What We've Been Up To {Some Snapshots}

I know what you're thinking....

Hello??? Anybody there???

Believe me, I hear ya & I recognize it's been quiet at Simply Suz lately. Don't you worry, I do have an excellent excuse -- we have been traveling (including a major out-of-state move) or hosting family 6 of the past 7 weekends. To top it off, the weekends prior to our marathon travel-stretch we were packing, preparing for our move, & saying goodbye to our NC friends! Needless to say, I am exhausted both physically & emotionally & have not had any time or energy for blogging!

Here are some snapshots of where we've been & what we've been up to the past couple of months....expect full feature blog posts on (most) of these happenings in the coming weeks!

Weekend of May 14th...
I did a photo-shoot for my super-cute, super-sweet, preggo girlfriend, Lori, & her hubby Dave. Lori is due at the end of the month, so hopefully I'll get around to sharing some of her darling photos before her little man arrives!
I also enjoyed a special treat that week at a work... a team getaway.... sailing in New Bern, NC!

Weekend of May 21st....
We headed north to New Jersey for my beautiful cousin, Sara's wedding. We were joined by (most of) the Lohuis fam (Mark...you were missed!). Hannah had on her dancing shoes, so she managed to keep us on our toes!
Weekend of May 28th (a.k.a. Memorial Day Weekend)....
We flew out west to Wichita, Kansas for brother Tom & sister Caroline's wedding. It was a McA-filled weekend!

I'll be sure to fill you in much more on that, including the darling rehearsal dinner Mom & Dad McA orchestrated!

Weekend of June 4th...
After saying goodbye to our good friends in NC, we hit the road & headed south to Florida! My gracious folks helped us unpack a truck-load-o-stuff into our new home.

Weekend of June 11th...
We enjoyed a mini-weekend-getaway with my family in Orlando. We lounged by the pool, grilled out, made a pit-stop at Ikea to get some home essentials & enjoyed quality Florida fam time.

Weekend of June 18th...
We took a traveling-breather & worked on settling into our new place. We also managed to take a break from all of the unpacking to celebrate our 4th anniversary on June 23rd!

Weekend of June 25th...
Katie, Matt & Hannah came to visit us in Gainesville! Katie gave us a great tour of her alma-mater & we chased around our adorable niece all weekend.

Weekend of July 2nd...
We headed home to Vero & spent the Fourth of July weekend with Mom & Dad Lo, Katie, Matt, Hannah & Grandma. We hit the beach, enjoyed pool time, hung some crown molding (technically that wasn't a "we" activity...Matt helped the-other-Matt with that), rearranged my folk's furniture & set up their sound system (okay, the Matts did that, too), ate lots of hot dogs (I'll claim that), watched the fireworks, & enjoyed Matt's favorite holiday!

Visit Simply Suz in the upcoming weeks months (I'm just being honest here) to get more details on all of this fun stuff & a few additional adventures planned before Matt starts dental school in August! Please be patient, it may take me awhile, as we have no plans of slowing down anytime soon!

Married! Congrats Tom & Care!

We had a blast Memorial Day weekend in Wichita, Kansas celebrating with Tom & Caroline as they tied the knot! I plan on sharing a bunch of photos & giving a full recap of their big day (& all the wedding festivities) after we get settled in Florida (we move tomorrow!), but in the interim, I wanted to share a few links to my photo albums, especially for family & friends who may be interested. Mom & Dad McA + wedding party .... this is for you!

Photos...

Caroline's Bridal Luncheon

Wedding Rehearsal

Rehearsal Dinner BBQ

Getting Ready

Wedding Day

A couple of important notes....

*I lost steam (& time!) as I sorted through these photos so you'll notice a TON of duplicates, especially in the wedding album (hence, 28 pages of photos in that Smugmug album...oops). I wanted to share these ASAP instead of waiting until I had time to sort & delete! My apologies for photo-overload! I will pare down once we're settled in Florida.

*If you are in any of the photos & want to save a copy, just click on the photo you'd like to download in Smugmug, select the size ("original" will likely be the largest & the best resolution), & then click "save photo" or the file folder icon.

