Introducing...(pictorally!) Mr. and Mrs. Eric and Anne Stefl!

Our long awaited wedding pictures have arrived!! Our photographer, Caitlyn, outdid herself. We are VERY happy with how they turned out, so I thought I'd throw a few up here so you, too, can witness our hotness. :) Enjoy!

Get a room, kids....haha!

Hubba-hubba :)

Eric picked me up and twirled me around in the air on this one. So cute, if I do say so myself!

I love this one! It's funny...we make it look like we're old pros at cutting wedding cakes, when in reality I was really nervous! :)

We've got a bleeder!

(First let me apologize - the HTML editor on my home PC is freaking out today, so the spacing of the words and lines is a bit crazy for the moment. Sorry! The blog hates my home PC.)

While on my quest to become a highly skilled, confident cook I decided to make homemade peanut butter chocolate chip cookies at home the other night.

Mid cookie dough preparation, all of a sudden I hear a loud *CLUCK!*.

At first I thought it was just the racket I was making with the cookie sheets I was retrieving from the cabinet at that moment. (I’m pretty reckless in the kitchen and tend to make a lot of noise doing just about anything in that room.) As I turn around, I see Eric grasping his head and looking to be in a fair amount of pain. Turns out his pull-up bar fell down and clunked him straight on the melon as he was resting between sets. Not good. I thought it was initially just one hell of a bump, but when he removed his hand and it was full of blood…like I said…not good. Luckily, after I almost passed out while trying to tend to his bloody wound, all was a-ok. He did have a little gash, but nothing serious that would require doctor’s care (well, I do recall throwing out the idea of going to the ER when I was about to pass out from the sight of the blood…ha!). The upside? He’ll likely get a new scar that he’ll think makes him look badass. One other thing I noted to myself was the difference between men in women (or at least us!) in situations such as these: 

Eric = “I’m fine. NO, we do NOT need to go to the doctor. NO, I do not need to lie down. And NO, do NOT get the peroxide.”

Had the situation been reversed…

Anne = “Oh my God!! Oh my God!! OUCHHHHHH!!! Can you see the cut?? How bad is it? It’s bad, isn’t it? Let’s go to the doctor…get bandages and peroxide. I…have…such…a…headache!!!” (All the while tears running down my face…)

Gotta love the differences between men and women. :) Other lesson I’m pulling from this? Maybe this is a sign that I should NOT attempt to master cooking. :) Oh, personal chef…where art thou?

Also, beware...neighborhood power outages can lead to scraped elbows and dents in cars. Just ask Eric after he had to break into our unattached garage to get to his car Friday morning before work. Oops! Poor guy's had a bad run of luck the last few days. I'm confident, however, that lunch with a few bloody marys and friends will help him forget all about it...

~as

On becoming domesticated...

Now that I’m a wife, I suppose I should start making more of a concerted effort to tackle the one part of domesticity that scares the crap out of me. Cooking. Ugh! I’m not a fan of cooking for a few reasons. First off, the rate of failure is much too high for my liking. I mean, really!! How many times have you heard of dishes going awry versus ones that are fabulous?? Yeah, that’s what I thought. :) Also, it takes sooo long to cook anything worthwhile. Once you add up the time it takes to come up with the idea of what to make, spend a million years at the grocery store tracking down the items since most good recipes call for like 20 different ingredients, do the prep work, AND all the cooking, you’re really looking at a significant time commitment!! Yowza. :) Where’s a personal chef when you need one?!?!

With that said, I’m up for the challenge and was put to my first test. My Dad’s birthday was this past weekend and what initially was going to be a quiet breakfast with Eric, my Dad, and I turned into a larger event that included Eric’s family and another friend. And now the menu was moved to brunch. I love having people over and entertaining, but when it comes to cooking for anyone other than my Dad or Eric, I get nervous. Both of those guys have to say they like it and will pretty much eat just about anything put in front of them. Other people tend to have a more discerning palette which worries me. Ha! Luckily, I scoured the internet top to bottom and found a few recipes that I felt would be good selections. Result = SUCCESS! The brunch for eight turned out great and with no leftovers lurking, I’m pretty confident that everyone genuinely liked the meal. Oh, and no one got sick (...that I know of, so also a success!). Phew.

