Home safe and sound...

Well, after 21 hours of travel yesterday, we are home safe and sound in our somewhat empty house...missing our pup.  I did tell Mr Fix It after my post the other day about his dog passing and we both cried off and on throughout the last day of our honeymoon.  But we still laid by the pool, chatted with new friends and did some dinner and shopping in town before our trip home.

I have much to share from the wedding day and honeymoon and will be back at it soon.  For now, the gifts have all been opened, the house is getting settled in with me and my daughter, Little Miss joining Mr Fix It for our first night as a family.  And I will be back to work tomorrow.

Thanks for following along...I am glad to be home and ready to start sharing details about everything...and especially what I learned and will encourage you to do for yourselves so the same mistakes and missed opportunities don't happen to any of you.  :)

Hope all is well and looking forward to catching up on all my friend's blogs once I get all caught up on work and such.

What a way to end a honeymoon...

It's me and Mr Fix It's last full day here in Bali.  We head home tomorrow afternoon.

And I have been checking e-mail and my blog real quick almost every single morning of our honeymoon.

Well today, I got the e-mail I didn't want to come...our friend who was staying at our house with our dog, Kuta (named after the beach where we are staying here in Bali) informed me that our pup passed away last night while we were gone.

I totally started crying when I read the e-mail.  And now I hav to decide if I should tell Mr Fix It now and ruin the last day and a half of our honeymoon or wait until we are on our way home to tell him.

He is going to be devastated...and I am so conflicted.  We knew he was not doing good since we found out he had a terminal heart condition two months ago, but we prayed he'd make it til we got home and at least have a few months with him.

Please pray for us, this is not the best way to end our honeymoon...but at least our dog is now at peace and not in pain.

It will be the worst thing in the world for us to walk into our empty home now for the first time.  I can't even imagine it.  Thanks for all of your encouragement and support...it means so much.

G'day from Australia!

Just stoppin' in to let you all know that I have checked out all the comments on my blog and I am so honored, humbled, excited for all the wonderful blessings from all of you!

We are here in Burleighs Head in Queensland and rented a 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment for 3 nights before we head to Lamington National Park for a day or two.

We are right across the street from the beach and have amazing ocean views from everywhere in our apartment.  Of course Mr Fix It hit the surf as soon as we were settled in and the weather has been good...not quite what we wanted but still good.

I can't wait to get back and start sharing recaps and pics with everyone...the magician was a HUGE hit...the photobooth was packed...weather was great.

Everything about our day was good...of course, I definitely have a few stories to share...for I thought for sure I was going to pass out...and there was unfortunately a few 'war wounds'during the ceremony ;)  More to come...

Mrs. Beever

Honey, honey - give us money!!!

Is that totally inappropriate?  :) 

I want to tell you about one of our gift registries today.  It's through a site called http://www.honeyfund.com/.  I heard about them from a girlfriend who married about a year and a half ago.  I think I may have told her about the idea actually and then she found the site.

Anyway, nowadays, you can opt to register for things like toasters, bedding, appliances, honeymoon travel plans and even a down payment on a new house!  You heard me.  Real Estate Agents can set up accounts for your guests to contribute to your down payment if you'd like.  I don't think I would personally go that far.  But when I heard about the opportunity to register for our honeymoon I was all over it!  Mostly because we don't need a whole ton of things for our new house since we are an 'older' more established couple.   (My girlfriend opted for the honeymoon registry because they moved into a super tiny one bedroom little studio place and didn't have room for a ton of new 'household' items.)

So, the cool thing about a honeymoon registry is that basically, your guests are just giving you cash really.  But they have different options of how to give it to you - through our site, they can pay with cash, check or using a debit or credit card via Paypal.  Of course, through Paypal, you do have to pay approximately a 3% fee on any monies received...but if you get $2,000 in gifts, then you are only paying $60 in fees.  Not bad.  And you might get more money if guests can put it on a credit card?  (You can even select an option to pass the fees onto the guests if you so choose.)