A Successful Marriage.

2 weeks ago (I know, I know, I'm way behind on blogging....) we jumped in our (new!) car & drove 6 hours west to Murphy, NC for the wedding of our college buddy, John, & his bride, Cara. The nuptials took place at a beautiful farm with gorgeous mountain views, & the Cregers couldn't have asked for a more perfect day. Sunny, clear & unusually warm for March... especially considering we had freezing rain this week!

 

John -- affectionately "Creger" (last-name/nicknames seem to be a theme with many of our college friends) is not only a great friend & a fun guy, but also has an incredibly strong faith. I love a good wedding & certainly the tasty food (barbeque at this mountain wedding...yum-o), dancing (please scroll down to the bottom of this post for some video evidence of a fantastic dance performance by Creger & his mom), & mini-reunions are all part of the celebration, but sometimes, I think couples miss the heart of the day. Not the case with these 2.

Their pastor did an incredible job of celebrating their relationship in Christ, challenging them to keep their primary focus on their walk with God, all the while painting a picture to the family & friends who had come to celebrate with John & Cara of what a successful marriage should look like.

 

One particular statement stuck out to me (forgive me for paraphrasing his much more powerful words): Just because you "make it" 50 or 60s years doesn't mean your marriage is successful. A successful marriage is one that is centered on Christ & reflects His glory. Our marriages should be a testament to the grace & power of God in our lives. After all, the marital relationship is to mirror that of Christ & the Church.

Mr. & Mrs. Creger, it was such a joy to celebrate with you. Matt & I wish you many many years of love, joy & a relationship centered on the God who brought you together. As for everyone else we had the pleasure of seeing in Murphy, get busy. Someone else needs to get hitched so we can all get together again soon!

I took a bunch of photos (would you expect anything less?!?) & won't share all of them on the blog, but if you're interested in seeing more, click here to go to my smugmug album. Here are a few (okay more like 20) favorites from the day....

My gorgeous friend Liz. I'm a tad bit jealous my hair won't do that.

With my main man.

My main man, with another man. How dare you, Tim?! :)

Cbiz & the fellas (Brad & Tim). What lucky men.

(Mrs. Schroeder & Mrs. Miller) These 2 ladies also married their college sweethearts!
Andrea, Jackie & I (plus Cara!) all married Young Life boys... they're keepers!

My aisle seat proved awesome for getting ceremony shots. (Check out that view!)

Lammers fulfilling his groomsmen duties (& apparently enjoying it). I'm digging the peacock feather.

2 of my best girlfriends (sadly, we were minus Jenny).

Matt sandwich (with Brad in the middle).

Cake.

More cake. It was tasty.

Had to share because I did her hair.

Creger & his mom's rendition of Thriller. Please scroll down to watch!

Photobooth fun (this may be my favorite photo of the entire wedding).

Photobooth shenanigans continue. Loving Abby with long, blonde hair! Ha!

Bahahahaha...

Wish I could go back & add a photobooth to our wedding.

Court & I came back with props.

Matt got a talking to after I looked at all of our photos & in 99% of them he's goofing off.

That's more like it.

If Courtney & I had an album cover, I'm pretty sure we'd use this photo (we were both fond of our shoes).

Nah. We'd probably use this instead.

Matt + Matt  = BFFs 4ever.

I miss this girl.

Taking a break from dancing to smile for Jackie's camera.

The whole gang. Our U of I / Young Life family (Missing a few key people...). Gosh, I love these folks.

End of the night. Before the crazy-big-moon made its appearance.

To wrap this up, I have to leave you with this video. In lieu of a more "traditional" mother-son dance, Creger & his mom surprised the wedding guests (& maybe Cara...not sure if she was in on it) by doing the entire Thriller dance. It was both hilarious & awesome. It's no secret where Creger's smooth moves come from anymore.... Way to go, Momma Creger!

