Christmas Celebration/Craziness!

Wow! It has been a whirlwind of a week. First off, because I just realized that in the craziness of open gyms at Rolly Pollies and getting ready to come home I forgot entirely to mention that Rob officially passed his test last Monday and is now a licensed CFI (certified flight instructor). He has turned in a resume to the flight school and now we are just waiting for instructors to move on so that he can be hired. Rob says that the tourism companies in Vegas and the Grand Canyon (the 2 most popular next steps for instructors with the hours to move on) tend to hire in January/February, so anytime now people should be moving on and a job should open up.

Onto the excitement of Christmas. We had a short visit at home, but packed it with family and friends. Our flight was delayed a bit on Christmas Eve, but the crazy windy day was in our favor and we had a 150 mph tailwind that helped push us along. We had Christmas Eve dinner at Rob's parents' house, met up with my parents for church and spent the night at my house. It was so much fun to have Christmas morning with Rob there! We opened gifts and had brunch, then spent the rest of the day with Rob's family. Both sides of his family live in the area, so we saw a lot of his family! We separated to spend more time with each of our families on Friday and it was a lil strange when Mom and Dad picked me up at the Andrasik's house in the morning...it felt like I was being picked up from a sleepover in middle school! Some parts of this whole married thing are still a lil weird...especially the sleepovers at each other's houses. On Friday night we met up with friends at BW3 and so many people came! People we hadn't seen in years! It was fabulous catching up with everyone.

The play by play continues...Our flight back to Phoenix left at 7:20 Saturday morning, which meant leaving the house at 5:30 after getting home around 1:00. Ewww. But it's not over yet. We had a 10 hour layover in Memphis. We were both thankful to be home for Christmas, but honestly, worst traveling schedule ever. We taxied over to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, where there's this crazy tradition of ducks marching into the fountain each day at 11:00am. Weird but entertaining. Here's a picture of the ducks hanging out in the fountain after their lil march.We did a lil more exploring in the area around the Peabody Hotel...walked along Beale Street and had lunch at Rendezvous, a famous bbq restaurant. (Thanks to Dad for all the tourism ideas!) Here is a picture of Beale Street and another of us on the roof of the Peabody with a lil of the city in the background. Good thing we don't look ridiculously exhausted :)

After some more hanging out in the airport, we were finally headed back to Phoenix. It was about 11:00 when I got back to the apartment (Rob still had all night to stay up and work!)...1:00 am Cleveland time. Talk about a long day of travel! In retrospect, the layover was maybe good because we were both so excited to just be back that I wasn't as sad as I was when we left.

We've spent the last couple of days getting re-settled in out here...grocery shopping, back to work for us both and I've been working on getting my teaching stuff in order. I can't believe that in less than a week now I'll be teaching! I'm starting to get really nervous...

We both hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and loved the chance to catch up with everyone we saw. Happy early new year to you all...and watch out for the Andrasik comeback in the bowl pool! :) Love, Sarah and Rob

Exciting GOOD News!

Good news, friends! Rob passed his test yesterday!! Well, almost. Technically there is one part that needs to be finished on Monday because he could only do it with a flight instructor from the school. Yesterday was the big stress though, and he isn't worried about Monday at all. Yesterday's test took most of the day- it started about 8:00 and Rob called me at 4:00 to tell me it wa over. The instructor came from the FAA and he actually told Rob that it was one of the shorter check rides he'd ever done because Rob knew the material so well. I'm quite proud of him and I think we're both excited that the busy week is over and ended well.

In other news, I was dying a lil bit the last couple days, but am just about fully recovered. I was pretty dehydrated, but managed to drink a lot of Pedialite and Powerade and I'm pretty sure I actually consumed 100% of B vitamins from Powerade yesterday. No big deal. I managed to catch up on some important celebrity news and holiday shows. Also, yesterday evening we rented Horton Hears a Who (nothing like a great celebration movie for Rob to watch after his test! He had a few beers and I switched Powerard flavors...super exciting on my half.)

