K's Birthday Month

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Photo dumpapalooza needs to be explained. These are all bad photos.....the end:) 

Before I jump in to K's birthday celebrations can I also just say that I got to babysit Princess Nithi and her little friends this week and what a treat. I don't have one non-blurry photo of them but it was adorable seeing them all romp around together. It really has been years since I've been in a whole group of little kids (whhhaa?) and they all played so well together and had a giant giggly mess of fun. Honestly, this reminded me of my sisters and I when we were little, bossing each other, telling on each other but fiercely loving each other too.




What fun! 

Ok, on to K's birthday celebration. This weekend K got a whole four days off, for much birthday celebrating. We kicked it off by going to see the Harry Potter midnight showing Thursday night. It was spectacularly awesome. We went with K's friend T, bought candy at the grocery store and got our own limited edition 3D glasses to keep, which turns out to be beneficial as well as very rad as they are much more comfortable than the standard fare. We went to see the show that started with Part 1 at 9, then released part 2 at midnight. Annnddd, since we are nerds and wanted good seats, we got there at 7. So, if you can't do math, we were at that movie theatre seven and a half hours. I very much loved the last movie though, and that is saying something because I didn't really like most of these movies, though I clearly adore the book series. 



Friday we headed to the lake with (K and J) and (L and F). We eagerly did everything we could, including game playing, reading, floating in the relaxation station (Costco rocks that apparently!), tubing (which made K and I sore), taking pontoon rides, riding the wave runner, cooking etc. It was really fun and what a great way to kick off some steam. We have been saving the large bulk of our vacation for the  wedding so it was so lovely of K and J to host this little getaway. 

Some choice pictures from the event include Odie trying to keep cool


K with a signature Rolling Rock, our cheap beer of choice this season.

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The birthday boy and his candles. Consequently this story is something of a disaster but it turns out to be something K loved anyway. I tried to pick up an ice cream cake on the way to the lake at DQ, but the one we looked up was closed. Went to the grocery store there and they didn't sell cakes, bought him ice cream which got melty in the malfunctioning freezer. I ended up sticking those gosh darn candles in a bowl of melty ice cream and we all supped. 



Yeah, I'm going to buy him an ice cream cake on his real birthday still though


This...is the face of a girl who just stole an early bite of breakfast. 


J poses with the fruit.....and some of K's delicious chocolate zucchini bread. 

To top it all off, we spent yesterday with B, who came to town to go to the Reel Big Fish concert with K. I believe they had tons of fun as they came home sweaty and grinning. Before I dropped them off I also got to chaperone dinner at what is quickly becoming one of our favorite places Beer Kitchen . I always love a good gastropub. 

Speaking of food that is bad for you, we had one last hurrah tonight after my work/on his dinner break when we made a dinner date at Pizza 51 . We had never tried it before, but this is where all the cool kids from UMKC go. I was pleasantly surprised by a pretty light pizza. Here are some photos of us chowing down. 





The wedding highlights of this post are that my Marmi is a goddess. She has been sewing away on a dress that must remain secret, but is totally fabulous already. I am pretty excited that we dipped below the 100 days mark and will be printing up some invites come next with my sis LP. Also, been looking up the average October temps. Last year, between 77 and 65 on our date. Year before, between 54 and 43.....umm crazy Fall here we come! 

A Post About Food

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In importing my recent photos (taken from my phone, shame on me for never charging my lovely camera's battery lately), I realized that these are all about food. I'm taking this as a good sign of all the fun times we've been having. 

Before I tantalize 'all my reader's' taste buds though, I must preface this with the fact that we have also been having lots of exercise to counteract this. We have still been riding, including some very fun rides with Mom and Dad and training for the BikeMS also. 

However, the fun part is the food. 