Photos of the Week: University of Florida

I'm starting to think I have a "thing" for college towns.... Champaign, Chapel Hill & now Gainesville. I love college campuses & the energy, sense of community & activity they infuse into the town (I will admit, I could live without Gainesville traffic). Here are some snapshots from UF's campus. Go Gators!

Guess who I got to see???

(Psst...miss my last post? Here's a sneak peak of our new home. I'll share interiors in June once we move in!).

Between apartment appointments & getting to know our new hometown, I also had time while in the Sunshine State to visit with my favorite Floridians: Mom, Dad, Grandma, Katie & Hannah! After wrapping up our apartment search in G-ville, Mom & I met the rest of the fam (minus the Matts and Mark) halfway in Orlando.

Hannah naturally stole the show (as she should!) by demonstrating all of the new things she's learned to her Aunt Suz. She can now run (or "Go! Go! Go!"), walk backwards, dance (twirl AND dip), play the air violin & conduct the orchestra (taking after DaDa on that one), talk on the phone (though that's been a favorite pasttime of hers for awhile), play hide-and-seek (she gets seeking, still working on hiding) & laugh on command (seriously, that's the cutest). [Sorry for my overuse of parentheses....the details are just too fun to leave out!]

She's a darn good communicator, as well. Not only does she communicate via sign language (for words like please, thank you, food, more, etc), she also has a whole lotta words & names in her arsenal. We had such a good time playing, reading books & snuggling. She was very confused as to why I was there without Uncle Matt (or as she calls him "Du Du" short for "Dude"). We made a little video to show off her new tricks to him! Maybe the Hannah show will show up here on the blog sometime... It's pretty cute. Brace yourself for a lot more Hannah blogging come June.... she's only going to be 3 hours away! That makes me one happy aunt.

Success!

Since our travel schedule wasn't nearly hectic enough the past couple of months, I squeezed in a last minute trip to Florida to look for housing last week. On Thursday morning, I flew to Orlando, got picked up by my sweet mom, & then looked at a ton of condos, townhomes & apartments in our soon-to-be new hometown of Gainesville. We saw our fair share of duds, but thankfully, we also spotted a few winners.

We've settled on this beauty for our new home. A few things that I love about this place: (1) We'll be only the second tenants in our unit (which happens to be the top floor in the photo below); (2) It's completely tiled (yay for no more nasty apartment carpet!); (3) It has a huge office in addition to 2 bedrooms; (4) It has a separate dining room that will fit our big table (almost every other place had a living/dining combo); (5) It's far away enough from campus that we won't be living in undergrad central, but also close enough for Matt to bike or take the bus to the dental school; (6) It occupies the entire top floor, which means we get screened in porches on both ends of our apartment & because it has a really open floor plan for the living/dining/office/kitchen, we can open up & enjoy a nice cross-breeze (when it's not 1000 degrees in Gainesville).

All-in-all I'm excited to move in (in June), relieved to have a place to live, & most of all thankful for my excellent partner-in-crime (Mom) who willingly chauffeured me around Gainesville & gave me her honest opinion about each place we walked in to.  Thanks, Mom!

Colorado in Pictures: Denver

Last stop, Denver! I'm back in NC from Fla. & still blogging about Colorado. Can you say busy? I'll keep it brief because I have a suitcase that needs unpacking & laundry that's calling my name. 

On Monday --our last day in Colorado-- we packed our bags & headed north to Denver. Tara & I were both flying out later that afternoon/evening & Liz thought a day in the big city would truly wrap up our whirlwind weekend out west. We enjoyed our President's Day by just walking around downtown & savoring our last few hours together.

Beautiful day in a beautiful city

Downtown Denver

Our version of a"group shot"

Although these ladies are truly 2 of my best friends (we were missing our 4th link... Lyndsey, who was with us in spirit), we usually just get to catch up in short visits when we happen to be home at the same time in Vero Beach during the holidays or for weddings. It was such a treat to have a long weekend to reconnect, share our lives, enjoy a beautiful part of our country, & simply love on one another. It was good for my soul. Thanks, Liz & Tara!!!