Introducing...

Genevieve America Arzabal! Born August 27, 2008. 6lbs, 3 oz.

She's beautiful! So cute, peaceful and perfect. :) Congrats to Rebecca and Mike, the incredibly happy parents! We are so happy for you and can't wait to meet her!

I now pronounce you...

Husband and Wife!!

A huge congrats to a couple of our best friends, Derek and Michele! They tied the knot this past weekend in a beautiful wedding in Cincinnati, Ohio. The ceremony was held at Holy Cross Immaculata Church and the reception was at the Hyde Park Country Club. Michele totally outdid herself and impressed us all with her cross-country planning. Everything went off without a hitch and she looked absolutely stunning. Seriously. Like a Barbie doll. :) The best moment was at the end of the night when Michele looked at me with a look of quasi-terror on her face and said, "We're going to be an old married couple now!" Don't worry, Michele, it's really not that bad. ;)

Another plus from the weekend was meeting more of their family and friends. Everyone couldn't have been nicer, more welcoming and more fun. I can honestly say I think we made some connections this weekend that will last longer than just the few days we were there.

Not only were we thrilled to be there as guests, but we felt honored to be a part of the wedding. Rusty stood up with Derek as a groomsman and I helped out in my official role as Program Distributor. It's a skill, people. I'm amazing. Really.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend...

Rehearsal dinner...

The ceremony... (didn't take many pictures. I was too busy being a sap and crying!)

Rusty escorting our new friend, Karen :)

Time to party!

Rusty and the best man, Jason

He cleans up pretty good, eh?

I love the look on Michele's face in this picture. Too cute!

Thanks for everything guys, we had a blast! Best wishes to you both and welcome to the club!! :)

Odds & Ends

It's the little things that make me happy...

- Since I won't be going to get my eyebrows waxed anytime soon, I thought it was a good time to invest in a really good pair of tweezers and upgrade from my dull Revlon ones. Off to Sephora I went where I found a cute (and sharp) pair that were right up my alley. I hate plucking my eyebrows, so I might as well do it with something a little more fun and functional.

- While we were making dinner Friday night, my phone drowned on the counter where a bag of ice had been sitting. (Yes, I charge my phone on the kitchen counter. I kind of asked for it.) Lucky for me, I was getting close to having to renew my 2-year contract with Sprint anyway so it was perfect timing. Not only did I upgrade my old flip phone to the new Samsung Instinct, I also signed up for a more comprehensive, cheaper service plan, AND worked out a special deal where I got a $70 credit to my account! Hurray!

- We saw The Dark Night today. Wow. I loved it. I'm not sure if any of you braved the crowds for its opening weekend, but I'll ya. Totally. Worth it. It was a little weird seeing Heath Ledger in that role, especially in the beginning. But he does such a great job as the Joker and you're so focused on the character that you completely forget about the actor. Definitely a must-see movie.

- Feeling an unfamiliar urge to be domestic. I know... weird. In response, I decided to try a new recipe and bake "Blueberry Breakfast Cornbread" while I was still half asleep this morning. Surprisingly enough, it was really good! :)

- I got a new phone. Oh. I guess I said that already... But all I've been doing since yesterday afternoon is play with it. It is so cool! So shiny and fancy. And I can check my email or go to the navigation feature by tapping one button. That's it! Very similar to the iPhone, but for a whole lot less. Who doesn't love that? One more thing and then I'll stop with the phone stuff, I promise. If I haven't already asked you, please email or text me your phone numbers! The damage was too severe to transfer my phone book. Thanks!

- And probably the finest moment of the weekend... some peace!

Mas, por favor!

What's that? You want more? Okay, okay. Twist my arm... ;)

We've been to Epcot and the Magic Kingdom so far. We went to both parks a second time later in the week because we didn't get to see and do everything on our list the first time around. However, there is way too much to document here, so I'm going to try and only hit the highlights. Alright! Next stop? Animal Kingdom where, among other things, we went on a jungle cruise, a safari ride to see some beautiful, exotic animals and a petting zoo for your run-of-the-mill sheep and goats.

Kylah wanted to brush every single one of them. She was so sweet and gentle with them.

Brothers!

The family in front of the Tree of Life. It's hard to see in this picture, but there are different wild animals carved out and sort of blend together. It is pretty amazing.

Next it was back to Epcot! This time, we focused on wandering through the countries and I tried to get some good pictures.

This is my favorite from the whole trip... I love the reflection of the clouds in the glass.

Me and my love in..."France." Can I just take a moment to comment on the fact that I HATE humidity. Every day I had to wear my hair back. Its making for some boring pictures...

We ended the night by staying at the park to watch the Epcot fireworks. We had great seats, right on the lake. Very cool.... particularly because they came with an ice cold margarita. :)

Lets just round this out with some of my favorite pictures to sum up the rest of the week...

Kylah loved her Crush doll we gave her.

