i'm thankful for you...

So this week was thanksgiving, and in true Polak fashion, we celebrated it on the wrong day...

welll tony and i had to come home for some weddings so we decided to celebrate thanksgiving the sunday before so that we could see everyone and not have a depressing time at home alone on the real thanksgiving...

man it was a long weekend...it seems like whenever we come home, we have so much to do that my head is spinning..

first we got out of work early friday morning and headed to the airport..after a brief sit at the terminal we got on and tried to sleep, but the flight was only 1 hour long, so that was not too helpful...we got out of the airport to be greeted by my daddy bearing water for me and a diet pepsi for tony ( and a lighter-dammit i wish he would quit)

we got to my mom and dad's and slept for a whole 1 and a half hours...then we had to head out to a wedding...

we missed the ceremony-whoopsy.. but we got there in time for champagne and hors derves but we were too tired to enjoy it like it was meant to be enjoyed...

we did get to have dinner, some speaches and get to see them in the first dance together.... it was so cute, instead of a speach, her brother played a song for her..it was beautiful. we stayed long enough to say hi to a few old friends and some acquaintances ( i got some great shopping tips for the washington area.) one of carina's friends lives really near to us!

we stayed until our eyes wouldn't stay open anymore.. man, everytime i think my friends are as cute as they ever will be, they just get better! in high school caraina was so cute, in college she was a hot little chick, check her out now all grown up and married !!!

so we left the wedding and my dad had brought home the best pizza on the dearborn/detroit border... gracie see's.. i am not much into pizza, but being that there was not too much for the vegetarian palate... i was ecstatic to see that pizza... tony and i had some, hung out with my dad and waited until my mom got home from work.. gave her a quick kiss, chatted a bit and then we finally crashed out... after being awake for 36 hours, the new memory foam mattress topper on the futon welcomed us with open arms!!

it's such a weird phenomenon....when we are at my parents house, i alway get up early and tony always sleeps in... when we are at our apartment ( no matter what state so far) i ALWAYS sleep in... if there is one thing that tony has taught me thus far, is to relax.. i always needed to be doing something and one day while we were at his house, tony was like, let's just lay around and watch tv.. or just lay around.. and man i am getting to be a pro at it!!!anyway so i got up way too early, hung out with my dad ( who took a "5-day-off" day off--don't ask) while tony slept.. i had to get ready for more stuff to do! i had another wedding to go to and i wanted to take barbie out for her birthday since we wouldn't be home when she really had a birthday!!!

so when tony got up, we rushed around the house to get ready for another wedding.. which we only stayed for a bit.. we had way too much to do...

afterwards ( with a change of clothes in the car) we met barbie and a bunch of others at chicks! we ended up with a full house... sue and tim had been there for a few hours by the time we got there then a bunch of folks trickled through the door, mike, nick, scott, megan, my mom, furious j, chris, jeff baker, maria, eric... it was so fun we had drinks and sang all sorts of tunes from the juke box... we didn't make it too late of a night because sunday was our thanksgiving... well i guess we went home at like 1:30 ish...

so sunday we had dinner at my mom and dad's house.. i love when we have people over when tony and i are home, we get to see as many people as we can and we can and be relaxed and not rushing around to all sides of the state...

so we had tony's parents and a million others over for dinner. afterwards, we put away all the turkey and turkey like food so that we could get down to what thanksgiving means- MAKING PIEROGI

we had a lot of people in training this year, it was really fun... new to the walkuski ( and now bono :) ) trainging circiut we had barb, megan, and melissa...here are some shots of us, in true polish style drinking too much and making the best of adult play doh that you can eat!!

Monday i changed my name. so i am now officially Angela Walkuski Bono ( walkuski is the middle name, no hyphens) so not only do i now get an amazing husband, a wonderful new family, but i FINALLY get a middle name.. it's not quite what i wished for when i was small, but it will do.. i just couldn't give up all those years with that name. Plus the only way i can get any more polish is if i can say more than curse words and i eat keilbasa!

After i changed my name, tony, eric, maria and i made the meat pierogi ( in a bit of a hurry) and then tony and i met tara and nicole for dinner...i have such great friends,,, tara bought dinner! love her!!! and not just for that... :) and my friends kept telling me that " marriage agrees with me" that i looked cute, etc, etc... now i know why they were my best dolls: )

we went to tara's for a a little bit to check out her new basement!! it looks great by the way, stop over and see it if you have a minute!!

