It's Almost Here!!!!

Oh my, it's only 4 days until I am a McCarthy! I feel like we've been planning this wedding forever (like 1 1/2 years), and now it has somehow finally gotten here! How did that happen? So, as you can guess, I have been extremely busy lately; I've found myself at wine stores begging for corks, and then hot gluing them together (I know you're jealous and wish you could too hot glue gun corks). On top of last minute details, my car's battery died last weekend while Scott was away on his bachelor party. I had to rent a car to drive to Claremont to pick up my wedding dress and attend Sarah McLemore's wedding (the wedding was lovely, check out Courtney's blog for a nice overview)
Tomorrow Scott and I make our way up to the Bay Area to begin wedding festivities. Thursday night we have dinner at Pam's house. Pam is a dear family friend, and I grew up with her daughter Haley. Friday is rehearsal, and Mexican dinner, Saturday is wedding day, and Sunday we are off to Maui! So before I sign off my blog for a few weeks, I wanted to write a quick post. Here's a picture....

This is on the wall at the bridal shop where I got my dress. My grandma thinks its so endearing and want to pose like that on my wedding day =)

Goodbye teaching...hello speech!

Tuesday was my last day of teaching...EVER!
I mentioned in my last post that I had a job interview in Oakland last week. After talking to a few different speech companies and clinics, this is the clinic that I liked the best. It is called Communication Works Therapy, you can check it out here. They have a small office in Oakland where they conduct social skills groups (mostly for children with autism and aspergers syndrome). They also place speech therapists and SLPAs (me) in school districts, preschool sites, and even at home sites to work with infants. Well, they offered me a job on the spot, and I accepted it! I will either be doing speech therapy with preschoolers in San Lorenzo, or school-aged children in Berkeley. I ultimately get to pick my site, and I'm sure it will be partly based upon where Scott and I decide to move. Currently, we are thinking of finding a place west of the tunnel (only you Bay Area people know what I'm talking about now), possibly in Berkeley, Oakland Hills, or Emeryville areas. I start working in late August...can't wait to start my new career!

Whirlwind weekend!

Here's a quick update on my whirlwind weekend in northen CA...
Thursday:

• teach 3rd grade
• attend 4 teachers' retirement party, catered by Scott
• drive to the Bay Area

Friday:

• 10am interview in Oakland (more on this later)
• first wedding hair trial...HATED it!
• meet with florist to finalize flowers
  
• Max's graduation pre-party, graduation ceremony, post party (wow, the Vetterli's can really stretch out a party!)

Saturday:

• 2nd hair trial...LOVED it!
• bridal shower at my Grandma Marianne's house
• BBQ dinner at parent's house (planned and cooked by all the men while the women were at the shower)

Sunday:

• Father's Day brunch at Chow
• Drive back home
• Watch Lakers WIN

Now that I'm back home, I am planning my next trip up, only 8 more days until I leave, 11 days until the wedding!!

Keep reading...

I have 3 new posts, so don't stop reading now! With my endless wedding to-do lists, I took the night off to catch up on some blogging...soak it up now, after the wedding my blog will be bare for awhile...

Wedding Gifts

Scott arrived home from work today greeted by 2 huge boxes from Macy's Wedding Registry. He eagerly called me(on my way home from work), and I pushed the gas a little harder to get home quicker =)
We opened both boxes and could not find a card. Each box was filled with gallons of packing peanuts, and several wrapped gifts. We opened the first gift...it was a china serving bowl. The second gift was a china gravy boat. Oh my! someone gave us all the china on our registry!! My grandparents are giving my an incomplete china set (I think it is my great great aunts?? Nana, is that right?). Our china is made by Heinrich, a German company that is not around anymore, and our set is not even available on replacements.com (although they are searching it out for me). I researched for hours online to find any information about our set. It was made in the 1930s and it is the same set they used on the Hindenburg blimp (the one that crashed in 1937.) So because we couldn't fill in the missing pieces of our set, we registered for a Lennox set that is similar (ivory with a gold rim).

