New New New!

Sorry for such a long gap in blogging the past month! I have been so busy settling down into married life and raising a new puppy that I haven't been able to blog much! So Akiba is growing like a weed and is doing great on his housebreaking! He has had an accident in about 3 weeks now (knock on wood!) and I am so happy with how it's going. Sure it sucks that I have to get up with him at 7-7:30 every morning, but he's not soiling his crate at night and on the weekends he even lets me and Nick sleep in a bit!

Along with a new puppy and routine there has also been another recent change. Drumroll please...........I got a jot at the local Petsmart PetHotel as a Pet Care Specialist!!!!! This past Monday and Wednesday I have been watching training videos and reading books and taking tests, and needless to say I am tired of that boring stuff and am feeling tortured seeing all of these dogs and not being able to really interact with them. However, tomorrow I get to begin training in the kennel part which I am totally excited for!!!! Tomorrow I am getting my schedule for next week so I am excited to see what it will be like!!! Anyhow, I am getting tired and still have stuff to do tonight so I am going to call it a night! Hopefully my next entry comes quicker than this one has :)

P.S. I also got a new phone today...the LG enV3 which is awesome! If you're looking for a new one with a full keyboard you should definitely check it out!

The Wedding, the Honeymoon, and All that Comes After

The Wedding:

So the wedding is over, the cake has been eaten, and the honeymoon is a fond memory. I am officially Mrs. Spotanski and a resident of Omaha, Nebraska. It is strange not having to worry about the wedding or having to plan and coordinate a hundred things! The wedding was a complete blast! There ceremony began at 4, and I nearly cried through the whole thing (Martha's the only one who saw it, though :) ). Then we took some pictures and went to a park to take some pictures, and then right before the reception, Nick and I decided that we could wait no longer for a Mountain Dew, and so we ran to the gas station in our wedding outfits! LOL.

The reception was a great time, excluding the DJ. The guy got our names wrong when introducing us, and then had to keep asking what we wanted to do next. He was extremely disorganized and we decided that we could NOT recommend Showtime Music to anyone. However, aside from that, the food was great (bbq brisket sandwiches), the cake was awesome, and Nick's Dad's band really made our wedding a night to remember :)

The Honeymoon:

Nick and I had plans to leave Omaha for Durango, Colorado, by 11 a.m. the day after the wedding, however, we decided to stop back by the hotel to say thanks and good-bye to everyone before leaving. Then we had to come home to get our bikes, luggage, and last minute stuff; therefore, we didn't get on the road until 1 p.m. This put us into Colorado Springs (where we stayed Sunday night) around 10 p.m. or so. We made it to Durango the next day around 2:30 after a nervewracking drive through a mountain pass near the great divide, and so we just decided to relax that first day in Colorado. Tuesday we went white water rafting, and did some more shopping. All day Wednesday was designated to the Silverton/Durango Narrow Gauge Railroad which was neat, but a lot of riding (7 hours total :P). Thursday we went to Mesa Verde National Park and saw Anisazi (sp?) cliff dwellings. Friday morning we took a horseback ride and then went to Trimble Natural Hot Springs in the afternoon. Saturday, being the 4th of July we just bummed around town and then watched fireworks from our balcony that night. Sunday we drove home all in one day (16 hours!). All in all we had a great time!

After it All:

So this past week is the first I have spent at home as a married woman, and it really has been a pretty productive week! We have a pantry in our kitchen/front room and I have been working on cleaning all of the clutter out of it so that it can be used to put our food in and such. Needless to say our frontroom is full of crap that we have to clean up tonight before we leave tomorrow to get our puppy. It's nice feeling like we don't have to accomplish everything in one day, though :) This has been a long and kind of boring blog, but I wanted to type it all in one go, so I didn't forget :) I have posted a few pictures taken by me and my family at the wedding, and of the honeymoon, though, and will post some taken by the photographer soon! Enjoy!

Me and Dad during the Father/Daugther dance

My niece, Jordyn :) She loves being tickled!

One of the first peaks in Colorado

Our hotel looked like Shakespeare's Globe Theatre!

On the train a rainbow formed as the train let off steam!

In front of the Engine.

And now Nick's turn :)

Me at Mesa Verde

Nick and I in front of Spruce Tree House Cliff Dwelling. So neat!!!

One of the cliff dwellings from above

We decided to eat out at a nice restaruant one night; this was Nick's choice of dinner: Trout and Potatoe :)

And my choice was a 8 oz. Sirloin :)

Miniature golfing (we saw two snakes on the course!)

The Fourth of July fireworks that we watched from our hotel room balcony :)

Two Weeks and Counting!

So it's finally beginning to hit me that two weeks from this moment right now I'll no longer be Ms. Osborn, but rather Mrs. Spotanski. It's bittersweet as I am excited to move foreward with my life to see where it takes me, but then again I am sad to leave my family, and furthermore I am kinda nervous for the financial responsibility that I am about to take on and such. I know that I have nothing to be nervous about financially, but it's just such a new experience and all.

As excited as I am for the wedding, I am ready for the stress to be gone. I think our honeymoon to Durango is going to be a great chance to just relax and unwind after the stress of the wedding and just life in general. Tonight I started packing up some clothes and odds-and-ends of mine to take to Omaha on Monday and it felt so weird to be packing my stuff up to move it all. However, as anxious I am for all of this, I am really excited to start my new life with Nick!

New puppy picture!!!

