Married Life!

Whew!

As most of you know, it's been kind of a whirlwind last six weeks for Vicki and I. In May we were in the Dominican for our wedding for a week from the 17th to the 25th. The weekend of June 18th we went to San Francisco to celebrate Vicki's birthday. The following weekend we were back in Iowa City for a small wedding reception with family and close friends. This past weekend, over the 4th, we took one night and went camping up north near Prescott Valley and Cottonwood.

With everything that has been going on, this blog hasn't been updated much. Expect that to change! I'll throw a couple links below to some pictures of our travels, but I'll also be putting up a blog post about each trip in the near future. In the meantime, take a look at the pictures and check back here often!

Click Here for pictures we took in the Dominican

Click Here for our Wedding Photographer's pictures

Wedding Reception in Iowa City

As most of you know, Vicki and I got married in the Dominican Republic on May 22. While we couldn't be more excited that a few of you were able to join us, many more of you were not able to make the trip. And since we'd love to see as many of you as possible, we have decided to have a cocktail reception in Iowa City to celebrate our marriage!

The reception will be on June 25, 2011, from 2-6pm at Atlas World Grill. The address is 127 Iowa Ave, Iowa City, IA 52240 (downtown Iowa City). We'd love to have as many people as possible at the reception, but we do ask that you RSVP by June 10th by emailing me. And of course, kids are more than welcome to join us!

After the reception we will enjoy a night out in downtown Iowa City to relive our college days. Please feel free to join us for that as well.

If you are in need of a place to stay for the weekend, the Heartland Inn on the Coralville Strip is offering a special rate for us. Their number is 319 351-8132. Just ask for the Smith-Macek rate.

Please see the "Wedding Information" links to the right for more information regarding our wedding (including pictures!) and our reception. We are looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible!

Our Wedding Information

Hello Everyone! Thank you so much in your interest in spending our wedding week with us in beautiful Punta Cana, Dominican Republic!

The purpose of this email is to give you all some basic information regarding our wedding: The resort we are staying at, flight information, and any other pertinent details. Below are all the links you will need in order to arrange to spend this special day with us if you so choose.

Dates:

We are getting married on Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 5pm. Vicki and Todd are arriving at the resort on Wednesday, May 18th, and staying until the following Wednesday, May 25th. You are welcome to stay for as long or as short as you would like.

Lodging:

We are staying at the Grand Palladium Bavaro Resort in Punta Cana. The Grand Palladium Bavaro is part of the larger Grand Palladium complex in Punta Cana. They have 4 resorts: The Grand Palladium Bavaro, the Grand Palladium Punta Cana, the Grand Palladium Palace, and the Royal Suites Turquesa by Palladium. (http://www.fiestahotelgroup.com/en/Hotels/Destination/America/Dominican-Republic/Punta-Cana)

Each resort has a slightly different focus (Bavaro and Punta Cana are more family-oriented, the Palace has a casino, and the Turquesa is adults-only). However, all of the resorts have access to all the amenities of the other resorts and are situated all right next to each other. You are welcome to book and stay at any of these resorts (we are booking at the Bavaro), it will not matter.

Also, all four resorts are all-inclusive. That means that the price you pay includes taxes, tips, all your meals, all your drinks (including alcohol), and most non-motorized activities for the duration of your stay. 

Keep in mind that if for some reason you decide to stay outside of the Grand Palladium complex in Punta Cana, there is a guest pass charge (from $60 to $120 per person) to be allowed onto the resort grounds for our wedding (or any other day).

Airfare:

The airport you will be flying into is Punta Cana (airport code: PUJ). The airport is approx. 20 miles from the resort. Included in your hotel price is roundtrip transportation from the resort to the Punta Cana airport (Approx. 20-30 minute drive). 

Making Reservations:

We are using a Travel Agent named Steve Songer (www.songertravel.com, stravel1@cox.net, 623-362-8779). Steve has been very helpful in setting up a wedding block for guests travelling to the DR for our wedding. We have set up a wedding block in order to get the best rates. In order to get the special wedding block, please make your arrangements through Steve, and mention our wedding/promo code: DW-MACEK52211. There is no booking fee and the wedding rate he can book will be the same or better than any rate you find for the resort through other channels (We've done the research, trust us...)

He requires just a $125 deposit per person for the resort at the time of booking, and can set up payments however you would like, as long as the full balance is paid 45 days prior to your arrival at the resort. 

