Six Years

On Friday, November 2nd we packed the car up and headed to a very special place...Galena, IL.  Six years ago that very day it was the eve of our wedding!  We were married at Eagle Ridge in Galena in 2006!  It was an amazing weekend, one that I often go back to in my mind and wish we could replay it! 

Our friends, Brandon & Monica Hahn, who were married in the Galena area 5 years ago on November 10th, are our companion couple on these anniversary trips we take!  Little did we know that this trip back to Galena would be one for the memory books! 

Eagle Ridge Resort

 

There is always a fair amount of planning that goes into our anniversary weekend!  Whether we come back to Galena or when we went to the Dells and Kansas City we want to be sure we have a good amount of fun packed in, stuff that we can look forward to during the weeks leading up to our departure, including our accomodations.  As silly as this may sound, we have had a few doozies when it comes to condos when we have stayed at Eagle Ridge, so I credit Monica for getting online and handpicking our condo this year.  It looked pretty nice from the pictures online, but it was very nice when we actually got there!  We all agreed that we had to "kiss a few toads" before we landed on this and said we would actually request the same unit when we return. 

 



The (first) Hahn-Eddins Condo - H117!

Friday evening found us eating dinner at a sushi restaurant called Little Tokyo, it was good food!  The ambiance wasn't quite what any of us were expecting as it was kind of a hole in the wall, but we were willing to roll with it!  After dinner we headed out for a night on the town, we quickly learned that Friday night isn't a very busy night in Galena.  It was dead.  That was okay, we still had a few spots to choose from, including the brewery which had live music, so we made the evening fun!

Saturday morning found Monica and I headed to the Stonedrift Spa up at the main resort building for massages!  This is a treat I don't often allow myself, so I was a bit disappointed when my masseuse talked through the entire massage!  However, I still spent some time running through the events of our wedding day in my head, that very day, at that same time, I was sitting in the kitchen of the house we rented with my dearest girlfriends and Mom getting bridal ready!  After our treatments we got cleaned up and accompanied the guys to Gobbie's pizza, this is a pizza place that Mike and Brandon frequent each year we are in Galena to watch the Hawks play, so why mess with the tradition?!  After a delicious lunch the girls left the guys bellied up at the bar to walk the downtown area and do some shopping. 

After a few hours of shopping and several delays in the Hawkeye game we decided to head back to the condo to relax and watch the game.  As we were all relaxing on the large couch in the living room we hear a beep.  Not just any beep...the beep of a smoke detector that is on the verge of having dead batteries.  So, as you know, every 90 seconds this loud beep continues to alert you that the batteries are dying.  Mike goes on a search to find that the beeping is coming from the smoke detector in our room.  So, naturally I picked up the phone and called the maintenance line to request someone to come and switch out our batteries, there was NO way we were going to be able to sleep through the loud beeping (this was 3:30 pm) - you will want to remember this!

We had early dinner reservations at Fried Green Tomatoes because we had signed up for a Haunted Pub Crawl at 8:00 PM!!!  We were all excited about the pub crawl, but a bit curious about what to expect?!  We walked into Amelia's a little before 8:00 and were greeted by a married couple, Amelia and Andy, Amelia was dressed in all black with a tulle cloak, this looked like it was going to be fun!  Her business has only been open since July and she has had sold out tours almost every weekend.

We walked around downtown Galena, stopping every so often to look at a building, Ameila and Andy telling us the history of the building and the hauntings in between our pub stops!  On the tour we stopped at Vinny Vanucchi's, One Eleven Main and the Desoto House.  Each of the pubs had stories about ghosts, some even had video footage, but One Eleven Main was actually on an episode of Chicago Ghost Hunters...where it can be heard on the tapes from the night they were there, a voice, telling them to "GO AWAY!!!" 

 

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, it was a very fun night!  We had a fun group of people who were on the tour with us and we had a great tour guide!  We had so much fun with Amelia and Andy that we ended up going out with them the rest of the evening and shutting down the local bar, Embe.

So, it is 2:30 AM, we are back at our condo, thinking it was about time to get ready for bed and...BEEP!  There was that damn smoke alarm!  No one had come to change out the batteries!!!  So, Mike decided that it was way too late to make any calls at this point, he was going to just take the battery out and we would deal with it when we got up and checked out in the morning.  Harmless, right?! 

He pulled the battery out of the smoke detector and another set of beeps went of, the alarm system!  At the same time he pulled the battery out, I was calling the front desk to see if someone could bring us a new battery and they already knew we had taken the battery out as it was alerting them and also the fire department!  A very long story short, but because they didn't come and replace the battery during the day, they sent over a little old man to try and fix it, but they didn't have the right battery.  At this point it is 3 AM and the front desk calls us only to tell us that we aren't able to stay in our room another night, they need to move us.  YES, move us at 3 AM!  You can about imagine how well that went over?!  Like a lead balloon!  We had to pack up all of our stuff and move!  In the middle of the night, we had no idea what the heck our condo even looked like, in the morning we were able to get a better look.  Needless to say, Eagle Ridge made it right and didn't charge us for our second night, which we were thankful for, moving at 3 AM after a night out isn't really a good deal for anyone involved!  Maybe we shouldn't have spoken too soon about liking the condo so much, the place they sent us to was another doozy!  Despite the snafu on the condo, it was a fantastic trip, and even that is part of what made it so memorable, it is definitely one of the things we will look back on and laugh someday!

