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So I'm getting married today.

Crazy.

As I'd said in an earlier post, with the beginning of a new life ahead of me, I'm beginning a new chapter with a new blog. This one will still be up and running, with links to the new blog and links to previous blogs, and the new blog will have links back here and to the others.

It's very exciting, I know.

Also exciting? I'm marrying my very best friend later today. In about... 16 hours.

This weekend's been fantastic so far. Friday night we met up with Kris Cowen for dinner and general fraternizing until midnight. Saturday I did most of my packing for our trip to Hawaii before heading to my bachelorette party. I wish I had the pictures, but I've left my camera at the other apartment. :( Maybe I'll have time on the plane to go through them.... no, wait, I'll definitely have time on the plane to go through them. Trips to Hawaii ain't quick.

My bachelorette party was great! We had a photo scavenger hunt in Coronado, dinner at Miguel's, then back to the apartment for gifts and talk, and then a sleepover with my very favorite girls. Thank you, Jenna, Sonia, and Mandy for sticking it out slumber party style. Sleeping sucked, Dear John sucked, but the bonding was great.

Dragged my behind off the couch this morning to meet Chris and his family for brunch (see earlier picture (sent from my brand new Samsung Reality (which is awesome))), then it was off to the nail salon. Want to know a secret? I hate getting my nails done. It hurts me. I don't know if my feet are just super sensitive or what, but I swear my toes are bright red when they're done, from all the pain they've caused me. Today, I literally watched the woman tear off a piece of my skin. My skin! And they take that little flat tool and jam it over your nail and straight into your toe. Seriously, I'm all tensed up the entire time. I wouldn't do it at all except that Chris has put in a request for me to girly it up a bit occasionally.

Also, it always takes so long.

And that's why we were late for our rehearsal. We actually had to rehearse on a completely different lawn than our actual ceremony lawn, because there was another wedding going on there. We had to improvise some, since our lawn includes a fountain and a view of downtown San Diego, but I think it's going to work. And I just need to say I LOVE our wedding party. They are so much stinking fun! It was just such a great atmosphere of joking around and watching fish jump out of the water. (I was pretty much mesmerized by this the whole time we ran through the first time, and turns out my bridesmaids were too-- stay tuned for an awesome picture Cody caught of them watching the fish-- anyway, if I spot a fish jumping out of the water tomorrow, I'll completely lose my focus on the wedding-- sorry, babe.) Jenafer was amazing coordinating everyone, and Justin was a great minion. ;) Jessica was the perfect flower girl after take one (where she booked it the first five yards or so), and it's all just going to be so perfect!

Then it was off to the dinner at BJ's. We had the entire outside area closed off just for us, and they've recently updated the outside; it was completely awesome. They have new loungey booths now that really give it a party atmosphere. We had all you can eat pizza and appetizers, and Chris and I table hopped because we weren't sure who we should sit with. So we chose everybody! When we passed out our wedding party gifts, Chris explained the story behind the 365 book (which we'd given to everyone) and how it was by Ryan showing me the book, and me thinking this Chris must just be an awesome guy, that we were all there tonight. I just love our love story!

Then it was back home to finish packing, ogle over the presents already piled in the garage (presents!), and try to analyze why my tooth still hurts (there's no more tooth, for crying out loud!). Then Chris left with Kris and Becky to go stay the night at their time share, where the boys will be getting ready, and I continued prepping for the day and the trip at the condo, where us girls will be primping.

So... I should be going to bed... but I don't know if I'll be able to sleep. ;) See you on the other side!


Remember, the new blog is www.lovelikeapolaroid.blogspot.com. Don't know when the first post will go up, but please keep checking; I promise it will come eventually!

Favorite friends!

Brunch before the craziness begins!

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I Heart my Dentist

Last Sunday I posted about the horrible timing of my wisdom tooth suddenly deciding it was time to make itself known.

Short version:

Saturday night my teeth started hurting WAY more than it usually does. My upper right wisdom tooth has bothered me off and on for the past few years; usually I pop an Aleeve, maybe rest for half an hour until it kicked in, and I'm good to go until the next time.

I knew something was wrong this time by how intense the pain was this time and by how the Aleeve was not helping at all. I did finally manage to fall asleep that night, only to wake up the next morning, Sunday, with the exact same predicament. Much more pain + no working medication + continued pain even after a full night's sleep + holiday weekend = me calling up Kaiser for an urgent care appointment to get me some pain killers until I could see my dentist.

