It's been a while!

Wow, it has been a while since either of us posted anything here. We will be getting better at it, I promise. I'm sure you all anxiously check this on a daily basis to find out what we are doing in our overly exciting life.....or not. Either way welcome back! :-) So much has happened over the course of the last couple of months to update all of you about our family!

First thing, we got our official wedding date at the beginning of November. APRIL 24th, 2010...YIPPEE!!!!! That is the date I was hoping for and Tom was very supportive of whatever day we got, but I really wanted this one. It is a Saturday, which will be very nice for getting ready for the wedding, people who work and those driving in from out of town. Other wedding stuff that we have under our belts, we found a photographer to capture our big day on film. I will make sure to post some of his work on our blog after the wedding for all to see and in case anyone loves what they see and want to know how they can find this person. :-)

We really lucked out and found a great and incredibly friendly woman to do our cake. She is the mother of a friend of ours and she does beautiful work! It is always wonderful to have someone you know help in your wedding, or at least someone of someone you know. hehe Invitations were ordered a couple of days ago and my mother has been very helpful with the save the dates. Her computer drafting skills far surpass my limited knowledge of computers so I appreciate her helping me out! One more really great piece is a really good friend of ours is officiating the ceremony and I couldn't be more pleased! To have someone marry us that we both love and respect makes it that much more wonderful. Okay, while there are many other wedding things to talk about, I will save those for a later post.

Next big thing is we went to Disneyland!!!! Earlier this year I won a trip based on my overall performance in my department for the year of 2008. I used that trip to take Tom and I back to Disneyland for the second year in a row. This time around we spent 7 days in a rainy and somewhat cold Anaheim, CA whereas last year we were there for only 3 days. The first day we went to Knott's Berry Farm. I have become quite the roller coaster lover and really wanted some thrills and I got them. Universal Studios was next on the agenda. Quite the array of characters to see and take pictures with. My favorite ride there was the Simpson's ride. While not a Simpson's viewer, I still enjoyed the ride. There was a haunted mansion that I was not a huge fan of because I hated that things were chasing us and I screamed so loud a couple of times my head hurt when we left. Later on in the week we saw a live taping of Conan O'Brien and that was really fun. There was an up and coming comedian, Josh Brolin and Tilly the Dog Artist...google it, it is silly!

Then the big day came to go to Disneyland. I love the place, but Tom loves it to a point that I feel I am under representing his feelings immensely by using the word "love". We went on every ride we wanted to and most of them multiple times. We have tried to start a tradition to make sure to purchase a space mountain picture each time we go and frame it at home. I must say Tom has turned me towards In-N-Out Burger. Of the 7 dinners we ate, I believe 4 of those were the unhealthy, but incredibly delicious burgers and fries from this wonderful establishment!!!! I really wish we could have some here, but perhaps for our waistlines it's best that we don't. From there is was a constant back to Disneyland and California Adventures and we did that for 4 days! I can't wait to go back, with the wedding it will set us back time frame, wise, but we will go back hopefully 2011...cross your fingers.

Unfortunately I did get sick towards the end of the trip and ended up having to miss my sister's baby shower. It was for the best to not pass my fever around, but I was incredibly disappointed I couldn't be there to share in the celebration. This catches us up until Christmas and New Years. All I need to say is I was able to spend Christmas with my wonderful family and Tom. New Year's was a quiet night alone with my future husband! That is all for now, tune in next time for more wedding discussion and other aspects of our life. Ta ta for now!!!

I found my wedding dress!!!!!

As I am sure you deduced from the heading of the post, I found my wedding dress!!!! It was a bit scary making such a large and final purchase, but I know this is the dress for me. I am also very grateful that my family was there (the girls of course!) and my neice and nephew. No important decision can be made with out the approval of Katie and Jack!!! And here is the dress.....

Just kidding!!! One, Tom isn't allowed to see it until I walk down the aisle. And, two, really!?! If you honestly think I would buy something like this let alone try it on, you don't know me at all. hehe


Last weekend my maid of honor came down from Seattle to make sure she was present at the first (and what turned out to be the final) dress shopping experience. Funny story....kind of! :-)


The night Kristine came down to visit she stayed the night at our house. Little did she know she would be kept up until 3:30 in the am discussing wedding stuff. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to talk to anyone besides Tom about the wedding so this was one of the first official times I had done this. Okay, Ashley, get to the point. Well, as I was showing her some options on the website for David's Bridal I pulled up a dress. There were certain things about it that didn't win my heart over so I nixed that one. The next day when we were browsing the dress options she saw the same said dress. I wasn't jumping up and down to try it on, but it was Kristine that said "why not!?!" Thank goodness for my sister because I probably woulndn't have tried it on otherwise. The cool part to the story is that is the dress I ended up getting! Small world!!! Thanks, Kristi. YOU ROCK!!!!!

