Earthquakes, Etc.

Yes, as many of you know, we experienced an earthquake this morning. I awoke to the shaking this morning at about 4:30 when a stuffed animal on a shelf above my bed fell on my head. Let me tell you it was a very strange sensation. The house was literally shaking back and forth as if someone put it on rollers and was jostling it. It wasn't very strong, but it made some things in my room rattle and woke most of the family from a dead sleep.

Let me tell you, though this was a scary thing. The first thing that popped into my head, after the initial "Is this an earthquake?" reaction was my beloved new house. I was thinking, "This is it. This is the beginning of the big earthquake on the New Madrid they've been talking about for 50 years. Oh goodness, if something happens to my house I have to fork out 15% of what it's insured for as a deductible. We can't afford that! Where are we going to live? Okay, Stephanie, just calm down. Pray." 45 minutes later I made it back to sleep and was relieved this morning when I found out the epicenter was in Illinois and it wasn't the "Big One" scientists have been predicting for ages now. Phew!

Now I can officially say I know what an earthquake feels like. Strange, very strange indeed.

Oh, and the etc. part of the title of this post is just that I FINALLY ordered my garter from The Gartermaker. It will be mint green with a lavender bow. I'm very excited to see it!

56 days and counting!

One of those weeks...

I'm sick. I've been sick since Saturday night as I mentioned before. I successfully overcame the stomach flu and was making my way back to eating normal meals when the congestion started. Now instead of barfing, I feel like I have a ton of bricks sitting on my chest and I sound like a boy going through a voice change when I talk. Yeah, the kids in the math class I was teaching yesterday thought it was quite funny. Not really.

Ahh... yesterday. Yesterday, I woke up sounding like an emphyzemic man and was tired and groggy. I blame this for backing into a trailer when leaving for work. Perfect. Not only was I sick, hungry, and running late for a fun filled day with 14 year olds, but I back into a trailer. Cue Dad. Dad brings good news... we should be able to buff the damage out. No dents or anything, and wouldn't you know it? The trailer is fine. Good, I've avoided a $500 deductible to fix my car.

Now I'm sitting in class blogging just to hang on to consciousness and praying for health again.

Look on the bright side, it's a beautiful day, tomorrow is Friday, and this weekend we're hoping to hit the zoo and I finally get to meet all of my "cyber friends." Let's hope this illness doesn't progress to Whooping Cough or something. At the rate I'm going, it wouldn't surprise me.

In the mean time I'm basking in the coming summer weather. Check out the next 5 days! We're almost hitting 80 next week! That's my kind of weather.

What a week!

This past week has been crazy! I'm going to go through it step by step, so prepare yourself for a gigantic post!

• Going back to last Saturday... Rob and I's wonderful friends Chris and Samantha got married! It was beautiful! The wedding was at St. Peter Church in St. Charles and the reception was at the Foundry Art Center, definitely a cool place. I'll let the pictures do the talking, though...
  

Sam's SIX flowergirls and FOUR ringbearers! There was a lot of cuteness walking down that aisle!

Sam with Jenn (left) and Lisa (right) her bridesmaids

Cutting the cake!

Beautiful bouquets! There was a red rose in each of their bouquets in memory of our dear friend Meghan who died in a car accident last year.

