New Years in Nashville!

We hope y'all had a fun and safe New Years celebration! We spent NYE in Nashville at the 1st Annual Bash on Broadway! It was amazing! It was a huge street party in downtown Nashville, sponsored by the Hard Rock Cafe, that closed off the lower half of Broadway. There was 5 hours of live music including Rodney Atkins and a countdown with an 80 foot guitar drop at midnight followed by a firework show! It was quite the event; downtown Nashville was packed! We have never seen so many people out, especially with the temperature being so low! Check out our NYE video we took with our new video camera (thanks Mom and Dad Mallahan!)

We are so excited for 2010! So much has happened for us in the last year, moving to Nashville and all... but so many huge events in our lives took place in the last decade;

• We met in Spring of 2001
  
• Erica went on a mission trip to Romania


• Confirmation


• Graduated from Highschool


• Shared some of the best times of our lives with cousin Robby Hawley


• Mitch recorded his 1st demo CD


• Graduated from College


• Got Married April 11, 2008


• Got our 1st puppy, Baker :)


• Moved to Nashville
  
• Not to mention all the many great memories with family and friends, Zach and Cheri getting married, and welcoming their 3 beautiful boys to the world. Celina and Patrick getting married. Meeting our very good friends in the Navy. Spending as much time on the mountain snowboarding as possible! All the wonderful vacations we've taken with family or friends to California, Oregon, Arizona, Philadelphia, New York, Nashville, Whistler, Coeur D'Alene, Leavenworth, Spokane and Mexico.

We have been so blessed to have so many fun and beautiful memories! We are excited to see what the New Year and Decade will bring! God Bless!

Our 1 Year Anniversary

April 11th, marked our 1 year anniversary!!! It's so hard to believe that it's already been a whole year since our big day. But we've had a wonderful first year of marriage filled with lots of love, excitement, adventure and beautiful memories. We spent our special weekend in beautiful Gatlinburg,TN located in the Great Smokey Montains (about 3 1/2 hours from Nashville) We had an amazing and very relaxing little mini break and really enjoyed exploring the east side of our new state.

Here are a few pics of our trip....

The Little Sparrow Cabin

On our Special Day

Mitch on our balcony...

he wrote a new song over the weekend... It's FABULOUS and called

"Heart On Fire"

We hiked to the beautiful Laurrel Falls in the Smokey Mountains...

(Baker got soaking wet and filthy, but had SO much fun)

It was a short trail... about 3.5 miles

Laurrel Falls (Not as pretty as the waterfalls from back home) :)

We attended St. Mary's Church for Easter Mass

And had a delicious Easter brunch at the famous Pancake Panty

Downtown Gatlinburg

My first show IN Nashville

Monday 9:45pm at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel in northern Nashville-

So as we hurried back from Graceland (a 3 hour drive) my excitement for singing that night was growing. Earlier in the day I was very inspired as Erica, her Mom and sisters and I walked the estate of the late great King, Elvis Presley. It was an amazing experience and it was very fitting that I would, later that night, be playing a show back in Nashville.

The show went great. I was filled with with emotion with having my in laws in town and there to watch me perform my first show actually in Nashville. George's wife, along with some other friends (Shawn, Eric and Melanie) were able to make it as well and there was a small crowd of people there drinking and enjoying the music. I felt at home up there on the stage. I was very disappointed that we only were allowed to play three songs, since we have five down, (I could have sung 15 if we were allowed).

Well this is just the beginning, so we will slowly work our way into a larger set, bigger venues, and the hearts of many, many fans.

Tornado Warning!

Mitch and I experienced our first big Tornado Warning in Nashville this last Saturday... and my lucky mom and sister's, who were visiting from Washington State, got to experience it as well.   Saturday started out as a typical Tennessee spring day, mild and warm with some overcasts.  Mitch, my mom & sisters and I spent the day in downtown Nashville.  First we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, then we checked out some souvenir shops followed by spending time in the Honky Tonk bars on Broadway, which are all ages until 7pm.  (Tootsies, The Stage, etc...)   We were just about to leave, and were snapping a few photo's outside on the sidewalks when all of a sudden a loud siren started blaring above us.  It was a Tornado Warning!  Then, literally within a minute,  it started pouring down rain, with thunder and lightening.  It was insane how quickly the weather changed!

