Sand ceremony

Awhile back someone asked about the sand ceremony we had at our wedding.

A typical sand ceremony uses 2 glass containers filled with different colored sand - one for the bride, one for the groom. They each pour some into a third glass container separately, to represent their individual lives. Then they pour it in together, to represent the blending of their lives in marriage. The final container is then a nice keepsake from the wedding.

In ours, we decided to have our moms participate with their own colored sand, since they (and our dads) provided the foundation that made us who we are.

The vows that we used for the sand ceremony:

Bryan and Tia, today you join your separate lives together. The two separate bottles of sand symbolize your separate lives, separate families and separate sets of friends. They represent all that you are and all that you will ever be as an individual.

They also represent your lives before today. As these two containers of sand are poured into the third container, the individual containers of sand will no longer exist, but will be joined together as one. Just as these grains of sand can never be separated and poured again into individual containers, so will your marriage be.

There are two women for which words could never relay the gratitude in our bride and groom's hearts, their mothers. Audrey and Diane you have contributed so much to Bryan and Tia's lives and they wish to symbolically thank you by inviting you to join them in their sand ceremony. Please come forward.

Diane and Audrey, we invite you pour some sand from your individual vases into the container to represent you giving them life, as well as all of your wonderful contributions to their lives. Without the two of you, and their fathers, providing them with a foundation of love and support, they never would have been the people they are today.

Tia, pour some of your sand which will represent you as an individual. Bryan, pour some of your sand which will represent you as an individual.

Bride and Groom, now pour your remaining sand into the container together to represent the joining of your two individual lives into this union of marriage

This isn't the best photo (there are some better ones under the professional photos), but you get the idea here:


There are companies that have the kit made for you (etching on the glassware, sand, etc), but they are fairly pricey. We decided to make our own using supplies from Michael's, and one evening we did the etching together. I think our final cost was $34, vs the $70 they wanted online.

#27

Today I officially crossed into my late 20's. Unfortunately, due to a husband who is still fairly sick, the need to work for a paycheck, and a new apartment to finish unpacking, we won't be doing much celebrating. My family is coming over with an ice cream cake, which will be d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. Hopefully we can finally give happy hour a try this weekend as a belated celebration.

Work is calling...more updates later!

Official wedding photos

www.pictage.com/432163

You can see them all at the link above. Overall I'm pretty happy with them. You'll have to register to see them, but it's free. If you go look, let me know which are your favorites. We only get 10 for free, then we have to pay for any others we want.

The exciting news from the last post has been somewhat dashed. It's a long story and was about a job offer, but I'm totally over it since I have a job I really like with the most fantastic people. I hadn't even been seeking out a job, so I'm not disappointed in anything except the horrific way I was treated for no reason I can figure out.

We do have a new place to live, which is great. Buying new stuff together is so much fun, but requires a level of compromise that I hadn't thought about! We're just about done with the big stuff though, and once Bryan feels better we can finally move there for good.

Bryan's been really sick with unexplained GI issues, that a bunch of dummies have said is just GERD, even after being so sick he spent time admitted to the hospital. He's lost 14lbs since coming back to Portland, and zero food stays down. Thankfully we finally got into a GI specialist, and he's great. The abdominal ltrasound was today, and the endoscopy is Friday. Hopefully he'll get some answers then, because you all know how much we like to eat :)

More photos!

We have lots of exciting news on the horizon, but I'll save all of that for a future post (and no, it's NOT a baby!). For now, here are more pictures. I've had tons of requests, and I know how much I enjoy wedding photos too. You can see in some of them how windy it was!

The handsome groom and my best friend and her baby.


Dad and I, walking down the "aisle"


Sand ceremony


Getting married, overlooking the ocean


Who knows what is going on!


Married!


Sisters in the sunset


Smoochin


Chatting with a stranger. That bald guy was so enthralled with us that after our conversation, he started walking with us, totally forgetting about his wife walking the other way!


Cake cutting


Dinner...check out Bryan's drink in a bucket. He managed to finish two of them.

I won!

I seriously never win anything, but today I won a contest at NieNie's blog

My prize?? Some Orville Redenbacher popcorn! Yum! I won because I said I deserved it after going a year with no popcorn due to braces, which just came off in May. Yay for winning!

For all of you that have been dying for wedding pictures, here are just a couple to wet your palate. I'm STILL waiting for the professional ones.

OIP

OIP= Only in Portland

We arrived safe and sound back in Portland Sunday evening, and now we're experiencing culture shock. I'm a Portland native, yet somehow being gone for almost 2 years (minus some time in the middle) was enough to forget how strange Portland is. People drive around here with bumper stickers that say
(as a small aside, in looking for that image I discovered there is an entire website for Keep Portland Weird).

