California Trip: Yosemite!!

Yosemite was SO amazing!!  The whole trip was just beyond perfection, and McGee and I were so beyond happy. We all drove up on Tuesday, and arrived in Yosemite around 2pm. We set up camp, and then McGee's family showed up just as we were finishing up. McGee's sister Mo (Maureen) was camping with us, but McGee's parents and youngest sister (Kathy aka "Mook") were staying in a hotel just outside the park, so they spent a lot of time hanging out with us at the campsites but then would go back to the hotel in the evening to sleep.

So, that first day we drove into Yosemite Valley and tried to check out the Visitor's Center but it had closed already, so we checked out the Ansel Adams shop and then the Yosemite Gift Shop, and we saw a few of the spectacular views from the Valley. Then we wall went back to the campsite for dinner. It was also McGee's birthday that day!!!  So we had some amazing chocolate chip cookie bars that my mom made for McGee, because he loooooves chocolate chip cookies. We all went to bed pretty early, because we had to be up early the next day!!

At 5:30am McGee and I woke up because we were SO excited to get married!!  We started to get ready, and the absolute ONLY hiccup that morning was that the outlet in the bathroom was broken, so Amanda couldn't curl my hair (she'd remembered a curling iron and everything, even though I'd forgotten to pack one!). But, that only stalled us for about 5 seconds before we were like, "Oh well! Straight hair, don't care", and back to getting ready we went. I was so darn excited to get married to Kevin, I didn't care at all that the stupid outlet was broken! By about 6:45am everyone was dressed and ready and in the cars heading up to Glacier Point (about an hour away from our campsite). When we arrived we had about a 10 minute walk up to the actual site where we were going to have the ceremony, so we all got ready to walk! I put on some flip flops, and linked arms with my dad (so it's like he was walking me down a really long hilly aisle!), and went to the area where we wanted to be! I changed back into my blue heels (I could not have made that hike in them!), and then Reverend Timmy performed the ceremony. He did an amazing job. It couldn't have been more perfect!  Here are some pictures that Amanda took on our camera during the ceremony. I know that McGee's sister and dad took pictures too, so I'll maybe do another post with some of those pictures later.

This is McGee placing the wedding band on my finger! 

We're married!! 

Yay! And that's Half Dome in the back. 

Here's our family! 

After the ceremony was over, we drove back down to Yosemite Valley to the Ahwahnee Hotel for brunch!! Brunch was amazing, and such a special way to celebrate. The waiter even brought out a "Congratulations" muffin for us to share! After brunch was over, we all got the hiking clothes we'd brought in our cars, and changed clothes in the Ahwahnee bathrooms so we could get some hiking done!  We went on a few hikes, and it was the perfect way to spend our wedding day :)  

It's a Congratulations muffin! 

McGee and I with the girls! 

Me and Addison! 

Back to my flip flops! 

Back to my hiking clothes! Yay! 

This is Mo, Cassidy, and Timmy at Tunnel View. Such a beautiful spot! 

Me, Brad, Mook, Pat (McGee's Dad), and Amanda... We all look confused. Haha

I love this pic of Mook! Haha

Brad, Amanda, and Cassidy hiking! Addison didn't want to hike, so she was in the car with my parents.

Here's Mom and Dad! This was on the hike back down from Bridalveil Falls. 

After a few hikes we went back to the campsites for relaxing and dinner (burritos cooked over the campfire! So awesome).  I even got to have Smores for dessert that night! What could be more perfect than that?! :)  

That was our wedding day!!  It couldn't have been more perfect, and we couldn't have been happier :)

California Trip: San Francisco

So I think I'm going to have to break my California trip into a few different posts!  The first one will be our awesome day in San Francisco, and then I'll have one for amazing Yosemite (aka "The Ceremony"!!!), and then I'll have another post for the awesome West Coast Party.  So, first up:  San Francisco!!

My parents, McGee and I all drove into San Francisco early on Sunday morning to meet up with Timmy and McGee's family. And at about 9am that morning McGee, Timmy, and McGee's family went on a bike ride around San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge!  While they were doing that, my parents and I had a lot of fun wandering around SF being tourists, and we had such a relaxing day! We had a nice breakfast right at Pier 39, and walked over to Ghirardelli Square which was on FIRE!!  Literally, there was a fire at Ghirardelli Square. We found out later it was only a car fire, so that's much better than the actual buildings being on fire!  We had to leave that area pretty quickly because the air quality was so terrible, so we walked back over to the Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 areas. I had such a great day hanging with my mom and dad!  By late afternoon, McGee and Co. were finished with the bike ride, so we met up with Timmy and McGee at the Buena Vista Cafe for some of their famous Irish Coffees!  They were potent but delicious. McGee's family had gone back to their hotel to rest, but we had plans to meet up later for dinner.

