Happy Festivus

3 months later we have decided it is time to once again grace the internet with our presence. To celebrate our renewed presence we have even updated our header picture - it is one from our engagement photo session. What do you think?

Alot has happened in three months that has kept us too busy to post so here is the top ten in no particular order.

1- We finished a semester of school. It was Mathew's first semester and Leah's 2nd to last. This took up the most amount of time and kept us up to all hours since we have also been working. But we did it and for those of you keeping track of our "over achieverness", the household has a 4.0 GPA!

2- We have started the "Biggest Loser" workout videos. It has gotten Leah's knees in good enough shape that we are now in training for a 5K. This is a big deal for Leah who typically ends up on crutches after she tries running.

3-Registry - It is keeping us busy right now. It has been amusing and probably deserves an entire post to itself.  In the meantime who knows the difference between a hostess set, serving set and an entertainment set of dishes 

4-SNOW-It snowed in Portland! For all you midwesterners and eastcoasters 8 inches IS A BIG DEAL-particularly when the city does not own a snow plow. Leah only went to work on Friday last week and Matthew's airbag free '93  Sentra became our main driving vehicle as we only had chains for his car.

5-Holiday Season and Potlucks-It has been fun. We have had work, TKD and family holiday parties and even a cookie exchange. This year we tried making Lemon garlic Humus, Kugle with granny smith apples, Vanilla Chip Bread pudding, Fiesta Tuna dip and Matthew's award winning Salmon Mousse. We also made little Salmon Bites for thanksgiving. It has been fun.

6-Searching for the ultimate sugar cookie recepie - It is a goal to be able to make good tasting maccabi men, dreidles and Stars. So far the Kraft cream cheese recipe was a bust and the newspaper butter cookies were good, but not a sugar cookie. Leah's Imma has sent us some which we will try soon but we are still looking - send us your favorite.

7-Conference-A paper Leah wrote with a professor has been accepted to a communication conference and she will be going to Arizona to present it in February. Matthew meanwhile has had a break in travel from work and we are waiting to see what next year will bring.

8-Booking plane tickets-We just booked plane tickets to Cincinnati for this January to go over wedding details, and now we are looking at booking August Wedding tickets, and honeymoon tickets. 

9-Hanukah Songs-We found a CD and are learning them ALL. Even the ltkah songs - We also made our own good latkahs.

10-Coming Soon-While in Cincinnati, we are going to pick out flowers, cupcakes, entertainment and more....

Wedding Venue Chosen

Happy weekend.

First on the list was work and life, however there is not too much to report. We have both been VERY busy with work, puting in long hours and now we have added school to the mix. For Leah two days a week she is out from 6:30 to ten and Matthew now has school too which keeps him out till 10 one night a week. And of course, along with school comes homework-we now spend most of our weekends in the office...

With all of that keeping us running around it is amazing that we have found a litle time to try dance lessons. Our first class was this week and surprisingly we got pointed out as the people knowing what they were doing and did not get pulled aside for extra pointers. Impressive since Leah's sense of rhythm is NONexistant...

In more exciting news we have picked the wedding location.

We went back to Ohio in August. Immediately after stepping off the plane and feeling the humidity, we came to the conclusion that the wedding would be held inside. This was a little sad but we decided a necessity.

Sparing you all the visits, we decided on The Manor House. The ceremony and reception will both take place at the Mannor House but in seperate rooms. Here is a picture of the ceremony room - note the ceiling is all glass - so airconditioned but almost outside! Hooray!

Catch Up Part One

Shannah Tovah - Happy New Year.

Over the last few weeks I have gotten some gentle reminders that the blog hasn't changed... probably it has even been so long that no one checks it... how sad. But it is the new year -5769-and we should make some new years resolutions. Nothing too big, but blog more and check facebook less while procrastinating from school work seems to be an achievable one. 

So much has happened since the last blog way back over a month ago, that I will break all the wedding details and catch up information into some different posts so that we can get everyone all caught up.

Here are the details we haven't told you about over the last month that we will catch you up on over the course of the next week or so.

1-School and work (We will get the boring one out of the way first)

2-Choosing a wedding site (finally and we are excited!)

3-Our wedding planner (best decision EVER)

4-Flowers (we came up with a fun idea)

5-Our trip to Vegas (no we didn't get married)

6-Cooking adventures (everyone seems to love a good recepie post now and then)

7- Clothing details...-(bridesmaid dresses, tuxes, hairstyles etc.)

8-Our photographer and engagement photo session (who knew we were so cute)

9-Litle details-(like rings, invitations, table cloths and the one I have been putting off music...)

10-Chuppah and Ketubah designs! (Okay Laurie this is last on the list but we will be getting to it soon!)

Okay this seems to be a lofty catch up list, stay tuned....

COMPUTER HELP

Tamar has agreed to design wedding invitations. She started out with GREAT success and THEN.............

