The Proposal Story :)
As many of you know, John & I will be celebrating 10 years of marriage this Spring! We’ve been working with Kirles Jewelers to design the perfect “dream ring” since John wanted to give me a ring upgrade for our 10th wedding anniversary. 🙂 I’ve been super excited to see how it was going to turn out, I chose the stone and bands, but until this week, I hadn’t seen it all put together…and I didn’t know when he was planning on giving it to me! 😉 In the meantime, I booked an overnight getaway for us at the JW for Valentine’s Day and I booked the romance package, which included chocolate covered strawberries so I was just thinking that we’d have a nice little getaway, I had no idea what all was in store for that evening.
We got to the hotel and we were upgraded to an executive corner suite that had an amazing view of downtown! I thought that was really sweet of them to do that for us. We got checked in and unpacked some stuff then headed downstairs for our 5:00 dinner reservation at Osteria Pronto, a great Italian restaurant inside the hotel. We both ordered the lasagna and literally EIGHT minutes later, the food was on our table. I found out later that John had contacted my Aunt Mary to help with this surprise, they had connected the day earlier and he dropped off hundreds of rose petals and 18 candles that she was going to set up in the room while we were having dinner, but she wasn’t planning on getting there until 5:15. Needless to say, he started acting a little funny and he said, “you know, let’s just take our time, I don’t want to rush this dinner.” I said, “ok” and I thought that was a little strange but whatever. LOL He started eating really slow and then he wanted to order dessert, I had a feeling that something was going on but I couldn’t quite figure it out.
We finally got up to leave and he later told me that valet parked my aunt’s car right next to the window, behind our table!! Luckily I didn’t notice it and we headed upstairs. I opened the door to our suite and there were hundreds of rose petals leading from the doorway to the bed, and on the bed were the initials “WYMM” on it! He got down on one knee and proposed all over again and presented me with the most amazing ring ever!! He later told me that I was so shocked and he was so excited that he forgot his whole speech that he had planned out, but he had written it out on his phone so he read it to me later and it was the sweetest thing EVER! 🙂 We had a great night together and it was so memorable. This Spring we’ll be renewing our vows on the beach in Sanibel Island, Florida, one of our favorite vacation destinations and I can’t wait!! It’s kind of nice to be a “bride” all over again…I think couples should do this every 10 years! 😉 Thank you to everyone who helped make this Valentine’s Day the best one I’ve ever had!
Special thanks to:
Kirles Jewelers (Pete, Cindy & Kristi Kirles)
The JW Marriott, Kristin Hohlier, the concierge & staff at Osteria Pronto
Mary Hession (Canine Retreat)
Bella’s Blooms (Traci Mosby & Chuck Eaglin)
Anna’s Baptism Celebration!
This past weekend was my Uncle’s birthday so we all got together for dinner at his house and John & I finally got to meet their new labradoodle puppy, Lucky! 🙂 (Buddy’s soon-to-be new BFF) Uncle Tom decided to surprise my cousin Anna with a party for her baptism at the same time though, she was thoroughly surprised and she loved it of course! We took lots of puppy pics while we were there too, these were some of my faves that I wanted to share with you guys. 😉 I LOVED it how Lucky would jump up and hug Anna ~ cutest thing EVER! 🙂
Christmas & New Year’s Eve 2012!
We hope that everyone had an amazing holiday season!! I’ve decided to lump a bunch of festivities together into one post since they all occurred within about two weeks obviously. 🙂 Despite being insanely busy with photo shoots, albums and reprint orders, we had an AMAZING time with friends and family last month. Buddy finally met Jenna, Aunt Sherri’s dog, and they became fast friends. We did our annual carriage ride/hot chocolate night downtown with the family and actually ran into Melissa, she was shooting a friend’s wedding that night! We had great Christmas celebrations with all sides of the family, I tried several Pinterest projects (that ACTUALLY turned out well ~ woo hoo!) and we got a fabulous peppermint cake from Classic Cakes this year! We ended our holiday celebrations with the annual Hession family New Year’s Eve bash which was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who helped make 2012 an amazing year for us! We love you all! xoxo
Random Acts of Kindness Day in Honor of the 25th Anniversary of ESD!
When I was a little girl, my dad came to me with an idea called Erin’s Special Day, where one day each year, we’d devote the entire day to hanging out with each other, doing fun things & he would always say that I would get to do whatever I wanted us to do together on that special day. I LOVED the idea of course and would dream up cool things to do with dad for that day each year. I remember one year he took me down to Union Station (back when it was an amusement/shopping area) and we played games, had lunch, shopped and he bought me this beautiful crystal rose in a vase from a glass maker that we met that day, it was a fun memory for sure. Over the years, we’ve done a lot of fun things together, including a trip to Vegas during WPPI one year (that trip literally changed my entire career), and it’s a day that he and I always look forward to every year. I asked him how he got the original idea for ESD and he said, “ESD was an idea I had to offer you a special day for us to be together, break up the routine and give you the opportunity to go wherever you’d like, do whatever you’d enjoy doing and sharing the fun, love and smiles together! Certainly one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.” You got that right!! 🙂
The other night I started thinking about when we started ESD and he & I both think that we started this back in 1985, but apparently we didn’t do it for the first two years after John & I were married (what was I thinking?? lol) so this year will be the 25th anniversary of our annual ESD. Over the last few years we’ve done ESD around the holidays so a lot of our time together would entail Christmas shopping, movies, etc. but I really wanted to do something different and special for our 25th year. As most of you know, I spent my 30th birthday doing 30 Random Acts of Kindness for others and it was truly one of the best days of my life. (The lady who inspired me to do that has created a website devoted just to that idea, due to the overwhelming response that she got when she did it for her birthday. If you’d like to learn about The Birthday Project, click HERE!) Anyway, I decided that for this year’s ESD, I wanted to do 25 Random Acts of Kindness in honor of the 25 years of awesome ESDs that dad has given me and I want him to experience what I experienced on my 30th birthday! 🙂
We’ve put together a list (I know, not so random, but 25 is a lot for one day) and we’ve put together a fun plan & route for tomorrow, 12/5/12. I will be taking photos and posting updates throughout the day on Facebook as we complete all 25 items on the list. A lot of RAOK are for friends, family & people who we work with a lot throughout the year, as a way of saying thanks for all that they’ve done for us. I can’t wait!! Follow me on Facebook by clicking HERE and help make this year’s ESD extra memorable by joining in and doing a Random Act of Kindness too!! The more interactive, the better!! Post a comment and share your RAOK with us either on this blog post or on Facebook & share this story with others. I hope that all of you who are moms and dads out there will also consider doing a Special Day for your kids as well, trust me, they’ll love it! 😉
(Here’s a fun photo of me with my dad back in 1985) 🙂
Update…..ESD #25 was AMAZING!! LOTS of people posted on my wall, messaged me on facebook, sent me emails & texts, etc. It was a great day! 🙂 I wanted to update this post with some photos from the day…don’t judge, they’re all iPhone pics! 😉
Happy 5th Birthday Buddy!
This weekend we celebrated Buddy’s 5th Birthday! We took some pics around the Christmas tree and brought out the obligatory birthday hat for his annual photo. LOL! He was less than pleased about the hat but he kept that one eye on the treat that John was holding behind me. He got lots of extra love and treats and even a brand new hedgehog toy that he LOVES! We love you Buddy!! Thanks for being the best dog in the whole world! XOXO