Rob and I with Chris and Sam

• Sunday I got to see another good friend again. I hadn't seen her in almost a year and she's pregnant! Well, she must be, considering it was her baby shower. It was adorable. She's a bit of a country girl and it was a camping theme with camouflage and even a fake campfire. It was so much fun! She is adorable too. Just makes me all the more jealous of pregnant ladies! I'm definitely not having kids for a long time though, so don't get any ideas!
• Last week started the race to get my homework done. I'm wanting to finish all of my "pre-assigned" stuff for school so I don't have to think about it anymore. I didn't do too bad, but I had a LOT to do, so I was good and didn't blog while I was doing homework. It was tough though!
• Last Friday I went to the Drunken Fish for the first time with Chris and Sam and Jennifer. It was so good to get together with them and talk about her wedding and mine coming up! I'm so jealous right now! I want to be married.... Sigh... soon enough! So the Drunken Fish was not at all what I expected. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but for some reason I was disappointed. The food was pretty good. I didn't get Sushi since I've yet to bring myself to try it, but I got a beef noodle bowl which was fabulous. I have to say, though, I found the restaurant to be a little dirty in general - hidden by the low lighting. It was small and I had a hard time understanding our waitress, but they served Pepsi, which made me pretty happy... :o)
• On Saturday I continued the race to finish the homework before going to the City Museum for Ryan's birthday. This was a definitely fun, but I have my reservations. So this place is supposed to be a big playground for adults (well, kids too) right? Cool, I can't remember what Tumble Drum was like, time to relive my inner kiddo. Enter me, ready to play. So, I'm feeling pretty brave, going up really high and crawling through tubes I'm way to big for while my knees are crying and decide to follow the crowd. Big mistake. They all decide to go into a tunnel to which we have no idea where it leads, nor what comes after the "descent." After the "descent" is a VERY dark, VERY narrow, VERY short tunnel that was NEVER ENDING. I'm not really a claustrophobic and not really afraid of the dark, I mean I tend to concentrate more on spiders in the dark, small places than the places being small and dark. Not this place. It was terrifying. Well, take a look for yourself: this is lit up by a flash, imagine it pitch black. Yeah, not cool at all. Especially when the floor decided to go up and make the dark, small tunnel even smaller. Yeah, wow. Warning for future visitors - don't descend the thing that looks like a well. Its super scary. But I'll share some other fun pictures from the night as well...

Eric serenading Ryan on the piano...

Denny and Rob with the creepy mask...

The gigantic kaleidescope

Here it is. THE HOLE. Yeah, imagine it pitch black, totally not cool.

Ryan the birthday boy and his girlfriend Stephanie, they are so cute!

• On Sunday I had a shower! But, first let me backtrack to Saturday night after the City Museum. Cue barfing. Yup, all night. Good old mother nature decided to bestow upon me the gift of the stomach flu the night before the shower I've been looking forward to for weeks. Come Sunday morning I was feeling a little weak and slightly nauseas, but I forced down some applesauce and put on a happy face before heading to the shower. Once at the shower, I was okay. I didn't get to enjoy the lunch at Java G's but I got a lot of awesome gifts and got to see some family I hadn't seen in a while! Say a little prayer for Rob's Aunt Billie though. She passed out when the shower was ending and hit her head on a table. We had to call and ambulance and it was definitely a scary moment. From what I understand she is doing fine now, but they are running tests to figure out why it happened.

So concludes my week of chaos... now we are two months from the wedding! Let the two months of chaos begin! I have a bunch of stuff to do still, but everything is coming together now and I can't wait! By the way, I'm still working on the house...

Dum, dum, de, dum...

For my wedding addicted readers, or, my recovering wedding addicted readers, I thought I'd make a post about the progress with the wedding. After sitting idle for quite a while with wedding stuff, it's kind of exciting that I've finally reached a point where I am a little more active in the wedding planning process. Why? Because I'm almost two months away!! 10 weeks! Time flies so fast. I can't believe that I've been engaged for a year and a half. But, through it all, I still can't wait for it to be here!

Saturday, my lovely friend Sam is getting married which is making it all the more real for me. I'm so happy too that mother nature has decided to give the world some relief from her incessant goal of recreating the flood that only Noah survived to give her the perfect spring day. 65 degrees and sunny! Woo-hoo! Who could have asked for a better day? I'll definitely be back with pictures of this event next week!

Back to my wedding... I mailed out invitations today! But, this seemingly joyous experience has been marred forever by the US Post Office's decision to charge me for the extra 0.1 oz. that my invitations weigh. That's right, remember my earlier post showing a picture of my lovely invitations with their nice purple stamps sitting so pleasantly in the corner? Yup, they are now accompanied by a lovely 17 cent stamp showing the most beautiful, and majestic, of animals. A ram. Yes, you heard me right, a ram. See for yourself...


Now, don't get me wrong. I think I've been pretty good about not flipping out about stuff with the wedding. I mean, I was fully prepared to buy the American flag stamps because I thought the pretty purple ones cost more. But, I'll admit that after all the work I put into the invites and how perfect they looked when I was finished, I was thoroughly disappointed when they weighed in at 1.1 oz requiring me to fork out another 17 cents a piece on ugly stamps to ruin my perfect invitations. Regardless, I'm so happy to have crossed this milestone! Invitations are out! Let's hope the RSVP's start rolling in! And for those of you near and dear to me reading this, yes, I need a response from you even if you think I know you're coming! I already have my mom and dad's, yes, I have a respond card from those I live with, that means I need one from you too!

