Ready For Some Football!!

Zach and I have been looking forward to September all summer long and no its not because our wedding is only 1 month away, its because football starts! Sports this month will rule our television, not only is college football and NFL starting, but this is the month before baseball playoffs and my Rays are in a close fight for AL Division Champs! Now in our house I have learned that there is no choice, everyone will be a Michigan fan. Diesel even got a MI bandana to wear from Colleen for all the games and last week we bought a huge MI flag to fly outside our house so all our neighbors will know we are MI fans! Last week MI played Conn. and we had Daren, Jenn, the kids, Gene, Sarah, Ben, Jaime, Marc and Jenny over to watch all the games and it was a blast! We had MI themed cups, plates and even cupcakes! Afterwards we had a huge bonfire outside and made smores :)

This week MI is currently playing Notre Dame, now my best friends Aimee and Ben are HUGE ND fans and Aimee (my maid of honor) has been trash talking with Zach over text message throughout the whole game! Currently MI is still up 21 to 17 and I hope they win cause Zach sounds like he's about to have a heart attack right now!

Bridal Shower & Bachelorette Party!

Well I have had a week to recover from one of the best weekends ever! Last Thursday, Beth and Aimee came to town to start off the weekend of festivities for my Bridal Shower and Bachelorette Party! It was so great to have my 2 best friends in town to spend time with, I miss them so much! The shower was a 50's housewife theme and we got into it! We all wore 50's style dresses, had 50 style decorations and Colleen, Zach's Mom, got the cutest 50's style theme cake by the lady who is doing our wedding cake. The girls even put together goodie bags for each guest to take home equipt with things every good housewife should have, such as rules for being a good housewife, a spatula, cleaning gloves, a manicure set and a comb. One of the best parts of the weekend was that Zach's Aunt Kim came and suprised me for my shower! She came over to our house Friday night with Zach's cousins Benjamin and Blake and I was so happy we got to see them! Zach and I also were really lucky and received some wonderful gifts!! My 2 favorites though were a quilt my mom made for me and Zach. She worked so hard on it and wrote the best note to explain the colors on the quilt and even has our name and our wedding date on one of the squares, it meant so much to me that my mom would put so much time into that for us!! Also, I receieved my "Drager Ring" All the ladies in the Drager family have a ring that they all wear and Colleen gave me mine and even though Zach and I aren't getting married for a month, I feel like an official Drager when I wear it!

The next part of the day was my bachelorette party, and the girls did good! We got a hotel room at the Hilton in downtown Charlotte and had fun getting ready, then we met my mom, Zach's Mom, Aunt Kim and my Aunt Faye for dinner at Rock Bottom. Throughout the evening the girls had a bag of "dares" that I had to do and one from the picture above is that I had to find a guy to practice walking down the aisle with. Luckily we had a great waiter at dinner who was willing to participate! After dinner, we went out for a girls night in Charlotte and it was so great to go out with my best friends and just have a fun night!! Last weekend made me realize how lucky I am to have such wondeful friends and family who made last weekend so special for me and I am so thankful to all of them!!

Spa Day!!

This past Tuesday Colleen took me and Erin to a spa in Asheville called the Grove Park Inn and boy was it nice!! We had massages first then had the rest of the day to relax around the pools. The outside pool was beautiful and overlooked the mountains, the indoor pools had music under the water and there was a steam room with a temperature of 140 degrees! The pictures above are all from the Grove Park Inn, the actual Inn itself is just beautiful! We had such a fun day and topped it off with a stop at Coldstone on the way home!

This next week is one I have had circled on my calendar for a long time, next Saturday is my bridal shower and bachelorette party! My best friends Aimee and Beth are getting in on Thursday and my mom and Aunt are getting here on Friday! I am looking forward to a fun girls weekend!

2 months away!

2 months from tomorrow I will be a Drager!! Things around here have been good, we took a break from wedding things after we sent the invites out and got the rest of the inside of the house painted. Also, back on July 27th, we celebrated Bella's 4th Birthday, as you can see above, me and Diesel threw her a party and unfortunately Zach was gone at work so he missed it.

