Anyway… thanks to God, it’s another Friday and we’ve seen quite a few previous Fridays since my last blog post. I’ve been busy with the usual random adventures and took some time today to assemble a decently composed pictorial summary. It seems like Winter is uncharacteristically flying by this year, and I’m surely not complaining. The snowboarding sucks this year, but we rarely have time to ride anyway so boo-freaking-hoo.

The scary thing about having such a mild Winter, is that all my nerdy bicycle friends have been out enjoying hundreds of training miles. I, of course, have not been training at all, and with racing season only a few weeks away, find myself thousands of miles behind in fitness. I’ve been out riding a bit, but haven’t spent nearly enough time in the pain cave.

And when I do get a good workout in, my recovery nutrition hasn’t exactly been well planned.

Meh, maybe I’ll wake up and train tomorrow. The more important thing is that our 2012 race kits are now in production.  At least I’ll look fast.

Further to the whole looking fast thing. I finished re-building that old motorcycle I picked up back in January. Here’s the before and after:

It’s nice to have that finished since I’m now really trying to get the rabbit ready for the Summer show season. I’ve made some really good progress lately with hopes of at least getting the motor into the car and having it run and drive. The good news, is that I’ve finally finished re-building the braking and steering systems so the car now stops when you press the pedal and turns when you spin the wheel. Amazing I know.

Not to be out done, the house insisted on remaining project numbero uno. As you may remember, our house is rather old and with that, is also rather out-dated. One really bad area was our attic insulation, or more specifically the absence of any. Therefore, for the past 55 years our attic has essentially been heated which causes problems with the roof whenever it snows. We’ve been lucky this year, but last years snowmageddon caused plenty of ice dams which wreak havoc on our old roof. The solution? Blown-in insulation from our friends at the depot! Now I know what you’re thinking, “Why didn’t you just lay your insulation?”

It was silly cheap to have them do it. Plus we’re stimulating the economy. And I just didn’t feel like it.

Unfortunately, we did still have to clean out the attic before the job. The previous owners of the house left old blinds, pieces of wood trim, and a bucket of lead paint up there which we didn’t want covered in insulation. Safety tip #1 is to protect your lungs when working in the attic (especially with a can of lead paint) so I loaded up on safety equipment.

Michelle was in charge of holding the trash bag near the door while I crawled around in the attic. She wentInsurgent Housewife with her safety equipment.

After crawling around up there for only an hour or so I was pretty damn glad we paid someone else to do the real job. The pros stopped by a few days later and now our house is like a fluffy pink thermos.

That pretty much brings us up to this week. Michelle and I had a fong-due Valentines dinner on Sunday

and a nice relaxed home made dinner with Cadence on Valentines day.

Thank God it’s Friday!

If you know me well, it’s quite an understatement when I say I love details.  I am quite obsessive which is great for the outcome, but is probably slowly taking years off my life more than I will admit.  Creating cohesive and tasteful events has become a passion since planning our wedding… and it all starts with the invitation.

(I apologize for it being fuzzy.)

I gathered inspiration from invitations on the internet, whipped together my mock up in Microsoft Publisher, and begged Uncle Obscene to transfer to Photoshop for printing crispness since I am PS inept.  He happily did it and they turned out beautifully.  All 100 postcards free courtesy of Vistaprint deals! Now what to do with the 66 leftover…

With 47 yes RSVPs, I of course questioned my ability to comfortably fit that many people in our house. I still don’t know how it worked out, but it did, thanks to multiple mom, sister, and me floor plans.

Aquarium provided by HD Moods Deluxe.

Additional seating was available upstairs as well.

Being the overly frugal person I am, when it came to decorations, they had to do double duty! Baby clothes are too adorable not to buy, so my mom and I did just that and hung them on clotheslines to double as baby shower decor.