Witness, our 4th of July celebration. We had crappy food at Cheeseburger in Paradise (ew, and in all honesty, we went there looking for a bathroom:) Really, K convinced (see, he thought I didn't know what he was doing) me to go to Nebraska furniture mart (which was closed) to fake shop for T.V's (which we aren't buying, unless somebody dies and leaves us tons of money, in the hopes there would surprisingly be some blow out sale for the 4th with a deal I wouldn't be able to pass up (it is fun to dream). 

However, K got a milkshake and was therefore happy 


The one cool day last week I spent a little time baking. I took a recipe a work friend gave me for the German Bierock and modified it, american man style (i.e. what I had in my cupboard). It ended up like a shepard's pie in a soft roll. K went crazy in love with these. 





We also hit up the Westport Food Truck Festival with the awesome L and F  and had a great time despite the serious heat. It could also be the fond memories of sitting with this food in our bellies while watching HP 1 with the commentary of Wizard People, Dear Reader 


A delicious Asada taco and alternately totally blah chicken taco



Fried catfish (pretty darn good, I've never had this) 

L's nachos, which all declared as 'How could they possibly make this taste this bad' 



K with his pretty darn good Philly Cheesesteak. 

Not pictured here was a cookies and cream cupcake from Ms. Nene's cupcakes and it was really good. I wouldn't say it was as good as my fav Cupcakes a la Mode, but it was much lighter and delicate, and therefore much more welcome in the 100 degree weather. Dear Westport, next time you want people to eat, don't charge 5 bucks for entry AND 5 bucks for beer, and invest in some umbrella rental:) 

All in all it was a wonderful time. 

This post's wedding sneak peak is of two of the DIY (i.e. thrift store items plus glue) stands for the dessert table. 



We have been trying to get all the rentals down this month. We also received our AMAZING invitation from awesome F , which we are very excited to send out. If you missed the seriously numerous posts, check out the engagement picture gallery where you can see pictures for awesome L, a la the link to wedding website on the right hand navigation. 

Until next time!

It Is So Hot!

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It is so freaking hot, I think we can all agree. However, K and I have been having tons of fun despite the heat. I spent a long time on a work trip, the highlight of which was finding this in the Skymall catalog. Needless to say it was SOO tempting to snatch it up for K's impending birthday....but I didn't. 



We celebrated my Mom's birthday with a fun day at the pool, went to another pool with K's work friends and had a very fun "4th of July" party with some of my work friends. All in all, a very busy weekend. Unfortunately, the only thing I took (cellphone) pictures of was our night at Shakespeare in the Park. This year's production of Macbeth was well done, and we got a good spot by getting there early and spending the time on some cold beer and Uno. 


K partakes of the strawberries and carrots we brought :)  


The set. 


The new family cooler, as K took every opportunity to mention:) He was the proud owner of this, our first cooler. 


The crowd soaks in the sun. 



Sandwiches! K style (meaning, no condiments) 


We had fun on our extended weekend and are looking forward to some more fun at the lake for K's b-day soon. 

No new wedding news, except that we'll be spending the month trying to finalize everything so I don't have to have any more wedding nightmares. 

City of Fountains Bicycle Tour-Kansas City

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This weekend was a great Father's Day extravaganza. Sunday we got up bright and early and went on the City of Fountains Tour . It was super fun to see all parts of the city and very perfect weather for a 22 mile ride. 


Here we are pre-ride, which started at Washington Square Park. 


So fresh and so clean. We are missing a post picture, where we were sweaty, but just as happy:) 


Mom Dad and Kyle amidst the fray. The kids doing the ride were the cutest (there were 9 and 17 mile routes as well), with many parents using total bike attachments . 


Mom, Dad and Me, family bike rides!


Kyle, stopped in front of the Fire Fighters fountain, another piece of the family affair, as Papa K is a retired fire fighter, as well as other members of the Lancaster family. 


The view from the top of the WWI memorial. One of the best views of Kansas City. 

In other news, we have been getting more things in the mail which is pretty exciting. See a peak of our exciting stuff. My wedding band came in the mail, as did K's birthday present (Reel Big Fish tickets!). 