The main reason I wanted to go this route (instead of just letting guests give us cash) was because it allows your guests to feel like they are contributing a specific gift or something fun and exciting for your trip.  My sister's mother-in-law thought our site was a great idea and was excited to give us a gift of $100 yesterday towards our Resort Stay in Bali.  She doesn't have to know that in reality, the $100.00 goes into my checking account and I can use it for whatever I want - a room or groceries.  :)  Here's some of the items we registered for from our site:

It's a simple process to sign up and register for free and you can create a custom web site geared towards your trip - they even have sample vacations to suggest for you!  Here's what our site looks like:

Through honeyfund.com they offer the guests the ability to write out a message that is printed on a gift certificate with the guests' names, message and amount of gift and what they selected to give towards.  The certificates look something like this and they can include them in a card:

So what do you think?  Have you decided to go a similar route?  Did you do any unusual type of registries for your own wedding?

Headin' down unda, mate - the Honeymoon!

Today's post is supposed to be about our honeymoon...but now I almost think it might be the honeymoon that isn't.  :(  Not sure what is going to happen to our honeymoon plans as Mr Fix It and I have had a rough weekend.  On Friday night, his work van broke down and he is concerned that if his motor is totally shot, it could be a HUGE expense (we're talking thousands of dollars) that would put a big wrench in our honeymoon plans.  Especially since Mr Fix It is currently looking for more work.

As I mentioned before, he is a self employed flooring contractor who installs any and all types of floors, showers, countertops, etc.  He does full bathroom and kitchen remodels as well and this business has kept him well provided for for many many years now.  In the six years we've been together, I have never known him to not have work lined up other than when he got in his surfing accident at the end of 2008 and couldn't work for 4 to 5 months.  So here it is, the beginning of 2010, our wedding year.  And Mr Fix It's end of the financial burden of wedding related items consists of my engagement/wedding ring, the remodel of his house before my daughter and I move in and the honeymoon.  That's it.  The honeymoon is his big huge responsibility.

So when he told me last summer that he wanted to take a trip to Indonesia I was pretty excited.  Mr Fix It is a surfer:

Yup, that's my little hottie.  And that's him in Indonesia...he loves to surf there and has made several trips.  And so since the wedding is mostly 'mine,' I knew that the honeymoon would be mostly 'his.'  :)  Then he mentioned spending two weeks in Indo.  Now I am all about laying on the beach watching him surf while I get some oceanside massages and do some cool shopping (Mr Fix It says the deals on designer things in Indo are insane and prepare to shop til we drop!)....but I didn't think 2 weeks of that type of lifestyle was going to keep me very satisfied.

I quickly put my mind to work and thought about the fact that I have always dreamed of going to Australia...and you can surf there...and Mr Fix It actually lived in Australia for several months many years ago.  So I suggested that maybe we go to Australia for a week and then go to Bali for a week...so that way we both get to go somewhere we love and do things we will enjoy.  Mr Fix It jumped on the phone and had booked our flight within minutes...and the cool thing?  He was able to use his air miles for the trip from LAX to Brisbane and from Bali back to LAX.  So he only had to pay about $740 for the entire airfare (from Brisbane to Bali and some taxes).  Yea us!

So here is our trip on a map:

The wedding is on a Friday night.  We will spend Saturday hanging with family and then head to the airport about 8 or 9 pm on Saturday night.  We'll take the red eye from LAX to Brisbane and arrive first thing Monday morning.  We'll spend 7 days in Brisbane and then on Sunday we head to Bali where we spend another 5 days before heading home on Saturday.  So all in all, we leave April 17th and return May 1st. 

As I mentioned, this is all up in the air now as our financial status is taking a huge hit with unexpected expenses (medical and auto related) and a lack of income on Mr Fix It's end.  There's more to come on this honeymoon post, like sharing some of the hotels I am hoping we will get to stay in and where we'll be...so stay tuned. 

But for now, do you have your honeymoon plans set yet?  Where are you heading and for how long?  And who/how did you decide on where you would be going?