Now that I am feeling better and Rob's test is over, we are going to spend the next few days preparing for the holidays and our trip home! We have a bit of shopping and a lot of wrapping to do. We are planning on celebrating our own lil Christmas here on Tuesday morning when Rob gets home from work...we are going to pull out the waffle maker and make waffles for breakfast and exchange gifts. Expect pictures I bet :) We both are getting really excited about the trip home and seeing everyone again. We both feel like we really appreciate family and togetherness more this Christmas than ever before. Okay, enough mush. We have bills to pay and an apartment to clean. Such fun! Love, Sarah and Rob

We were quite festive this weekend. On Thursday, we drove up to Scottsdale to do a lil Christmas shopping and stopped in at Sprinkles! (Honestly, I think Sprinkles is one of my favorite parts of moving to Arizona so far. It's so much happy goodness in one lil store.) Here is a picture of me displaying our delicious cupcakes (because Rob thinks there are too many pictures of him and food on the blog!) My cupcake was vanilla peppermint (vanilla cake with the peppermint in the frosting) and Rob's was vanilla with chocolate frosting and sprinkles.

The peppermint kind of made me want peppermint in everything, so on Friday we made hot chocolate on the stove top, added some holiday marshmallows (obviously) and I added a candy cane to mine. I even smashed the candy cane up to make it beautiful on top. Rob is weird and doesn't like peppermint anywhere, which I'm fairly alright with because, well, more minty goodness for me. I also took pictures of our hot chocolate (and popcorn because it was movie night) because adding random pictures to this blog amuses me.

Oh! And the best story about the red and green marshmallows is that the chip clip that closes the bag is magnetic so they are actually hanging on the refrigerator door and I laugh at this all the time.

The last part of our festiveness in pictures is the holiday lights festival we went to on Saturday night. It was in Tempe-we actually drove through ASU's campus to get there. There is a lil man-made lake and all of the boats there were decorated with Christmas lights and they made a parade. There were also fireworks at the end, but they made me miss fireworks at Jacobs Field a lot. Ok picture time. This is Rob and I playing in a "snow" machine in the festival. It sort of looked like snow when you were there and right under it, but when I stuck out my tongue, I realized it was most definitely soap suds. This is pretty obvious in the picture, but I still think it's pretty funny.

This week is a busy one for both of us. Rob's test is Friday so he is flying extra and studying all week. Please think smart thoughts for him on Friday! Again, we will keep you all posted as to how things go. I am planning a big chicken parmesean dinner for Friday night and hoping it is a celebratory one! This week (and also Monday and Tuesday next week) Rolly Pollies is holding open gyms for 2 hours each morning and evening, which gives me a lot more hours than usual at work. Figure this in with birthday parties at work next weekend, tutoring, meeting with the Chandler school district before I start student teaching, a few errands and finishing up the Christmas shopping and I should be a busy girl! I am actually looking forward to the hectic week, but am also excited for the end of it, when Rob's test is behind us. (And when we're that much closer to being home for Christmas!)

Again, we hope all is well with you and would like you to order in a lil bit of snow (not too much to mess up flying home, but something more than soap suds please) for our Christmas visit. I bet you never thought you'd hear me say that, but I still know I have the sunshine to come back to :) Love, Sarah and Rob

This Week's Excitement...

...in words this time, no pictures or videos!

1. I met my cooperating teacher after school on Tuesday! She is great. I feel a lot better about student teaching after meeting her, but seeing the school and her classroom started making me nervous as well. She teaches 3 honors English 9 classes (freshman) and is the student council adviser, which is also a class. I will completely take over the English classes and help out some in the student council class. (Planning winter formal, pep rallies and prom!) She gave me access to the district's standards, which are all broken down by grade and quarter, so I know what I will be teaching already. I'll teach the books Anthem and 1984 and the big project for the second semester is a research paper. (100 of those to grade should be fun...) I'm going to spend the next few weeks getting started on reviewing my notes from college teaching classes and re-reading the books.

2. The heat is back on. I am sure you were all very worried about us being cold out here.

3. The lil market I like to go to gave me a free canvas bag when I was shopping yesterday. I think I will iron on my name with the extra letters from my Rolly Pollies shirt creation project. Also, I discovered their inexpensive brand of 2% milk cheese. Small things make me very happy.

4. This weekend is baking Christmas cookies weekend. I am going to this share Christmas cookies and wine event on Monday night with girls in the area. It was from a meet up group online. I feel a lil like I'm online dating for friends, but will hopefully make some regardless.

5. We grilled out last night. Turkey burgers! I think Rob likes hamburgers better still, but I was pleased. Hooray for grilling in mid-December. It's still a lil strange and sometimes I feel like I need snow, but it passes quickly.