Next item to tackle on my road to domesticity…NOT locking my husband out of the house while he’s out for a run and I leave for work! WHOOPS!!! My bad. Haha! And what makes this even worse is that this has happened three times now. :) I blame it on the fact that I’m on autopilot when I leave the house. Grab my purse…check, grab my keys….check, lock the door…check, get in my car and leave…check. It’s not my fault!! Okay, technically it is, but maybe he should consider his role in all of this. He’s leaving his new bride unprotected in a house where I could potentially get kidnapped, raped, murdered AND killed. Now who’s the bad guy. And that ladies, is how you turn it around back on them. Haha! Score 1 for Anne. 0 for Eric. :) And yes - I know murdered and killed are more or less the same…inside joke…

~as

Travel talk

Our plane ride to and from Mexico was uneventful….thankfully! The reason I bring this up is because I’m so haunted by our last plane ride that I now find an uneventful ride noteworthy. Sad, I know.

I'm referring to our vacation last year to Alaska. The first leg of our trip that brought us to Minneapolis wasn’t bad. Rather quiet actually. I should’ve known that this was the calm before the storm. :) The next leg of our trip from MN to Anchorage, AK was just over five hours. This, of course, was where the problem was. Being the gracious wife (well, girlfriend then) that I am, I always give Eric the window seat because I know he loves it and I take one for the team with the middle seat. The dreaded middle seat. No one ever likes sitting “bi*ch” in a car, let alone on a plane where you’re among strangers!!

I digress. Back to the story.

The problem was with the man that I had to “share” arm rests with (and by share I mean completely TAKE OVER the arm rest and think it’s only theirs!). He was an older man, sixties maybe, and had some sort of issue with his legs, unbeknownst to us, of course. So upon arriving at our seats, we were greeted by this man that just sat there and stared up at us. After the common, “Excuse me sir, these are our seats...would you mind moving for a moment?” we were told in not so many words that he couldn’t move and we had to CRAWL/STEP over him! Really?!?! I mean, REALLY?!? So after stowing our over head luggage in the compartment, we proceeded to climb over this complete stranger and fumble to get situated. At this point, I’m thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” and it’s as I finally settle into my seat that the realization sets in. I will NOT be able to use the restroom for this entire 5 hour flight and suddenly all I can think about is the bottle of water I just polished off. Uh oh. :) As you can imagine, about an hour into the flight I had to use the facilities, but there was no way in heck I was climbing over duder again. How embarrassing! And let me just pause to say – I’m not trying to come down on this guy for his leg issues or whatever the case is. Get a WINDOW seat, dude! Not an aisle seat! Oh, and the best part during the 5 hours was the fact that he fell asleep for most of it with his head cocked towards me. Let’s just say that would’ve been bad enough had I not also been overwhelmed with his heavy breathing and TERRIBLE bad breath! It’s times like these when I question the wisdom of always giving Eric the window seat. Now you see why an uneventful plane ride is good. :)

Here's what we saw when we approached Mexico - so beautiful!

Here’s something else to put a smile on your face...it did ours, that for sure! We took an excursion one day to the Tulum Ruins which was followed by a visit to Xel-Ha (a water park type place, except no chlorine - all ocean water with all sorts of different activities to do). Xel-Ha also happened to have a bike path with bikes you could use to ride around. We figured, What the heck! Sounds like fun! Let’s just say that while it was a lot of fun, it also resulted in BOTH of us feeling very inept afterwards. Let me explain these bikes for a second. I’m still trying to figure this out - although it was a full size, adult mountain bike, they put child brakes on it. Hmmm, shouldn’t adults already know how to operate regular bike brakes? You know the kind – where you pedal backwards and it brakes. I haven’t had a bike like that since I was about 5 years old! Also, the pedals were really low to the ground, so you had to be careful not to scrape them on the asphalt as you made turns. All of this came into play as I rounded the bend on a turn…uh oh. One thing led to another and my pedal was scraping the ground, I freaked out because of the sound, I tried to brake and back-pedaled too hard, my bike started to wobble, I tried to balance myself out but did the exact opposite and started making things worse, and before I knew it…I was off the path and headed into the woods. HAHA!! Luckily, somewhere during the chaos I managed to brake enough to slow my bike down so it came to a stop just moments before I tumbled to the ground. :) After Eric made sure I was okay, we were in hysterics laughing at the events that just transpired. As they say, “Nothing to see here, folks - move along!” And I got back on the proverbial “horse”.

As we meandered down the path some more, we would occasionally pass two skinny trees that would be a few feet apart and Eric would ride between them. Needless to say, I was a little gun shy at this point so I stuck to going around the trees. Well, before I knew what was happening, all of a sudden I hear “CRASH!” and I turn my head just in time to see Eric flying off his bike! He actually caught some air, too!! Ha! Turns out he got a little too cocky going in between two skinny trees, misjudged their distance apart, and his handlebars ended up touching one of them. Whoops! Luckily, all was A-OK with him (except maybe a bruised ego) and we sure got a good laugh out of that one as well. After returning the bikes shortly later (before we completely demolished them), we stuck with an activity that was likely to keep us out of harm’s way…laying in a hammock in the hammock garden. :)

Oh, good times…

~as

I’m baaaaaaaack…and I’m MARRIED!!!