So tonight Ethan and I took a trip (and i do mean trip!) to Grant City to see mine and Nick's new puppy, Akiba. After the nearly run stop-signs, winding road, and getting the car stuck in foot-deep mud I was almost to the point of just turning around and going home and just going to see him some other night. However, I got a call from the woman as I was finally on my way there after getting out of the mud (Thanks Duane Willaims!!!!!!!!!!!!) asking if I was still planning on coming and I told her the story, and she said she'd be glad to wait, and so we finally got there and this is what we saw:

Well, naturally I am soooooo excited to pick him up on July 11th :) So out of all the horrible stuff that happened on the way there (too much to recount), this was totally worth it!!!!

New (future) Family Member

Nick and I decided quite a while back that after our wedding we would get a puppy shortly thereafter. We were originally thinking of getting a Jack Russell Terrier, but only because they are fairly small dogs that would seem to fit our house well. However, the more we talked, the more we found that both of us are "big-dog-people" and we discussed how much we like his brother, Ryan's, Siberian Husky, Kia.

So we have decided to get one for ourselves :) Looking in the paper here in Omaha and in Kansas City there really seems to be hardly any Huskies to be found. So I was searching online a few days ago and found a breeder in Grant City, Mo (about 40 miles from Maysville) with pups available at the price we were expecting to pay. So we have decided on a little black and white male that we decided to name Akiba. The picture below was taken by the breeder when he was a little under a month old. I am going to go see him on Tuesday and then Nick and I are going to pick him up a few days after our honeymoon on either July 6th or 7th or so! I will put up more recent pics of him when I have them!

Garage Saling, Graduation, Growing Up

Garage Saling:

This past weekend marked the beginning of "garage sale season" for Mom and I :) On the first Saturday in May several neighborhoods in Liberty have neighborhood-wide garage sales and we just love going to them! This year Mom and I were planning on leaving around 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning to head to Liberty; however, Greg and Wendy called Friday afternoon and were telling us they were garage saling and so I mentioned it to Mom and she decided that she wanted to be spontaneous (say what!!!???) and that she wanted to go down and garage sale that night and stay in a hotel and then garage sale more the next day! So we went down and in just the hour and a half that we garage saled that evening I found pretty much everything that I was looking for (vhs/dvd player combo, big dog pet taxi, books) which was great!

I just love getting to do this with Mom and we have decided that this is our "deer hunting" ;)


Graduation/Growing Up:

Five days from now I will officially be a college graduate!!!! EEEEEKKKKKKK :) I honestly never knew if this day would really come and couldn't be more ready for it. These past five years have really flown by and I have enjoyed my college career, but now am ready to move on and get other parts of my life started :) This section is double-titled because I believe that with Graduation comes the neccessity (sp?) to grow up, and although I am ready for graduation, I'm not sure that I'm ready to be a "grown up" :) I love my family and am kind of daunted by the thought of moving 3 hours away and not getting to see them everyday. However, I'm sure that after a few months I will adjust to it and know that I will love getting to be with Nick everyday :) (that's the bright side :) )

Blessed, Bridal Shower, Bad Weather

As I was deciding what all to talk about tonight, I found that I had so much to say and so forgive me if I seem a little long winded :)

Blessed:

I have always known that I am blessed to have a wonderful family and group of friends, but I don't think that I (or maybe anyone else, for that matter) spend enough time reflecting on this and how different our lives would be without these people. I recently graded some essays in my sophmore class and some of the students wrote about some of the their horrible home lives, and it just really made me aware as to how wonderful I have it. Sure there are days when I come home from school/work tired and butt-dragging and then there's this little note at the end of the island asking me to do the laundry, vacuum, sweep, or something of the like, and I get thoroughly upset because all I want to do is relax. However, after reading about how bad some people have had it (and still do have it) I am thankful that God has given me the life he did.

Mom, Grandma Foogie, and Me at my bridal shower.....I have such a wonderful family :)

Bridal Shower:

This topic kind of ties into the "blessed" category. Today Martha and Teresa had a bridal shower for me and Nick (although, naturally Nick didn't come :) ) and it was so wonderful to get to see some family members that I had not seen in over a year, and whom it will probably be another year before I see them again! There were probably 25-30 people who came which is a wonderful turnout for a shower! Teresa and Martha just worked so hard on everything and the food, games, and just everything turned out amazing! I was glad that Martha and Kati finally got to meet, seeing as they will both be in my wedding about 2 months from now :) And I kid you not, Nick and I seriously got tons of wonderful gifts!!! It took me probably 45 minutes to an hour to open all of them, and then when I got home I brought them all in the frontroom to show Dad and they literally filled up the entire frontroom! We got everything from towels, kitchen utensils, a standing mixer (that I have wanted for soooooo long! LOL), to a clock, photo albums and picture frames, and an amazing hope chest that Dad made for me (another thing I have wanted for years!) I am just so thankful for having such a wonderful, supportive family and am so glad that we don't have to go out and buy these sorts of things now :)

The gorgeous hope chest that Dad made me is in the front :)

Bad Weather:


Tonight around 9 p.m. we had our first tornado warning of the year (as far as I can remember, anyways!) which I was dreading. If you know me, then you know that I hate bad weather especially since we don't have a basement because we have to go out to Grandma and Grandpa's when the weather gets bad. Nick and I have been talking and have decided that a full basement (finished or unfinished....doesn't matter to us) is pretty much a requirement in our next home, especially if we stay in the Midwest. Hopefully this year we don't have as much severe weather as we did last year.....it seemed like every night in Omaha there were tornado warnings, which particularly bothers me there because we don't have anywhere to go for shelter there, and because about 3 miles away from Nick's house a tornado hit last summer and did a lot of damage. In other words, I am a big baby and would love to live somewhere tornados aren't common :)