Next. I had my first dress fitting last week! It went awesome! While I was there, I picked up several of the bridesmaids dresses and saw the flowergirl dresses! They look awesome! The wedding will be gorgeous. Check out this post and this post to see the dresses...

Today, I discussed the ceremony music with Russell. This is something that has kind of sat in the back of my head for a long time. Much to the disappointment of my dear mom, who dreamed of me walking down the aisle to the Bridal March... I don't think that's what we'll be using. I'm not sure but here's what I've got it narrowed down to for the day. For before the ceremony while the guests are finding seats, I'll be playing a selection of songs from my all time favorite movie, Pride & Prejudice.

If you haven't seen this movie, see it. And, while you're watching it, listen to the music! It is gorgeous!!! For the processional I've got it narrowed down to three:

1. Hymne by Vangelis
2. The Theme Song from Legends of the Fall
3. It's Your Day by Yiruma

I think all would be awesome. We'll see what Rob says....

The recessional will be a surprise though!

Finally, Rob and I have to set up our pre-marital "counseling" with our pastor. I'm kinda nervous about this. Obviously, I have no idea what to expect. I hate not knowing what to expect. I suppose it must be done though...

I'll leave you with some wedding related funnies tonight...

Don't Register at Sears

Rob and I made the registries for our wedding sometime in January. We decided, obviously, on Bed Bath and Beyond because they are absolutely the BEST place to register. But we wanted to give our guests an option and after all the bad things we heard about Target and Macy's we decided to go to Sears. Big mistake. I should have known from the beginning. I've had nothing but trouble with them and I've about reached the point of canceling my registry there and going somewhere else. I really hate doing that though because the invites are already out for my shower on April 13th. Let me tell you about my troubles...

• The printer: It's broken. Every time I go to the Mid Rivers store, I look at the registry kiosk and the main computer is off and the printer doesn't work. Um... how are my lovely guests (who are so graciously taking their time to buy me a gift) going to see what I registered for if they can't print it off? So, I politely bring this to the attention of an associate who tells me they have a work order out for it to be fixed. They've told me this for weeks now...
• This brings me to point number 2. The associates. So, upon realizing that the printer doesn't work I promptly go to the nearest service desk in search of an associate to help me. There is no one there! So, now (I'm thinking of my guests, here) I have to trounce through the store in search of someone to help me which is not something I, as a valued customer should have to do, and have to wait for them to find someone to help me.
• Now, point number 3. I went to Sears today to see if my comforter set was on sale. Come to find out they are discontinuing not only the blanket I registered for but also the bath stuff. In fact they, and all the other stores within driving distance were out of it. They didn't notify me of this? How am I supposed to magically know that half the stuff I registered is being discontinued? They were supposed to notify me of this...

Sigh...

Invitations - Check!

Rob and I got the invitations ready to go on Saturday! I thoroughly enjoyed this project when we started, I loved the idea of making them all look really nice and putting them in the envelopes and checking off the names of the people getting them one-by-one. Until we were about 3 hours into the process and only half-way done. Thank goodness I only have to do that once in my life. They turned out fantastic though and I'm only going to show a picture of them completed in the box because I don't want to ruin the surprise for anyone... ;)

Now I just have to send them out!

I'm done with vacuuming...

I went to my house today to check the mail and put my trash can back in the garage. While I was there I decided to do a couple of things I had been meaning to do: organize the folders for the desk, tape off the bathrooms for painting, and vacuum the floors. Well, I organized the folders, no problem. Then I vacuumed. I'm done with vacuuming. At the risk of grossing you out, I will show you why:

This is the last round of unclogging the carpet fiber from the vacuum cleaner. I do this at least once usually twice every time I vacuum and I have to change the bag every time I vacuum as well. Ugh! I feel like I make a bigger mess vacuuming than cleaning up. But, I have to get past this point with the carpeting and I can only do it by vacuuming. :(

Argh.

Babies!!!

