Yuri Update

As of last week Yuri is 4 months old. He is now 4lbs, Chewie was 5 when we got him. We think that we may end up with the largest and the smallest Maltese ever. Hehe. It took about a month, but Chewie and him are now best friends. They play together all the time. While Chewie does get annoyed with Yuri sometimes, he still has the couch as a refuge from his annoying little brother. Yuri's legs are too short to be able to jump on anything. I would love to post some pictures of them playing together, but it is impossible to get a good one. Maybe I will get video of it sometime. In the meantime here are some of Yuri hanging out under the Christmas tree.

Blog

I forgot to post a while back that Patti Gabriel, our photographer, has a blog and put up some pictures from our wedding on it. Click here to see our post.

Vegas Baby!

Steve and I are having an unconventional turkey day this year. We are headed to Vegas! We leave tomorrow after work. I know its going to be a great trip. Neither of us have ever been before. Right now I am most exited about a few things...
- Buffet Thanksgiving dinner with Steve, Sarah and Tony
- Holy flatten penny machines! I just gathered about 20 pennies to take! I will get the quarters when I get there.
- Checking out all of the different hotels. We are staying our first night at the Luxor and the rest of the time at Harah's
- Hitting up some great looking brewpubs
- Beatles LOVE Cirque de Soleil
- Possibly hitting up a world renowned restaurant or two. We have seen a lot of them on Top Chef this season and we are big fans of Open Table. So I am sure we will use it to make a great dinner reservation one night.


Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Eat some pumpkin pie for me!

Welcome Leah

I'm an Aunt! Kim and Brian had a beautiful baby girl last Wednesday, Leah Gwendolyn Gilmore. Steve and I went to St Louis this past weekend to meet her.
Isn't she cute? :)

Steve was very excited to meet her too. With his crazy imagination and goofiness he is going to be a great uncle. I've already decided I am teaching her "Uncle Steve is stupid." when she can talk. Kim said it was ok. haha

I wish we were a little closer so we could see her more often and be able to spoil her properly. I am sure we will still manage to do a good job from a distance though.

Introducing....

The newest member of out family.....Yuri Kozlen.

Last weekend we drove to Chewie's hometown of Greentop, MO and got him a brother. These are some pictures from that day.

A tired Yuri is not used to traveling by car like his big brother is.

Here is a video of him running around at a park that we stopped at on the way home. Hes pretty fast so a lot of the video is just leaves. hehe.

It has been a few days now and Yuri is adjusting to life in Olathe pretty well. He has learned his name and is trying to figure out potty training right now. His favorite thing to do is chase his brother around. Making Chewie's favorite thing to do hiding on the couch where his pesky little bro can't get him. We are hoping in time they will become best friends, but right now Chewie is just tolerating him. hehe

Babies!

Last week I got to meet the cutest babies. I have had two friends recently have their first children, Katie and Brooke. Steph has been in town for work and we she came up with the great idea of getting together to see kiddos. It just happened they were all going to be at Brooke's house one day last week so it worked out well.

Steph holding Brooke's daughter Adalyn. She was born with that much hair! So cute.

Katie and I with her twin boys. Abram(with Katie) and Owen(with me).

Owen giving me some smiles. So adorable.

Abram sleeping So tiny and cute!

All of the babies are so well behaved. Both Katie and Brooke have been blessed with beautiful children. So glad I got to meet them. I can't wait to watch them grow up.

Woof's

Today Chewie is at doggie day care. We are heading to Vegas in a few weeks and we decided to try out a new place to board him at while we are gone. Last time we were at the dog park a lady with two small dogs told me about Woof's. I have driven by it many times, but never thought to look it up. Going off of her recommendation Steve called them last week. We had to submit a form to get him approved. They got his shot records from our vet and he is now Woof's material. hehe. They do a free half day of their "Stay and Play" for new-comers. So Steve took him there at noon today. They have a web cam on the dogs so you can watch them interact all day. It is kind of fun. The quality isn't great but there are only about 3 small white dogs there when I have looked so I can try to pick him out.

I put a red box around him here. I am positive this one is him. hehe

He may or may not be in this one.

They have an outdoor area they can go and play in too. It is all open, so they can go in and out as they please.

Chewie is that you standing in the doorway? I can't tell. hehe

I think he had a good time. I am going to pick him up after work and I can't wait to get to see the play myself. Steve said its pretty cool. I also can't wait for Chewie to tell me all about his day at the Stay and Play. :)

13.1 miles!

Well we did it and survied to tell about it! Last Saturday Steve and I both completed our very first half marathon..13.1 miles. Steve ran his in 2 hrs 25 mins and I was able to complete it in just barely over 3 hrs...3 hrs 2 mins. We both figured I would have ran it in 30 more mins than it actually took me, so coming in at that time I was ecstatic! A few highlights for me were:
- Running through downtown was really fun, there is so much to see. Kansas City really is a great town.
- The beginning few hills were quite a site, thousands of people running at one time is such a thing to see
- I made myself an acquaintance to run with the first 8 miles. This helped out a lot. We chatted and kept each other going.
- There were bands playing along parts of the route that kept it fun and exciting.
- I got to mile 10 and someone had candy they were giving out! The Skittles I took got me through the next mile or two.
- Seeing Steve close to the finish line cheering for me and so happy for me that I was still running was really awesome.
- I was able to continue running till the end of the race. I calculated that I probably walked a total of 30 to 40 mins the whole time. So 2 1/2 hrs running..that's a long time!