My sister actually caught much of the excitement on camera, 

check out these videos... they're pretty funny!

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffk3h_iGYg

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at7ILMArAQU

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K727b18FiXA

(To check out the videos Part 4-7 go to my sisters you tube channel: WorldsFavPesticide's)

This was definitely one intense storm, though it could have been much worse.  The streets and sidewalks flooded, and the thunder and lightening was so loud and close, but thankfully, no tornados formed.  :)  Hopefully we won't have a scare like this again for a long time. 

It's been 2 months!

We've been in Nashville for two months now! It's unbelievable how times flies. Nashville is such an awesome place to live, we thought we'd share some of our favorite places so far...

The Centennial Dog Park - Baker has a blast when we take him here and we enjoy it because we get to meet and mingle with a lot of people/couples.

The Crow's Nest - A really cool sports bar/restaurant about a 1/2 mile from our house. It's one of our favorites! We like meeting Shawn and Renee here for drinks on Friday evenings after a long week of work.

Whole Foods - A grocery store only a 1/2 mile from our house as well. There is only one problem, they do not sell any soda, meaning no Mt. dew! Other than that it's the best grocery store ever!

The Bluebird Cafe - The legendary venue... the Bluebird Cafe is also very close to our house, within a 1/4 mile. We really enjoy attending an "In the Round" event where 4-5 talented singer/songwriters take turns performing their own music/songs as they sit in a circle facing each other in the middle of the cafe. It's a really neat experience.

Pei Wei - A fantastic restaurant close to our house serving delicious Asian cuisine at really reasonable prices.

St. Henry's or The Cathedral of the Incarnation - No matter how busy we are, (with work, unpacking/organizing, or cleaning) when we go to church here in Nashville it's so peaceful. More peaceful than usual. Maybe it's because we don't know anyone and therefor have no distractions allowing us to completely focus on God. But attending mass here in Nashville is like escaping from everything. Going to mass is nice because it's familiar, and calm and peaceful. It's really nice to share that together Sunday mornings.

Our house - Our cute little townhouse feels more and more like home everyday. And we love it even more now because the leather sectional we ordered finally was delivered this last Wednesday! :)

First Show in Nashville

On Fat Tuesday, I played my first show in Nashville... well it's technically not considered Nashville, it's a town 20 minutes south called Franklin. The venue is called Dan McGuinness. It was an open mic night and, in order to play that night, you have to show up early and sign up. We played four songs. Three were Kayle's and two were mine. Oh yeah, I guess no one really knows about my little acoustic band yet! Well let me introduce you to them. Back in October, I found a couple of guys in Nashville through a craigslist ad that they posted. We hit it off on the phone and when we moved here we finally got together and practiced. They are both very talented guitar players and Kayle has an arsenal of great songs.

We have been practing about twice a week and we plan on playing more and more as we learn and write songs together.

George, Me, and Kayle
Brittany and Kevin came and visited us from San Antonio and came to the performance. They are trying to move here in the next couple of months!

Finding a Church

So far Mitch and I have checked out 4 different catholic churches here in Nashville. We enjoyed all of them and they are all lovely in there own way, but one of the churches we don't plan on attending on a regular basis. Early one Sunday morning Mitch wanted to find a 10:00 or 10:30 mass, since most are scheduled at 8:30 or 11:00, so he went to http://www.masstimes.org/ and discovered that "Mary Queen of Angels" had 10am Mass, so we had planned to go there. We left our house around 9:45, typed the address into my phone's navigation and headed to church. When we made our final turn and arrived at our "destination" we realized that it was not the destination that we expected. We were at the Mary Queen of Angels Church... the only thing was that it was located inside the Mary Queen of Angels nursing home! We started busting up laughing and almost left to find a different church, but instead decided to stay since we were already there and mass was about to start. We walked into the little chapel and found that there were very few seats left. But we did find two seats in the 2nd row on the far right side, so we quickly walked over and sat down. It wasn't until halfway through the mass that we realized that the first two rows in front were reserved for handicap people! Haha! Then we felt even more out of place! And to make things even worse, after mass, on our way out we were politely stopped by three different elderly people telling us that we weren't supposed to sit where we sat. Of course we apologized and thanked them for letting us know, but we felt horrible and all we wanted to do was leave! Haha! There was one thing though that Mitch and I really enjoyed about Mary Queen of Angels and that was seeing a few different elderly couples attending mass together. We both noticed these older couples and talked about how one day we hope that will be us. :)