Kaiser was very nice to me. They gave me Amoxicillin, in case of infection, and Vicodin, to keep me from wanting to rip my own ear off from the pain.

I learned an important fact through this experience: Vicodin makes me tired. So very tired. I felt like I had not nap all the time. Including at work. It was horrible how out of it I was all week.

Luckily, I got in to see my dentist on Thursday afternoon. I was pretty apprehensive going into the appointment; after all, what possibly good way could all this work out? They were just going to tell me I needed to get my wisdom tooth out, I would tell them I a) don't have the money since insurance won't cover crazy things like that yet, and b) am getting married in a week and can't be miserable from getting my wisdom teeth out.

It pretty much went down like that. Except, after my dentist and her assistant got over the shock that I was getting married next week, my dentist is all "all right, we'll just do it here."

Excuse me?

Which is what I said.

She explained my tooth was neither impacted nor fully underneath the gum, so she could easily take it out. Right then and there, in fact.

There was still the matter of insurance however, and my dentist had the receptionist call Aetna to discuss matters. She came back in to let me know I only had to pay the deductible and $40. What?!

So I got my wisdom tooth out.

It took all of ten minutes to numb me up, a minute to put in a movie (Marley & Me, because my dentist's office rocks), a few minutes to clean my teeth while we waited for the numbness to settle, and about three minutes for that tooth to be gone.

All these years... who knew it was easier than getting a cavity filled?

It's been about five days since, and it still hurts off and on, so I'm still on the painkillers. Had a really great nap on them yesterday. I try not to take them when I'm working, because nodding off in front of students isn't the greatest example, you know. Yesterday I started chewing on the right side of my mouth again; you never realize how much you miss using your whole mouth until you can only use one half.

So hopefully I'm back to 100% and off the Vicodin by this weekend. As you all know, it's going to be quite a busy and eventful few days. :)

Picture recaps

We tried on our rings the other day. I love that Chris is so excited to finally wear his.

Becky did an AMAZING job crafting our rehearsal dinner invitations!

Chris did a remodel of the bulletin board, this time will all our loose wedding paraphernalia.

Wedding party gifts, wrapped and ready to be given!

Picked up my dress from David's Bridal on Friday night. It's amazing. I forgot how much I was in love with that dress until I tried it on again after alterations. The things so big though, the only place to keep it is hanging all awkwardly in Chris' closet. Don't worry- he's not going to peek. I tempt him on a regular basis and he flat out refused to look at it before the 20th. :)

Working out some kinks for our photobooth. This was taken around 9pm against the garage door. With a gigantic outdoor spot light.

Time for some recaps!

Coming up:

The dreaded CSET.
Trip to the dentist.
Finishing up the wedding planning.
Relaxing?

Thirteen days away and...

... a bridesmaid dress has gone MIA

... the CSET looms ever closer

... my top right wisdom tooth decided RIGHT NOW is the time to make a fuss about still being up there



Here's hoping to a better 'twelve days away.'

Bachelor(ette) Day

Today is Chris' bachelor party day. Which means I am a bachelorette for the day.

Basically this means I can eat whatever I want, watch whatever I want, and do whatever I want. Sometimes it's so pesky having someone else to plan activities around. Am I right? Married people? ;)

I ate lunch when I felt like it.

I watched NCIS, Season 7, Disc 1 when I felt like it.

I did wedding planning stuff when I felt like it.

My theme for today was "relax, but still accomplish some stuff." I slept in. Lounged for a bit. Got ready. Went to the store to get some snacks (i.e. Pepsi Max and german chocolate cake because I can), hung out with Jenna for a bit, hung out with Aaron for a bit (since he is just two doors down now), ate lunch, read some blogs, worked on our candy buffet decorations, studied some math, watched some NCIS, tried to convince my mom to get her hair done for the wedding, (tried not to argue with my mom about getting her hair done for the wedding), made labels for our candy buffet, took a long hot shower, and began studying transformational geometry. (Somewhere in there I ate the german chocolate cake.) And now I'm taking a blogging break.

Mmmmm. It's nice being a bachelorette for a day.

Maybe I miss him a little.


Moving on!

