cut from our short schedule because time was quite tight, if you recall.

THEN I kept seeing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall of these HAPPY couples being happy BEFORE they got married in their engagement pictures, so I decided that I wanted engagement pictures, too.  I made this decision the first week of April.  (Note: we were married the last week of April.)  After some hee-hawing back and forth with Peter, I told him that I would contact ONE photographer and offer the TWO dates that we were available.  And if they said no, I would let it go.

Lucky for us, five days before our wedding, Peter and I made the trip to Madison to have our engagement pictures taken.

And I’m SO happy we did!!!

… to the man who taught me how to tell a story.

… to the man who introduced me to my passion.

… to the man that keeps my head on my shoulders, and my feet on the ground.

… to the man who always makes me laugh.

… to the man who loved me first.

I think that this is my longest time not posting since I started this blog.  First, I will apologize.  Since we got back from the honeymoon, I’ve been meaning to write a blog post, but then I would get distracted or busy (you’ll see why further down), and not write.  Oh, and my cute little Dell Mini has a really little brain, and since it’s two and a half years old now, it decided that it should move slower than a little old man.  It’s really annoying.  


Anyway, this post is going to cover quite a few topics, so I’m going to keep each topic as short as I know how, and I’ll include pictures (real camera pictures, not drawings…).


I’ll start with the wedding, since it was a pretty big life change and all.  In short – you all did an amazing job planning our wedding and we really couldn’t be happier.  The day was more perfect than I could have ever imagined.  There weren’t any problems throughout the day, but to be fair – if there were, someone else handled them which was awesome.  Anyway, our photographer and videographer did the most AMAZING job.  I seriously could look at the pictures ALL THE TIME.  


Here is the website for ALL of the wedding pictures: 


http://www.pictage.com/1235231

There is only a week left for you to see all of the pictures, so if you’d like to order them, you only have a week.  Unfortunately, I can’t put the pictures on my blog right now because of copyright, but eventually I’ll be able to show them to you!


Here is a link to the blog post that the photographer did with a sneak peek of the photos.


And here is a link to the wedding video.  I could watch it all the time!! 


So yes, it really was one of the best days of my life, and it went as quickly as everyone told me it would.  It’s kind of funny because I only actually remember bits and pieces of the day, almost like I was in a trance.  I CAN tell you that one of my absolute favorite parts of the day was when the priest introduced us to the church as Mr. and Mrs. Peter Romenesko.  Looking out at all of the people clapping and seeing how happy everyone was.  That was my favorite.  The priest said it very well to us – he said that this is one of the only times in our lives that so many people who love us and care for us will be in one place, and we’ll be able to see all of them.  I’m smiling just thinking about it!!


One of the BEST decisions that we made in the two and a half months of wedding planning was going on our honeymoon the day after the wedding.  Seriously.  SUCH a good decision.  Peter and I were so busy between planning and work that we both needed the entire week (I could have stayed for another!) to wind down and do nothing.  It. was. amazing.  We went to an all-inclusive resort in St. Thomas.  I can’t even start to say how great it was.  SO great.


The weather was really nice while we were there.  It was overcast every day, and only one day of rain.  At first I was a little depressed about all of the clouds all the time, but then my skin was very happy, because I would wear a lower SPF to get some color, and I didn’t get burned at all because of the cloud cover.  The last day and a half that we were there had zero clouds and 100% sun.  It was actually quite beneficial to have the last part of our trip in the full-on sun because I was able to sweat off all of the pina coladas and strawberry daquiris that I drank junk that I ate during the week.

Someone didn’t listen to his wife when she told him to wear sunscreen.  Poor Peter’s legs were RED HOT SUNBURNED, so for the entire week he had to have a towel over them.

Since there were only 2 of us, we had to take a lot of self-pictures.  We got pretty good at it!

The hotel had a pool bar, and the iguanas always relaxed there.  So we didn’t.

Sick.

The ocean was SO beautiful.  Amazingly clear.  We spent 90% of our time laying on the beach.

The view we had from the beach every day.

This was the rainy day.  Note my hair.  So gross.

The REAL reason that we were never at the hotel bar was because  there were a lot of other honeymooners there that were way more fun than Peter and me.  While we were reading on the beach and making friends with couples that have been married for 15 years, the other honeymooners were doing body shots at the pool bar.  Clearly our scene, but we decided that since we were married now we shouldn’t do body shots anymore.

Even though I made fun of him at the time, I’m really glad that Peter did this – he made a little video every day about our trip.  He just has such a great voice for voice-overs.  My little MC.

If you can believe it, this was the view straight down from our balcony on the second floor.  You can see the bottom of the ocean!  Isn’t that so great??