Chewie wearing my bib number and wondering why we are up so dang early on a Saturday!

Steve and I before the race. It was dark out still and raining!

Me waving to Steve and some of our friends...almost to the finish line!

My Final Stats:

Track Us

This Saturday Steve and I are running in the Kansas City Half Marathon. Below is a link to a site where you can track how we are doing by text message or email. I thought I would send it out in case anyone was interested in seeing how we are doing or how we did.

http://tracking.theendresultco.com/2009/kc/index.php

Look for Steve to do really well, but don't be surprised to see my time between 3 and 4 hours long. I didn't end up training like I should have for this, but you know I was busy planning a wedding. :) My goal is not based on time really, but just to finish the race at all. I know I have the ability to run half of the distance. it is going to be the second half that I will have to push through (a half is 13.1 miles). Wish us luck!

Name Change

Taking a half day of work today to start on changing my name. :) I am leaving at lunch time to head to the social security office and the dmv to get the process of changing everything from Sarah James to Sarah Kozlen. To prepare for this I spent some time yesterday practicing writing my new name out. hehe

Preview

Our photographer sent me the following picture from the wedding. Steve and I love it, so I thought I would share it with all of you. Enjoy!

Errands

We got in to St Louis late last night. Today we woke up and got right to some wedding errands. Including going to the St Louis County City Hall to get out marriage license!

Just one step closer to getting married! :)

Last Day!

Today is my last day of work for a week and a half. Five o'clock cannot come soon enough. I am so excited to get on the road and be in St. Louis. Yesterday, at work, I went to our regular Monday morning "stand up" meeting and they surprised me with a cake. It was so unexpected and nice. A lot of people had also signed a card with lots of really nice things and advice. I had no idea anything was going on. So nice of everyone. Well I better get back to work so 5 gets here quicker. :)

Sneak Peek!

4 1/2 more days to the wedding! :) I thought I would give you all a little taste of what is to come. Nothing is too revealing I think. Here is just a little of what I, along with the help of others, have been working hard on over the last few months. I can't wait to see how it all comes together!

Anniversary

Last weekend was Steve and my's 6 year anniversary. It was the last one we will ever celebrate for dating each other. Next year we will have to start all over, back at one and just 13 days later than we would normally celebrate. :) We are so busy with wedding stuff that it was nice to take a Sunday and celebrate. Steve scheduled us a nice dinner at one of the nicest restaurants in Kansas City. The restaurant is on the Plaza, so we went down early to shop a little and just walk around. The weather was great. There was even a jazz band playing outside some of the shops that we sat and listened to for a while. Before we had dinner we sat on the patio at Baja 600


Steve and I having margaritas and mojitos on the patio at Baja 600.
Dinner was one of the best we have had. We ate at The Capital Grille. Steve had told them it was our anniversary so when we got there we had "Happy Anniversary" and heart confetti sprinkled on the table. hehe

All of the food was amazing! Below is lobster mac and cheese. Yummm!
My steak, already halfway eaten, was delicious! It was also huge...it took up that whole plate!
We also got a to die for flour less chocolate cake for desert, on the house for our anniversary. And they took our picture and put it in a nice card/frame to commemorate the night.

It was a lovely way to spend our last anniversary together. And I am so glad we got to try out The Capital Grille. Thanks to Steve for planning it all. :)

high of 74 degrees

We have entered into the 10 day forecast! Woohoo. I know 10 days is a huge amount of time in the weather world and this could stay the same or change drastically, but it is still fun to check and see what the weather may be. Right now I would say it looks like a perfect day to get married. :)
I am not really worried about the weather though. We are getting married rain or shine! :) The only bummer with rain would be pictures, but we could figure that out. Steve has access, through work, to this massive weather database. With it he was able to look back at the weather on September 26th through a number of years. I would say, from what he found that historically it looks like we picked a great day.

In the past 5 years on Sept 26 it has been an average of 66-70 degrees. It has not rained since 2003 and that’s the only year it rained in this decade. In 2004 it was an avg temp of 54 which is the only year it seemed kind of cold and in 1999 it was an average temp of 76, hitting 89, which looks to be the warmest in the past decade. The avg precipitation on Sept 26 is .1 inches and high is 2.26 in 1884.

Programs!

Being that it is getting so close to the wedding it was time to start working on programs. I know a lot of people wait till even closer than I did to the wedding to do their programs, but I didn't want to haul all of the necessary pieces to St Louis and assemble them there. So I started a few weeks ago looking on the Knot for program layout ideas. Below are some of the styles I liked.