I'm really excited with how the labels for our candy bar turned out. I was a little over the decorations earlier today when I wrapped the jars in yellow ribbon. (It's really hard to wrap round objects with linear objects.) I almost decided screw this! I don't have to do it if I don't want to. It was my idea anyway! And then I pictured Chris coming home and asking me why the only wedding planning I did all day was wrap ribbons around jars and eat german chocolate cake while watching NCIS. So I got my behind in gear, grabbed my handy dandy crafting supplies and got to work.

They came out waaaaaaaaaay better than I'd expected. I printed out the word labels on white circles surrounded by yellow squares, then cut them out with my 2" round punch, keeping just enough yellow to give the circles a border. Surprisingly, I only had to do two test prints to get the right size. From there I used my Slice (which is working again, thank you very much, Making Memories) to cut out 2.5" flowers from the yellow geometric paper I designed (isn't it cute? Maybe someday I'll be a famous scrapbook designer).

And... now it's back to our regularly scheduled programming of CSET studying.

Week Recap

What we've been up to:

(Don't worry: he's a lot more chipper about wedding plans than this photo reveals.)

A brief history of blogging

For people who've been following me FOREVER on this blog (when did I start? 2004? I think that was when this whole internet fad hit the nurse's station at camp.)

Anyway, you've been with me through xanga. (Dang. Remember xanga? Is anyone on xanga anymore?)

Then you followed me to blogger, into The Puzzle Box. We stayed there for a few years, before I dwindled a little bit on the blogging. You know, there was a lot going on then. Graduating college... and... hmmm... the heck did I do after I graduated college?

Not sure. I didn't write it down. But six months later I started another new blog. That blog is this one here, though back then it had a different name...

What's Your Story? was soooo 2008. It was simple. Fun. I really got into my groove that year.

In late 2008 I discovered the amazingness of Spring Awakening. And one of their songs inspired both my 2009 goals and new blog:

Nope. I didn't do sadness that year. Mostly because in January 2009 I re-met the OSF, and you all know the rest of that story.

Halfway through 2009, I realized, hey! My header's kind of dark. I need to change it up a bit:

I guess this would be called 2009 2.0? The name of the blog was still Don't Do Sadness, just with a lighter, friendlier look.

Then this year I switched it up to the blog you all know and love:

So what's in store next for the smallblondeone's blog? Well, it's been awhile since I changed up the URL, and I was thinking since I'm getting married and starting this whole new life anyway, anyway, then maybe I'd just go ahead and start a whole new blog for these crazy new adventures?

Things. They are a changing.

Be prepared.

2010. A new blog.

The adventures of thesmallblondeone... the married years.

25 day countdown

At 25 days left (25!), here's how our evenings normally look:

He + computer ( + beer) = last minute wedding design.

She + computer ( + extra large coke) = math, math, and more math studying.


25 days!

"Napoleon goes over plans for world domination"

Alternate title: Chris pours over plans for wedding domination, 2010.

Photo Booth

Chris and I spent a lot of time in the garage yesterday, going through all our accumulated wedding stuff. The month countdown has come, and we're making our lists and checking them twice. Guess what? We're almost there. Pretty close anyway. And the weekend was very productive getting some forgotten or last minute items. We sorted things into categories (i.e., cake table, guest book table, candy bar, photo booth...), and played with some of the new items...

28 days to go!!!

Packing it up.

Due to the late arrival of summer this year, and the atrociously hot temperature in our townhouse these days, the only time I can pack without wanting to to die is times like this. Three a.m. Three a.m. has found me on the last few nights boxing up scrapbooks, clothes, and old memories. Seriously, I have lots of old memories. Like, bins of old memories. They range from photo albums to old camp staff notebooks to boxes of pictures to stuffed happy birthday bears. I am amazed at how much of my "stuff" is in the form of memories.

(I'm also amazed at how much underwear I have- certainly more than one person needs, and this is not helped by last week's bridal shower.)


(Can I talk about underwear on here? Will you guys stop reading if I do?)


(Please don't stop reading. I'll go back to talking about normal things here.)

So I've been sifting through my memories. And boxing up my present. And the future? It's kind of up in the air right now. Besides the obvious changes, that is. I'm marrying an amazing man. I get to spend the rest of my life with him. But where we'll spend our first year? What our house will look like? When we get to settle into our own space? That's all TBD. For now, we just know we'll make do at the condo, most of our things packed away in the garage for the real move. Whenever and wherever that will be.