Steve can also make your flight reservations as well if you would like. But as Steve told us, if you find a good price on airfare, jump on it. If you go outside Steve for booking airfare, we recommend Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) in order to see as many different options as possible. For those of you travelling from the Midwest: Keep in mind we have found cheaper rates if you are willing to make two stops on the way to Punta Cana instead of just one. Also- Some flights we looked at had next day arrivals to the DR (If you left on Wednesday, you may not get to the DR until Thursday). That was mostly from the West Coast, but some Midwest flights were the same. Just some things to think about. 

There are options to do a hotel and airfare package deal, but up to this point we have found it cheaper to book separately. Again, Steve will be willing to work with you and explore all options in order to get you the best price. 

Misc. Info:

Passports: As the Dominican Republic is outside the US, you will need a passport in order to travel there. Passports can take 2-3 months to receive if applying for one, so keep that in mind. Also, the DR requires your passport to be valid six months AFTER your date of travel, so make sure you are ok there. (http://travel.state.gov/passport/)

Resort Info: Palladium Addicts (http://www.palladiumaddict.net/dominican-republic-punta-cana) is a GREAT resource to learn about and see pictures of the resort we are staying at. 

Travel Insurance:

Steve will offer the ability to purchase insurance for the hotel part of the trip at the time of booking. The insurance is $120 per person I believe, and allows you to cancel for any reason and get your money back (excluding the insurance charge). You can also purchase Travel Insurance for your entire trip (including airfare) through Travel Guard (www.travelguard.com). Travel Guard can be cheaper or more expensive than the Insurance Steve offers, depending on the type you get.

I hope this email will help answer most of your questions and point you in the right direction for information. If you have ANY other questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. 

She Said YES!!!

Just short of 7 years ago, Vicki was invited by a mutual friend of ours to a party that was going on in the house I was living in at the time. It was the first time I met Vicki, and I remember thinking at the time that she was cute. I never could have predicted the way the next 6+ years went, but I wouldn't change anything. This is our story. 

In May of 2004, I moved to Kansas City. A few days in, that same mutual friend called me and said that Vicki also lived in KC, and that we should get in touch. She gave me Vicki's number, and called Vicki to give her my number. I called her that day, and the thing I remember most was that my phone was being a piece of junk and kept losing signal. I think I had to call her back 4 or 5 times in order to finish our conversation. But finish we did, with an invitation to join her for a Happy Hour one day. 

One Happy Hour turned into a night out, and a minor league baseball game with the KC Iowa Alumni association, and a friendship was struck. I liked Vicki immediately, and after a while told her as much. Unfortunately, the timing was not right for either of us, and nothing came of it. 

Though we remained friends, each of us eventually started dating other people. In 2006 I moved to Phoenix, and though we didn't really lose touch, we didn't really keep in contact either. Then one day a trip back to Iowa City for an Iowa football game changed everything...

I was heading back to Iowa City in October of 2008 for the Iowa - Penn St. game, and I sent out a message on Facebook to see if anyone would be back. Vicki was one of the only people to respond, and though she couldn't make it back for the game (she was still in KC at the time), we started talking regularly again.

A few messages over Facebook turned into late night chats on Facebook, which turned into emails, which turned into IM's, which turned into phone calls, which turned into seemingly constant talking over all those mediums. After a few months, we both knew there was a mutual attraction there, but living so far apart it was hard to tell exactly what was there. So in January of 2009, Vicki made a long weekend visit to Phoenix to see where we stood. 

Where we stood was both of us wanting a relationship. A trip back to KC for me turned into another trip here for her, and soon we were flying back and forth every 3-4 weeks. In July of 2009 Vicki packed up and moved here, moving into my brother's house with me. We started looking for a house almost immediately (after she got a job, of course), and in December we moved into our new house. 

Since then it's been a matter of when, not if, I would propose to her. I liked her immediately, and 6+ years never changed that. This past weekend, in Philadelphia, I got the chance to propose. 

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The plan was thrown together quickly. I bought the ring a week before we went to Philadelphia. She was with me when I bought it, and helped picked it out, so she knew it was coming. But she didn't know when I would pick it up or propose, and I had to try to surprise her. I contacted Vicki's friend that lives in Philly and asked her to help me.

I asked her friend to invite Vicki and I to Love Park, to make it seem like her idea and not mine. Vicki took the bait, and though she suspected before we left that I might do it there, she had given that idea up. She didn't think I would haul the ring halfway across the country. Honestly, that was the only thing I was nervous about, but I did it successfully. 

So Vicki and I met her friend and her husband in Love Park, and after talking for a bit, it was Vicki's idea to get pictures in front of the sculpture. Perfect. The main reason I contacted her friend ahead of time was mostly because I wanted them to get pictures of the entire proposal. This is what they captured:

The obligatory picture. 