We also have been using our grill every weekend and Zach is quite the grill master :) We made ribs, grilled pita with hummus, grilled potatoes and a nice salad for dinner last night. Now you may look at the photo above and say "wow, Zach and Jaclyn must have had people over for dinner" Nope! If you know anything about the Drager's its that they like good food, make amazing meals and have PLENTY of food! Zach has of course inherited that trait and I am reaping the benefits (plus having to do additional workouts! :)) Today Zach also decided to start canning. Now this is a new process to me as he likes to call me "city girl" I must admit, I was kinda grossed out by his canning process, mainly because I don't like okra and putting a hard boiled egg in a can just looks gross. Zach however was in heaven canning for over an hour in the kitchen! Well Zach's off again tonight to TN and right now Diesel is looking at me with his ball in his mouth so I better go play with him outside :)

Wedding Invitations, 2nd Anniversary, House Projects, Oh My!

We finally got our wedding invitations out in the mail this past Friday (picture above), so be on the lookout! Now that those are out, I will work on our programs and candy bags for the candy bar (my mom ordered 81 POUNDS of candy for the candy bar!! She is the best!). Also, one of the things I love about Zach is that he always wants to work on something around the house. I love that he always wants to work so hard for us and better our house, but I think right now with all the wedding stuff we are working on might not be the best time to repaint the inside of our house. Well we decided to do it anyways and decided to do the wall with the fireplace a dark color (picture above) and we are doing the other walls a lighter color. Now that we've started I'm really glad we did do it and we had a fun day today figuring out paint colors and then actually painting. Although Diesel and Bella are completely confused as to why our furniture is all pushed to the middle of the room and they can't get to their spots on the couch. Also today, August 1st is our 2 year anniversary! Zach got me the best present, a soft serve icecream machine!! We used it tonight and it was so delicious!! Zach said he'd never seen me so happy, I told him he could have saved himself alot of money and just bought me this machine instead of a ring! :)

Just kidding, I'm glad he got me that ring, I can't believe that 2 years ago I got so lucky to have Zach ask me out on a date and now we are 2 months away from being married!!

Summer Fun

Zach and I just got back a couple days ago from our MI trip, it was a blast! We got to visit with all of Zach's family and friends and I even got to meet Zach's 2 uncles that I hadn't gotten to meet yet so that was really nice. A highlight of our trip was my first Apple Fritter from Erie Orchard. Is it sad that I am still thinking about that apple fritter? It was just SO good! Diesel did really good on the trip, he was FANTASTIC in the car rides, on the way home it took 15 hours and he was just perfect! The picture of him above is him exhausted from playing so much on our trip :)
Zach's cousins Amber and Leigh are in town right now and yesterday we went up to the mountains with Colleen and visted Grandfather Mountain. The picture above is of us in the park on the way to the top of the mountain. Once we got to the top it was so windy and there is a bridge you have to walk across, well we got to the other side and it started to rain on us! Luckily the rain didn't last long and it ended up to be a beautiful day. We then took them to the candy store at the Mass General store, although Colleen and I were the only two that got bags of candy, imagine that! :)
The last picture above is all the veggies I picked from our garden tonight!! We are having Erin up for Leigh and Amber's last night on Friday night and I think we are going to make homemade pizza with all our veggies, yum!
In wedding news, I'm going Saturday for a practice run on my hair, I haven't decided how I want it yet but I'm excited to go see what they can do with it! Also, our invitations have arrived! Be on the lookout for them around the beginning of August!

Wedding Planning is in FULL force!

My mom came up to visit us over the long 4th of July weekend and we went full force into wedding planning! Even Zach got into it, you can see him and my mom in one of pictures above at the event rental place talking over our centerpieces. I have to give him credit, he has had some really good decorating ideas and even came up with one of our centerpieces! My mom, what a trooper! I'm seriously not kidding when I say she should be a wedding planner, we got so much accomplished when she was here, we both feel alot better and prepared for the big day that is less than 3 months away!!! We did fit in a little non-wedding events and the one picture above is of Diesel watching fireworks. We met my brother and his girlfriend Sarah down near Lake Norman and watched a good show. Diesel did good, the finale kinda freaked him out since it was so loud though. The other picture above was of him getting a bath the day his grandma came to visit, he likes to look his best when we have company! This Thursday Zach, Diesel and I are going to go up to Michigan!! I am so excited to get to visit with Zach's Grandparents and the rest of his family up there!! We will stay until Monday and that is gonna be our last trip until our honeymoon so we are ready!! Check back after next weekend and I'm sure I'll have some good pictures to post from our trip!