So far we feel that St. Henry's is a good fit for us. St. Henry's has a K-8 catholic school and many of the parishoners are young families. But we still have a few other churches that we would like to check out before officially joining one church.

Driving to Nashville!

Hi Y'all! Greetings from Nashville! We thought we'd share a little about our drive accross the country, our 5 day, 3,200 mile drive to our new home!

The morning of January 3rd was a hard moring.  Saying goodbye to our parents, sibling and close friends for the last time in our driveway, getting into our SUV and driving away as they all stood there waving goodbye was heartbreaking.  It was so so hard.  But we did it.  We put our lives into God's hands and made the leap, trusting that everything will work out and fall into place.  And so far it has! :)

Our Roadtrip Itinerary:

Day 1 - Bellingham, WA  to  Medford, OR  -  540 miles

Day 2 - Medford, OR  to  Barstow, CA  -  717 miles

Day 3 - Barstow, CA  to  Albuquerque, NM  -  690 miles

Day 4 - Albuquerque, NM  to  Fort Smith, AR  -  724 miles

Day 5 - Fort Smith, AR  to  Nashville, TN  -  500 miles 

It was a long drive but we had fun along the way.  We were both so excited the entire drive over, yet it still kinda felt unreal to us that we were actually moving.  We would driving and listening to music and then all of a sudden one of us would turn to the other and say, "Can you believe that we're really doing this?"  Then we would both bust up laughing talk about how unreal it felt.  The weather was great.  We didn't get even 1 ounce of percipitation our entire drive over.  No rain, no snow.  So that was good for hauling the U-Haul.  We drove for anywhere between 11-13 hours each day and when we started feeling tired we turned on one of the three books on CD that were given to us as a going away present (Thanks so much Tylor and Bethany!)  They really helped the time fly by, especially at night.

Here are some pictures of our trip...

Our Expedition served us well! We had a very comfortable drive over. It was perfect for us... well except for the gas mileage.. we spent a total of $690 on gas to get over here.

Mitch drove the entire way... we had planned on taking turns, but Mitch felt more comfortable driving (which was fine by me) :) He did a great job and even managed to squeeze the Expedition and trailor through a Taco Bell drive through. That's pretty good!

We saw some amazing sunrises and sunsets, and it was really neat seeing the lay of the land and how it changes from state to state. This picture was taken in Northern California.

Baker was such a good boy!  He was so easy going the entire time.  He never whined, he ate when we fed him, drank when we gave him water and pottied when we walked him.  I must admit i was worried about him and the long drive, but he was perfect.  I can't imagine moving here and not having him.  We think that he made the move over here a little easier.  

We love him to death!

Baker sleeping in his little doggy car seat.  We are happy we bought one of these, even though at first we thought it was a complete waste of money.

Snow in Arizona and New Mexico!  

We drove south down I-5 and East on I-40 (old Route 66) to avoid winter weather and still had to drive through the snow.  It wasn't bad though, just a pretty dusting of snow.

Just snapping pics at a gas station.  We liked stopping at "Love's Travel Stops"  and looked for them when we needed to stop.  They had the best bathrooms! 

Crossing the Mississippi River and you can see Memphis in the background.  

Almost in Tennessee!

Tennessee Welcomes You!

The Tennessee State line, in the middle of the Mississippi River Bridge.

We were SO excited to finally arrive in Tennessee!  Even though we still had a 3 hour drive to Nashville we were ecstatic to be so finally be in our new state and so close to starting our new lives in our new city.  This is Mitch's frist pic in his new home state.