When Lauren spent the night a few weekends ago she helped me get a Word document laid out and ready to format with everything I would need to be in the program. Over the last couple of weeks I have gotten everything needed for the program ready. Friday I had them printed up and Saturday night Lauren and her mom were so kind and came over and assembled them with me. Together we got 90 of them done! I could never have gotten that many done in one night without them. They had also just done all of this a few months ago for Lauren and Nicks wedding, so they had more expertise in program assembling than I do. hehe. Sunday Steve helped me out and we got the rest of them done. I am so glad to have such a big thing to cross off my to do list! Thank you sooooooo much Lauren and Terry!

Ceremony Music

Pretty much everything for the wedding has been planned out by now, except for minor details. One thing that Steve and I had not put much thought into though was music for the ceremony. The people at the Piper Palm House mentioned that a lot of people use ipods or something of the like for music. At the time this was alright with us, so we figured we would go with that and work on it when the time came. Well it was time to figure out the music for the ceremony over the last week. I put Steve in charge of it. Then one night he tells me that he needs to talk to me about it. He is no longer happy with the idea of having someone press play on a cd or ipod and he worries that it could ruin the wedding. I tell him everything will be fine no matter what, its just music. Little did I know he had really thought all of this through and researched people to play at the wedding. So sweet of him! So now we are having a string duo play from Noteworthy Music.
There will be a violin and a classical guitar playing. We picked out the songs from their list last night and we are super excited about them playing. And now with the music picked out I can finalize the programs and get them printed.

September!

Today is the first day of September. That means....
- 4 weeks till the wedding
- 25 1/2 days till the wedding
- only 15 of those days are days I have to work
- 3 more weekends till the wedding weekend
- 7514 hours till the ceremony
- 450840 minuets till the ceremony
- 27050400 seconds till the ceremony
- only 2 more trips to St Louis, one of those for the wedding
Yay!

Head For the Cure

This morning Lauren, Amy Lunn and I ran a 5K, Head for the Cure. It was in an office park in Overland Park called Corporate Woods. The path was a pretty good one. The weather was also great for a run, in the 50's. More exciting than the path or the weather though was the cause. Every race benefits something and while we have ran many races now, I have not yet ran a race that meant anything to me. Head for the Cure raises money to find a cure for brain cancer, something that hits close to home for us. While we were at UMR one of our best friends, Krista, had her dad pass away. So this race we ran for him, Krista and her family.

Krista's dad, Jack Wolfe
Lauren and I before the race. We made some sweet hats to wear...mine says JW and hers is the above picture of Jack.
All 3 of us after the race. We also made some awesome shirts that said "Cancer Sucks" They were a big hit.
It also was Amy Lunn's first race and she did great! She is doing the half marathon in October just like Steve and I. :) Lauren did awesome as usual. I am really proud of myself this race. I ran it at a faster pace than I usually do and I finished around 34 mins. I'd say it was a pretty good Sunday morning.

Congratulations Kristen & Aaron!

Last weekend Steve and I traveled to Ann Arbor, MI for his cousin's wedding. While we did not have the best time traveling, we did have a great time at the wedding. Kristen looked beautiful and her new hubby, Aaron, didn't stop grinning from ear to ear the whole time. Not only was the wedding and reception wonderful, but it was really nice to get to visit with some of Steve's family members that we do not get to see as often as we would like.

We are next! :)
Me and my beautiful soon to be sister-in-law.
Steve's cousins Lauren(in the middle, a junior bridesmaid) and Gracie(the flower girl)

The newlyweds.

Congrats Mr & Mrs Diez!

Catching Up!

Its been quite a while since I have posted anything. Everything has been so busy lately. I'm just now fitting in some time to blog. A few weekends ago I traveled to St. Louis for many many wedding happenings. Mom and Ellen were able to come into town also. It was great to get to see them for a weekend and have some helpers along for wedding stuff. I got in earlier than I expected Friday night and was able to meet up with Kara(who just happened to be in town the same weekend!), Nickie and Jenni. It was good to get to hang out with them. I was also able to spend some time with Leslie and Paul who were kind enough to let me stay with them.I got up early on Saturday and began a long, but fun day of wedding stuff. I had a meeting with the florist first, then met mom, Ellen and mama at the dress shop. I put on my dress and it fit perfectly! Then it was off to the caterer. We finalized so many details. It felt great to get so much figured out. After the caterer it was almost time for my first shower of the weekend. Hawaiian theme at the Kozlen's house!

Kozlen group pic

James' group pic

Awesome pillow Ellen had made for me.

The shower was super fun. I felt like I could post a ton of pics from it. Kim had made up a few games for me to play, that I know got lots of laughs out of everyone. The food was yummmm. Karen knows what I like...lots of dip. hehe. Thank you to everyone that helped with the shower and thank you to everyone that could make it!
After the shower Ellen and I ran wedding related errands for the next 4-5 hours. Then it was back to Mama's house where I put everyone to work crafting the rest of the night. They had a blast I just know it. hehe

Sunday we had another shower, in Belleville. It was brunch and was awesome! Its a wonder that I have lost any weight with how much I love food. haha.

Mom's wonderful friends, Rosanne, Tracy and Toni, who threw the shower. Thank you ladies!

Awesome cupcakes and a bride Barbie cake :)

Thank you to everyone that was able to make it to this shower also. I had a wonderful time and it was great to get to visit with all of you!