Similarly, my kick ass wedding shoes made an appearance. I think from now on I should order everything on-line, as it is so exciting to get mail that is fun:) 


We also had an awesome visit to the farm  where we are getting married recently and I felt like Maria, ready to burst out and sing to the hills. Here are some pictures of how beautiful the farm is in Spring. 







That's it for now folks. I'm going to go away on business this week so nothing fun will happen, but we will be back with more rides and Shakespeare in the park and some lake fun to come. 


The Summer Sizzle

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Hello you, our faithful followers. In an effort not let this go completely, we have here a little update of what we've been up to in the newly summer weather. I apologize for our sporadic posting, but I don't want to let it completely die. I plan to make it a better account of our lives when we get married, out of inspiration from my absolutely favorite blogger Mrs. C . 

Ok, enough of that.  In the mean time, we've been playing outside and preparing for the weather a lot. We had a really fun memorial weekend, in which we stuffed in a lot of activities. I finagled my way in to taking a day off work in the middle of the week so that K and I could actually share a day (and working memorial day instead) and we had a ton of fun. 

We got some bar-be-que from Oklahoma Joe's. Delicious


We also saw Hangover Part II. My review is that is was not nearly as funny as the first one. The plot was almost identical to the first one, except that you were more worried about their characters than laughing about them. There seemed to be unnecessary graphic nudity that was not very funny and overall it wasn't very enjoyable. K was pretty happy I went to go see it with him though, and that is all that matters. We went tradsies for him coming to see Bridesmaids with me, although we both ended up liking that one better. Go Kristin Wiig! 

We also stumbled upon a really great festival, in benefit of Kansas City pedestrians and cyclists and sponsored by New Belgium Beer. There were short films and beer tasting and fun all around. 

 

Hanging out in the grass with the sample beers. They also gave you a little book describing what the beers were like, flavors, something called "mouth feel" etc. We felt very snooty, but wrote comments like "Give me more bananas!" so it wasn't lasting. 

 



Later that weekend, we got to celebrate the union of our good friends B and A. We dj'ed the wedding and it was double fun to be K's assistant and see all my friends from graduate school as well.

Here is our setup, a little more modest without the lighting rig. 


They held the festivities in a very cute barn, which was also fun practice for us. 



 All dressed up for the partay.

 

Finally, we had tons of fun this last weekend participating in the Samsung hosted scavenger hunt in Kansas City. We signed up, along with 500 other people, got to use one of the new Nexus phones, and headed out on the hunt. It was about 95 degrees, and the radius for the spots was 1-2 miles, so running from place to place for 2 hours got us VERY worn out, but man was it fun. We did fairly well, with the top place had 102 points, we got 81 (only 9 points away from the third place winner at 90). Go team R & K!. 

Here are some pictures of K practicing for the event with the SVNGR app at his workplace.




Speaking of work, K has been putting in some time as an overnight photog, riding out with a fellow photographer to get a feel for the role. He has had a blast, despite the fact that both times he has done it, he had to work his own day shift before hand, therefore ending up working 16 hours and being awake 24. Yikes, however, he was having so much fun he didn't notice much. 

Here is a sunrise shot being shot in KC.


In my news, I have been working on wedding things quite a bit. The ladies in my family,  LP,  LH and Marmi  have all been giant helps, thanks to them we are all booked up for our fabulous honeymoon in Key Largo, FL, well on our way towards making all our diy decorations and have already prototyped out the home-made wedding dress. 

Here are some sneak peaks: 

Flowers being made from book pages and tissue paper: 


Nithi practicing being a flower girl. She really loved making us sing "Here comes the bride" and throwing cotton balls from her little basket willy nilly. 



That is it for now folks, we will be once again, trying to make a better effort of updating this here blog. I'll leave you with this random photo of what K calls "One Trip Rachel". I will NOT be going back down to the car for another load thanks very much (p.s. that is costco sized food, we don't shop there exclusively:D)