Where has the last 18 months gone?

I'll tell you where the time has gone.... We have have been blessed with our little beauty, MacKenzie in October 1, 2010. We have been in a constant whirl wind of diapers, bottles, giggles, tears, and everything else baby.

I was inspired to write this blog post just after our baby who is not such a baby anymore dumped a package or chocolate chips on the floor. "you said I can't have anymore mommy, well I have another plan." She knew I was gonna move her away so she scooped up a huge handful and shoved them in her mouth. Lol hard to be mad at her sweet little face.

Hopefully I can post more often about the fun MacKenzie is bringing to our lives.

It's been so long!

It has been 5 months or so since my last update. Since then, I am excited to announce that my super smart husband, is officially a CPA! I logged in to get the final test results while we were in Chicago and I had just dropped Matt off at a conference for the day. I was too anxious and made him call me right away. Tears flowed and we celebrated that night with a trip to Navy Pier and dinner at Bubba Gump's.

In June, we also celebrated me completing my Master's degree. Even though it took an additional 3 months to receive my diploma, it is a great feeling to be done with school!

We are currently 36 weeks and 6 days pregnant and are expecting our little bundle of joy this month! The baby's nursery is all ready thanks to the helping hands of daddy, Grandpa Walker, Great Grandpa Walker, and Grandma Melka. The nursery is a buttery yellow with white wanescoting and is decked out in a bedding line called Snug as a Bug.  We are very anxious to greet this little one with a  loving family.

Being 9 months pregnant, it was not feasible for me to start teaching this fall, so Matt has found me a part-time job, working from our home, answering phone calls for Barking Dog Communications. It is definitely a blessing to be able to earn a paycheck while in my PJs!

Matt has been busy with work and it is expected to only get busier as he goes into government season. He was also promoted in July to being a Senior Accountant. With the promotion comes greater responsibility and more stress. He is working diligently on maintaining a work/life balance.

We celebrate our 1 year wedding anniversary this Sunday and I can hardly believe that it has gone by as quickly as it has. It seems like just yesterday, we fell in love while playing the Nintendo Wii. But I fall deeper in love with him with each passing day. Yesterday, I fell deeper in love with him as we went for a walk around the block and talked about our days.

It has been an exciting year already and it is only expected to get better as we welcome Little Baby Walker so soon!

My goodness, where does the time go?

Since my last post, so much has happened in our lives! We have adjusted pretty well to living as a married couple and I have acclimated to being Mrs. Walker.

In January I began my student teaching in the kindergarten classroom of Mrs. Barb Howell at Chelwood Elementary. It has been quite an experience working with 20 five and six year old children for the past 3 months. In February, I took over the classroom as per my school requirements. Wow! Children have a seemingly unending supply of energy! I was very busy trying to incorporate state standards, curriculum requirements, and still have some fun with the kiddos. They are a delightful and spunky group of kids and I will miss them dearly as I made my departure from their classroom last Friday. We celebrated with a pizza party catered by the beloved Mr. Walker. Matt graciously bought and picked up 4 18" pizzas for my crew to feast upon. We could not believe the little buggers ate every last slice of pizza! To top it all off, I made cupcakes for desert and the kids ate them as well! I was thrown a wonderful little party by the adorable LuAnn Salzwedel and the kinder-team. These folks definitely have spoiled me and I hope to find a fantastic team to work with when I get my own classroom! Then of course, there was the always amazing Stephanie McCurley who so wonderfully served as my right hand while I was in the classroom with the kids. Mrs. McCurley should the Educational Assistant of the year! She has a fantastic personality, a go get 'em spirit, and a super hard worker!

Amongst all of the excitement in the classroom, Matt and I have found out that we are expecting our first child on September 23, 2010! I am currently at week 19 and the excitement is mounting. Our families and friends are very excited about the new addition to our family and have already begun to spoil our little one. The baby has already received nursery furniture and crib, a high-chair, diaper bag, blankets, stuffed animals and outfits. We go for our official Ultra-sound tomorrow. This is the U/S in which we could find out the sex of the baby, but Matt and I both want to wait until the baby is born. No sense in unwrapping a Christmas present before Christmas!

In the meanwhile, Matt continues to work for Meyners & Co. as a Staff Accountant and has been "senioring" many jobs. He is also pushing forward and continuing to study for his CPA exams. He works very long hours and has been amazing as I progress through pregnancy. He is famous for cooking the meals in our marriage and packing lunches. He has taken an interest in researching the foods that I eat and how they could adversely affect the baby. He is still my prince Charming and I thank God everyday that His plan included Matt and I being married! It is amazing how we keep getting closer to each other.