Tuesday we came back to virginia, although right now it is home sweet home, i know that home is where your family is, and i can't wait to be back there!

Another wedding

We were going to head out to virginia friday after we got home from our honeymoon, but my other mom was getting married!!! how could i miss that???

auntie annie and rich got married!!! Congrats!! here are some photos

The honeymoon

The day after the wedding, my family, tony's parents, and my best dolls stopped over for food and to open gifts ( i love that part). we also watched the video once more family dropped by- mostly because tony and i did not remember much of it.. we were laughing so hard. i told him to drink the wine of our loving cup ceremony and it wasn't time yet..then i couldn't stop laughing, and therefore was not focused on anything other than not bursting out into inappropriate laughter.... we didn't stay up too late because monday was when we left for the honeymoon...

I thought that i would be all ready to go on the honeymoon, like packed and everything days before, but that was just a dream... we got packed and raced out the door to the airport. Our flights went smoothly...and wouldn't you friggin know it, i fell asleep during the first movie- the lake house, the one i wanted to see!! i woke up just in time to see garfield 2 starting...yech..
anyway we got to Dublin super early in the morning ( 8:30 is really early considering we left at 5pm the night before.) luckily the hotel let us check in early. so we took an afternoon nap.
Woke up just in time to get some dinner and drinks...you are not supposed to hang out on the streets of dublin after it gets too dark, there are a lot of random acts of violence in that city... not like mugging and stuff, but drunk people picking fights with anyone... so we went back to our room after drinks and got ready for the next day...
we got up early had an irish breakfast, which is enough food for a million people...well not if you are a vegetarian...then you get toast and porriage, maybe yogurt and fruit...
but man, tony had like 4 different kinds of meat, it was weird...
we left the hotel and picked up our rental car...
we booked it on line in the states and it was like 268 bucks, once the mandatory irish driving tax ( it has the second highest rate of road fatalities-yikes) and all the other taxes, it was like 480 euro....that's a lot more than we bargained for, but whatev's it was out honeymoon and what choice did we have...
it took a bit to get used to driving on the wrong side of the car, and the wrong side of the road...tony had to remind me every so often that i was on the wrong side.

So headed out for Galway, thanks to our cab driver's suggestion... we were going to head down the coast and then to Galway, but he said that there was more to see the way he suggested. so we did it...
and he was right... it was amazing, we drove across the whole country in 3 hours...
stopped when we got to Galway and had dinner. Then we found a little bed and breakfast, dropped our stuff off and headed into town. we walked to a few pubs and had a few drinks and then back to the b and b.... these things are not meant for night people....breakfast is usually from 8-10. so we got up early and got breakfast. went back to the room got ready and headed to connemara. it is on the east coast and it is beautiful... we went to a few castles that we couldn't afford to stay at, so we had tea there instead.

the first one we went to was really cool, but snooty mc stuck up, so we just used the bathroom and left. The next one was one that we actually considered staying at before we got to ireland. it was kinda hard to find, but once we did it was really cool. we weren't dressed scrubby, but we asked what time dinner was, and the hostess said " umm we don't have an openings tonight for dinner, you might want to go to the next town." hmmm, so we had tea there instead and headed to roundstone for dinner. it was a quiet little town, a little creepy- quiet.

after dinner we went back to galway. i have to say that driving home from the grand canyon to flagstaff in elk season in the dark is scary, but this was probably the scariest drive i ever took.

The roads are, if you are lucky, about 15 feet across, no street lights, very curvy, random sheep in the raod, along with horses, goats and donkeys and an awful lot of people are hammered by 5 pm... here are a few examples of the streets-

Once we got back to galway we were going to go out to more pubs, but i was starting to feel sick...so we walked to an "off license" which pretty much means a liquor store and got some libations to have in our room... here is what happens when you feel like crap on your honeymoon in ireland, you drink whiskey to feel better....and guess what it worked!!! i really felt like a million bucks the next day..

so we headed out to the cliffs of moher..on the way there, we stopped off at a few castles and ruins, but people own them. Like when they bought the land that their 'real' house is on, they got the castle as a bonus. so a lot of them were closed!
we got to the city a little late, so we drove to lahinch and got another b and b and then went to dinner...and an intersting dinner it was... there was a very drunk man at the bar, cursing and taking his clothes off and trying to smoke in the pub ( all work places are non smoking in ireland! NICE!!!) turns out he owned the place...it was sad, but a little bit funny. we stayed there and were going to wait for music, but the kids never showed up so we went to another pub and there was no music there either! NUTS!!
the next day we went to the cliff- they are beautiful...and it is where the chase scene was filmed for the princess bride!!! one of my favorites!!!