6. This is not so much excitement, but a nice way to wrap this list up before it really starts to border on uninteresting. We are extending an invitation to anyone who would like to be in Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl. If you can afford a game and plane ticket, your lodging is on us! :) And we have the most fantastic air mattress....!

Hope all is well with everyone! Thank you again for the comments...I get e-mail notifications when someone leaves a comment and am super excited when I see one :) Love, Sarah and Rob

Holiday Cheer in our Apartment

Unfortunately, Rob's test was pushed back to December 19th...the head flight instructor at the school had a sudden pop up 2 week vacation of some sort and Rob needed to fly with her all last week to finish training before the test. Neither of us were too happy. Fingers crossed everything will go well on the 19th and he will be hired on as an instructor right away. That would be the best Christmas present!

Since Rob didn't have to spend as much time this week as he originally thought studying, we had plenty of time to decorate our apartment for Christmas! Here are a few pictures...

Our Christmas tree! He is a lil 4-foot guy sitting on a box so he is tall enough to be seen through the window, but we like him :)

This is the fireplace Rob created last Christmas when I came out to visit him. It's hanging on the wall with our thermostat...which I'm really only mentioning as a way to point out that our heat is broken and this is a bigger deal in Arizona than I would have thought. It gets chilly in here at night!

We made paper snowflakes to hang from the lamp above our kitchen table and I filled the Kate Spade rose bowl from Cindy and John with extra ball ornaments that didn't fit on our lil tree.

The flash makes it difficult to appreciate these, but we strung lights on our balcony and around our front door. It's been fun coming home to Christmas lights in the evening!

On Friday we went into Glendale for a Gingerbread Nights festival. The newspaper out here claimed that you could make your own gingerbread house to bring home, but we never found the area to do so. I was disappointed! The festival was a lot like Strongsville's home days in the summer, with a giant movie screen to show The Grinch. Even though it wasn't what we expected, it was a fun evening out. And I'm definitely getting my share of Christmas between our decorations and the Kids Bop Christmas cd that plays nonstop at Rolly Pollies.

We hope all is well with everyone and that you had as much fun decorating this year as we did! Merry Christmas :) Love, Sarah and Rob

Our First Thanksgiving Together!

We are proud to say that our first Thanksgiving together went wonderfully! No smoke detectors were set off and the food was all edible! The turkey was really the biggest stress and we worked together on it...

Rob cleaned the turkey (the gross part!) on Wednesday night before work.

I rubbed olive oil all over its skin before it went into the oven. It was very raw and cold and slimy and I touched it. I was quite proud.

And, Rob carved the turkey!

The other big stress was the gravy. Thanks to some help from mom and grandma Irene it turned out well!
We have only made a small dent in our leftovers. (The only exception being the pumpkin pie, which is gone...we had pie and coffee on the balcony each night this weekend!) Our turkey was 12.5 pounds. Rob stuffed it with his family's stuffing recipe and I made my family's Thanksgiving dressing in a 9x13 pan. We had mashed potatoes, a loaf of homemade bread, glazed carrots and baked apples as well. If anyone has free time this week and needs some more Thanksgiving, come visit! Tomorrow I am planning on making a pot pie with the leftover turkey and pie shells, but there will be leftovers of that too I am sure!

Speaking of potential visitors...we went on quite the adventure Friday morning for you! At some point late Thursday night, I decided that I wanted to buy an air mattress on sale at Kohls the next morning. Of course, my family was planning on going to Kohls in Lancaster Friday morning and I ended up homesick and the next thing I know it's 3:30 am and the alarm is going off. Rob and I (yes, both of us) pulled into the parking lot at Kohls at 4:10 AM! We got the last air mattress, stood in line for an hour and a half, purchased said mattress and were back in bed by 6:00. I thought it was a job well done. Rob admitted that he expected the car engine to still be warm when we got back into the car! To conclude this lovely story, I owe Rob my soul and we need visitors! I have really wanted to blow the air mattress up and sleep on it for the past few nights, but Rob keeps arguing that we have a bed. Now that he's back at work, I just might do it... :)

To wrap things up, Rob's test is this Friday! Someone from the FAA is coming out to the flight school to test him...it will be a full day event...so think smart thoughts for him on Friday! We will keep you all updated on how he does :) We both wish that we could have been with you all on Thanksgiving, but were thankful for each other (mush) and the chance to talk to so many of you. Next year, Thanksgiving can be in Phoenix...we have experience! And you can all fight over the air mattress! Love, Sarah and Rob

Our Apartment Tour!