Scrappy and Buster are still as goofy as ever! Buster likes to snuggle my tummy and I try to get him to "talk" to the baby. We celebrated Scrappy's "3rd Birthday" We celebrate their birthdays based on when they came to live with us. No, we didn't have a cake or presents, or even a party, I just took a moment to play with him  and remember that he is a part of our family too. (Look for Buster Brown and Scrappie Doo on Facebook because these pups are into technology)

We are going to hold a pool for the date that Baby Walker will be born and the gender! Half of the proceeds will go to the winner and the other half will be put into a savings account for the baby's future! Squares are $5 each on a first come first serve basis. Let us know if you wish to participate and we will enter it into the spreadsheet. It should be fun! Baby Pool Spreadsheet

I will try harder to post more often and get some pictures up also!

The married life

The first 3 months of married life have been superb!

I have been busy continuing to work on my masters degree. I have started substitute teaching for APS. It has been an exciting transition from corporate America into the world of education. Along with my transition, I have been met with many germs. I look at it that I am building my immune system to prepare me for my own classroom. I start my student teaching in January. Contrary to what I had thought, I will be doing my student teaching under the direction of Barb Howell. She is Mrs. Walker's neighbor in the classroom. She will certainly be exciting to work with.

Matt has been studying up a storm for his Financial portion of the CPA. In fact, that is where he is as I write this entry to the blog. I am positive this exam with be a success! He has been traveling a bit for work including being out of town for my birthday. But we made the most of it when I went to visit him on my birthday and we went to a nice dinner. He's been working hard and is a fantastic provider. (I really did marry my Prince Charming!)


We have continued to grow together as a couple. With me not working full time, we enjoy spending time with each other doing things that do not cost much.We really enjoy cooking and baking together. Just yesterday, we spent most of the day in the kitchen baking 3 batches of French bread to take with us to the Thanksgiving feasts we have been invited to. We also try to sneak in a Netflix movie whenever we can.

Scrappy and Buster are living it up in the Walker house. They have each managed to get special "Princess" blankets out of us to cuddle on at night. These pups are about as spoiled as they come. Buster is receiving a special diet because of course, the little princess has a food allergy. Being home with them more often has given me a chance to become familiar with their daily routine and what they want with their seemingly constant nudges to go "outside". Although we like to tease them that they are mentally slow, these two are quite smart and have learned that o-u-t-s-i-d-e means outside.

Well, life awaits!

Our Honeymoon

Well, he did such a great job keeping the location of our honeymoon a secret... up until the Thursday before the wedding... oops! :) Good thing Matt let the cat out of the bag otherwise when Msgr. Raun mentioned our honeymoon in San Antonio during the ceremony Matt may have been a bit perturbed.

The night after the wedding, we stayed at the Hyatt Place at the Albuquerque Sunport. We woke up and had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel lobby. We boarded the shuttle van and made our way to the airport to catch a flight to San Antonio. When we finally arrived in San Antonio, we were made our way to the Hertz counter to pick up our car. We had an Ford Escape for our trip. It was a zippy little thing and the voice on the GPS made us giggle whenever she would pronounce a name of a street.

We arrived at our very posh hotel. Hotel Valencia greeted us with open arms. I was blown away at how swanky our Riverside retreat was!

That first night, we dropped off our luggage in the room and headed down to the Riverwalk to find our meal and our first night's adventure. We had a foodies dream dinner at Waxy O'Connor's. We enjoyed a few pints of Harp Lager from the tap as we dined on our corned beef and cabbage and stuffed chicken. Both meals were divine! After finishing 1 too many pints, we continued our adventure down the Riverwalk. Stopping in small shops to check out the tourist merchandise, we settled with a few chocolate treats from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and enjoyed each other's company.

The next morning, we were headed to Sea World San Antonio. We were flabbergasted by the pure beauty of the Shamu exhibition. Those mammals were enormous and you could see the gentleness in their eyes as they whirled past on their way to the next trick. Although we sat in the splash zone... we were dry. We found our way to the roller coasters spread throughout the park and had a blast catching highs from the adrenaline. We visited a very fun attraction at the park about the penguins. So many different types of penguins! Who knew?! We also watched a Pirate show in a theatre there that posted 4-D animation. Up for the adventure, we put on our 3-D glasses, not knowing where that last dimension would come from, we were very surprised to find out that the theatre was plump with aquatics to spray during the show. Very entertaining! We finished our day there with a dolphin show. What a day!