We are at exactly 30 days now, and it's still so hard to believe that in just 30 days, everything will change. As I sit here on my bed, looking around at my half naked room, it's hard to imagine that in 30 days I won't be roommates with Jenna, Brittany, and Jen. I won't be waiting for Jenna to finish up in the bathroom at night so I can go in and brush my teeth. I won't stay up late watching Friends episodes with Jen. And I've seen so much of Brittany these past few years, what with living and working together, but 30 days from now I'll be gone and she'll have started her new job.

It's all so weird.

Also, weird? I get to live with a boy.... weird.

I now dream in numbers.

You know how bilingual people are often asked, "What language do you dream in? English or Spanish? French or Italian? Tagalog or ASL?"

Well, I have a new language to dream in: Numbers.

Apparently I have done so much studying for the math CSET recently, that the numbers have seeped into my head and begun setting up camp to come out in my subconscious. While my brain should be resting.

The night before last I had a dream that I was calculating direct and inverse variations. There was nothing else in my dream but me + math. And I was super intent on these problems. It was imperative I finish these problems, fast, or someone was going to die or something. To my surprise, I suddenly found myself awake, sitting up in bed, still fervently trying to divide out 7 for the constant of variation, k. After a couple disorienting moments I realized 1) I was in bed, and 2) I did not have to finish the math problem. Everything would be okay, even if I didn't solve for k at this particular moment.

It was highly amusing.

The moral of the story is this: The CSET is taking over my life.

(In fact, I've got my headphones on right now while Jeeves whispers sweet nothings of matrices in my ear.)

My first ever bridal shower

Sunday was my birthday! And as is tradition at the Woodman classroom, we had a celebration!

But not just any ol' birthday celebration, mind you. I was surprised with a birthday/bridal shower luncheon on Monday!

My co-workers seriously rock. No wonder Woodman is the most coveted classroom.

So I headed into the kitchen around 12:15, prepared for my birthday lunch, as as I rounded the corner I saw... (da, da, da!)... a Victoria's Secret bag. And I was all, "wha?" and Brittany was all, "welcome to your birthday bridal shower!" And I was all, "the guys are leaving, right? Right?"

Nope. The guys stayed.

We had a big ol' potluck with lumpia, fried chicken, couscous, a fruit bowl, and two cakes... one of which was my favorite Hans & Harry cake.

Brittany even facilitated bridal shower games to play! She passed out clothespins to play the "you may not say the words bride, groom, wedding, dress, or Chris" game. I lost real fast on that one, using Chris' name of course. But Dave ended up winning his very first bridal shower game from it.

We also did the "how much do all these things cost?" with a bag of cleaning supplies... I was exactly $1 off that game, P.S., with a guess of $16.76. Darn that Rachel girl for taking that prize from me.

(But it's okay: I got to keep all the stuff in the bag. Chris and I will have a clean house!)

Co-workers Lora Lae and Baby Rachel (Woodman inside joke):

Our resident math wiz, Domingo, hanging loose at the shower, and sporting his clothespin:

Michelle, who is my specific teacher, and who is amazing!

Me opening up various presents and cards. I got a birthday card signed by the students and a special card delivered by two of my favorites, plus the Woodman staff card. I was a little, ahem, wary of opening my Victoria's Secret bag in front of the guys, but Michelle assured me it was fine. In it was a gift card... thank goodness. ;)

I also got something from our registry: our two glass mixing cups. Our kitchen is well on its way. And, my fellow scrapbooking co-worker Lora Lae also gave me an adorable scrapbook for wedding pictures, in our specific wedding colors! Loved it!

But by far, the best picture of the day goes to Baby Rach:

Thank you, Woodman friends! I love working with you all and couldn't ask for a better place to spend the majority of my day!

It's [almost] my birthday!

Thought you all should know. :)

We are getting quite popular.

As photographers, that is. Got an impromptu shoot tomorrow with Chris' little cousins from Europe, as well as maternity shots next week for another member of Chris' extended family. Not to mention our pending family picture dates with the Aubreys, Holzes (Melody? Is that the plural of your last name?), and Bests. And then we're going to have to go on hiatus from taking and editing pictures to go take and edit our own on our Hawaii vacation.

Tonight we're working on pictures from Kayla and David's wedding on July 17th. We've been playing around with some softer effects, which is definitely new for me, as I tend to go very sharp and contrasty. But it's also super fun trying out some new stuff, even if trying to maintain the style all the way through is proving quite difficult.