after that we headed to the dingle pennisula... meanwhile, all this driving was only about 2-3 hours a day and we were almost to the bottom of the coutry!!! it is smaller than michigan!

it was beautiful.. we pretty much did the same thing every day... drove to a bed and breakfast, got dinner and then got drinks.. in the morning we did what ever the locals, or our book said would be cool.. in this case we drove around slea head. it is a 'highway' if you can call it that that goes around the dingle pennisula... on it there are amazing ruins from as far back as 1000 bc...it was so cool to be able to stand inside of a house like structure that housed people that long ago...

The next day we drove to kerry, and drove the ring of kerry, which is pretty much every landscape from rolling green mountains, to palm trees ( yes there are palm trees in ireland!! and lots of sheep) to ocean views like you have never seen before.

Not to mention sheep that live on the front porch of someone's house.. tony and i were laughing so hard that we had to turn around take another picture of this..
After the ring of kerry we wanted to head into cork and then make our way back to dublin...we drove to tipperary town in tipperary county for a few reasons 1. there is a song about tipperary 2. i used to drink at the pub when i was under age and then again when i was legal 3. there were a lot of ruins there...

the town itself was really dodgy.. infact we were nervous just to stop and go pee there.. there were teens hanging in the street throwin the stink eye.. it also didn't help that we had just heard a news report that the legal age for being able to prosicute children as adults was raised from 8 to 12!!! some of those kids are so badly behaved that they have already been to jail by the time they are 12....so needless to say, we drove to another town. cashel.. which proved to be a great place to be... there was a castle there that was around right at the time of chirstianity...it was a castle for a king, then later given to the monks ( after the plague when there was no one around to appreciate it)

after that we went to a stonehenge like place. a circle of 15 stones that has been around since bc times... soooo coool...

we had to get back to dublin to return our car and get home, so that was the next step...

we got to the airport on time, got on the place on time, but did not leave on time, we sat on the tarmack for 45 minutes, thus making us late for our connecting flight. we got trapped in chicago for nearly 5 hours and finally got home.
thankfully my mom and dad love the crap out of us and stayed up to pick us up, even though they both had to work in the am ( thanks guys)

the next day we had folks over to watch our honeymoon pics on dvd, kind like the slide show, only with booze....i am sure that very soon i will be sending them out via imagestation. until then...enjoy

so frustrated

So i started writing about what has been going on since the shower and i accidently closed the page while i was trying to close another page...so i will try again tomorrow. i don't feel like re-writing all that..but tomorrow, i promise it will be updated and then i will try to keep up on my travels!

hello out there...it's been awhile

So it has been a busy summer and fall. i wanted to post, FINALLY before it became winter and then spring....
So here is what tony and i have been up to starting from where i left off....

We spent the summer in ann arbor, and intstead of enjoying it like we planned, we spent every day off doing wedding stuff ( which proved to be worth it in the end.) still it was sad since that city was were we spent one of our first dates, and then many more to follow, and there is so much there that we love.

In July we had our Bachelor/Bachelorette parties...from what i heard, tony had an awesome time at his...
i can tell mine was probably the most fun one that i have ever been too ( and not just because it was for me :) )
My best dolls kept a lot of thing secret from me, which i thought would be annoying, but it was a lot more fun like that. Not to mention that i trust them and knew that whatever they did would be amazing!
We started out at tara's house for a few drinks and some h'ordeurves. They served my signature drink ( well i have a lot of them these days, but my signature drink from the last time we had all gone out together) we had a cosmo like mix that was great and it was made with my new favortie vodka triple olive berry! so oo good.
after a few libations and some interesting presents, the party bus arrived. i expected something like a shuttle bus, like all the others that i have seen, but this was like a rock star tour bus!! anyway it was equiped with a bathroom, a moon roof, a table, millions of acres of couch space and a pole! what bachelorette party can go without that???
My girls planned on taking me for a quick drink at our town dive bar, the trail bar-but before we even made it off the street, i guess the bus driver, took out someone's bumper and we ended up getting pulled over!!!! we all joked that there weren't supposed to be strippers there, and the officiers were pretty, ahem, unprofessional to say the least! i mean, i guess i didn't expect anything less than that ( having drank with a quite a few of them in my drh days!)

