Happy Turkey Day

This thanksgiving we spent the first half of it driving 10 hours from San Diego to Sacramento with Harley in tow!!! I don't remember it being as long and as draining, but I think we are getting REALLY sick of that drive. Luckily we'll be doing it again for Christmas! blah!!!

We spent the yummy holiday split pretty evenly at both my house and Gregg's house. Here are some pictures of the fun-filled (short) weekend we had. We just love home!!!

I told my mom she needed to put more color on the tables for the centerpieces and we came up with this creation! Perssimin are from Bachan's backyard, lemons from our lemon tree and leaves for garnish!

Three Generations

Lauren and I rocked it out with Rockband, we had too much fun singing and talking about her upcoming wedding plans in June! I can't wait!!!!

Poor Harley baby was attacked by his unlcle David

Take a look at this picture, my dad was on the mic! It was sooo awesome, we gotta get him the Beatles version of the game, he'd be a PRO!

While my mom and dad watched a movie Gregg, David and I decided to play a speedy instense game of monopoly. I would have fun but I got sidetracked by the movie ha ha!

Har passed out on the couch from all the turkey he was able to sneak 'under' the table!

hee hee

While our weekend continued, we ended up staying the night at the Anderson household. We went to Taco Loco for dinner and had so much fun meeting all of the fun staff at the restaurant. Gregg's parents are local's there, everyone knew exactly who they were when we walked in. Pretty VIP! Afterwards we decided to go say hi to Big Dave who was working the door at a popular bar in Folsom called Scarlett's! There we met up with some fun friends and danced the night away!!! I love it because Gregg's parents still come out with us for drinks and dancing, such great in-laws.

 Overall we had such a good time with family and great friends and can't wait to have another Christmas adventure in just a few weeks!!! Yay Sacramento!

Photogs!

I had to post just a few of my favorite pictures from our photographer!!! We bought our cd of all of our digital negatives so we can start printing and framing! I love my photographer John Schnack!!! Not only is he an incredible artist but probably the easiest and kindest vendor to work with!!!! Just love 'schnack time'!!!!!

how fun is this!?

Sooo it's officially OFFICIAL - I am an Anderson. We got our new 'joint' checks in the mail, I already have my new social security card, everything at work has already changed and all my new credit cards and debit cards just arrived!!!! The only thing I have left to do is sign up for a new driver's license, I'm just dreading having to wait in line and find a day to attempt this daunting task!!!

a little beer, a little chicken, a little meal!

So tonight for dinner Gregg and I decided to venture out and try a recipe we've been wanting to attempt for a long time....beer can chicken!! It was quite a long recipe but we managed to make it through...here are the events of the evening in sequential order.

All the million of spices I had to buy!

Me being a good little wife and cooking!

My silly husband eating raw chicken, ewww!

I'm really happy I have a husband to do "this part" of the chicken. I even bought plastic gloves and denied them. Boys are gross!

Our little chicky all prepped and ready to go!

Ewwww don't touch me with those hands!

Even Har Har wanted to know what was smelling so good in the oven!!!! Little puppies!!!

Heres our finished product, it looks just like the picture....yes!!!

And a close up.....can you smell it?

Mmm a nice homecooked meal by the Anderson's, complete with Beer Can Chicken, greenbeans and mashed potatoes! Yummy!!!!

happy halloweenie

This year on Halloween Gregg, Harley and I were making the long drive home from Sacramento to San Diego with all of our wedding presents in tow! We had gotten an invite for our friend Jeremy's Halloween/Going away party. We've known Jeremy for about 8 years (since our freshman year of college). He was moving away to Denver, CO and this was his final bash!!! We debated back and forth for a bit and realized that we couldn't miss such a fun event. It worked out wonderfully because we got to see so many good friends that we hadn't seen since the big wedding day.

Here's the classic Shaunna/Kate photo that we always manage to take. We have such big smiles in this picture! I love it!

Awww my besties. They were sooo super surprised to see Gregg and I so it was really fun to hug each of them!!!!

This group picture is awesome, so many people had SO MANY great outfits!!!

Here we are the classic newlywed halloween photo! LOL. ahhh what a great halloween bash for 2009!!!!

Honey Moonie

So naturally if I'm blogging about my wedding then I HAVE to show pictures of my incredible honeymoon adventures! On the trip Gregg kept calling me "Honey Moonie" and I called him "Moonie Honey" - can you tell we had puppy love written all over us or what???? Gregg's parents were gracious enough to treat us to a magical 7 day stay on the beautiful island of Kauai, HI. They bought our airfare, hotel room and car rental. Gregg and I covered our activites, drinks and food - it worked out PERFECTLY!!!!

Naturally I made Gregg take about a 1000 pictures so that we could document every single moment. Clearly I'm not going to post all of them on here but here is a little snapshot of our adventures of our first days as husband and wife!

Here's Gregg driving our *sweet* seabring convertible!!! We loved our car (to the next level) it made a huge difference when driving along the coast for an hour just roaming through the island. Our hotel was the Grand Hyatt on Poi'pu Island.

Our first adventure was up to Waimea Canyon (basically known as "The Grand Canyon" of Kauai). We took lots of pretty one-handed pictures along the way. We found that the same tourists kept stopping at each 'lookout point' so we kept saying hi, over and over again. Pretty silly!