I purchased a Baby Boy Nursery scrapbook paper tablet. Cost with a Michael’s 50% off = $10.  With that I made, bunting that hung on curtain rods, a mobile that hung above the gift table, and a sign for the front door.  All the other materials used to make those things were left over from the wedding, score!

I made this yarn wreath for the door and when I packaged it up for Heather to take home, she was quite happy to get to hang it on their little man’s nursery door.  I am not sure why she was thinking I was going to keep it…

My nephew is going to have two very crafty aunts! Ryan’s sister helped with decorations too, making the tissue poms poms and this adorable diaper bike.

Besides feeding the guests, I suppose there is the obligation to keep them entertained.  Keeping with the clothesline theme scheme, we hung baby pictures of Heather and Ryan.  If only we had a morphed picture of the two of them to post…

I stole these from the internet as well and made them my own with the help of Publisher again.  No Photoshop required.

We placed them at each table setting for the guests to fill out and then hang on… wait for it, wait for it…
… a clothesline!

I do not like to be tacky, but I certainly can’t deny being cheesy, so games were in order.  Guess how many inches Heather’s belly measured around, take the diaper pin of whomever said the words cute, baby, or boy, and lastly guess how many goldfish were in the baby bottle.
Go ahead, take a guess…

Heather opened LOTS of gifts, including these fortune cookie slippers from my mother-in-law. (I think that’s the first time I blogged that without ‘future’ in front of it!)

While Heather made her way through piles of gifts, we served some of this

(Thank you, Kristin!)

and when all was unwrapped, prizes awarded, and millions of gracious thank you’s exchanged, we sent our guests home with…
(a few batches later and joint efforts)
and
(made by Rockstar’s great-nanny)

In the end, all the stress leading up to the shower was totally worth it and I can add another successful planned party to my books! I guess its like childbirth though, you eventually forget about the pain once its over. HAHA- I’ll ask Heather about that one in about 7 weeks.  I can’t wait to meet my nephew!

*Thank you, Steph, for taking so many pictures!!

**636 goldfish in case you were wondering.

That aught to show those silly Mayans what’s up!

Anyway, speaking of the end of the world – The Flyers are having a great season and it was 60F this past weekend. We kicked things off with another edge of the seat Flyers game courtesy of Santa Claus. These are typically my uncle’s season pass seats, but once or twice a year we get to sit here, and Thursday night treated us to an awesome Flyers game winning goal with only 30 seconds left!

As I mentioned earlier, it was downright hot this past weekend. So hot that Michelle suggested we take the bikes out.    In the outdoors.    In January.    Michelle.

The hotness part #2 came Saturday night in the form of M2 Photography‘s new studio rager. The first words of any conversion related to our wedding are often “we loved your photos so much!” so take note, brides-to-be. M2 = awesome photography and months later you get to drink all their liquor. Michelle’s baked potato dip was a hit although it took me 4 tries to describe it correctly.

Proper photo documentation is likely to follow soon on M2′s blog. Until then, here’s a sneak peek:

Finally, on Sunday I was driving through Philly and spotted this stencil. It was awesome.

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

In 2011, there were 20 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 63 posts. There were 182 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 38mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was November 9th with 136 views. The most popular post that day was At A Glance.

The top referring sites in 2011 were:

• facebook.com
• forums.vwvortex.com
• mrandmrsobscene.blogspot.com
• m2-photography.net
• benjaminobscene.com

neato!

Cadence looking tough as nails:

We sold our tandem!

I went to New Orleans:

Cadence gave Fred a haircut:

The rabbit gets newer every day!

Cadence visited the Fong house in NJ for Christmas!

K Fong never disappoints:

Alvin, Simon, and Theodore:

One of my Christmas presents from Michelle:

She’s the best.

It’s been a busy holiday weekend, and discerning readers  may have already noticed a big change in our Two Lovebirds tag-line. It’s true, we did get another bike. I picked up this cross bike for Michelle on our way down to NJ for Thanksgiving. Like most of her bikes, it’s sparkling clean and too big for me, but we’re hoping to get some mud on it soon.