Portland is weird. Yesterday we went to work/study at a local coffeeshop. There is only one table with plug-ins, so I shared it was a woman most likely in her early 50's. She chatted with me, at which point her gold tooth became so distracting I couldn't look at anything else. Her long grey hair was pinned back, and she was drinking some kind of hippy mint tea. She went on and on about how great this tea was, and shared it with me, telling me about her work with a local hippy organic store and the Oregon Country Fair (a hippy weekend long fair in Eugene, the hippy capital of the nation). She was really nice, just so "Portland." This is after being served my coffee by a dreadlocked server, while a big sign proclaimed "We now serve hemp milk." Hemp milk? I've never heard of it! OIP.

Fast forward to the drive to the realtor's office to make an offer on a condo. While waiting to make a left turn at a light, I come into the middle of a battle between a biker and a car. This is not uncommon in Portland, where it is hip to bike, but bikers are aggressive, nasty, hoity-toity people (for the most part). I don't know what had transpired, but they were arguing very loudly with lots of swear words. The driver got out and I thought they would fight, but they just screamed more. He got back in his car, the yelling continued, and the biker reached out and punched the guy's car with all of his might. The pissed off driver squealed his tires and took off. OIP.

We're happy to be back, and looking forward to trying out all of the restaurants that have opened in our absence. We've already got plans for our first "Back in Portland Happy Hour" this Friday. But getting used to this town again is going to take some time for sure!

Made it

We're here, safe and sound at home, but very, very tired. Four LONG days of driving 15 hour days. Can't wait for the weekend already.

Still alive!

Despite the lack of postings recently, I am still alive. Packing and all of the associated moving crap has kept me really busy. I don't see this changing much in the next couple of weeks, since we still have to drive 3,000 miles in 2 days, unpack, go back to work, and find a permanent place to live. I'll be back to normal in a few weeks :)

What's up with customer service?

Yes, I am an 80-year-old woman in a young body. Where has customer service gone?

Exhibit A: Yesterday, I called to see if a local dealership had a Honda Civic Hybrid. She asked for my first name, and I gave it to her. She asked for my last, and I politely said I preferred not to give it. She then told me she couldn't give me any information then, and hung up on me. What?!?

Exhibit B: We went to Scion to test drive the tC. We walked in, the only people there. The receptionist paged a Scion rep twice, and no one came. She proceeded to ignore us, and 5 minutes later we walked out, having never been spoken to again.

Exhibit C: Went to the Nissan dealership to test drive a Nissan Altima Hybrid. 45 minutes before closing, and we're told "the gate is already locked, so you can't drive it today." Closed, 45 minutes, before you close??? At least the saleslady was really nice.

Exhibit D: Drop of my car today at 9am to get a hitch put on. Tell the guy I'll be back at 2pm, and he says that's fine. Come back at 2:20, and it's not done, with 2 cars still to be finished before he gets to mine. They close at 5, so it's unlikely they will even have it done today at all. What?!? Too bad we're screwed, because they are the only place in town with the hitch in stock.

All of these things happened in the last 2 days. What happened to nice people who give decent service to paying customers (or potential customers)?

Brief update

I know you all are dying for wedding updates, but I just haven't had time to get photos from everyone, upload and organize the ones I have already, and write about it. Coming back from your honeymoon with a mean case of vertigo, a work proposal to write, many things to sell on Craigslist, an entire house to pack, a trailer hitch to have installed, friends to see, etc etc etc has keep me very busy. Suffice to say we did get married! For now, you'll have to be satiated with these two scanned formal pictures from our honeymoon cruise. Enjoy them, because they are almost surely better than our wedding pictures anyway (long hair + wind on the beach = just-got-out-of-bed look in every photo).

The end of me, the beginning of we

We're off to do this:
Then to try this:

And this:


On this:
Wish us luck! See you the 18th.

Teeth!

The before pics (left side, obviously) and the after pictures on the right. Excuse the angry red gums....they weren't too happy with having glue scraped off. Not bad in 13 months. Now to get used to this new retainer. Thankfully it's an Essix (the clear plastic kind), but I still talk funny and it is pretty painful. I've started using Crest Whitestrips too, at the recommendation of my ortho. I'll have to post some after shots of that if they work well.

Also, congrats to Bryan for passing his ERI test with flying colors! It was the last hurdle to graduation, and he did really well on it. Now onto studying for the NCLEX.