I love babies! So, this post is devoted to all of the babies in my life, furry and not so furry :o)

The second (human) love of my life: James. I've decided this will be the hardest part of getting married. James lives with my family right now and the thought of moving out, not being able to give him a hug and a kiss every day and telling him goodnight is horrifying. I will get through this, but nonetheless, he's my the reason for my love of being an aunt.






Isabella is very quickly making her own little home in my heart right next to James. At five months old she weighs in at a whopping 18 pounds of pure adorable chunky beautifulness. How can you deny this face? How can you deny that pudge? Ahhh...


And as for furry babies? We have plenty of that kind of cuteness to go around too!



Ahhh... I love my babies.

And, just because I have so many cute pictures to share, here are a few more:

James is currently potty training so he must entertain himself while waiting... don't worry, it's clean.

This is James in his tux for the wedding! Is he not adorable? He runs around the house saying, "I handsome." I love it.

And, last but certainly not least, a little sneak peak at the post to come...

My First Shower!

I had my first bridal shower last Saturday! It was so much fun! It was really strange being the center of attention, but I think I handled it pretty well. You can see my "problem" in a couple of the pictures.

Here is said "Problem:"
Okay, first, check out the fabulous cake. It was delicious! Now, if you look very closely you will notice the "problem." Right around my neck area. Looks a bit like hives... maybe like someone has just tried strangling me? This is what happens when I get nervous. I flush a wonderfully vibrant red similar to that of a tomato for all the world to see. This is my current area of worry as far as my looks for the wedding. Forget low lighting, I'll be glowing!

Anyway, back to the shower... I'll just let the pictures tell the story. I got some great gifts and got to hang out with some family and friends (something I don't get to do very often!). It was a blast and Jocelyn, her mom, and Ashley did a wonderful job!

I have another one in two weeks! Woo-hoo!!!

I feel like a horrible slacker.

I am hanging my head in shame as I write this first blog post in almost a MONTH. Yes, a month. What have I been doing? Well, wouldn't you like to know. I have spent the last month doing everything from painting my entire house (well, almost), setting up our furniture, having my first shower, starting on my invitations, attending the most fun and amazing bachelorette party ever, researching alarm systems and phone companies, and homework. Notice how homework is last on that list? Not only am I a blogging slacker (I haven't even stalked my most stalked blogs daily!), but I'm a total slacker of a college student. Prepare yourselves, ladies and gentlement. Miss 4.0 GPA my actually get her first "C" this semester. Why? Because I'm so not motivated! I have a house! I have things to do! Is studying for that midterm really that important? I guess it should be.

I'm going to touch on some random news and then sign off for tonight...

• I've printed off all the envelopes for the invitations (woo-hoo!) This took a ridiculous 3 days and I'm currently waiting on 4 addresses from my beloved fiance (whom I'm about to strangle) that I have so kindly reminded him to get daily for about 3 weeks. I'm also in the midst of deciding how to tie the ribbons on the invites... that will be fun.
• The bridesmaid dresses and flower girl dresses are in! Yay! I hope there aren't any problems!
• My house is almost entirely painted. I only have two bathrooms to do and possibly the third bedroom. I'm so done with paint. This is the main reason I haven't blogged... I can't bring myself to make my humungo before and after post until it's complete... will this ever happen? Yes, it will. At least this is what I keep telling myself. I promise the post is coming and you will love it! My house looks fantastic!
• I've found a full time job for the summer. Let me tell you, this is a relief. I'll be back at Westgate Christian summer camp working with three year olds all day. They are so cute! Well, they have to be, or I might be contemplating mass murder ... ;)
• I had my first shower! It was so much fun! My wonderful, amazing, fabulous, beautiful maid of honor threw it for me and she did a fantastic job. I'll post pics later.
• I hate new carpet. I have vacuumed my house quite a few times (this is much less than I would have liked...) and I have to change the bag in the vacuum cleaner every time I do it. I also have to stop about every 10 feet to pull out fiber balls to keep them from clogging the vacuum. This sucks... hopefully it won't last much longer. I wonder if getting an Oreck will help alleviate my stress...?
• I'm getting married in a little more than 10 weeks! WOW!! I'm still very ready for it to be here!
• Speaking of weddings... my good friend Sam is getting married in less than 2 weeks. I'm so excited for her! She had a bachelorette party a couple of weeks ago. It was a blast. We went to the Melting Pot (amazing!) and then back to her apartment to just hang out. I had so much fun! Very low key, exactly my kind of party.
• I'm tired.
• I'm a terrible blogger. I'm too freaking lazy to upload pictures from my camera to show you some of the things I've mentioned in this post. I apologize. At this point I have too many things to care about to care about putting pictures on my blog. Hopefully the facelift is enough to hold you all over.