I know, I know…I’m a huge slacker and haven’t posted anything for WAY too long, but I think I had a pretty good excuse, right?!?

All in all, our wedding day went wonderfully. You always hear of these major catastrophes on TV and in movies, but I’m pleased to say that despite a few small obstacles, all turned out fantastically. Oh, wait…what is that you say? You want to hear more about those obstacles? Okay, fine – you twisted my arm.

Many of you likely don’t remember, but the Thursday and Friday prior to our wedding felt like we were in a real life version of the movie “Storm of the Century”. The weather was just awful. Thunder, and lightning, and rain, oh my! I was trying my best to stay positive and come to terms with the fact that even me and my type A personality and massive control issues couldn’t change the weather (unfortunately…). HA! We were scheduled to have outdoor pictures with our photographer after the ceremony and inclement weather would most certainly nix those plans. As luck would have it, though, the day was absolutely perfect and any worries I had washed away with the previous night’s storm. I woke up, sprang out of bed, and immediately shot over to our bedroom window and peeked out the blinds. Sunny and not a cloud in the sky! Can I get an AMEN! Phew. Potential Obstacle #1 = averted!

Shortly after seeing the great day we were blessed with, Potential Obstacle #2 reared its ugly head. Our guest book was missing!!! To give you a bit of explanation, I decided I wanted to do something unique for our guest book. Using our engagement pictures, I placed them into a leather bound book with black cardstock quality pages. The pictures were carefully and painstakingly inserted in such a manner that the guests would write their sentiments and signatures all around the pages of pictures in silver pens (to “POP” off the black card stock…hehe). To put it mildly, I was (and still am!) in love with our guest book. And being the meticulous planner I like to think I am, I thought it would be a great idea to bring the book with us to the rehearsal dinner on Friday night so the wedding party and immediate family could sign the book then since they’d be quite busy the next day. Now fast forward back to the morning of the wedding…the book I cherish so much was missing!!!! Nooooooo!! I immediately went into mini panic mode and made my sister, Adria, come with me to search my car and our house. Nothing. As my Mom, Adria, and Eric all stood by me wondering what they could do to help as they saw the sadness in my face, I started to cry. :) And as everyone was telling me it would be okay, I then blurted out through my tears, “But what will the guest sign???” HA!! It was at this point that the three of them – those individuals that are supposed to make sure I stay calm and relaxed this morning – started laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of my comment. Awesome, guys, just awesome. Jerk faces. :) At which point I think I said, “You guys, don’t laugh at me!” and then started to chuckle myself. I mean, really…what WOULD the guests sign?!!? Hahaha! Thankfully, Eric’s mom Denise was the hero. She called the restaurant we had the rehearsal dinner at and they had the book. Denise went and retrieved it for me and all was well in the world again. Phew. Potential Obstacle #2 = averted!

Next small obstacle was at the salon where I was scheduled to have my hair and makeup done. Upon exciting my car, my maid of honor rushed out to say, “You’re not going to be happy to hear this…” (uh oh) “…but the salon’s air conditioning system is broke.” It was about 80 degrees already at this point. Yikes! All I’m thinking in my head was, Great…my hair will fall down and lose its curl and I’ll sweat off all my makeup before I even leave the joint! :) Luckily, my bridesmaids kicked into action and one strong mimosa later (or should I say one 20 ounce cup of champagne with a dribble of OJ), I was chillaxin. Hey, don’t judge. Eric was having bloody marys with his g-men, so what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right!? :) I got used to the warmer “climate” in the salon and all turned out well. Phew. Potential Obstacle #3 = averted!

This next obstacle I didn’t find out about until after the ceremony, which is probably a good thing. :) As I mentioned above, all of the groomsmen and ushers went out for a few bloody marys the morning of the wedding. From the bar, all of the guys headed down to the Hilton where our rented bus was supposed to pick them up and bring them to the church. Well, in the midst of all the fun and festivities, one of the groomsmen forgot his tux at home. Like Scobby Doo would say, ruh roh! Although he ended up missing the bus and had to drive himself to the church, he was able to run home and gather his tux in time. Silly rabbit, trix are for kids! Phew. Potential Obstacle #4 = averted!

More to come on our adventurous honeymoon in another posting. Ta ta for now!

~as