Miss Elleigh May Would Like to Make an Announcement

Elleigh is too tired and recovering on the couch from her time away at the kennel. But, Elleigh May wanted me to write a blog for her to announce that now that the whole family is married, she has chosen to take her Daddy's name. Elleigh May can now be addressed as Miss Elleigh May Abberton effectively immediately. She's thinking she wants Mommy to buy her something with her new monogram on it... EMA. Or maybe even she would like formal announcement cards sent out. We've changed her name with the kennel earlier today and Mommy will call the vet tomorrow to change her name there. Lucas was technically Daddy's dog already, though he's a Momma's boy, so his name was already Abberton.

The Honeymoon is Definitely Over!

Today was crazy busy! We got home last night just after 11:30 pm. I blogged, checked e-mail and bank accounts on-line before we went to bed. We are two hours behind still from Mexico time, so trying to adjust ourselves still. As soon as we got up this morning, however, we have been running. I guess it was good practice to get us back up to pace for our return to work tomorrow. We started off by heading to the post office to collect our vacation mail, restart our mail, and to inform the postal service of my name change. We found the copy of our certified marriage license in our mail. (Thank you, Jacinda, for the fast processing of the paper work!) So, with the certified copy I was able to go to the DMV and get my name changed on my license. That was a big job done as I will need that changed before I can do any other changes, and I am not sure when I would have gotten a long enough lunch break to try and drive up to the DMV on a work day. From the DMV, we headed to Pet Agree to pick up our babies. I then opened a new simply free checking account with my new name. And then I coordinated a pick up with the courier in Concord so I could get my luggage back. And while I went grocery shopping, Michael went to the Verizon store down the road to upgrade his phone. Still craving Mexico, I made Salsa from scratch in the food processor (Thanks Deb, Gary & Maya) and we had fish crusted in tortilla chips and peppers for dinner. It was a bit disappointing though to not have the big dessert buffet after dinner with all of the tiny little dessert offerings to chose from. And nobody brought me a frozen drink today either.

Lost and Found

My suitcase showed up in Boston at some point and so a courier service drove it up to New Hampshire today for delivery. There was no explanation on the website or on the bag as to where the suitcase went or what happened to it. I guess I will never know, but everything seems to be there and the knitting is safe.

On a sadder note, we got the luggage back, but we lost something else. We went to pick up Elleigh and Lucas at the kennel today and the kennel seems to have lost baby Lucas. They gave us two Boston terriers back, and one is clearly Miss Elleigh May. She was very happy to see her daddy and just wanted to go home to snuggle on the couch. But the other dog is not a puppy and is about twice the size Lucas was when we dropped him off almost two weeks ago. They cunningly have trained this dog to respond to the name Lucas to try to throw us off. And both dogs seemed very happy to see us, as evident in the photo. They tried to make us think we were getting two great dogs by causing a scene and pretending they didn't want to let the little loves go home. The new Lucas seemed friendly enough, and seemed to get along well with Elleigh, so we put him in the car to take him home too. Might as well since we are set up for two dogs anyway. We are going to have to get a bigger crate for new Lucas though. He won't fit in the puppy crate. But he was pleasant enough, gave kisses, sat quietly in the car, and snuggled with Elleigh on the back seat, so I assume he will get along just fine in our household.

We had to seriously bath the dogs when we got them home. They were filthy, not like neglect filthy, but like "I had such a great time digging and rolling in the dirt" filthy. Even their collars were caked with dirt.

When we put new Lucas on the scale, he weighed 14.6 pounds. More evidence we have the wrong dog since baby Lucas weighed just under 11 pounds when we took him to be neutered in February. Miss Elleigh May is still holding at her pleasant 18.8 pounds.

Check out the March 2nd post which has a head shot of the baby Lucas and see for yourself the difference.

Where's My Luggage?

We made it back to New Hampshire, minus one bag of luggage. When we arrived in Newark, NJ from Cancun airport, 2 of our 3 checked bags arrived via Continental airlines. I was hoping when we got to Boston that my suitcase would just show up magically on the baggage claim belt with the other bags, but that was wishful thinking.

I'm missing my suitcase with my swimsuits, summer clothes, Keen sandals, all of the wedding thank you notes I worked on at the pool side, and worst of all- that bag had half of my knitting in it. My knitting friends are clutching their chests right now at the horror of it. I had brought enough knitting that I couldn't put it all in my carry on. And in case they gave me guff about the needles on the plane, I didn't want to lose all of my double points in one carry on bag. So I split up the load. Sadly, as of just logging on to Continental's website, there is no news yet of my missing bag.

The baggage claim representative in Boston found no notes on the missing bag as of the time we were leaving Boston, and he tried to make me feel better about it by saying that Mexico was very lax on putting notes in the computer system about missing/lost bags. He assures me that sometimes they just show up in the states. And when the bag gets back to Boston, he will arrange to have it delivered out to the house. I will check the website in the morning again and see if there is any update on the missing baggage claim website area.

Happy Birthday To You...

Our travel day home from Mexico was Michael's birthday. He will have to make his own comment on this blog entry if he wants everybody to know how old he is.