Well, it was really our fault, we asked her to add some Hebrew text to the invitation and since her MAC did not want to type in Hebrew she was pasting characters in. 40 PHOTOSHOP layers later her MAC decided to crash.GREAT.
So now we need YOUR help. Do you know how to have a MAC type in Hebrew. More specifically to get Hebrew text in photoshop? Please let us know.
Thanks!!

In other news - We are loving the olympics on the big TV. Leah has finally agreed that it IS necessary to have a TV this big. The only downside is that the live swimming events do not start till 10 at night and going to bed while swimming is on is not an option. Who know's if we will be able to wake up early enough to do our own workouts after staying up all night to watch the real athletes.
GO WORLD!

Almost moved in!

Hooray! We can not even begin to tell you how much easier this is making life.
So here are some of our move in pictures.

Bedroom is unpacked and even pictures a mirror and stuffed animals have a home.

Still a little more work is needed to clean the front room and the office - but almost there....

And We Are Back

So it has been almost four weeks and we have been busy busy busy! So busy in fact that Leah has not been to the pool in 3 weeks - but finally made it today!

Lets divide it up

1 - Family

Leah's Parents and ELANA were in town for two weeks. We went to Klamath Falls and then had a week in Portland - While in Portland we went out to dinner every night showing off our favorite locations, went to the zoo and saw the dinosaur exhibit, and generally hung out. Between the excitement we also got wedding planning underway.

Tamar visitied the next week. Much fun having her in town even for only 3 days. We hung out, did more wedding planning, saw Batman at Midnight - worst idea ever but much fun.... went bowling AND picked a wedding dress. Caitlin visited this last weekend for her friend Alice's wedding. Sisters four weekends in a row! So lucky - although we are looking forwards a weekends to ourselves

2 - Personal

While at Klamath Falls Leah received a job offer and by the time we got back was in a new position at the Portland Public Schools - moving from HR Intern to HR Staffing Specialist, officially on the books. It is a great move and Leah is loving the new responsibilities. It was great to have family in while receiving the news - we celebrated by buying purses.

Matthew just finished planning his trainings and is getting ready to go to AUSTRALIA - advice for what to do in Sydney in the winter is much appreciated.

Leah is moved in. It was starting to get frustrating for her for the last month or so living with her stuff in two places. We dropped a lot of stuff at Goodwill, have moved in a lot of boxes and in addition to the Bajokin and storage shed, we now have a corner bookshelf and a large ikea closet that we built ourselves. We will finally get the pictures unpacked once we get rid of the many boxes! We can't wait.

3 - Wedding

We have been so productive. The goal is to have as much as possible planned before we go back to school so that we only have to wory about work and school work.

We have currently worked on getting a date, narrowing down locations, designing a cake, looking at Ketubah (by Leah's mother) and Chupah designs (by Matthew's mother), invitations (by Tamar), Dress - Leah's is picked out and purchased and bridesmaids dresses are in the works and colors have preliminarily been chosen.

We are looking at going to Ohio soon to make even more descisions.

It is getting long so we will post more details about the plans and the move later.

Planning, Planning, more planning....

This last week comes in two parts.

New Furniture
Last weekend, after much searching we bought two new pieces of furniture - a corner bookcase and a file cabinet. We had been searching for these two items for quite some time as they will make the condo feel more like a home and also give even more storage. The only final piece we need to purchase is an extra closet - apparently we have a lot of stuff. Hopefully we can buy that this week and build and fill it on the week of the 14th and be moved in!!

Leah's Parents Visiting (and Elana!!)
This Thursday Matthew took a half day off work and Leah took a full day off. At 11 am we picked up her parents at the airport, rented a car and drove to Klamath Falls, OR for a July 4th vacation. Klamath Falls used to have waterfalls, however land was moved a while back and now there are no falls. It is about 5 hours away from Portland and we did the trip in a Chevy Impala - Matthew, Elana and Leah sat in the back seat.

This was Matthew's first Independence Day as an American Citzen. On the 4th we drove into California to visit the Lava Bed National Park. Great way to spend the 4th - at a national park. The lava tubes were amazing inside and a little scary as you go deeper. When we got back we listened to 1776 soundtrack and watched the different fireworks shows on TV!

We spent all Saturday enjoying the resort's facilities, exercise room, swimming pool, ping pong and volleyball. There is much more to come and we will have downloaded all the pictures by next week. Hopefully there will be some good ones to post.

During the vacation, on our drives and over some meals we have been able to get started on some wedding planning. There has been a lot of it but overall very productive. Leah's family will be here for the rest of the week. We, well Leah, is hoping to get a lot worked out before the end of August, before school starts-we will see how that goes.

Happy Independence Day!

P.S. We haven't had many comments so if you're reading our blog, leave us a message!

Bjorken anyone?

Here is a slideshow of our weekend!

The goal this weekend was to make more space for Leah to move in. The first trick was moving all the stuff out of the linen closet and into this deck box (waterproof of course).

It looked so comfortable Matthew decided to take a nap.

Look at all our stuff. We'll check on it now and then to make sure no one stolen anything.