I'm still working on my set (I take a lot of pictures), but Chris has finished his and is now setting up his most recent blog to showcase. His pictures are amazing. I really truly love that we share this passion together- it really makes spending hours and hours going through pictures so much better when there's someone next to you doing the same thing. And it never hurts when you look up to find him looking at your screen in admiration at whatever photo you're on. :)

Anyway, if you want to see some great wedding pictures (especially the first one- I pretty much fell in love with him all over again when I saw that first one), check out my almost-husband's latest blog. (And, yes, that is a new blog site he's using- read his previous post about breaking up with blogger to find out why he switched.)

45

And that's all I'm telling you.

:)

Tuesday was an emotional roller coaster.

It really was. First my car broke down again. Chris had to come rescue me at the school's Old Town office. I started crying when he came to get me. I hate that my car just randomly dies on me. It makes me nervous to drive, and that's a sucky thing to be nervous about. I hate that Chris had to take time out of his work day to come get me, even though I know he didn't mind.

(I also hate the bill for fixing my car, which my wonderful pre-husband took care of without batting an eye. I love my pre-husband.)

Then there was family stuff that Chris and I talked about on the ride over to Goodyear. And I cried again.

Then we got the bill, and I told myself I would not cry.

Then on the way home, Chris said, "This'll cheer you up." And he pulled out our brand new, just printed, beautiful, wonderful guest book from the backseat of his car.

It was really beautiful and wonderful. Chris designed it, and while I at first gave him a hard time for all the extra work he was putting into it, I'm so glad he went with the inspiration. It looks amazing, and I know everyone's going to love answering the prompts we picked for the pages.

Then we got back to Chris' and made dinner together and talked about more family stuff and I was getting all emotional again, until Chris came downstairs and instructed me to close my eyes, that he had a surprise. I did. When I opened them, he was holding his phone in front of my face, with this picture on it.

And seriously, how can you be sad when you see this cutie in her flower girl dress? This is the first time we're even seeing it in real life, and it looks awesome, if we do say so ourselves.

After that was a great chat with Sarah. Let me tell you something: Sarah and Chris video chatting is the best thing ever. I generally try to catch it on my own webcam, sneakily facing my laptop screen toward Chris and his computer because he just gets so darn funny and animated when he's talking with Sarah.


In fact... I just went back through some of my funnier videos of "Chris Chats with Sarah," and I decided maybe I'd whip up this little piece for the general amusement of our viewers at home.

Mmmmm... that makes me feel better.

46

We are packing up to wazoo over here. And over there. At both of our places. In the hopes we will have a place to move into by the end of this month.

We're still not sure if the whole house is going to work out for us, but we know God's going to work out something for us eventually. And if we have to live at Chris' condo with roommates for awhile, so be it! At least we'll already be packed when it's time to go to our own home!

Mail Call

Okay, so now that we're less than 50 days out, this whole wedding thing has started getting pretty exciting. For instance, we now have really fun mail on a regular basis. Yes, they are in the form of RSVPs, but you look at our awesome logo and tell me you wouldn't love seeing five or six of those postcards in your box everyday.

We (read: I) make a game out of it too. Either Chris grabs the mail on his way in or he hands me the key when he gets home and I throw some sandals on to go get it myself. Then we keep them upside down until Chris pulls up our guest ledger, and begin flipping them over one by one to see who's coming. So far, I feel I'm kicking Chris' butt in RSVPs from my side, but he points out that there are still a LOT more blank spaces on his to fill.

We've filled up about half our expected spots- now comes the point where we find out if we sent out way to many invites than we can comfortably seat!

House Update

You may have remembered this post from a couple months ago... yeah, we didn't get that place.

Here's what's been going on on the house hunting front.

1) We put an offer on a place in Chula Vista (the nice part, thank you). They already had an offer they'd just accepted. Boo.

2) We put an offer on previously mentioned place in El Cajon. We put our offer in the day after it went on the market. We offered $10,000 more than the asking price. We had the place in the bag. In. The. Bag.

Without going into too many details (since we are now so over getting incredibly screwed by Bank of America), the bank who owned the property passed it on to one rep to clear us to make our offer official. One rep. One clearance. Should have taken a day. We heard nothing for two weeks. Finally got a new BofA rep. He got our offer finalized by the next day; bank told us they accepted an offer just the day before. Bank of America's selling agent told us we even had a higher offer, but thank you to Miss Doesn't Do Her Job At all at Bank of America, nobody won.