I cheated and gave Michael his birthday present before we left on our honeymoon last Sunday. I got myself a Garmin GPS navigation system for the car. I mean, I got Michael a Garmin system for his birthday. I wanted him to be able to play with it on the way down to Boston, and I didn't want for him to not have a gift by his actual birthday. He seemed to genuinely enjoy it and I think I really did surprise him with it.

It's a lot of fun and we both can't wait to try it out going other places. It got us to Boston and back no problem, and even detoured us around an accident on the drive back home. Michael drove to Boston and I drove home with it from Boston. It doesn't eliminate back seat driving or complaining completely though. Hopefully, this navigation device means we will never, ever have to fight over directions as a married couple.

Our Last Day in Mexico

Today is our last full day in Mexico. We have had fantastic weather! Upon arrival last Monday afternoon, we heard rumor that the resort had just finished a 3 day period of rain. We had rain once, but it was after we left the pool area for the day. We had changed our clothes for dinner and went outside and realized it had just poured.

We have completely caught up on sleep, however, I am not sure how well we will do with the time change when we get home. Thankfully, Ann from Lake Opechee Inn mentioned to us on Thursday before the wedding that it was the spring ahead clock change weekend. So we sprung ahead an hour on Sunday, and then we went back 2 hours on Monday upon arriving in Cancun. Apparently, Mexico is not observing the early daylight savings time change. It may take a little bit for us to realize what time it is when we get home. I am looking forward to having it stay brighter into the evening though.

I think that we will be ready to go home tomorrow. We are rested. We have spent some quality time together. I am really starting to miss Elleigh May and Lucas. Probably my biggest complaint about our vacation would have to be the stiff bed and the limp pillows, so I will be glad to get into my own bed again.

Despite knitting most days, I Have very little to show for it. I did wind two skeins of sock yarn by hand, so that took some time. Otherwise, I don' have a lot of progress to show on my sock projects. It has been very leisurely knitting.

Hola from Mexico

We have finally gotten the TV internet to work in our resort room so we can send an update about our honeymoon. We have a little wireless keyboard that sometimes skips letters we have typed, and the space bar hasn't worked right since it fell off the keyboard. And we can only see about 1/4 of the normal computer screen at a time as we try to scroll through web pages. And of course, spell check isn't working. Or at least I can't seem to get it to work.

We spent another day in Mexico the same as most others so far. We seem to have caught up on our sleep, getting in at least ten hours a night. We get up when we want, go to the breakfast buffet on the way to the pool, find as shady as a spot as possible so I won't completely fry, then Michael reads and I knit while sipping frozen drinks until 1 pm when we go to the lunch buffet. After lunch, we resume sipping, reading or knitting, and then will eventually get into one of the pools for swimming and water walking. It takes about 15 minutes to walk one lap around the big pool while in it. It has all sorts of nooks and a lot of people. The lap takes even longer if we stop at the swim-up bar. It's actually one of the shadiest place in the pool since the bar's roof consists of a faux cave rock with a waterfall coming down over it. (I can't wait to get some photos added to these blog entries.). By 5 pm, we head back to our room where we get ready for dinner by jumping in the hot tub on our terrace.

We have had dinner reservations at a different restaurant at the resort each night. Tonight, we are going to the seafood restaurant (La Marina) and last night we had steak at El Rancho.

Tomorrow is our last day, and I doubt our itinerary will change much, except we are going to the Japanese restaurant for dinner. And then we fly home on Monday morning, arriving in Boston late in the evening and probably not getting back to our house until the wee hours on Tuesday morning.

Finally Finished the Amanda Hat

My knitting has been seriously limited recently with all of the wedding planning. However, I have not given up my weekly dose of Sunday knitting. Some call it weekly therapy. I've been plugging away at my Amanda Hat once a week in Sunday knitting group at Borders. I finally finished it today and got to sew in the ends. I came no where near finishing the hat for Gina's Amanda Hat contest, but I wanted to finish it even though I am well past the contest deadline. I thought the yarn was going to be a little more variegated in color than it actually turned out, but I still like the bucket style of the hat. It's a nice contrast to the Laceigh Hat I made earlier this winter. With this hard winter, it doesn't hurt to have two hand knit hats to wear.

A Little More Effort, PLEASE!

I can tell that some of you have been working hard on my request to bring on the good weather for the wedding and the travel days surrounding it, but it seems some of you could give a little more. The extended weather forecast for the wedding day has shaped up to partly cloudy and 30 degrees and been given a fair rating by weather.com. Sunday and Monday (when we are trying to get to Boston and fly out to Mexico) are both also partly cloudy days now. YES! However, the rain/snow showers have moved to Friday which is a big travel day for some of our traveling guests. like my parents. I would like you all to put a little more effort into conversing with the universe, Mother Earth, God, or the weather fairies in order to shape up Friday too. It's clear it is working some, but we have not quite nailed the whole weekend yet. I'm not a completely unreasonable bride. Please note I am not complaining that I am going to be driving around doing final errands in a light wintry mix on Tuesday and a straight out wintry mix on Wednesday. And let's not forget the additional 6 inches of snow goodies we are getting today. If I want a clear weekend, the crappy weather has to go somewhere.