Here we are in front of the sign. You can't see but there were so many people stopped on either side of the stairwell (to the left and right of the sign) but I didn't care and I made someone stop to take a picture which then created a bit of traffic - oh well anything for a picture right? These are precious memories people!!!

After our first "dinner out" we started realizing that if we charged everything that we bought in the hotel (to the room) it would be 10% off.....so naturally since our reservations were for Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, I got to sign the check after dinner and charge it to the room. This was my very first time signing something as Mrs. Kate Anderson. How awesome is that!!!!!

"Mrs. Kate N. Anderson"

One of our 3 adventures was our.....Sunset Dinner Cruise on the Na'apali Coast. Man oh man was this beautiful. The crew on the ship was so friendly and so accomodating, we gave them a nice tip afterwards! Here's me in the store taking a picture in front of this pretty map (that's on the wall) and pointing at Poi'pu, which was our island!

The best part about the cruise was that right as we sailed away an older women was chatting with us and asked us if we needed any "bonine"?? Gregg had no clue what she was talking about and kept saying, "need any what??" so I politely answered, "ohh no no we're fine for now, but if things get bad later, we might take you up on that offer". Well, sure enough when we were sailing through some of the rough waters, Gregg wasn't feeling so well and we both ended up hunting down the lady and each taking a pill. I wasn't feeling sick at all but thought it was a good idea just in case....since we were going to be eating and drinking on the boat later. Good thing we did because there were pretty rough waters on the way back. We got to see a whole swarm of dophins, ate a great dinner and drank "sneaky tiki's" the entire way! I love this picture of us with the bright blue ocean water in the background!

2nd adventure: Ziplining! Holy hell batman this is by far the BEST activity you can do on the island and we heard this company (Outrigger Activities) was the most adventurous!!!!! Not only did Gregg and I go on 5 different ziplines but we flipped upsidedown, did a running jump off the platform, did a free fall backwards, repelled down a steep mountain and finally zipped along an 1800 meter drop! UM.......WOW!!!!

Ahhh the classic sand picture. Our new marriage...just a few days old, how precious! A nice girl (probably another honeymooner - god bless her) came and took our picture.
The Anderson's/ Est. 2009

So we heard from a lot of people that we had to drive up the coast to Princeville which is on the other side of the island. On the way we stopped off to a beautiful desserted beach and this was our attempt to take a nice picture with the GORGEOUS WATER in the background. Didn't turn out so well but this is a nice picture of Gregg and I.

Ohhh Scotty.....we heard from our ziplining instructor that his favorite resturant to go on the island for "date night" was Scotty's Ocean View BBQ!! Since Gregg and I wanted to try a bunch of new things while we were on our Kauai adventure we thought...why not have BBQ on the island (especially if it was a recommendation from a local)? Well he was right!! The BBQ was really great and the best part about the dinner was the homemade smore kit they give you as dessert. How cute is that idea.....we had way too much fun with it - and I ate so many marshmellows I could barely walk afterwards....oops!

Our final picture goodbye...we both made sad faces as we waited to board our flight back home. What a wonderful trip it was, a perfect way to reconnect after 16 months of wedding planning and a really special time to remember our wonderfulu friends and family that came to celebrate our big day with us. I know there will never be another trip like this, where we'll be so young, so selfish and so carefree in our lives so we really treasured every moment together.

Now back to the real world full of puppy responsibilites, laundry, working out, actually going to work and cooking. I'm still trying to figure out why we came back....... :)

She's Baaaaaack!

Well it's offical everyone! Not only am I back in the blogging world but I'm back and with a new name as Kate Nonaka Anderson! As you can see from the title of this post and the pictures below I have been somewhat.....ahem.......busy. Oh you know just busy getting hitched to the man I love!!! Yes, yes, if you've been living under a rock for the past 16 months, I got married on Sunday October 18, 2009 and it was the most magical and extrodinary day of my life. Below are some snippets of photos that were taken on that incredible day. These are some of my favs!!!

This photo is literally moments after Gregg and I were announced as 'husband and wife' - as you can see by our smiles we were really really happy to make it so "official!!" I love this one because it's really candid and just captures the moment. I can hear the Bob Marley song playing in the background right now.....

Below is a beautiful picture of all of our guest names on their little champagne chairs. YES, I did make all of those, NO I did not drink every single bottle. I had some good friends and GREAT bridesmaids donate their drinking abilities (thank you over and over again). The cake is a photocake made out of hat boxes that I decoupaged together. It turned out super great and fun and definitely made my "craft" table turn out much better than expected. All those late nights, paint, glue, wire cutting was worth it for a beautiful photo like this and I think the guests really enjoyed it too!

This photo is just one of fifty (i swear) that we took on the dance floor. As you can see my girls didn't let me know and we definitely rocked it out alllll niiiiiggghhhttt loooongg. It was too much fun for words.

Finally had to end with a photo of the hubby and I. It's so strange to be calling each other husband and wife already but we secretly LOVE saying it. It's like this whole new meaning to our relationship and what we have been through together. We have gone through so many trials and tribulations over the past five years it feels so natural to call each other our other halves now. I love wearing my double rings (wedding band + engagment ring)....it fits me just right!!!!!!!

I love you husband, I'm so happy to be a Mrs.!!!!!

**Dedication: This posts is for 3 special people that I know for a solid fact are reading my blog right now - sensers you know who you are - xoxo**