Thank you all for your patience. I'm on the verge of losing my grip on all of things I'm holding so tightly to. As much as I want to let go, if I do, I'll lose it. Someone tell me it will get better after the wedding? I don't know how much longer I can stretch myself this thin... I don't even have time to blog anymore, which is my main outlet. Maybe as soon as we get internet at the house I can take my babies and escape for some much needed alone time and blog there... I need to get the invites out and caught up on my online class first... I also need to finish painting. :(

I need a vacation. Good night.

Here goes!

I've been tagged by Julia!

The rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged.

1. I have a perfectly irrational fear of spiders. I can't believe I just typed that word in my blog. I can't even look at the word anymore... it gives me the heebie-jeebies. I don't know where it stems from, but I need therapy or something. Although, if I went to therapy I would at some point have to confront my fear, right? Um... no. Not gonna happen. I couldn't even shelve the books at the library with pictures of spiders on them, hence the lack of pictures on this particular point. I can't kill them either. That's what Rob's for. :o)
2. I hate girls with small boobs. Okay, hate is a strong word. I am extremely jealous. I have huge boobs (I won't go into details), and I carry a very large grudge against those girls who can go to the store and buy a bikini (or wedding gown for that matter) without worrying about spilling out. Oh, and don't get me started on Victoria's Secret. Apparently they think that DD is as big as it gets. Think again! So, I'm stuck ordering my "granny bras" (because they don't make cutesy bras for us "full-figured" girls) from a website direct from the UK. We always want what we can't have, right?
3. I am very shy around new people. In fact, I think people often take it as me being stuck up. Rob has actually told me before that I have this air of being better than other people. I'm really not like that! I'm just totally uncomfortable around new people! Especially crowds of new people!
4. I have a thing for forearms. Yup, forearms. Most girls like the "eyes," or "the butt." Nope. I like the forearms. From the elbow to the wrist. There's just something about a man's forearm. Mmmmm...
5. I can't stand the thought of becoming a teacher. Actually, I can't stand the thought of practically devoting my life to teaching. Call me selfish, but I want my life to be devoted to my family and friends. Those who are near and dear to me. I don't want to "grow up" and have a full time job. I want to be a stay-at-home mom and a wonderful wife for my husband. I want to what I want to do with my free time, not what I HAVE to do. I'm setting myself up for disappointment on this one. I pray that God changes my attitude with this one (although I'll never give up my hope at being a SAHM).
6. I am ashamed at my lack on knowledge on all things historical. I'm hanging my head right now as I admit that I had no idea what the Cold War or the Cuban Missile Crisis were until college. I blame it on my schooling. Okay, I'm really good at memorizing all those dates and aced every history class I took, but did I remember it? Also, is it necessary to spend so much time on the Civil War and WWII? We never even broached the subject of Vietnam because we always ran out of time. Even after memorizing all those dates, I couldn't tell you who, what, where, when, or why about anything historical and it's sad.
7. Julia, this one's for you. I was the epitome of the geek in school. I graduated with a 4.3 GPA and was in the top 5% of my class (25 out of 500). I nearly killed myself with stress senior year and still missed hitting the top 10. I also got a 30 on my ACT. I'm pretty proud of this, but I'm a good test-taker. My GPA so far is definitely less dorky, as Julia would say, but it's still pretty up there (3.8). I decided there was more to life than good grades. Blame it on Rob, we met senior year....

I'm supposed to tag 7 people, but now that I'm finally catching up on reading everyone's blogs, I've found that most of the people's blogs I've visited have already been tagged... but nonetheless, here's mine: I tag Clary, Brigid, Yara, Lisa, Kristal, Amber, and Nikki.

Something's Missing...

Isn't there supposed to be a light at the end of this tunnel? We are officially homeowners and I wish I could convey to you just how good that feels. Now, my OCD/anal retentive side takes over and I immediately start making lists in my head of what I need/want to do at the house. For example, paint. We didn't need to paint right away but I HATE white walls and Rob agreed that we should do it before the furniture comes in a couple of weeks. We have a refrigerator now and I think we've about cleared all the junk out of my parents' basement. It gets harder and harder to leave! I constantly find myself trying to come up with something I need to do over there just so I can be there! Ahhh... only three more months until we move in! I'll post pictures on that later.

