Rover rescued!

yesterday on my way home from work, i saw this little puggle (pug/beagle) wandering by the side of the road without a collar. after turning around and driving past him 4 times, i decided to stop. he appeared to be well fed (i.e. kinda fat), neutered, nails clipped, not itchy (i.e. no fleas), so i decided he must be someone's lost pet.

well, i couldn't leave him by the side of the road, so i picked him up (no leash/collar), put him in my car, and drove him to my vet, where i knew they could scan him for a microchip. turns out, he had one! they called the owner and left a message, i left the dog with the vet, and they promised to call me and let me know what happened.

about an hour later, Rover (his name) was picked up by his owner! apparently, they'd been visiting cousins and he'd wandered out of their backyard. now he's all safe and sound!

feeling tech savvy?

this weekend, alex and i made the switch to our own family phone plan, and with that, we were able to get a good deal on new phones! we were excited to shop because we had decided to make the switch to Andriod smart phones and say a fond farewell to our old faithful "messaging only" phones.

we both ended up going with the new Samsung Facinate, which just came out for Verizon a few days ago (we felt so trendy, haha). i've got to say, i love it. seriously love it. it's touch screen only, no keyboard, and the screen is super responsive and easy to use. it's also got the biggest battery of any android phone, so in theory it's supposed to last the longest (so far, i've been impressed - 36 hours and i still have half a charge left).

but, what i'm MOST excited about is i finally have access to the games that previously i could only play on my dad's iphone, like Jewels (similar to Snood) and Paper Toss (requires you to flick crumbled paper into a waste basket, paying attention to the wind speed of the nearby fan). after all, that's what phones are for right? no? well anyway, it's fun and mindless and keeps me from doing what i should be doing like reading...oh wait...haha.

anyways, if any of your are considering a phone upgrade, the Facinate has my vote!

pura vida!

it's finally time for some pics from costa rica! the beach was incredibly beautiful - really soft black sand, with small waves because we were situated in a bay. i took advantage with a little art work:
here we are on our first day in costa rica exploring the beaches:


this is where we spent most of the week - next to the 3 tier pool complete with swim up bar and snack hut!


this was one of our biggest adventures during the trip - zip lining! alex is a little afraid of heights, so this was particularly triumphant for him :) all told, we went across 11 lines and 3 suspension bridges. i even took one of the long lines upside down! here we are halfway through the trip on a platform above the tree tops:


we also took one night to escape the resort and explore a small town nearby. it was really fun to explore a little of the local scene, do some serious souvenir shopping, and eat some fresh seafood:


although we did have some rain during our trip, we also got some beautiful sunsets. here's the view from the balcony of our "bungalow":


the resort also had several restaurants to choose from and all of the food was delicious. here we are in the main restaurant on our last night:

that's just a taste of our incredibly relaxing and beautiful trip. more on costa rica next time...

my new last name

i know i owe you all pictures and stories of costa rica (don't worry, they're coming), but for now, i want to share a revelation with you. as you know or will some day find out, after you get married, everyone LOVES using your new last name. loves it. which is nice and fun and also totally bizarre. so far i've made the switch on facebook, but still need to do so with email, voice mail, the social security administration...you get the idea.

well, today my grandpa called just to say hi and when i picked up, he said "hi there mrs. heacock", pronounced "hee-cock". my boss had done the same thing earlier in the day. when i corrected my grandpa, he said, "oh it's probably because people are used to saying peacock".

apparently my new last name is just one letter off from the most pretentious of birds, and that is causing massive waves of mispronunciation. maybe most of you already noticed that, but i never did! who knew??

lots and lots of water...

and not in the awesome Brad Paisley song way. on friday, we had a HUGE storm come through and pretty much the whole chicago area flooded. lots of things shut down - people's electricity, the eisenhower expressway (the major east-west highway to the city...picture 66 being shut down from the Beltway to DC), the kennedy expressway (north-south highway...so add portions of the Beltway shutting down and maybe even 270), and even my parents' sump pump.

that's right, we awoke to about 3 inches of water in our basement saturday morning. bummer. although we had nothing compared to some folks - my office got 18 inches in the basement, the company down there lost all of their computers, and our AC is broken (80 degree office on a monday is also a bummer). then, when alex and i took the train into the city for a work event saturday, we saw people in row boats going down their street. that's right - row boats. some underpasses even became swimming pools for children of irresponsible parents. it was chaos.

here's a picture of the street in front of my office on saturday afternoon.
thankfully, it's all clearing up now and people are starting to recover. you can tell by the streets lined with old carpet for the garbage folks to grab :)

starting the "honey do" list

recently alex and i decided we were totally bored of the cream walls and white trim throughout our entire condo. since he's got some time before the wedding, we decided that we (meaning he) would get some painting done before i move in!

we've had lots of fun picking colors, and some of the names are really creative - so far he's painted the bedroom "mineral water", which looks like a pretty robin's egg blue, and the guest bathroom will be "grass cloth", a nice soft green.

any suggestions for our living room?? that's the next project we think :)

engagement pictures are up!

our photographers for the wedding are a young local couple that we've really enjoyed getting to know. they're fun, creative, and you can tell they love what they do. anyways, as a part of our package, we got an engagement session with them, which we did about 3 weeks ago. well, the pictures are edited and some of the photographer's favorites are up on her blog! check them out here and see what you think :)

as a side note, stephanie actually found these guys first and used them for her wedding, so keep that link to see some of her wedding pictures when they get posted (hopefully soon!).