That evening, we went back to the Riverwalk to find dinner. We shared a Shark Bite drink for 2 (Yummy!) and a Steampot for 2 from Joe's Crab Shack. With full bellies and a long day exploring, we walked the Riverwalk and settled on a bottle of wine and ice cream to take back to our hotel room.

Being foodies, the next morning, Matt and I decided we just had to visit some of the places featured on Food Network and the Travel Channel. We arrived at Lulu's diner excited to see what the big deal was. We each ordered a scrumptious breakfast that quickly filled us to the gills. But you don't go to Lulu's without taking home a Cinnamon Roll (they were the size of Matt's head!) We happily brought our 3 lb baby back to the hotel.

But first, we went and visited the Alamo. It was fascinating to actually see something so historical. Walking through the old church and hearing the story was eye opening to everything I missed from sleeping through history class (oops). After the Alamo, we were going to go see a movie, but none of the times seemed to work well for us, so we walked across the street to the Ripley's Beleive it or Not and the Wax Museum. It was a lot of fun walking around in there. We even saw Lee Harvey Oswald's toe tag!

We retreated back to our hotel room for a much needed nap and woke up to have our cinnamon roll snack.... well 1/3 of it between the 2 of us. That night for dinner, we headed to another place featured on Man v. Food. Big Lou's Pizza was featured for their 42" Pizza. A pizza so large they have widened doorways and a custom pizza oven. Although we weren't up for that challenge, we did receive a very tasty pizza. Again stuffed to the gills, we returned to our hotel room for movies on TV.  We made a brief debut in the V Bar located in the hotel. We toasted our recent nuptials with a extra dirty martini for me and a glass of scotch for Matt.

Sadly, the next morning, we packed up, checked out of our hotel, returned our rental car, boarded the shuttle and arrived at the airport to get on a plane to come home. We had a blast and we are confident that it wont be the last of our adventures together!

Wedding

Wedding Day September 5, 2009

The morning of the wedding began with bagels and coffee for me and homemade breakfast for Matt. Matt received a few surprises that morning to include a Flag box and a note to let Matt know that a flag was being flown that day in honor of our wedding. Also, a banner that said, "Today I marry my best friend. Matthew Walker, I will see you in a few hours at the altar. Love Always, Christy" He also was surprised with a magnet for the door of the car he rode in to the church that said, "Today is the day we say 'I do!'"

The ceremony was done during a full Catholic mass at St. Thomas Aquainas church in Rio Rancho, New Mexico at 1:00 in the afternoon. The mass was beautiful with our friends and family watching as we gazed into each others eyes and I was escorted down the aisle by my dad, Tom Dassie. The wedding party consisted of Dawn Martinez, Maid of Honor, Joey Jablonski, Best Man, and Bridesmaids: Melody Dassie, Caitlin Walker, Kirsten Walker. Jr Bridesmaid, Rachel Melka. Groomsmen Tommy Dassie and Bobby Butler. Adorable flower girls: Autumn Melka and Darby Bishop. Super cute Ring Bearers: Owen Dassie and Aiden Hargis.

While I waited in the cry room at the church for the ceremony to begin, I was given a gift from my groom: a beautiful Bulova watch. It brought tears to my eyes.

After the ceremony, we all climbed into a cashmere super stretch limosine and headed to A&W for some fun post wedding pictures. The employees at A&W and the customers in the restaurant were quite astounded to see an entire wedding party pile into the restaurant. Our photographer, Talitha Tarro of Photography by Talitha A. Tarro took excellent shots and we are sure we will see her work in magazines soon! After bombarding the restaurant, we headed to a field in Corrales for some more pictures. Our last stop for pictures were exclusively for Matt and I on the Golf Course at Desert Greens. As the weather started to change, the wind whirled and the sky created a beautiful back drop.

It was then time to start the party. I surprised Matt with a Grooms cake in the shape of a Teva sandal to commemorate the sandals he wore when we first started dating that I absolutely hated. :) Everything was perfect! The cakes, the dinner, Uncle Jim's DJing was just what the Dr. ordered and a good time was had by all.

As the evening started to come to an end, Matt and I ran to change into our "Get Away Outfits" and made a grand exit complete with guests holding sparklers as Matt and I made our way out to get into an awaiting Taxi-cab. The Taxi whisked us away to our undisclosed hotel so we could leave for our honeymoon the next morning to San Antonio.