Here's the fire at Ghirardelli Square! 

Another view of the fire with the Ghirardelli sign

I love this picture of my mom and dad!  

The Fisherman's Grotto!  I love this place, but we were too full from breakfast to have lunch here.

So, the 5 of us wandered around a bit more, and we went in the vintage arcade that's at Fisherman's Wharf! It is SO cool, and we had a blast in there. After spending a LOT of quarters at the arcade, we made our way over to Pier 39 to watch the sea lions! This is when Brad, Amanda, Cassidy, and Addison all met up with us!  We all stood there watching the drama between the sea lions for a loooong time - They are so darn entertaining!!  Then it was just about time to head to Boudin's to have dinner with the McGee family! This was the first time that our families met!  It went really well, and the whole dinner was amazing. There were even cute little signs the the restaurant had placed all over our table that said "Congratulations Kevin and Erin!".

Here's Timmy trying out the "Magic Chair" at the arcade... 

McGee doesn't know what to think about it... 

And I sat in one of those "Test Your Passion" chairs. 

Some of the sea lions! 

Pier 39! 

It was an amazing day in SF.  McGee's family stayed another night in SF and the next day (Monday) they drove down the coast a bit to Monterey area. The rest of us all went back to Sacramento that night, so on Monday my mom and dad did a lot of prep for our Yosemite trip, and McGee, Timmy and I did a bit of exploring in Sacramento since Timmy had never been there before! We walked around the Capitol Building, walked around Old Sac, and then hit up a few breweries. It was a fun day!  

Timmy thought we should definitely get our picture taken under the "McGee's" sign!

And then next day (Tuesday) we drove up to Yosemite!!  

What a busy holiday weekend!

Wow, we have had a super productive holiday weekend so far! I have done a LOT of painting, and McGee has finished a million other items from our to-do list. One of the many things that McGee did was switch out our hallway light! The light fixture that was there was very 80s and brassy (there's a lot of 80s brass around our house...), but we love the new light we picked out. 

The original light fixture... 

And our new one:

I've been working very hard on painting (I somehow even gave myself a few blisters on my hand from painting?). Our living room is painted (except for our accent wall, which will eventually be a nice blue color), and our halls are all painted now. All of the walls in our house were coated in primer by the last owner, so they were all white but starting to pick up smudges and dirt (oh the joys of having a dog...). Here are some pictures of the newly painted living room and halls:

I don't know how well you can tell in this pic, but the living room is a nice beigey grey color now. 

Ignore the boxes everywhere! That's stuff for our bathroom (lighting, sink, etc). And the wall on the right (that isn't painted yet) will be blue. 

Here's our hall (with the new light!). It's a darker beige-grey color. 

Here you can kinda see the difference between the two colors. 

McGee also got our bat house attached to one of our trees, and the biggest thing the McGee did this weekend (I told you he was busy!!) was he fixed a leaky pipe in our basement. This was something that HAD to be done before we head to CA, because the pipe wouldn't have been ok leaking for that long. Poor McGee had to make 3 trips to Home Depot, but he did an amazing job of fixing the pipe!  

There's our bat house! It's probably about 18 or 20 feet off the ground (they recommend at least 15 feet off the ground). 

Here's the pipe that McGee fixed! He had to cut it in a few spots and attach some stuff... I know nothing about it, but it looks impressive to me and it's bone dry now! 

Just over 2 weeks til our wedding!!

Oh my gosh, I can't believe our wedding is coming up so soon!!  We'll be flying out to CA in just about a week and a half. So, as you can probably imagine, we are BUSY!! We've been working on the house a lot, and also prepping for our trip out to CA. A lot of that prep the past two weekends has been figuring out a good boarding place for Guinness (we'll be boarding him for 12 days!!  Poor goober...). But, we've definitely found a great place now, and we both feel great about the facility and the people there. So, that's one HUGE thing off our to-do list before we tie the knot! :)

We've been working on the house a lot too!  We did a lot of yard work (again... ), and McGee got on our roof and cleaned the gutters and attached gutter guards to our gutters that didn't have them (which was about half of them). While he was up there, I was weeding our garden and I planted a cool flower (it's called Celosia) that we picked up during our trip to Home Depot. We also bought some paints for our living room and hallways, so we're ready to start painting soon (maybe this coming weekend).  And we've also purchased some stuff to finish off our hall bathroom, so we plan to work on that maybe this coming weekend too, or maybe we'll save that for after the wedding if this weekend ends up being crazy. There's so much work to do on this house!