Let me just start out by saying that the process of posting this video was ridiculously long by any standards. It's now 10:30 in the evening and we recorded the tour about 4:00. Since then, we have cleaned Thomas (our chunkster of a turkey...12.5 pounds for 2 people!), baked a pumpkin pie, Rob's long gone to work and I've been to a Thanksgiving Eve church service. In the background of it all, we were trying to load a video that was about 4 times as many MB (you can figure out what that means) as the blog program would allow. I've spent the past two hours trying to shrink the file size down and finally discovered the Windows Movie Maker program on my computer and put all the skills I used in some educational technology class at Miami to work. Long story short (I obviously rarely do this...sorry!), here is a tour of our apartment!



We hope that you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving tomorrow and wish we could be there or that you could be here! Check back, of course, for pictures and narration of our own Thanksgiving adventures! Love, Sarah and Rob

ps- one important thing to know about our apartment that didn't get taped in the video: the cat poster from Shelly and Adam is hanging in our laundry room, across from the washer and dryer until I have a classroom of my own that it can be transfered to :)

Exciting News All Around...

This will probably be fairly brief (okay, brief by my standards), as I just finished a glass of wine and a Rolly Pollies birthday training video. It seemed a fantastic combination before the sleepiness hit.

Rob and I have had a pretty exciting week. For starters, he passed his test on Monday afternoon! This test was a sort of double check with the school before they schedule his final test with the FAA. And...this afternoon his examiner from the FAA called and his final checkride/test is scheduled for December 5th...just 2 weeks from today! Rob's instructor at the school says the guy he's been assigned is fairly thorough (he tested another student at the school a few weeks ago and it took 8 hours to complete the test!) so he definitely has his work cut out for him in studying the next few weeks. It's definitely exciting to being so close to finished though!

Also today, I found out my student teaching assignment! I am teaching at Hamilton High School. I haven't spoken with my cooperating teacher yet, but I stalked her a baby bit on the school's website and I think she teaches Freshman Honors, Student Government and perhaps AP. Not certain on that last one. The school is about 6 miles down the road...a 10-15 minute drive with all the traffic lights. Rob and I drove over this evening and some of the students were starting to tailgate before a playoff football game! It looks like a pretty neat place. The school has about 3,500 students (and it's one of four public high schools in Chandler! This city is HUGE!) I am really excited to meet my teacher and get started!

A few other exciting notes...I baked bread this week. From scratch/with the whole yeast and rising process. This further illustrates my need for a full-time schedule. Our target.com order came in record time, but I blanked signing the UPS signature pad and used Kaiser...oops! We hung a few pictures on the wall, are getting ready to hang curtains and have a wonderfully cinnamon scented apartment thanks to a fabulous care package from mom :)

I am gearing up for 4 birthday parties this weekend and a trip to the grocery to prepare for our first Thanksgiving. Any tips are welcome...especially in the area of making gravy (this seems to be a McCandlish stress), pumpkin pie recipes from family and not google, thawing turkeys (I think about 2 days for 10 pounds??) and how to fly you all out here to do the cooking and shop with me on Friday...or turn Rob into someone craving the mall the day after Thanksgiving. Eek...we miss you!!

Also, this is remarkably not short. My apologies for the false advertising.

Happy Birthday Rob Weekend!!

Eek! It's been almost a week since I have posted...I can't believe how busy life has gotten out here! To start with, here are a few pictures from our adventures with Evan in Tucson last weekend...


We went hiking this weekend as well, as part of Rob's birthday celebration. We stayed closer to Phoenix this time and hiked part of South Mountain. We drove up to a lookout point where you could see the buildings of downtown Phoenix and the surrounding suburbs, then started hiking on a trail from there. At this point, I'm using the word trail rather loosely. To reach the actual dirt/dust trail of the mountain, we scampered down a lot of rocks. It was nothing to Rob, but to me--my idea of hiking before I came out here was strolling along the bridle trails I know like the back of my hand in the Metroparks--it was pretty intense. My legs (and butt!!) are still sore from all the climbing. I was drowning in the foam pit with all the kids at work this weekend (imagine the ball pit from Chuckie Cheese, but it's filled with foam squares instead--fantastic!) Here are a few pictures of the view and the sunset...