Now our Bjorken enters the story. To increase the storage in the bathroom we visited IKEA to look for a cabinet. (Bjorken is swedish for cabinet)

After a couple hours searching the bathroom, kitchen and closet sections we didn't find anything. Feeling frustrated we started along the winding path back to the car.

Coming around a final bend towards the exit we ran into an entire section of bathroom cabinets! We picked one out and went home to hang it.


A couple hours later we had a new cabinet. The top is a seperate section with a lock for all the more dangerous drugs.

Then we had dinner and moved on to unpacking some of the boxes Leah brought over.

After pulling all of the books out of the boxes Leah was daring Matthew to tell her to throw some of them out.

Luckily it all fit with room to spare so all was well.

We also bought a Skype phone in case both our cell phones get lost or die. Send us an email for the number.

Too much excitement

So much excitment-much more fun than last week.

1- Picture of the flower engagement tart thing as promised

2-RED SHOES!!!!!

We went to a wedding for one of our Portland friends this week - (Mazal Tov Stephanie and Dan!!). Well 2 hours before the wedding Leah decided she needed new shoes to wear with the dress. (Matthew already had dress shoes...) Off to Target we went and 20 minutes later emerged with two pairs of shoes!

Fabulous picture of Matthew and Leah in Happy Valley for the wedding

5-One of Leah's classes is done and work is lowing down a little for Matthew
Now the fun can begin. We may have some substantial planning updates coming up soon

6-Happenings
Matthew set us up with a website on the knot.com - It is kind of ridiculous and a pain to set up so bear with us. It will probably be useful eventually - in the meantime it is: http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/Matthew Letts&LeahPentelnik
Matthew also decided to tell his friends we are engaged - so maybe they are checking our site out now too - welcome! We are also starting to look at ketubah quotes because a lot of the planning for the wedding can come from our thoughts on what the ketubah will look like.

7 - The poll expired and "no pet" won.... how sad. We'll get a new one up soon.

Boringness abounds

Nothing too exciting has happened this week. Matthew spent the week in San jose and Leah spent the week writing papers. The end is in sight for the semester with more classes for both of us just around the corner.

One plan for freedom is planning for Leah's parent's visit and going through ALL the pictures from the last year to put in the photoalbums. So much planning.

One exciting development is engagement cards. They are so pretty and we are getting quite a few. One of the cards is from Leah's Bubby and Zayde and it came with sunkist throwing candies! How cute.

Last weekend Gayle and Leah hosted a cheesecake party. We (well Gayle really) made a salad and all the girls brought cheesecake - one of our best last hoorah ideas EVER before the move. Rebecca brought Matthew and Leah an iceing tart. We ate it! - Picture to come soon once they are uploaded...

In other news 2 boxes of Leah's books have been moved over to the condo and now need to be unpacked. Once some papers are turned in Wednesday hopefully there will be some time to move a few more boxes of trivial stuff next week.

We are also going to Stephanie and Dan's wedding this weekend, pictures next week. Maybe Leah and Gayle will finally get a picture of each other.

MOST importantly, Matthew has just run out to get donuts.

PICTURES GALORE - and even some videos

That's right as the title says we have pictures, but before you get to see them here are the updates.
1 - People are starting to give Leah bridal magazines so she is now happily procrasitnating looking at pretty dresses
2 - Matthew is packing to go out of town for a week on a business trip to San Jose where it is warm.
3- Matthew's Tae Kwon Do 3rd Degree testing was today. He thinks he broke his toe. Leah played photographer.

4- Happy Anniversary Peter and Laurie - Their 29th Anniversary is this week.

And now......the pictures

Look they are doing forms and the pictures are in focus!

More forms and a picture at the very end.

And now the picture we have all been waiting for....

THE RING!!

There is probably one that actually shows the setting but this one was edited all pretty.

Finally we have a video of Matthew and Christine's Sai form.

More videos can be found here!

USWC - 3D Testing - Mr. Letts/Mr. Aryal Sparring

USWC - 3D Testing - Mrs. Taft Powerbreak

USWC - 3D Testing - Mrs. Taft Weapon Form

USWC - 3D Testing - Mrs. Taft/Mrs. Webb Sparring

USWC - 3D Testing - Mr. Letts Powerbreak

USWC - 3D Testing - Mr. Letts/Mrs. Webb Sai Form

USWC - 3D Testing - Letts/Haller Sparring

USWC - 3D Testing - Mr. Letts 4 Station Board Break

USWC - 3D Testing - Letts/Lagrow Sparring

USWC - 3D Testing - Mr. Haller's Weapon Form

USWC - 3D Testing - Mrs. Webb 4 Station break

USWC - 3D Testing - 2 on 1 Sparring

USWC - 3D testing - BaSai

Welcome

Well it took all night and a few frustrations (and spelling errors...) but welcome to our blog!

As we get started on our crazy life together, we will try to keep you updated on things like moving in, wedding plans and other blissful chaos.