I FORCED Peter to go snorkeling one day.  Maybe sometime he’ll tell you the story about why he is afraid of snorkeling.  It has to do with snorkeling in Disney World when he was 12 and getting yelled at and swallowing a bunch of water.  After he told me that, he kept expressing that he did NOT want to snorkel, and after I had FINALLY convinced him, I told him that I changed my mind and didn’t want him to snorkel.  I was very afraid that he would have a panic attack in the middle of the ocean.  So, loving wife that I am, I told him that although I am a good swimmer (ten years of swimming lessons at Badger High), I wasn’t a good enough swimmer to save him if he had a panic attack.  And I would be very sad if he drowned on our honeymoon.  (He didn’t, so that’s good news.)

Look at us looking all nice on the last night of our honeymoon.  We were all set to go on a sunset cruise, but then it was lightning and stuff, and I read somewhere that it was kind of dangerous to be out in the middle of a body of water on a hunk of metal while it’s lightning.  Needless to say, the resort cancelled our cruise.  But at least we got a nice picture!

When we got back from the honeymoon, we had to get back into our real, non-inclusive resort lives where we had to pay for drinks and ice cream.  Bummer.  


The good news is that it was much less difficult than I had anticipated returning to work.  During all of the wedding planning madness, I got a promotion at work – so that’s exciting!!  So I was not only returning to work with a new last name, but a new job title and office.

Getting back into the real world also meant that there wasn’t a maid to clean our living area and make the bed every day.  Lucky for me, I am a REALLY organized person, so parts of our apartment looked like this within like, one day of being back in the real world.

Unfortunately, MOST of our apartment looked like this:

Why is it so hard for me to put the squirt bottle back in the closet after I iron??

Maybe because I can’t even put the ironing board away after I iron (right side of the picture).  And I just KNOW that there’s a carpet under all of those boxes SOMEWHERE…

Absolute WORST part of coming back from vacation: unpacking.

Nevermind.  REAL absolute worst part of coming back from vacation is all the LAUNDRY.

We spent about a week jumping over boxes with our dinner and eating in front of the TV.  Mom, I’m so sorry.

Where did these things even COME from??

For approximately one week I just dreaded coming home from work because of the above was the mess that I had to come home to.  It was so much stuff that I just didn’t even know where to start.  So I dedicated myself to unpacking one box at a time.  And then, it was super motivating when I could see the ENTIRE living room floor.  So once that was taken care of, I was ready to take on everything else.  


And then Peter’s parents came up to finish moving ALLLLLL of his stuff from his old apartment into our apartment.  So we started all over again.  But that was all taken care of fairly quickly, because I was sick of having stuff all over the place all the time.  


So now, Peter and I are 6 weeks into wedded bliss.  Things are going very well, although it is quite an adjustment living with someone after you’ve had an entire two bedroom apartment all to yourself for a year and a half.  


Because Peter and I are so used to being apart, we thought it would be best to be apart as MUCH as possible.  So this last week I went to Mexico for a work conference, this coming week Peter will be in Washington state for three days, and then next week I’ll be out west for 10 days touring beef ranches with a group of Brazilians.  You know, we thought it would be best to ease ourselves into the whole roommates for life thing…. 


While I was in Mexico, everyone was giving me a hard time for being away from my new husband so soon.  My friend from Brazil told me that it was better this way because then when we’re together it will be like we’re on our honeymoon all the time since we’re not together all the time.  Good thing we don’t have much of a choice but to test it out!


I’ll be perfectly honest – I do miss Peter when I’m traveling.  (And he SAYS he misses me, but I think that he REALLY likes being able to play video games all the time and eat as much frozen pizza as he wants.)


So, that’s been the last six weeks in a nutshell.  I’m going to try my best to post more, because I actually dislike very much having to do such a long post about so many things.  But you get the picture.

Our first formal appearance as the Romeneskos at my dear friend Libby and Sam’s wedding.

I really do love being a Romenesko.

For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about my mom.  I’ve been thinking about what I should tell the world about her, but everything that I was to say doesn’t even begin to describe how wonderful my mom is.  


Peter and I decided not to drive home this weekend for Mother’s Day because it’s our first weekend in Green Bay since the first weekend of February.  We have a lot of things to re-arrange and move before the end of May when Peter will be fully moved into my our apartment.  Our moms understood, told us that we needed a weekend to relax and get things organized after such a hectic few months.  They weren’t upset or sad. 


I was relieved when my mom understood that I wasn’t coming home.  


But now, when I woke up this morning, I’m sad that I’m not at home with my mom on Mother’s Day.  


Instead of writing and deleting and writing and deleting this morning, I decided to go back and read the blog posts that I’ve written for my mom on past Mother’s Days.  I’m happy to say that every word that I typed still rings true today.


Missing my mom while I was in Ecuador


Last year’s Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there, but especially to mine.