I didn't know right away as others have told me would be the case. I had to try it on 3 times to feel 100% confident that it was the right dress and it felt like me. It does feel like me and it is on order and will hopefully be here in a couple of months. It's crazy how long it takes and this is apparently the off season.

Later that day we met up with the boys for some lunch and eventually dinner at Red Robin. The only unfortunate result of us all being around each other is everybody, the following week, starting getting really sick. I love my family very much and was saddened to hear they were not feeling well, had to call in sick to work and some of them ended up going to the doctor for a check up. So far, I have tried to do status checks to at least know how people are feeling. At this point I think only a couple of people are still sick. Luckily, I escaped the clutches of the bug and had some minor throat issues. My voice is still iffy from day to day because of talking all day long for work, so we will see. Best wishes to everyone to stay well or get better.

That is all for now. Talk to you again soon!

XOXO

3 Dogs Hungover from Star Wars...

So last week pretty cool...because I had vacation most of it! I had the staples in my leg removed and every day my live in home nurse took care of me so my leg is somewhat back to normal.

On Saturday It was our officially one year anniversary! We wanted to do something because we knew this was going to probably be the last time we would celebrate this date since we are getting married in April. So I was randomly searching online a week ago and found out that Three Dog Night was coming to Tacoma! We both like them for various reasons. The main one being that we both grew up listening to them because of Our parents. My mom is a huge fan and Ashley's dad was a big fan. They are not the most obvious main stream band so it was one of the things that helped bring us together.

So we went and saw them on Saturday, this was actually our second time seeing them we also saw them about a year ago. The show was great! We had fun! The only somewhat disappointing thing was that it was the exact same show we saw last time...every song. So we were a little disappointed because one of our favorite songs is "Eli's Coming" and they did not play it.

On Tuesday we saw "The Hangover" which was pretty hilarious. I am pretty tough on comedies and I thought it was funny and well written. I am interested to see what movies begin to come out here at the end of the year because honestly I don't think there has been that many good movies this year. I went through the entire list of movies released in 2009 and only about ten did I think were even half way decent. I could not even make a top five list yet because I don't really like any of them all that much. I think there will probably be a rush here of good movies since we are heading towards the end of the year.

Wednesday was pretty cool. I was not expecting to attend Star Wars...Live in Concert! But at the last minute my brother needed someone to go with him and so I jumped on board. The coolest part was that I got to see...

Of course they were not animated but they were Awesome! I got kind of crappy pictures because all I had was my cell phone camera. If you are interested I have one on my Facebook page. Overall the show was pretty cool I dig watching orchestras so hearing songs like the imperial march just made you realize what amazing pieces of music they are. It was also cool because there were just a lot of things going on. They had a screen projecting the movies, then the orchestra, then the actor who portrayed C-3Po would come in and narrate the entire story. Along with this there was Pyro and laser lights.

I did have to return to work on Thursday but hey what can you do? The rest of the week played out like normal. Today is Saturday and Ashley is currently at her first crack at finding a dress which is pretty exciting.

Hello everyone!

As you may have read from Tom's first post, this is intended to chronicle our lives and our family. Soon I will be a Martichuski and Beaves will be my maiden name....weird!!! Weirdness aside, I am very excited to start a new family and see where the future takes us. My posts for the next little while will probably be about the impending wedding and the planning that will consume my time outside of work and play.

So far, we have found the location and have a tentative date in mind, but won't find out officially until November 1st. I think I am already driving Tom nuts with the planning and incessant requests for his involvement. Honestly, I have to give him a lot of credit. He has been very involved and seems interested in the details of the wedding. Either he is a good fiance and is actually interested or his acting degree is serving him well and he fakes it really good!!!! For the sake of my continued enthusiasm about this process I am going to assume it is the former and not the latter.

To rewind slightly, I want to comment on his proposal and give him a big thumbs up about the thought that went into how he did it. Little did I know that the day before he went through with it he picked a fight with me to throw me off track to assume I would have to wait longer to get the sparkly ring and promise of marriage. That tricky SOB!!!! He described it very beautifully, but didn't seem to mention a couple of funny moments that he may have chosen to forget. That morning I had driven to the airport to pick up my grandmother who had flown in from Salt Lake City. I took her and my father to the grocery store and then drove home. When I opened the front door Tom was literally standing just far enough away to not be hit by the door and he greeted me with a very peculiar look on his face. At further examination I noticed that he was sweating. When I asked why he was perspiring he said that he had just put on some lotion and that is why his face was glistening. LIAR!!!!!!!! He was nervous! I knew something was up, but didn't push it.