(The moral of the story is if you try to buy a place through Bank of America, go in and sit in the office of whoever has your offer and stare at them until they do their job. This is my plan for the next time this happens.)


3) We found an A-freaking-mazing place that was CHEAP. Completely remodeled, amazing layout, high vaulted ceilings, everything brand new... we fell in love in one night, sent in our offer the next morning. They already had a cash offer, but the guy wasn't responding to a counter-offer by the seller. We offered $15,000 more. The selling agent made us feel very optimistic. Another one In The Bag. We waited out the weekend to hear the good news that we had the place.

This past Monday: They went with the cash offer.

I prepared myself for Chris and I have to have roommates for our first precious months of marriage.

4) We put another offer in on Tuesday, for a place we'd looked at while we were quite confident we would be getting the remodeled place. It was a great place, but we didn't really bother with it, since we were already pre-decorating our newly remodeled condo that was In The Bag. When we found out we'd lost the other place, Chris put in the offer just because... why not?

On Tuesday afternoon Chris called me: "Um, they sent us a counter offer."

Me: "What does this mean?"
Chris: "Basically if we accept it, we start the process of actually buying and no one else can beat us out."
Me: "Okay, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I've been hurt too many times before." (Dramatic hand raise to the eyes.)

We found out Thursday we got the place. It's a pretty nice 3 bedroom in El Cajon with a brand new huge kitchen.

BUT!!! I won't believe it until we have the keys. I went digging around online and found all kinds of horror stories. Allegedly (Chris' favorite word) we will close at the end of August and the place will be ours. Our main hurdle we foresee is that the place won't appraise for how much the seller is asking for it, in which case the bank won't give us the full loan, and the seller will have to be okay with dropping the price. Hopefully, the seller isn't completely blind and has looked at the comps in the area as well, and isn't really expecting what he's asking... if he is, then hopefully he'll realize that no one else will be able to get the full loan amount either.

In conclusion! We are in escrow. We could move in beginning of September. We could lose the place and have to start the search all over. We are not discussing where the TV will go, what carpet color we want, or the fact that we could have a library in one of our 3 bedrooms.

But crossed fingers and prayers and good thoughts are completely welcome!

Shutterfly

I'm trying to find the best picture hosting site, and right now I keep coming back to Shutterfly. Still can't link to one picture at a time without having the whole slide show thing come up, but it's useful when you've got 204 pictures!


Justin + Jenafer + Zoey

Click here to view these pictures larger

52

Spent an evening in the garage together. Chris showed me how he perfectly cuts and mounts pictures onto foam board for the most professional look possible. Our poster board pictures look awesome, stored in the garage with the rest of our yellow and gray stuff.

While Chris went on to another project, I took out all my collected apothecary jars, some old boxes, and tissue wrap from Michaels to structure my beloved candy buffet. Isn't it going to be fabulous? :)

53: No wedding plans, but some kickin' guacomole dip

During my pre-marriage period, I'm trying to build up a repetoire of go-to dishes I can make for my beloved husband when he comes home from a hard day at work. (Thus far my repertoire is very limited, but I'm trying to kick it up a notch, since I now have two very cute kitchen aprons, as well as a slew of kitchen supplies on their way in the form of wedding presents.)

On Sunday we went grocery shopping for the week, and I had my list of ingredients for four specific meals I wanted to try out. One was a chili recipe that called for a side of guacomole dip, that I planned to make for Thursday's dinner. Well, Thursday came around, and we found ourselves making dinner around 9pm (thank goodness for time stamps on my pictures, or I'd never know when I made dinner!). A little late, obviously. So Chris ended up making the chili himself, while I concentrated on the guacomole dip.

The chili was dubna* (Ryan/Chris slang for 'Decent... but not amazing.' Yes, they know the u and b are backwards.) But the guacomole dip was heaven**.


*Not Chris' fault: the recipe wasn't anything spectacular, and he makes a mean white bean chicken chili to prove his skillz.
** Again, not my fault: I was just following directions, and Chris was the one who instructed me to squeeze the heck out of some limes to throw into it. And to throw in some garlic salt. He knows so much more about cooking than I do!

So much to do...