after that incident which seemed to last forever ( which when you have 15 or so girls with booze in them and booze on the bus it could have been 5 minutes, but it felt like forever!!!)we ended up at the trail for a few drinks and then headed downtown...i honestly can not remember the names of the bars that we went to, not because i was hammered, but because no one told me in advance, so i just knew when it was time to leave and go to another one...
we went to three bars downtown and then on the way home someone yelled " stop at whitecastle" so we did. i stayed in the bus, but did not argue when fries were being offered left and right ( which probably explained more of the morning sickness than the drinks). We went back to tara's for what we thought would be girl talk, but ended up being girls falling dead asleep! In the morning, tara the amazing hostess made us breakfast...does is count still as breakfast if it is in the afternoon??? All in all, i had a really fun and memorable time.
I don't even think i got dressed to go home, i headed out of tara's in my jammies and went to my mom and dad's house .

What was next....oh the rehearsal...

Wait no...the pre rehearsal car smash...

tony and i were staying at tara's house after we moved out of our apartment and on weds. after she went to work, we were lounging around in our pjs. Tony went out to smoke and he said " honey did your car have a dent in it yesterday?" my retort " that's not funny"." then i went outside and sure enough, there was a nice dent that took up all of my driver's side...crap, now that i think about it, i was going to get a photo to put in with my wedding photos. but i forgot..

anyway after much drama i got all the info i needed to get it fixed ( without paying a $500 deductable)

Luckily i hung out that night at the trail bar ( with kristine, tara, and lana) because those amazing girls figured out all the things that i forgot about the wedding- like how was i getting MY car to the place!! Lana and Kristine solved the problem for me ( not to mention lana then became my wedding coordinator-thanks again)

Onward to rehearsal dinner....

so i had just finished getting dolled up and tony says "honey, umm, the rev. had an accident and she can't come tonight, or do our wedding... can we have rehearsal tomorrow." to which i promptly replied..."that is not funny" he handed me the phone and our stand in reverand said that she could do our wedding, but not rehearsal...someone else would have to...

that someone else, was me... here's the thing, my family is really bad at behaving, and i was counting on her to keep the peace, but since i was the stand in i had my best bitch face on ( which i am told i am pretty good at)

it went well, considering there was not authority figure there to snap them into place...

we went back to my mom and dad's and had a gerat dinner of Antonio's and then on to the gifts!

everyone seemed to love their stuff... i really spoiled my dolls. but i figured 1. they have to spend a lot of money to be in a wedding and 2. i love them all and they are the sisters that i never had!!

friday tony and i decided to spend the day apart, well some of it...he ran some errands and stuff until we parted -he stayed at his best man's and i stayed at mom and dad's. i finished up some wedding stuff that i needed to do, had a glass of wine with my mom and went to bed...

only to wake up at 6:30 am to get my hair done... well my appointment was at 9 but i had to have my tea and wake up... i started out a little stressed until my hair was done, and my mom's and two of my dolls...man dennis todd's place did a great job!!! We all looked like classic movie stars!!!!

Then we headed to mom and dad's to get ready... everything fell into place from there...the trolley arrived and we got to the park early (i didn't have to worry about the reception set up, because my 'honorary best doll- mark did that for me!! you rule !) so we all hopped into the trolley and headed to the park...WE WERE EARLY!!! i didn't think it was possible for me to be early, but maybe this new last name thing is going to help me be on time.. we shall see...i won't lie, i got a little nervous, but only because we didn't have a perfect rehearsal and tony and i put a lot of time into this one day...so as i was getting ready to walk down the aisle, scott pulled out a flask and was like "this works pretty well for nerves" so i had a drank and headed down the aisle...

from there, everything was perfect! our ceremony went swimmingly, tony looked so handsome up there. i mean, he is still handsome, but now he is my husband.. how weird is that??? i am a wife!

i didn't take any pictures that day but our photographer sure did...feel free to check them out at www.trillium.smugmug.com scroll down and click on our page, the password is angib

looking back on it, it was worth all the money that we saved and quickly spent.. i think everyone had a great time... and the after party, which we didn't go to ( at the same hotel that we were at) seemed to be a blast too!!!