Later, when we were at the location where he first expressed his feelings for me, Tom's Pizza, we had a very awkward moment as he was seemingly trying to figure out how and where at this place to make his move. A car pulled up next to ours and the driver, who we call "The Cowboy" because of his cowboy-like attire, decided to exit out of the passenger side as opposed to a normal person going out their own door. Tom seemed a little frazzled, I wasn't sure why, but I just sat in the car and didn't really know what was going on. When Tom got out of the car I was still confused and remained in my seat. After standing outside his door for a few moments he bent over and very rudely said "You can get out of the car!" I now know that he was simply nervous and perhaps frightened at what he was about to do. From there Tom covered the rest well. I vividly remember my beautiful ring falling to the ground and thinking to myself "Wow, I'm glad we aren't near a drain. That would just be my luck!!"

I love him very much and can't wait to marry him. While we have our disagreements and differing perspectives from time to time, that is the way of it and it will never change the fact that he is my person and my future husband.

I will post again very soon. This weekend I am going to try on wedding dresses for the first time and I am very excited. My maid of honor, sister Kristine, is making a special trip down to be here and I am very grateful to her. The involvement she has had and offered is beyond what I could have hoped. Since neither of us have done this part of a wedding before we are learning as we go. All of my other sisters, my mother and my niece and nephew will be there. I love my family and can't wait for Saturday and dress shopping.

The Launch of the T and A Blog!

I have been attempting to fully launch this blog since August. This is the official Tom and Ashley Blog! Hence the whole "It's all about T and A".

This blog will definitely be filled with random rants from us both as well as our current conquests. I originally wanted to do this to showcase our efforts in getting our wedding together and to document the beginning and life of our family.

A few weeks ago I purposed to Ashley. Which was an amazing moment for me. I planned on doing it for a while but had been searching for the perfect moment to do it. Originally I planned on doing it in Disneyland (we are going there in December) but did not think I could wait that long. Plus I thought it would be a huge pain, I would have to sneak it on an airplane and just pray she would never see it.

Besides all that I could tell she was restless. She has dated people in the past who had told her they wanted to marry her but had nothing about it so she struggled with trusting me. With that in mind I wanted to do it when she least expected it but also in an enough amount of time that she would not have doubt. But beyond everything I wanted it to be a date that meant something to us both. So I picked the day before her birthday. I picked this date for two reasons the first was because any proposal I did I could use to pretend it had something to do with her birthday. The second and most important reason was because the day before her birthday was the first night Ashley and I had first kissed and spent quality time together. So I asked her Father the day before and I was ready to go! So when I purposed I used the theme of firsts. I made it seem like it was for her birthday and linked them all together.

The first present I gave her was gift wrapped bacon (Pretty awesome I know) this was because the first morning we spent together I talked non-stop about bacon. Some would call this nerves I would call it every day activity. The second present I gave her was the movie "Choke" which we both hated. I gave her this because it was the first movie we saw together. After that I took her to Tom's Pizza which is the place where I told her I had a crush on her and confessed my feelings for her for the first time. I then linked all of the firsts together and proposed. This involved a lot of sweating and me dropping the ring on the ground. To be completely honest I am not sure what happened next, it is kind of a blur. We spent the rest of the day creating new firsts. We went to Multnomah Falls and went to Tad's Chicken and Dumplings. Two things we had never done before.

In more recent events specifically. This week was very interesting for me. If you looked at my facebook page you probably know that I messed my leg up. So if figured I would officially document the story. Ashley and I were at the gym because we are on a quest to look amazing for our wedding. I had on head phones and was in the zone. While being in the zone I stepped onto a treadmill. Unfortunately for me the treadmill happened to still be on. My left leg went onto the treadmill and immediately threw me to the ground. After being to thrown to the ground I did not think to much of it and had no idea why I fell and place my hand on the treadmill. Keep in mind the treadmill was still moving! The treadmill again threw me to the ground! I eventually realized how to get up and got up and got on the treadmill next to it. I then attempted to hit the stop button several times finally shutting it off. I then ran for a minute or so on the treadmill next to it when I finally looked down and notice I was bleeding. In fact there was a blood river going into my sock. So I stopped and went to the front counter and accessed there emergency kit. After that we went home and speculated for a few hours if I should go to the Doctor or Not. Amy (Ashley's sister) came over and took a look at it and she said that she would probably go to the doctor so after she left I made the executive decision to go to the doctor.

The rest is a Vicodin haze. I was pretty happy they prescribed me that after my crappy day. So we plan on updating this periodically so you can watch us evolve! Sorry for the bloody pictures but if you know anything about me I like to tell it like it is!