Let's do something a little different honey. 

I have one more idea for a pic honey... =)

She doesn't even know what hit her. She actually started to get down on a knee also because she thought that was the picture I was going for!

Ahh yeah...

Putting the ring on.

People in the park were clapping and cheering!

The kiss to seal the deal.

So I proposed. In Love Park. It may have been cheesy and obvious, but it was certainly effective. And now we're engaged, and I couldn't be happier =)

More Painting

Vicki and I (mostly Vicki) have spent the last couple of weekends doing some more painting at the house, among other things. While she mostly does the painting, I do the other random small things around the house. Most of what I do doesn't need pictures (cleaning out the shed, spraying the yard and house for bugs and weeds, etc), we always like to take some before and after pictures of the painting. First up is the downstairs bathroom!

Looks good huh? =) We also painted the archway off the living room, at the opposite end of the kitchen, the same color as the kitchen. For the record, this was my idea...

Every weekend we seem to have a project to work on for the house. I'll keep posting pictures as we get them all done...

New Kitchen

Well, repainted kitchen. Vicki did a lot of work this past weekend and got our kitchen painted. It looks really good, and is a definite improvement over what it was before! Below are the before and after pictures.

T-Minus Three Days and Counting

So, it's been awhile since I've posted in here; Vicki has done much of the updating lately. But, as we're getting pretty close to moving into our new house, I thought I'd put an update up and let everyone know how things are going.

We've had an interesting time trying to buy a short sale house. it hasn't always gone according to plan, but for the most part has gone fairly quickly. Apparently the people who were selling the house had moved to Boston, and their brother rented the house out to some random tenants. The renters have been less than cooperative with us throughout the entire process, and as a result has created a lot of headaches for us (and the sellers).

To make a long story short, the renters basically refused to leave the house, even after the seller served an eviction notice on them. They went to court last week, and the judge took one look at the papers and told the renters to get out of the house. They have until midnight tomorrow (Wednesday the 9th) to vacate the house. We are scheduled to have a final walk-through on the house on Thursday morning, and get the keys to the house Friday. We plan on moving Friday night after work, and being in our new house starting then!

Attached are a couple of pictures of what we are moving. For the most part, a lot of Vicki's things remained in boxes from when she moved here, so that has helped streamline the moving process. After the weekend I'll put up some new pictures from the new house.

It's a mess, but soon it will all have a home in the new house...

My Parents Condo

My parents recently bought a condo here in AZ, and have asked Vicki and I (mostly Vicki) to help decorate it, paint it, get it ready, etc. Vicki is really good at that sort of thing, I just follow her directions... =) We've spent the last two days doing some painting up there, and below are some before and after pics.

The hallway, white before.

The hallway, some green color after (Vicki would have to tell you the color name...)

Vicki, doing the edging.

The living room (new color, was white).

Living room, into kitchen. Was also white.

I don't have any good before pictures, but one wall in the living room was an awful color of pink that we painted over. We managed to get two walls in the living room with two coats, and painted half the kitchen and the hallway with one coat. We might have gotten more work done, but we ran into some difficulties running errands both yesterday and today, including a dead battery in Vicki's car today at Home Depot.

All in all, we did a lot of work, but have a lot left to do. I hope my parents appreciate it!!

My Turn

So apparently I've been a little slacking in the posting department, as Vicki has been doing most of that lately. But she has done a pretty good job of keeping everyone up to date with what's been going on.

One thing she did fail to mention was an Arizona Diamondbacks game we went to a few weeks back. On Monday of Vicki's second week at work, one of the guys she interviewed with (who is a friend of some friends of mine at US Airways) offered her the US Airways tickets to the game. She asked me if i wanted to go to the game, and of course i said yes. I've been in the US Airways suite at center court of a Phoenix Suns game and their corporate tent at the FBR Open, so i assumed the US Airways tickets to the Dbacks game were pretty good.

And clearly i was correct. We were sitting behind home plate, down the third base line just a bit, in the 8th row. In the picture below, the head you see in the bottom right corner in the white shirt is Derrick Hall, Dbacks President and CEO. His seats were just six rows in front of ours...

Stephen Drew at the plate.

The Dbacks won the game, 7-4, over the New York Mets. It was an entertaining game, as the Dbacks jumped out to early lead, and the Mets tried to climb back into the game. Below are some more pics from the game.

Doug Davis at 2nd base.

Mark Reynolds at the plate.

The Dbacks TV broadcast booth, Mark Grace and Daron Sutton.