The top 2 pieces are the original china, and the bottom 2 are the Lennox

The mystery continues...who would buy us all the china we registered for? We asked for some dinner plates, salad plates, and all the serving platters/bowls to go with it. Scott found the packing slip, and it was from his Dad! OK, back up here...for those that don't know...Scott was raised by his mother. He hasn't seen or heard from his father for over 20 years. Weird. The packing slip also lists that he sent us 2 Reidel champagne glasses and a coffee maker. The glasses were in the package, but the coffee maker is yet to arrive. Somehow he heard Scott was getting married and searched out our registry. His mom is in touch with some of his family, so he must have heard through them...
Oh, and we finally found the card in the last box we opened. It said: Congratulations, Love Dad. What do I write on the thank-you? How about: Thank you, From Scott.

Tag!

I've been tagged by devon, so here it goes:

1.) What was I doing 10 years ago?
I had just finished my freshman year at Scripps, and I was back in Walnut Creek working at Keyspot (a summer day camp).

2.) 5 things on my to do list today?

• glue corks for wedding place card holders
• call to schedule Maui massages
• call florist
• finalize Nichole's baby shower menu
  
• make rehearsal dinner guest list (my to-do list is never-ending right now!!!)
  

3.) Snacks I enjoy?

• Trader Joe's Honey Whole Wheat Pretzel Sticks
• I'm a sucker for ANY cheese in the fridge (I've stopped buying it because of this)
• 100-calorie popcorn bags...mmmm
• cut-up fruit (weird, I won't eat a whole apple, but I will if it is sliced)
• M&Ms
  

4.) Things I'd do if I was a millionaire?

The funny thing is, I wouldn't change much about my upcoming wedding if I were a millionaire. I would still get married at Murrieta's Well. I would give up our honeymoon, however, and travel to Bora Bora or Fiji. Scott opts for a private island. So after our private island, we would probably be broke and would have to come back home and work like normal again! But if we had infinite $$$$, I would pay someone off so I can get my speech therapy license without going through the master's program. We would surely buy a restaurant in Napa, and it would only be open Wed.-Fri. nights (so Scott can have a life outside the restaurant world). Interesting how even if we were millionaires we would both continue our chosen careers...

5.) Places I've lived?

In chronological order:

• Walnut Creek, CA
• Clayton, CA
• Walnut Creek, CA
• Claremont, CA
• Madrid, Spain
• Claremont, CA
• Irvine/Newport Beach, CA
• Costa Mesa, CA
• coming soon....Bay Area, CA

*I am tagging the Scripps girls AGAIN (since I am the only one who did it after devon tagged all of us)

Luau Shower

Last Friday my work threw me a Hawaiian-themed bridal shower. Technically, I don't work there anymore, but it the elementary school that I taught at for 3 years, Sepulveda. Currently I sub there pretty much everyday (I am a picky sub and only work for teachers I personally know.) The shower was supposed to be a surprise, but I saw the hot pink flyer on the wall of a room I subbed in. Instead of hiding the fact that I knew, I told Carol, the planner (and the speech therapist I did my clinicals with), and she let everyone know it was not a surprise anymore. They also invited Scott, but he couldn't get out of work to come to the 11:30am lunch shower.
Upon entering the teacher's lounge, I was greeted with a sweet serenade of Hawaiian music, and a grass skirt was promptly tied around my waist. They also had a lovely coconut top, but I declined =) The lounge was decorated like the Islands, and the cake was an amazing replica of a beach hut, sand, and water, all created with sugar and flour.
As I sat down to nibble on macadamia nuts and dried pineapple, the secretary comes in the lounge, escorting Scott! Apparently he was able to do his work at sonic-speed that morning, rushed home to shower, and flew to Sepulveda to surprise me. At least something was a surprise!

Once Scott arrived, we opened our gifts. We got the general stuff off our registry (place mats, towels, salt/pepper shakers, etc.), but the stand-out theme gift was our leis. The crafty computer teacher had collected cash from the teachers and tied all the bills into a lei for me and a Polynesian headpiece for Scott. Very cool. I'm thinking of wearing it in Maui and paying for my mai-tais with it! Haha, can't you see us sitting at a bar with cash hanging all around us?

You can see our luxurious teacher's lounge here =)

It was a great shower, and such a nice gesture of my co-workers.