The (second) Hahn-Eddins condo - W106

Here is a quick look back at The Smith-Eddins wedding weekend! 

Rehearsal on the Pointe Patio - 11.02.06

 

 

Rehearsal Dinner @ Spikes on the Eagle Ridge golf course

 

Our wedding party - surrounded by family & friends!  11.03.06

Reception in the Eagle Ridge ballroom

 

There are many moments where I can't believe that Mike and I have already been married for six years, yet I feel like we have been together forever.  I guess when you are married to your soul mate, it is like you knew each other long before you were even together!  I am an unbelievably lucky woman to have such a good husband by my side as we go through this crazy thing called life!  Six years ago I could have never predicted how blessed we are today. I love you, I love us!

 

 

 *Happy Anniversary to the Hahn's!  You are an amazing couple, we wish you a lifetime of love and happiness!
And more anniversary wishes for Jason and Jen who shared their special day with us 6 years ago, they celebrated 12 years of marriage this year!  We love you both very much and respect you so much as a couple!  We love you all!*

Kansas City Weekend

Last weekend found Mike and I, along with our good friends the Hahn's, in Kansas City to celebrate our anniversaries, five years for us and four for Brandon and Monica!  We left late Friday morning and with a quick pit stop in Des Moines, made it to the city with ease. 

We checked in to our hotel, called the Q, freshened up a bit from traveling and then went out to explore.  The evening found us having dinner at a really cool burger spot called Blanc Burgers + Bottles on the Plaza.  The atmosphere was very chic, the food was good, and the 100+ varieties of beer was cold!  After dinner we enjoyed stopping at some night spots as we made our way home! 

Our room @ the Q

Saturday was all planned out before we even left.  The girls would drop the guys off at 810 Sports Zone to secure a table to watch the Hawkeye game and the girls would get a little bit of shopping in before meeting back up with the boys to have lunch and spend a bit of our own time cheering on the Hawkeyes!  As you probably know, no matter how much cheering we would do the Hawks wouldn't bring home a victory.  Despite the football loss, the shopping was a success!

We made our way back to the hotel around 4:00 as Mike and I were scheduled to have a couple's hot stone massage, that we were so looking forward to.  We made our way to the spa and quickly discovered that the spa was no more than a closet in the basement, it didn't take me long to get totally freaked out, so we went upstairs to cancel our service.  It totally bummed me out, but one thing I really love in life is a good massage and I wasn't going to ruin that with a shady, backroom massage.  EEEK!!! 

Saturday night we had dinner reservations at Plaza III.  The restaurant had come highly recommended, so we wanted to be sure to check it out.  The food was amazing, so amazing that it was hard to stop eating and we were all miserable by the end of the dinner!

There was live entertainment in the lounge below the restaurant.  A gentleman by the name of Lonnie McFadden was performing, he is a regular in the lounge on Saturday nights.  Think of him as Sammy Davis Jr. meets Louis Armstrong, he was phenomenal!  Not only was he a gifted singer, he played a few instruments and at one point he slipped out of his regular shoes into tap shoes and danced!  He was so much fun to watch!

Lonnie McFadden - Amazing!

Sunday we loaded up the car with all the essentials needed for tailgating and headed to Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs vs. Broncos game!  As we pulled in you could feel the excitement in the air as the fans had their tents set up, grills going and sound systems pounding out music. 

Heading into Arrowhead!

The weather was absolutley gorgeous, it ended up being a 70 degree day and the fans were out in full force.  The stadium filled up quickly with thousands of fans waiting to see if their team would be victorious.  Before the game started we participated in a card stunt in honor of Veterans Day and experienced a B-52 Bomber fly over, which if you have never seen one, it is pretty amazing!

KC Super Fan!

Here come the Chiefs!

Unfortunately for the Kansas City fans, the Broncos took home the win, but for the four of us we weren't partial, just happy to be at a pro game, enjoying the beautiful weather! 

I should mention that while we were in Kansas City, my Mom and Terry came back from Oklahoma to spend some quality time with Lila.  They had lots and lots of fun together and they did a good job of keeping us updated as to what they were doing and making sure to send special messages from Lila throughout the weekend (sorry for the quality)...

We are already devising a plan for our anniversary trip next year...maybe somewhere tropical?!  We have so much fun on this weekend trip where we not only celebrate our each of us as a couple, but our friendships, too!