My first pic in my new home state! 

We're home!  Us turning into our condo complex for the very first time!  

The Georgetown Condominiums of Nashville!

Our new home! Unit 9B!  We LOVE it!  And Baker loves it here too!  The condo's are in a park-like setting so there are lots of grassy areas around for Baker to run and play in.  

Plus there are ton's of dogs that live here in Georgetown.  It almost seems like we wouldn't fit in if we didn't have a dog! :)

We are so happy here in our new home!  It's not perfect... it's older and it's smaller, but it's perfect for us, its all we need.  We feel so blessed to have found this place, and are so thankful and that our friends (Shawn and Rennee) were able to check it out for us and help us lease it before we even left Washington.  We can't wait for everyone to come visit us.

Our New Address:

Mitch and Erica Mallahan

5025 Hillsboro Pike Unit 9B

Nashville, TN 37215

Our Honeymoon!

After much debate and indecision to where we should kick back and enjoy each other when all the wedding fiasco was over, we finally had settled on an exciting and exotic honeymoon location on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico!   Neither of us had been to Mexico, so it seemed fitting that we should get to experience a new place together for the first time, while still being able to enjoy the sun, water, and each other.  We spent 3 nights in Cancun and 5 nights in Cozumel. 

So here is a little day to day of what we did:

Day 1: Arrive in Cancun!! We arrived mid-day and grabbed a cab to our hotel, The Gran Melia, which was located in the middle of "the strip". Checked out our awesome hotel and went for a swim in the beautiful crystal blue warm water, layed on the beach and enjoyed some drinks. Mitch had his first "Tacante". Then we enjoyed a fabulous seafood dinner at a nice restaurant (we forgot the name)

Day 2: We slept in late and then explored "the Strip". After sleeping in and enjoying a fabulous breakfast at the hotel cafe, we took the bus down to the shopping area of the strip. We walked through tons of shops mostly window shopping but we did buy a few little things. Mitch got a really neat cross necklace made out of leather, wood and sand.

One thing that I really enjoyed about walking around in Cancun was that all the sales people in the shops asked us if we were on our honeymoon, they would call out to us, "Honeymooners? Yes?" and after we nodded, they would say to Mitch, "Ahh, you a lucky lucky man!" Haha! Mitch heard that over and over that day... It was great.  :)

And that night we had dinner at the Cancun Hooters, I've always wanted to go to one so we did... it was a lot of fun, and to my surprise really there wasn't that much cleavage. :)

Day 3: Mitch's 25th Birthday! We toured the Mayan Ruins of Coba! It was an adventured filled day where we hiked, zip lined, repelled down into an old sacrificial water hole and explored the Mayan Ruins of Coba.  Then later that night we explored the Cancun night clubs to celebrate Mitch's B-day.  We had a blast!

Day 4: Headed to Cozumel!  We got a taxi and went to Playa Del Carmen, where we grabbed a quick bite at a little Mexican restaurant.  This is where we had the BEST fajitas ever while being serenaded by a great Mexican guitar player who sang "Hotel California" for us.  Then we caught the 2:00 ferry to Cozumel.  We arrived half an hour later, grabbed another cab and checked into our Beautiful hotel Cozumel Palace. We explored our all-inclusive resort and laid by the pool for the rest of the day.  We had a really good BBQ dinner out by the pool and later that evening Mitch and I were talked into participating in what is called "Couples Night".  This is something the Resort organizes and it's where 5 couples compete up on stage out by the pool.  They had us playing silly games, dancing and answering funny trivia questions.  It was alot of fun and we actually tied for 1st place!  We got a bottle of Tequila and 2 red Cozumel Palace hats. :)  The audience LOVED Mitch and after that night everyone at the resort called Mitch "Tequila Boy".