Here's the cool flower! There's little yellow buds that will bloom soon I think... 

Another thing we've been doing a fair amount is going for walks over to the nature trail down the block from us! I swear, this nature trail has been the coolest surprise of purchasing this house. We had NO idea it was there until at least a few weeks after we moved in! All of the leaves are finally in everywhere, and the nature trail looks as cool as I thought it would! If you can't remember what it looked like leaf-less (from a post about a month ago), here ya go: 

This was the nature trail in mid-April... 

And here it is now: 

This past weekend we also stopped by McGee's work (Einstein Hospital) and they have a new statue out front that is SO darn cute and charming! It's Albert Einstein, just chilling on a bench. He looks so friendly. It's quite an impressive hospital, I must say... That's the ER that I went to a few years ago when I had a concussion after hitting my head on a pipe (whoops...).

Doesn't he look so cute and friendly? 

Well, that's about all that's going on here! Not a lot, but at the same time it's a LOT. We're so excited for our trip out to CA, and we're SO excited to get married of course!! I will be Erin McGee in just a few weeks! Whoa! 

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope everyone is having a very great Mother's Day! McGee just left to go over to his parents' house for an early dinner, but I'm not joining him because I caught a nasty case of Poison Ivy. It is not very fun... And I wasn't able to sleep much at all last night. Plus, it looks really gross, so I worry that I'd make his family lose their appetites :-(  The worst day of it was yesterday though, and I wasn't planning on going to the doctor or anything for it because my insurance SUCKS so I just didn't want to deal with a large bill right now. But it was definitely getting worse and worse as the day was going on, and while McGee and I were out running errands he kept looking at me (it was pretty bad on my cheeks, chin, and neck), and then he said, "Do you think maybe we should get you to a clinic or something?" and I was feeling pretty miserable, so I was like, "Yeah, that sounds good". And luckily we found a CVS right near us that has one of those Walk-In Minute Clinics, and the Nurse Practitioner there said I had a really bad case of Poison Ivy, so she put me on a heavy-duty steroid regimen that tapers down over 2 weeks. I had to take 6 pills yesterday and 6 pills again today, and I'm happy to say that I'm noticing an improvement today. One of my arms is still REALLY bad (it looks awful and gross... so I've been wearing long sleeves even though it's high 80s and really humid today), but my face and neck are doing a bit better. Last night they were soooo itchy though, so i couldn't really sleep (even though I'd taken 2 Benadryls and had lathered up in hydrocortisone cream). I've pretty much been awake since 3am this morning... so... it feels way later than 5pm right now.

BUT, enough of my complaining about stupid Poison Ivy. I decided I'd take some pictures of our yard now that we have a bunch of flowers and leaves! That will be a nice pretty post that seems fitting for Mother's Day.

Here's a bush with beautiful flowers that's right by our front steps. I have no idea what it's called, but it has some really bright fuchsia flowers! 

And here's a white bush (that seems like a different type than the fuchsia bushes), and another fuchsia one that isn't quite as healthy and full as the one by the front door. 

Here's a picture from our driveway of that same area. You can also see our plum tree, and the HUGE tree that is next to our house (that's the one we were concerned about before we bought our house, but the arborist said it's quite healthy and we just need to have it trimmed every few years). 

This is a picture from our driveway of the other side of our yard (you can see part of my car!). This side is just straight-up forest area, but it's awesome because it really blocks us from the road now that the leaves are in.

This is the back of our house. There are a bunch of bushes that seem like the same type as the fuchsia bushes in the front yard, but these are mostly red flowered bushes, with one bush that has light pink flowers. And you can see our screened room (that's behind the pink flowered bush)

This is a view to the left of the screened room (you can still see the pink flowers). There are some more tall trees that give us a bit of privacy from our neighbors, and you can see the retaining wall that will eventually have our BBQ grill and some nice chairs for lounging.

This is a view if you were standing on that retaining wall near our grill. You can see some more of our big trees, and you can see that they pretty much block the road. When the leaves are gone though (Fall and Winter) you can see all the way to Valley Forge National Park! 

And this is the view from our Master Bathroom window! I have no idea what kind of tree has those pretty white flowers, but I think it's quite a nice view. 

That's our yard! I tried to get all angles for you so you could really see the whole yard. And I apologize for my lack of knowledge about flowers and plants! I'll learn eventually I think. Our daffodils on the side yard have stopped blooming (they're my favorite type of flower, but they never bloom for very long!), and my marigolds that I planted are still alive and doing well. The white and purple flowers I planted (in the planter boxes) have pretty much committed suicide, but I'm still trying to save them. 

I hope you're all having a great day!