The pictures shrink a bit in the posting process, but you can sort of see downtown near the left side of the picture here.

The lil bits of yellow are actually street signs on the road that led up to the lookout point.

Saturday was Rob's actual birthday (25!!). He had a meeting at work about renting a plane his company just bought in the morning, so while he was gone, I decorated the apartment with crepe paper and made celebration pancakes. (They're just pancakes plus sprinkles in the batter, but I love them.) The pancakes were delicious (hooray for the griddle); the singing of happy birthday was horrendous (I had to sing solo! It's time to make friends!!)

We stopped at Starbucks before running a few errands to finish getting everything we need for the apartment (it's an ongoing/slow process it seems!) and made taco soup/chili for dinner. I think Rob had a great birthday :)

And speaking of birthdays...I officially started work this weekend at Rolly Pollies with a birthday party yesterday and today. I guess it is a short stint of easing me into it--next weekend I work 5 parties! I am really liking the job, which is good because it feels like it's been a while since I have looked forward to going to work. (A $20 tip for working an hour and a half party yesterday didn't hurt the job excitement!) The kids at parties spend an hour in the gym and a half hour in the party room (where they open presents and eat cake). Everything is really structured--it's all broken up into 15 minute increments, which makes the time fly by. (Plus, playing in the blow up moon bounce castle, riding on the zip line and bouncing on trampolines hardly seems like work!) Unfortunately, the bulk of my hours will be on the weekends, which will conflict some with Rob's schedule, but not to the point that we never get to see one another. And, I'm really liking having something for me and my own schedule to stick to.

We are hoping to record a video tour of our apartment at some point next weekend (or ideally at the latest, by Thanksgiving) so you all can get an idea of where we are living! Until then...love, Sarah and Rob

And ps-- thank you all for the comments! We are loving them :)

marriage is a $5 bottle of wine and velveeta macaroni on friday night...

This is the ridiculously intelligent conclusion Rob and I came to on Friday night, after returning from Home Depot to hang a shelf and finally set up lamps in our apartment. Also, we bought a vacuum cleaner on Friday. We live on the edge out here, obviously.

Okay, important things first, then on to our exciting weekend recap. I am an employed member of society again! In the past 4 days, I've managed to get hired at 2 different jobs! On Friday morning, I heard back from a tutoring service I'd applied to and was assigned my first student. I met with the owner at Starbucks on Sunday afternoon and we worked out all the details. Tomorrow evening is my first tutoring session with a 5th grade boy- so far I know that we are working on spelling, basic math and organizational skills. His teacher is already talking about holding him back, so I may have my work cut out for me. I'll be meeting with him 3 evenings each week and will hopefully pick up more students in time--the hourly pay works out to be higher than what I was making hourly at AHA! This afternoon, I also heard back from Rolly Pollies- the children's gym I was stalking for a while last week in hopes of a job. Luckily, they have sorted out their new management issues and I start tomorrow morning in training! I am helping teach an hour long class for kids that just started walking, followed by an hour long class for two-year olds. I also am working an open gym on Wednesday and then 3 birthday parties this weekend :)

Also, an update: later this week, Rob is retesting part of his stage check test that he took last week. There was some crazy failure in communication between the instructor that he flew with for the test and the chief flight instructor and it sounds like he is really looking forward to finishing this portion of the schooling out this week and getting it behind him.

Now, back to the weekend excitement. On Saturday, we drove down to Tucson to visit Evan, a friend from home who has been in Arizona for the past few months working at the Caterpillar test site (he is an engineer for the company). At one point on the drive down, the highway signs switched from miles to kilometers...apparently we were only 20 miles from the border! Evan took us to Mt. Lemon. We did a lot of driving up to the top and stopped at a few lookout points along the way. (Pictures to come as soon as we find Rob's camera!) It was beautiful...you would never think of ski slopes and pine trees in Arizona, but I promise you they were there. At the base of the mountain it was about 80 degrees and at the top about 50. (I think my blood is thinning already...I was cold!) It was about 10,000 feet elevation--and we passed a good number of people biking up along the road. Crazy!! We had dinner with Evan at an amazing pizza restaurant called Frog N Firkin on Arizona University's campus. It was in an area that reminded me a lot of Miami's uptown. Final conclusion to tie back to the title: even though we are cheap, we are still classier than we were in college. College is a box of wine; marriage is a bottle. :)

Pumpkin Cupcake Surprise!