Thanksgiving was the typical mix of driving, football, family, and crunchy stuffing. We hadn’t seen my family since the wedding so it was great to catch up and re-live the excitement. It still amazes me when cousins, aunts, uncles, and the Bo say how much they enjoyed it. Not that I don’t believe them, I’m just really honored to have been part of putting together such a great family event. On a side note, I also found out that I am in fact, the tallest grandchild. In your face, Bella!

Nothing too crazy for us on Black Friday this year, although we did get stuck in Walmart traffic driving home Thursday night. Friday morning I met Patrick in Phoenixville for a post-turkey ride. He must have skipped the gravy because he spent the next two hours destroying me on some of Chester County’s meanest climbs. Michelle and I made it out for the bit of shopping, but couldn’t quite concentrate as we were unsure how the present on the top of our lists was going to work out.

We’ve wanted a dog for so many years, and finally have the means to take care of one. Weeks of PetFinder searches later, we found a rescue Pitbull terrier mix in Delaware county. She has been living with an amazing foster family for nearly half a year, but for different reasons never found a permanent home. Michelle and I both spend too much time at work, so we wanted an adult dog that wouldn’t mind us gone during the day. Also, it never hurts to have a dog come pre-housetrained. So after lots of discussion, planning, and meetings we completed the paperwork and took her home Saturday afternoon. Without further adieu, I’m pleased to introduce our two year old Pitbull, Cadence:

#bikenerds

The rest of the weekend is pretty much dog this and dog that. I’m really glad we had a few days to slowly introduce her to the house and our lives. Cadence gets pretty excited with new things, so we wanted to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Later Saturday night, we gave Cadence some quiet time and went out ice skating with the team. Scrapbooking night is next weekend.

Sunday morning was more fierce Sunnybrook winter training and featured French cow milk cheese, an Italian sheep’s milk cheese with truffles, and two local varieties accompanied by the best out of season fruit ever.

Fill in the rest of Sunday with more doggy playtime and a crappy Eagles game.

*For the full effect, please imagine I’ve written the rest of this post in auto-tune.

So where did we leave off? Ah yes, the wedding. It was pretty good, right? I certainly enjoyed it. In case you missed it, or just want to confirm we’re talking about the same wedding, please don’t hesitate to view the pictures and slideshow featured on M2 Photography’s blog. While you’re there, you might as well look at the engagement photos again too. But what happens to a wedding blog after the wedding? – the same thing that happens to the bride and groom!

They get old and boring They live happily ever after!

This time in our lives is what you might call “the intermezzo” – a sweet mango sorbet that cleanses the palate of that caesar salad wedding and stimulates the appetite for the filet mignon of life ahead. Other people just call it the honeymoon phase. Either way, it’s not bad living. Since returning from the Poconos, we’ve been able to clean out more of the yard and trim back fifty years of ivy, re-organize the basement and garage, eat dinner out at restaurants again, and even have a little fun between our legs.

For our second Halloween at the house, we skipped the parties to stay home and watch bad tv. I’m pleased to announce though that this year we had our very first trick-or-treaters! Two of them! I credit my excellent knife work in carving a friendly bear pumpkin.

Really the only scary part of Halloween was over the weekend when I pulled apart the 31 year old rear brakes on the rabbit.

Shortly following the ghouls and goblins, of course, was our trip down to Cabo to celebrate the wedding our friends, Chris and Barette. I think the sunny, warm weather was just what Michelle needed, and a healthy dose of old friends sorted me out too. We’re left with quickly fading tans, and I still haven’t put my suitcase away, but sun rises like this are freaking awesome.

As I mentioned earlier, we’ve also been able to tackle a lot of the household projects we’ve been putting off. Michelle has officially betrayed Fern Gully and cut down the jungle of ivy and dead trees surrounding our house. I get a weird mix of love and fear when I see her eyes light up in cruel satisfaction as she chainsaws limb after limb off the old trees. However, I can’t think of many morning greetings that remind me I’m married more than “So are we going to put that toilet in today?”