Vicki and I had a lot of fun at the game, and are hoping to get the US Airways tickets again. After sitting in the 8th row, nothing else seems quite as nice... =)

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As Vicki mentioned, we're heading up to Denver next weekend (Labor Day) to take advantage of her flight benefits for the first time. I found a really cheap hotel rooms in downtown Denver fr the weekend, and the Dbacks are there to play the Rockies. So in addition to watching the first Iowa football game of the season, we're planning on going to a baseball game as well. And we'll be seeing some friends of Vicki's from college, as well as my friends the Longstreth's, whose wedding we just attended in Lincoln, NE.

Everything else just keeps moving along here in Phoenix. I keep hoping at some point the temperatures will break, but it's still hitting 110+ here and there. One of these days, one of these days...

Settling In

So it's been about two and a half weeks since Vicki and I made the drive to phoenix, and we're both settling in to our routines and our lives together. As stated below, Vicki made quick work of finding a job, which came as a relief to both of us i think. Although we were prepared for her job search to take a while, it was nice to find something so quickly. Especially something at US Airways, with all the flight benefits that comes with it. Between her with cheap flights and me with cheap hotels, there is a good chance we will be travelling fairly frequently...

Vicki's things arrived last Sunday, and as she said we kinda of put things wherever they would fit in order to get them in the house. We are living with my brother and his wife, and while they have a large house, we're still taking up some space. She has been slowly unpacking and organizing what she can as we go along, and eventually we'll get it all to a place it can stay for a while.

This weekend we are off to Lincoln, NE for a wedding of a good friend of mine from back home in Sioux City. He and I, along with a couple of other guys that will be there this weekend, have all known each other since kindergarten and have managed to stay friends for more than two decades. That always amazes me when i think about it. We are flying standby, but we're hoping to get out of Phoenix early on Friday, and back late Sunday.

If everything works out well with flights, we are planning on meeting pretty much my entire family in Omaha on Sunday for lunch. My parents, my sister, her husband, and their two kids, and my grandma. Should be interesting, they can get a little crazy when they're all together!

Anyway, like i said, Vicki and I are settling in to life here in Phoenix... =)

Pictures From Vicki's Bday Weekend In Phoenix

Just a few pictures of Vicki's birthday weekend while she was in Phoenix. We met some friends out for dinner, then went out for drinks and dancing (of course!) afterwards.

After doing some dancing.

I love this picture...

Sitting in the booth.

Before we went out that night.

All in all we had a pretty fun night...

T Minus 1 Week And Counting!

Wow, getting close huh? Sometimes i'm still in shock we actually got all this done and thrown together so quickly! One week from today i will fly back to KC, hop in a car with Vicki and we'll make our way back down to Phoenix. And then, almost as soon as we get here, it's off to Tucson for a wedding.

Vicki is working hard every day to get boxes packed in preparation for the move. She's up to 30 or so, and at least according to her is making pretty good progress. I moved with my brother and his wife into a new house just about a month ago, so i know how much packing boxes sucks. It must be even worse doing an entire house by yourself though. Sorry i'm not there to help Vicki!!

I am looking forward to having Vicki here with me, it will be great to be able to see her every day instead of one weekend a month. And of course we're both looking forward to having all of this moving stuff be over and done with! Just one more week and we're homefree...

Moving: Do Not Want

So, this whole moving thing has turned into a gigantic ordeal, much more so than i was hoping it would be. Not that i thought it was going to be easy, but i jumped in the fray late last week to try to help Vicki find a decent moving company at a decent price, and was relatively taken aback at what i found...

First of all, i got absolutely inundated with phone calls and emails. I haven't made an official count, but i'd guess i got somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 emails over the course of a couple of days. So much so that it became overwhelming and i couldn't keep up. After doing some very arbitrary trimming down to a few companies, i found one guy i really liked, talked with him a few times, and had Vicki get a hold of him.

Everything seemed good, until she did her homework and researched the company a bit, and it started to look like that at best the company wasn't very good, and at worst it was a scam. So we scrapped them, and went with a more reliable, more well-known company. Vicki set it all up, and it looks like everything is a go!

I'm flying back to KC on Tuesday, July 14th (less than two weeks!) to help Vicki drive down in her car with the dogs, and the movers will load her things the same day. Then it's off to Phoenix!

Meanwhile, Vicki does all the hard work and packs boxes, while i sit in Phoenix and wait. I feel completely worthless not being able to help...

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog. Stay tuned as we keep you updated about Vicki's move to Phoenix, her job search, and our adventures down here. Feel free to look around and leave comments. Thanks for visiting, hope to hear from you soon!