Enchanted to Meet You

For my birthday this year, JR's mom gave me tickets to see Taylor Swift in concert. How amazing is that? I get the vote for coolest in-laws in the world.

The concert was Saturday night and after a series of unfortunate events, JR was unable to go. He had surgery on two of his teeth last week and it has been really painful, and then on top of that he has had the flu. He told me that I had to go to the concert without him ("no, no I can stay here with you... oh, okay, if you make me then I guess I will go..."). I called my new friend Sarah from work and she was IN. It was perfect because I already knew that she knew every word to every Taylor Swift song too.

The seats were AMAZING, we were just to the left of the stage and a few rows up.

I didn't take a ton of pictures on account of I was enjoying the show a little too much.

But she looked amazing.

 

Jimmy Eat World made a guest appearance and rocked "The Middle" with Taylor. The crowd sing-along factor went down drastically for this song, since most of the girls there were under the age of 15 and definitely missed this phase of music. But I was right there: "IT JUST TAKES SOME TIME LITTLE GIRL YOU'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RIDE". Oh it was wonderful.

Sometimes there is absolutely nothing in the world better than singing your face off for a solid three hours.

The One Where We Went to New York

Look, don't get mad about the six day blog hiatus. I had a REALLY busy week. And when I say really busy, I mean not busy enough to miss any of my most important TV shows, just busy enough not to have time to blog. I realize that it would be very much like me to start a blog and stop blogging after a few posts (see here), but this time is different and I will prove it to all of you. Mostly to myself though.

 So following our super fabulous wedding, we took off to New York for a week and it was very possibly the most amazing/delicious/crazy awesome week of my life. 

We stayed at a little place called the Waldorf Astoria- you may have heard of it. It was so fancy! You couldn't wear jeans in the lobby after 5:00 PM and anytime I picked up the phone they would say "Good Evening, Mrs. Williams. What can we do for you?" and I wanted to be like EVERYTHING I LOVE ALL THE THINGS. But my mother would be proud to know that I kept my cool. And my pinkies up.

Most people would have meticulously planned everyday on this vacation. We were more of the let's-walk-around-and-see-what-we-stumble-on kind of people.

We found the Rockefeller Center first thing where we ran through the NBC store like children, reminiscing about all of our favorite NBC shows (Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, The Office). I walked away with a Bluth's Frozen Banana Stand t-shirt, JR with a Dwight t-shirt. Success.

Most important things to invest in when traveling to New York: crazy comfy but stylish shoes and a Beth Rizley Evans satchel, seen above.

We also found Grand Central, which was large and reminded me of London, and who doesn't love both of those things.

 

We learned quickly that it is very difficult to take posed scenic shots with the Selfie Method. "A" for effort.

 

Any planning that we did do was food-related. We journeyed to the infamous Shake Shack where we feasted on burgers, hot dogs, french fries and, of course, shakes.

Here is JR, mid-french fry bite.

Me, mid-hotdog bite. Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about hotdogs. And this one was absolute perfection.

And the World Famous "Concrete".

Also on the Delicious List, but not pictured: Five Napkin Burger (need I say more?), Bouchon Bakery (for French Macarons), Carmine's most amazing meatballs, Le Pain (for weird waffle things that blew my mind).

We each chose a museum to go to; JR picked the Museum of Natural History and I picked the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Museum of Natural History was so fun. We made our way through every floor, trying to appreciate all the tribal exhibits but mostly charging past them. Don't worry, we stopped to see the very most important things.

Like this guy from Night at the Museum!

Until we finally made it to the DINOSAUR FLOOR. Oh dinosaurs. You are the best.

We did a lot of this:

Okay, fine. I did a lot of this:

 

And in the middle of all of that, someone asked if we wanted a picture together. Oh, right, of course we do.

Megaladon tooth! I've touched a Megaladon tooth!

For those of you who don't know how awesome Megaladon is, please click here. You must learn.

The main reason we went to the Met was to see the Alexander McQueen exhibit. He was an amazing designer who died last year, and this was pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I was dying to go. He designed a lot of Lady Gaga's crazy outfits and was known for being very Avant Garde. I thought JR would absolutely hate it but it ended up being one of his favorite parts of the trip.

We couldn't take pictures inside the exhibit, but it was one of the coolest things I have ever, ever seen.

We also saw three incredible plays: Mary Poppins, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Phantom of the Opera. I highly recommend them all. 

Also a great excuse to dress up, which I love.

The trip was perfect in every way. I am hoping that in twenty or thirty years JR will take me back to New York to run around like idiots again, I can't think of anyone in the world I'd rather do that with.

Wedding Day

June 11, 2011

We got murried! And it was the best day ever.

Plenty of picture-taking

Lots of family

A fantastic party

Sharkface made an appearance

A bit of cake

Followed by dancing, of course

And we ended the night with some fabulous sparklers

All in all, a good day's work.

Our Story

I woke up in the middle of the night and decided that it is way past time to start a blog. So here I am.

Being the first blog (of many?) I thought I would start off with the story of JR and I:

We met the summer of 2009 at a dessert party that I was throwing at my apartment (ice cream sundaes in homemade waffle cone bowls!). We started making excuses to hang out with each other every night- midnight trips to Walmart, horrible scary movies, Settlers of Catan marathons. Finally one night- I can't really remember exactly what night it was (June thirtieth, it was a Monday)- he kissed me, and we were officially dating. Which meant midnight trips to Walmart, horrible scary movies, and Settlers of Catan marathons.

The following February we had a bit of a falling out. It was perfectly *cough* mutual... I wonder how well sarcasm translates in blog world... Anyway, the Mutual February Incident was followed by one year of radio silence, in which time I went on a myriad of bad dates, graduated from culinary school, and experienced a lot of Catan cravings.

I will now set up this dramatic scene for you:
    February 2011. Hadn't heard from JR for one full year, almost to the day. Engagement ring on my finger. From not JR.
    I'm sitting on my bed. My phone makes the text message sound. You know the one.
    It's JR.
    Can you believe it! The nerve of this guy.

And then one week later I was engaged to JR. Happy ending! Did you see that one coming?

We got married on June 11th, 2011. See?

Directly after our honeymoon we moved to Arizona and bought a dog. JR works at Midwestern University taking care of the lab animals while he is applying to medical school and I work at a brand new cupcake store called 21 Cakes, one of the cuter places of the world.

Since this blog is four or five months late, I will be catching up on some important news headlines in the next few posts (wedding day, honeymoon, Arizona, etc.). Don't get bored yet, things will get current quickly.

I understand that I have a lot of blog rules to learn in the coming weeks. For example, I think there is a number of pictures to number of words ratio that I have definitely failed in this post. Hang in there with me.