The name dilemma

*EDIT: Thanks for all of the feedback! Keep it coming! I should have also said I'm not really a fan of the 4 names thing. That's just way too much for me to write :) For those who might be curious, my dad also votes for Tia Neely Kauffman. I also should have mentioned that Lorraine was my paternal grandmother's middle name, in case that influences any comments.*

Unless you live under a rock, you know that I'm getting married next week (NEXT WEEK!!!).

I'm debating with to do with my name when I get married. Bryan is fine with me keeping my name or taking his, although last week when I said I was keeping my own, he wanted to know why and said it made him sad. I really was just testing him out though, and I found out that he would really like it if I changed it.

So here's the debate. Many women I know have turned their maiden name into their middle name. My best friend didn't, but "only because I hated my maiden name."

My current name: Tia Lorraine Neely
Fiance's last name: Kauffman
Should I be: Tia Lorraine Kauffman or Tia Neely Kauffman

For the record, I hate dual last names or hyphenating, so there will be no Neely-Kauffman going on. If I keep Neely, it will be strictly my middle name, and I won't walk around like Catherine Zeta Jones telling everyone to call me by 3 names.

Too true

Setting the scene:
Bryan is standing in the dining room eating a grapefruit, pouting because he just spilled grapefruit juice on his shirt.

Tia: "So I'm supposed to feel bad for you because you're surprised that when you stand up, right next to the table, and eat a grapefruit you get grapefruit juice on your shirt?"

Bryan: "You're supposed to empathize not because you think we [men] are less smart, but because we are less smart."

Ah yes, he's a keeper :)

By the numbers

2 - days my work server has been down, making me virtually unable to work
3 - more pounds I would like to lose
4 - new pairs of shorts purchased for upcoming cruise (2 for each of us)
9 - days until the braces come off
10 - number of glorious days of vacation coming up soon
16 - days until we get married
17 - days until we go on the cruise
70 - amount spent on wedding dress
78 - amount spent on new 2 piece bathing suit for the cruise
500 - discount Nissan is offering new grads (Versa?)
1,000 - discount Toyota is offering new grads (Prius?)
2,713 - miles we have to drive to get back to Portland in 6 weeks

Atkins

We're on day 4 (or is it day 5? the lack of carbs has slowed my brain) of our quasi-Aktins pre-wedding (18 days, holy lord!) slim down. And as I type this, I'm eating a burrito.

Here's what we've learned so far - we like carbs and sugar. They make us happy. When we don't have them, we spend 99.99% of our time together talking about carbs and sugar and how much we miss them. Last night on our way home from the outlet mall, we were discussing that we could not bear to eat yet another meal of eggs and meat. So we thought we'd stop at the grocery store and see how we could spice things up. The parking lot had 5,347,856 cars, and we DO NOT do crowded grocery stores.

Nearby was food heaven/hell row (depending on your outlook). Pizza Hut, Arby's, Wendy's, McDonalds. Bryan drove into the Wendy's parking lot so we could think about what to do. We sat there, like 2 drug addicts trying to score their next fix, debating what to do. In the end, we ate at Wendy's...after driving out, then making a u-turn at the bank to come back! Some genius at Wendy's headquarters decided to put the nutritional info of everyone on the menu posted right inside the door. That allowed us to make better choices, which we felt good about (and about the few carbs we were able to get....YUM! Bryan immediately wanted something with a bun, I wanted something with SUGAR). I allowed myself the child's size frosty (which is about the size of a thimble) and then PUT IT DOWN WITH HALF OF IT STILL LEFT. I know, I almost hurt my arm patting myself on the back.

The update is, me down 1 pound, Bryan down 3 pounds. I have decided that this miserable "diet" isn't worth 1 pound in 4 days. I think Bryan has slightly given in too, since he had a tuna melt for lunch. However, we can definitely continue some of the long-term positive changes we've made: more fruits and veggies, no more white carbs, avoiding carbs at every single meal, fewer desserts, no more fruit juices or non-diet soda. We go to the gym at least 3 times a week, and the other days we try and do something active. All in preparation for the gluttony of the cruise :)

Thanks for saying hi!

For those of you that have been brave enough to say hi, welcome! I have to admit, I was most curious about my loyal Canadian reader, and she was the first to "out" herself. Hi Sarah, glad you think I'm different in a good way :) I like your picture.

Jenn - Nice to meet you. I'm now a regular reader of your blog too. I'm still wishing I was in Chicago for that Cupcake Crawl, whenever it happens. I'll be passing through around May 30th on my way to Portland, but that's as close as I'll get.