This photo was staged, but trust me, that old toilet was heavy. Don’t worry though, we donated it to the curb and someone is probably using it right now (in their home, not the curb). As if by some miracle, the new toilet is installed, connected, and flushing deposits up to 13 golf balls in size.

Yup, married life ain’t bad.

Target

My reaction was caught on camera (sorry I do not have those pictures to post) as my eyes filled with tears and I blurted out, “REALLY!?!?!”   Congratulatory hugs, kisses, and belly rubs were in order.

My first duty as Auntie Chelle was to catch my mom’s reaction on video.  FAIL… I got overly excited and double pushed the record button and only captured the first second.  Anyways, it went a little something like this:  This guy

came strutting out of the kitchen wearing a ‘I’m going to be a Big Brother’ t-shirt.  Mom aka Nona instantly noticed and did the typical Tonya happy dance followed by shrieks of joy and hugs so tight the baby probably felt it.  Dad aka Pop pop found out the day before, but his reaction, so we were told, was not so instantaneous.  Maybe it was because it was Sammy’s first time showing off his new t-shirt, but Pop pop just thought Heather and Ryan were getting another dog.  Finally when the  light bulb went on, I am pretty sure its safe to assume he is much more ecstatic by the latter revelation.

Not knowing whether they were having a boy or girl at this point, Ryan was secretly hoping for a boy and I had a feeling that his wish was going to come true.  The name Rockstar you wonder?  I’m not really sure, but Ryan started it and it stuck with me.  Rockstar will be the first grandchild in our family and Ryan’s, so this kid is going to be spoiled and I can’t wait!  Oh yea, that’s right, I didn’t wait to start the spoiling.  Going with my gut that it was going to be a boy, I went out and bought this:

Rockstar clothes courtesy of Kohl’s

So after successfully keeping the secret for 6 weeks, waiting another 15 to confirm they were having a boy, I would like to make my now obvious BIG announcement, Heather and Ryan are expecting a little boy due on March 27th, 2012!!!! I cannot be happier for the two of them and I cannot wait to meet my nephew!  And I should mention, the due date is Ben’s birthday. Awesome!

I would like to say that we officially now have all the time in the world to blog… I am so eager to re-live all that has happened in the past few weeks, including full wedding recaps.  We are still waiting on the rest of our professional photos from Michael and Melissa over at M2, but I won’t rush them, their work is priceless and they have already given us this preview.   While we wait for the photos to do the recaps there are a few things we will be able to keep you occupied with: our Eagles Mere honeymoon, our trip to Cabo, and a BIG announcement (no, we are not expecting)!!!

Side note:  It’s this guy’s birthday!!  Happy Birthday, Dad! We love you!

Excited? I know, me too. It’s been one hell of a 550 days, 4 hours, and 22 minutes – Many days and nights filled with vendor meetings, long reviews of the budget, paper crafting, photoshopping, and tough decision making. It’s amazing now to see everything coming together. The realization of Michelle’s vision for the wedding is a pretty awesome thing when you see it in person (especially if you’ve ever tried to make sense of her creative process). As usual though, we’ve had plenty of other action too in the past few months.

I enjoyed phase 1 of my bachelor party (the idea here is to hit the bottle off the ski pole with the novelty flying disk):

We were measured and fitted for tuxedos:

Michelle also had her bachelorette party and brought me home a decoration for the garage:

It rained a lot (pictured is the bicycle trail):

We had a dance party with little kids:

We had a dance party with big kids:

The rabbit rolls on tires now (but unfortunately won’t be making it to the wedding):

Cyclocross season started:

Ben and Cait got married:

We successfully surprised Michelle with a shower at her own house:

Phase 2 of the bachelor party:

And finally phase 3 this past weekend:

Can’t wait to see everyone next week!