I need to study for my math CSET.
I need to edit Kayla's wedding pictures.
I need to go to the post office for international stamps.
I need to re-work my budget with Chris.
I need to think of ways to make geometry fun for my kids.
I need to schedule a photo shoot for the Bests.
I need to pick out wedding day jewelry.
I need to go through all my stuff and prepare to pack.
I need to start my first TPA for the credential program.
I need to update my blog more often.
I need to finish my pictures from San Francisco.
I need to take more pictures of the wedding planning process.
I need to get in shape.
I need to find a father/daughter dance song.
I need to explore Hawaii via Google maps for the optimal vacation experience.


But first I need to make Chris dinner.

Hmmm..

Just when I give up hope that we'll be able to have our own house before the wedding....

... we get counter-offered.

...very interesting

Weekends are not for fun, they are for wedding planning

As Chris has been saying recently, we've got all the big stuff taken care of. Now it's on to the little stuff that should be super fun. Except we're so burnt out on wedding planning we don't want to do it anymore!

Shopping for candy should be fun.

Picking out jewelry and a veil should be fun.

Pouring through our hard drives for reception music should be fun.

And sometimes it's fun. But most of the time it kind of feels like a chore. Homework, if you will. And nobody likes homework.

We had a good day on Sunday, actually. Did some out of the house planning, which may have been what we needed to end our funk. (And when I say 'our' funk, I usually mean me, and my funk, but since we're about to be married we share everything now. Including funks.) We headed down to the Coronado Community Center with our sketches of where things were going to go the day of, just to make sure we hadn't accidentally decided the cake table would go in front of a door or something. We stood out on the lawn and counted how many seconds it would take our party people to get from Point A (hidden behind a fountain) to Point B (the front). We counted pillars on the patio to determine how many Chinese lanterns we would need. Good times.

After that we stopped at David's Bridal to check for Jessica's flower girl dress. See, I had made a mistake in wedding planning. I had assumed a flower girl dress wouldn't need to be picked out and ordered months before even the wedding dress had been picked out and ordered. But apparently that's how the wedding world works. If I ever write a book about my misadventures in wedding planning, this will be one of the first topics: Find a flower girl dress before you even bother with your own dress.

So we were resorting to hoping the dress we liked, in the color we liked, in the size of our flower girl would magically appear in stock at our David's Bridal, since it was too late to order it with a guarantee of getting it before the wedding. It wasn't there. But a manager was. And she said she'd called the manufacturere "just to see if they happen to have any extra in stock." Guess what? They did! So we paid $15 more and it will be here the end of August, probably before the bridesmaid dresses, ordered months ago, will get here.

After that we went candy shopping for the candy bar. Okay, that was fun.

So we got a lot done this weekend. And it was nice being out and about with Chris, especially when we were able to achieve all three goals we set out for.

But I'm going to be stoked the next time we have a weekend that starts out with, "What do you want to do?" "I don't know. What do you want to do?" "Let's do nothing." "Okay."

It will be a good day. :)

Funny of the day

While I was flipping through the spiral notebook I use to jot down math notes in my CSET preparation, I came across a quote I had jotted down in the car one day.

Chris Trementozzi on Jordan singing Green Day's American Idiot: 

"It just doesn't work! It's like Strawberry Shortcake trying to... to... push a kitten off a cliff!"

Invitation Party! {Updated}

So yesterday we planned to have a date night-in while we addressed envelopes for our invitations. Here's what was on the schedule:

1) I was going to make dinner out of the random things in Chris' fridge (thrown together meal = beef, tater tots, and steamed edamame, in case you were wondering... actually wasn't bad).

2) We were going to run down the street to Yogurtland and stop at Vons for mixers (only got the hard stuff right now, if you know what I mean, wink, wink)

3) We were going to pop in our latest Netflixed DVD, Duplicity, and park it in front of the TV with yummy mixed drinks, envelopes, and gray Sharpies for the rest of the night.

4) We were going to finish ALL of our envelopes before the night was over, dagnabit!


So what did we actually end up doing? Everything on the list... except of course for the invitations... which were the most important part... and the whole point of our night in...

We didn't even start 'em.

So tonight! We've enlisted the help of Best Man #2 to get 'er done! So it's a different sort of date night- kind of out this time, but really in, since we'll be at Ry's. There's a possibility of mixed drinks (cause it's Ryan house), and maybe dinner. Probably no fro yo this time. Hopefully Ryan can keep us motivated to see this task through!



UPDATE!

The invitation party went splendidly! We're all done, with the exception of just a few addresses we still need. Ryan was a huge help; he stamped every envelope and RSVP and stuffed while Chris and I wrote out addresses. What a best man!!!