Tanya - I've heard a lot about you. It's funny to me that I think all of Bryan's "significant" exes read my blog! Sorry that it looks like we won't get to connect while we're out east. Time just flew by. I hear you're quite the talented pianist. My ex graduated from Eastman in Piano Performance, so I know all about how much work goes into being a pianist! If you're ever out west for a gig we'd be happy to show you around.

I know there are others of you out there! Fess up, and make a new blog friend today :)

Food porn (or Rachel Ray you are not)

I'm not sure if it was Bryan or Krista I first heard it from, but "food porn" is a common occurance in our household. Food porn can consist of looking at restaurant menus online, watching cooking shows on the Food Network, talking about where to go out to dinner, discussing what you'd LOVE to be eating right that moment, etc.

So a couple of weeks ago Bryan and Krista were engaging in some food porn Rachel Ray style. I guess that day she was making Cubano Hash. The next day, they decided that they wanted to make it. Now it was maybe 11am, and NO preparation had been made to create this. Here is the recipe as Rachel Ray made it.

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
3/4 pound ground pork
3/4 pound, packaged chorizo, peeled and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1/3 palm full
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 bottle beer
4 Portuguese rolls or 2 sandwich sized English muffins, split and toasted
4 deli-cut slices Swiss cheese
4 dill pickles, chopped
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons butter
4 large eggs

So as they read the recipe together, this is how it went...me listening in hysterical laughter as this unfolded:
olive oil
- K: "We have that"
ground pork
- T: "We don't have that. All we have is frozen pork pieces"
- B: "That will be fine!"
Chorizo
- K: "We don't have chorizo, but I have some sausages and some strange hot sauce from Costa Rica, so that will be perfect."
Medium onion
- B: "We don't have a fresh onion, but we have frozen chopped onion with celery and red pepper in it. That should be fine."
3 cloves garlic
-K: "I have some in a jar, that will be fine."
Ground cumin
-T: "Yes, we have that in the cupboard"
Ground allspice
-K: "What's allspice?"
-B: "Beat's me!"
-T: "I think it's in the same family as cinnamon and nutmeg, but we don't have any."
-K: "Ooh, but we do have cinnamon and nutmeg. Good enough!"
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Yes, we have salt and pepper
2 tablespoons tomato paste
-K: "I don't have any."
-B: "Neither do we, let's just use ketchup."
1/2 bottle beer
-B: "Oh, I have one beer left! How's a pale ale?"
4 Portuguese rolls or 2 sandwich sized English muffins
-B: "We've got wheat bread, how's that?"
4 deli-cut slices Swiss cheese
-T: "I just bought some swiss cheese yesterday, lucky for you guys. This might be the only thing you'll actually do right!"
Dill pickles
-B: "I think there is a jar in the fridge that isn't too old."
Yellow mustard
-K: "We don't have yellow mustard."
-B: "I have some brown mustard. Brown isn't that far from yellow, right?"
Butter
-Margarine will have to do.
Large eggs
-B: "I think we just have 4 eggs left."

And yes, after this discussion where they had less than half of what they needed, they decided to forge ahead. If only I could explain the HORRIBLE smell this recipe made. It looked even worse (I wish I had pictures). But the verdict from the college kids....................

IT'S DELICIOUS!!!!!

Much to their dismay, I refused to try it.

Brunch

At Christmas we were given a gift card to a local Italian restaurant that has a very fancy Sunday brunch, which we finally went to today. The photo above shows the chocolate fountain, which has a caramel fountain right next to it. YUMMY! It was definitely my favorite part. There is nothing like fresh fruit in the winter, and the added bonus of chocolate was fantastic.

Here's the rest of the menu:

Made To Order Belgium Waffle Station with Fruit Toppings
Carving Station - Roast Beef, Lamb, Pork & Salmon
Create Your Own Omelet Station

Mario's Wheel-Homemade Fettuccine tossed in a Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese Wheel
Grilled Chicken with Mushroom Sauce
Seasonal Vegetables
Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Tortellini Alfredo
Ricotta Stuffed Shells with Marinara
Eggs Benedicto
Bacon and Sausage
20 Italian Antipasti-Caprese, Marinated mussels, Calamari Salad, Balsamic
Grilled Vegetables,
Grilled Mushrooms and Many More
Fresh Cut Fruit Display
Croissants, Danish, Bagels and Muffins
Lavish Array of Cakes, Tortes, Pastries and Cookies
Regular and Decaffeinated Coffee
Fruit Juices
Champagne Mimosas

Yep, tons of food. Some was a bit bizarre to be eating for out first meal of the day, but most of it was good. For the price ($50 for the 2 of us), we expected a bit more, but since it was free, we were more than happy :)

Who else is excited???