First off, as promised, here is a picture of our kitchen on Friday, when the pod arrived and we attempted to put all the kitchen boxes in it...


I promise things are looking better now! The festive scarecrow dish towels and pumpkin soaps are out! We are also slowly decorating our fridge...send a wonderful picture or note and I bet it will be a fantastic new addition :)

Also, here is a picture of Rob and I on our balcony...relaxing with pizza and beer on Friday evening and taking a break from the unpacking madness. (Also note, it was warm enough to sit outside in the evening in a t-shirt less than a week ago. Now it's officially fall here and in the mid-70's during the day and the 50's at night. We still have the apartment windows open, but I have a sweatshirt on now!)

Now on to the real stories...yesterday morning Rob had a stage check (which basically means big test). It's another step toward him becoming an instructor at the flight school. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll find out until tomorrow whether he passed or not...and neither of us are very patient with waiting for the news! While Rob was taking his test, I baked pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting to surprise him with when he came home! It was quite the adventure...from attempting to find a Wal-Mart to pick up the ingredients while he was at work Monday night (turning into any parking lot means u-turns out here with the divided medians, which is nerve-wreckingly difficult, obviously) to figuring out the oven and the timer and all these new kitchen appliances! Luckily, everything came together and the cupcakes turned out wonderfully! (Here come more pictures because I'm so excited to have figured that feature out!)


Regarding the cupcakes...special thanks/shout out to Mom for the baking advice, Rob's mom for the Kitchen Aid, Shelly and PJ for the mixing bowls (not pictured, but quite necessary), Sara Vacha for the beautiful polka dotted paper baking cups...the list goes on and on. Thank you from us both! Love, Sarah and Rob

Everything I forgot before!!

I somehow failed to mention the major development in my life: my identity crisis is over. Between the social security office and the drivers license office (who knows what else to call that place, honestly), I think I spent a solid 3-4 hours sitting and waiting...and sitting and waiting. I did manage to change my name, take an acceptable license photo and get new plates. (Rob was on board for everything but the name change. And the acceptable photo part is up for debate-even he'll admit!) Arizona proved to be a ridiculous state in a number of ways: first, our licenses expire when we are 65. Second, they charge for license plates based on the value/year/other things Rob would know but he fell asleep on the couch of your car. Arizona thinks my beautiful lil Corolla that hauled us out here last week is terribly cheap, which is actually a good thing. They're in love with Rob's truck though. We won't even discuss how much his license plates cost. You'd cringe. I guarantee it. Finally, we discovered a mall. (Best day out here yet.) We went to the mall to check out Pottery Barn and a new hair salon with potential (Rob was elated about this all, believe me...just keep reading) and parked in the parking lot was a helicopter that a golf cart full of people drove up to and climbed into and then it took off. Which means one thing...people fly to the mall. And I thought the Nordstrom's was high class. Crazy state, no?

Settling In

As crazy as it seems sometimes, we've been out in Arizona for over a week now! Though you'd never guess it if you walked into our apartment. (Attempted to open the door into our apartment might actually be a better way of phrasing it.) The pod arrived yesterday in the late morning and made Halloween feel a bit like Christmas...for me at least...after quite a few trips unloading it up three flights of stairs, Rob might have had a different opinion! Everything was out of the pod and into our apartment in about an hour and a half. The unpacking and organizing stage will definitely take a bit longer. At one point, we filled our kitchen entirely with boxes of kitchen gifts from the wedding. In a few days, when I've unpacked/found the box with my camera cord in it, I'll post the pictures we took. At this point, the closet is organized, Rob is still in awe at my ability to fill it up and we've started in on the kitchen. There is still quite a bit to go until it's a real working kitchen! Last night we ordered pizza and ate it on the balcony and this evening we grilled hot dogs and picnic-ed outside (the apartment complex has gas grills and picnic areas throughout it). Tomorrow we are planning on swinging by a bagel shop before church and then hopefully unpacking enough to cook a real dinner. I can't wait to get out all these new kitchen appliances and use them! (Might need to read the direction manuals first...) Thank you again to everyone for all of the wonderful gifts and an amazing wedding. We love reliving it all and remembering who each gift came from as we unpack it and try to find a place for it! More to come...love, Sarah and Rob.