::Sigh::

That was fun... So uh, when are we getting together again??! :)

Wish Upon A Star

We had a fantastic time with our family at Disney World. However, this was not an endeavor for the faint of heart! We braved rain, wind, blisters, ponchos that smelled like a tacklebox, mosquitoes and some wicked sunburns that will no doubt drain the world of its supply of aloe. All kidding aside, these were just tiny bits of our trip that just gave us more to laugh about, because who has ever been on a vacation where everything goes perfectly? (If you are raising your hand right now, you can just go ahead and slap yourself for me. ;))

I will now try to sum up our vacation with more pictures than anything else. Lets just put it this way, I think between all of us we have more than 600 pictures. I went through them and pulled 81 out that are must haves for our album (luckily it fits 200 photos, so I get to pick more!! mwa ha ha ha!) . But I am obviously not going to put up 81 pictures because, as awesome as we are... no one wants to wade through that many pictures on someone's blog. And I don't have the patience to upload that many either.

So here we go...

Rusty and I arrived to Orlando on Friday, June 13. We had a fantastic crab dinner (crab cakes for me... yummy!) to kick things off right. We were all excited and wound up but knew we had a big day ahead of us at Epcot, so we hit the sack relatively early. But first, Kylah helped me check out our new digs for the next week.

The parks we covered during our stay were Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studios (some twice!). All were ridiculously fun and provided an unimaginable amount of walking. I wonder how many miles we walked overall...? I had to keep reminding myself not to complain out loud because my wonderful sister-in-law held up just fine and she's 6 months pregnant! What a trooper. :)

Anyway, I'll be up front with you all right now and say I honestly do not remember everything we did. Occasionally I'd write notes in my cell phone to remind me, but not often enough to remember what we did each day. Let's start with Epcot, shall we?

View of Epcot from our balcony. This was especially awesome because we could watch the fireworks from here every night!

First family picture of the trip...
We had heard Donald Duck was hard to spot. He was the first character we met!
Rusty and I in front of a waterfall in Norway...

Kylah got to meet almost all of the Disney princesses at her princess lunch. She met Cinderella, Sleeping Pooty (she can't say "Beauty" yet...), Ariel and a host of others but Belle was everyone's favorite. She was gorgeous and so sweet.

While Kylah got autographs from some other characters, Goofy gave me a big hug :)


Beautiful family... outside the Finding Nemo ride.

Most important picture of all: the family with Mickey!

The next day we headed to Magic Kingdom.

Sheesh! Only been here an hour and we're in trouble already! Haha!

"Can I see??"

You thought I was kidding about the ponchos. Seriously, they're making a comeback! In any case, when its raining as hard as it was, you'll wear ANYTHING to stay dry!

Uncle Rusty holding Sleepy Kylah... this makes my uterus ache... ;)

Kylah and I settle in after a looong day to watch Ratatouille.

That about wraps up the first couple days. I have more that I'd like to share with everyone, so stay tuned!

BOOYAH!

I finally had my review today at work and it went GREAT! I wasn't really worried about it, but I don't think anyone actually looks forward to those, right? Anyway, the performance evaluation went extremely well, but the part that makes me very happy was my compensation review.

As many of you know, the husband and I are determined to buy a house in the next year and a half while the housing market around here isn't as outrageous as usual - at least by Silicon Valley standards. We've given ourselves a budget, started saving and planned out our finances as well as we can for the next year. Needless to say, I was a little antsy to see if my comp adjustment would reflect all the hard work I've put in over the last year, but just as important, will it make a difference in our savings plan? The good news is YES! Granted, I didn't win the lottery or anything, but I did receive a pretty solid raise and every little bit helps, so I certainly can't complain. Woohoo!

And as if I deserved MORE good things at work, I'm just finishing out the second week with my new boss. She. Is. Awesome. A little background: two years ago, I was promoted to the HR Manager position to build an HR department. All by myself. I had no experience and at the same time started going to school in the evenings to get my masters degree in Human Resource Management. While I believe I've done a really good job so far with the HR dept., I'm realistic and know that there is only so far my department can go without some help and guidance from someone with more experience. Well, apparently my boss (the president of the company) was thinking the same thing and we hired the HR consultant we were working with on a few projects to be our Director of HR. She is amazing, funny, witty, super smart and has the most adorable British accent ever. I just can't believe how much nicer it is to go to work now that she's on board. The best thing about her? She's all about incorporating shopping into any and all offsite meetings or business trips. Who can argue with that? :)

Finally, a few pictures I took after work today to brighten up this post before I lose my 3 readers for good!

Pretty floral arrangement from my company...

Flowering ivy outside our kitchen window...Baby peaches on our tree!

...aaand I'm spent. The large furry things that live in my house are summoning me again... Have a Happy Friday, ya'll!

Action Shots

Now that it stays light out a little bit later, we have more time to get outside and throw the frisbee around with the dogs. Please forgive me, they are kind of blurry, but the dogs move a lot faster than I can click the button on the camera!

Look how high Brodie can jump!
Harley, on the other hand, doesn't bother to leave the ground to catch it. Or it could be the extra 20 lbs he's carrying around. ;)

I love how funny Brodie looks in this one... It makes me chuckle.

That's all for now. I hope you didn't mind the dog-centric post. In case you hadn't noticed, I am slightly obsessed with my pups. :)