Day 5:  We called room service for breakfast, as we did almost every morning, taking advantage of the all-inclusiveness of the resort.  We then walked around downtown Cozumel and did a little shopping.  We also enjoyed a Starbucks!  I was so excited.  It was nice to have my tall, double, extra caramel, caramel macchiato!  We then returned to our hotel to snorkel off the amazing coral reef and relax by the pool for the rest of the day.  This afternoon by the pool is where we made some new friends.  We Met 3 different couples, from all over the US, who were staying at the resort as well.  We all had dinner together at the Mexican Restaurant at our Resort (included in the all-inclusive package) and enjoyed the company of our new friends.  And after dinner Mitch gave a little musical performance for everyone in the hotel lobby after our new friend Bob kindly asked the Mexican Band playing if Mitch could borrow one of their guitars and the stage for a couple minutes to play some of his songs.  They smiled and happily cheered Mitch on as he played about 5 of his songs.  It was awesome! 

Day 6: After breakfast we went to town and rented a moped.  Then we headed to the Tequila Factory about 20 minutes away, where we sampled about 15 different kinds of delicious tequila. Our next stop was the Mayan Ruins on Cozumel.  We spent a couple hours touring these ruins and saw probably 50 different wild iguanas out and about.  It was really neat. We left the ruins and continued driving around the perimeter of the island, we cruised and cruised and stopped a couple times to take a stroll on a couple beautiful secluded beaches.  Cozumel is such a beautiful place!  We then returned to our hotel and met up with our Resort Friends to Celebrate Angie's 30th Birthday.  We all went to dinner at the Japanese Restaurant in our hotel (included in the all-inclusive package) and had a great time. 

Day 7:   We found a beautiful Catholic Church in the outskirts of downtown Cozumel and went to mass, it wasn't fancy but was nice.  There were tons of children there, and all the kids sat in the front section of the church without their families. The boys were all on one side while the girls sat on the other side.  We had never seen that before.  The mass was in Spanish, naturally, but we were able to follow along just fine, well, for the most part! It felt really good to go to church together on our Honeymoon. 

Then we went spent the afternoon at Playa Bonita, a beautiful white sandy beach, where we were served food and drinks and swam in the beautiful blue water.  After getting a little too much sun we headed back to our resort.  We freshened up then enjoyed a nice dinner, just the two of us, at the Italian Restaurant in our resort.  Then we went outside and hung out on the patio and Mitch, aka Tequila Boy, participated in "Karaoke Night" which was alot of fun to watch!

Day 8: We went Scuba Diving!  It was a first for both of us and it was amazing!  We had so much fun!  We had a half hour individual training lesson on how to use our gear then we went out just the two of us with our guide for an hour of diving.  The deepest we got was 35 feet, but that was good for our first time. 

After scuba diving we met some of our new friends, Bob and Angie from Nashville, at a little restaurant on the other side of the island called "Coconuts" for lunch.  It's an awesome little restaurant with amazing food that we highly recommend!  Then we jumped in their little old purple convertible VW bug and drove to a beautiful light house on a quiet beach.   Then we observed wild alligators from an observation deck.    

Day 9:  We woke up, had breakfast, packed up our stuff and went snorkeling one last time off our hotels reef.  Then it was time to leave the little island of Cozumel.  We headed for the Cancun airport and flew home.

We had an amazing honeymoon!  It couldn't have been any better.  And we hope to go back to Cozumel again some day soon! :)

Beautiful Memories

Beautiful Memories was the unofficial "theme" of our Wedding. It was the title of the wedding song that I wrote for Erica, and played for Erica (for the 1st time) at our reception. Because that was the title of my song to her, "Beautiful Memories" was printed on the CD's that we had made and handed out at our wedding and it was also printed on our wedding programs. And in all actuality our wedding day was just that, a beautiful memory, it was a day that neither of us will ever forget. It seemed like we waited forever for the day to come, and then when our "Big Day" was finally here, it went by way too fast. The past eight months have gone by fast as well. Which is why we are just now sending out our thank-you notes. J (our apologies... but apparently according to wedding etiquette now-a-days you have up to 1 year!)

Here are a few pic's from our Special Day

The Church we got married in, Sacred Heart in Bellingham, WA

Our Wedding Party

Awwww

Mr. & Mrs. Mallahan

To see more pic's from our Big Day click on the Wedding Photo's link in the side column.

Thanks for checking up on us! We hope you're all doing well.