I really want to write a long-winded, picture-filled post about the past weeks events, but to tell you the truth, it's 11:00pm, I'm developing a sore throat, I just finished painting my gigantic 12 foot great room walls, and I'm exhausted. So, this post serves as a tiny update to my blog readers, my ever-so-patient blog readers, just letting you know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I'm just filling every spare moment with projects (while successfully neglecting my schooling) and my list of things to blog about gets longer and longer with every day that passes. So here is my vow to you: I promise I will make the gigantic post that you've all been waiting for with tons of pictures and the details of all of the project advancement with the house, just as soon as I stop being so project-oriented! Also, I've been tagged by Julia, and I'm working on that one too! Hang in there guys!

Oh, and by the way, there's only 100 days until my wedding!!! Well, according to The Knot's countdown. My Facebook and Google countdowns say 101 days. But hey, who's counting?

Where to begin?

I've finally found a moment in this unbelievably hectic last several days to post some updates for my blog readers. I guess I'll start from the beginning:

• We ordered our invitations Friday! One less thing I have to think about. I'm pretty happy though, we ended up getting all of our invitations and enclosures for under $250. Now I get to wait and see how good the colors look... I hate this part. Updates on that in a couple of weeks.
• Saturday was jam-packed with running errands. Rob and I started the day with getting my new cell phone (more on that below) which, I'm not joking, took 2+ hours. It was totally ridiculous and made the rest of our day all the more rushed. Then we headed to get something to eat because after two hours of dealing with idiots, we were ravenously hungry. After getting a very quick bite to eat, we went over to Ashley Furniture to get some ideas for what we want for the house. We walked around for a while, spotted a couple of things we liked, but didn't love anything. Then we hit Thomasville - way out of our price range. After which we went home, showered, and went out with some friends. It was a solid day of accomplishments and wasted time. Is that possible.
• Ahhh, my new phone. I'm in love. We ended up getting our own T-Mobile plan at Costco where they happened to be running a deal where if you get your own plan, you get a brand new Blackberry Pearl, for free! Yes, I got a Blackberry Pearl for free! It's very different from the cell phone I'm used to, mainly because it's more like a mini-PC than a cell phone. All the better. Stephanie LOVES new technical gadgets! Isn't she a beauty?
• Sunday, I enjoyed a wedding shower thrown by Rob's family for a relative of Rob's that is getting married in March. It was great to get together and see every one (for four hours!) and it makes me all the more excited for my own... ;)
• Monday I subbed for a copy clerk at West High School which led to a very interesting turn of events. I took the job last minute because I hadn't gotten anything for that day quite yet and I had subbed as a copy clerk a couple of times before and quite enjoyed it. I got there and discovered that the woman I was subbing for is going to be out for an indefinite period of time and they were searching for a long-term replacement. Turns out, I'm very available! So now, I'm a temporary replacement for a copy clerk working from 7-2 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays which is quite a relief. Best of all? I have wireless!!! So after I program in a bunch of copy jobs to what I have dubbed as "The Beast," I have time to wait and do things I normally don't have time to do! Like blogging and homework! Woo-hoo! Check out the machine I'm using... yeah, I know.
• Today we had our walk through at the house. My wait to see my completed house has come to an end, and it's beautiful! I'm so happy. I didn't get to take any pictures, but they have taken care of almost all of the issues we had mentioned before, and are working on everything else. It's all very minimal though and I couldn't be happier. No, I take that back. I could be happier if we were closing tomorrow, when we are supposed to close. Not on Thursday because Vantage home was late in getting paperwork back in on their end. I WANT MY HOUSE!!! NOW!!! It'll be ours before we know it, along with the payments... :o)
• We also went shopping for furniture today again. We stopped at Rothman Furniture after eating at Bob Evans after the walk through. We have found our furniture! I love everything we've picked out and now we just need to purchase it! Of course we're waiting until we close, but it feels good to have something picked out. Check it out! Our lovely bedroom set. Very simple and elegant and I LOVE the dark wood. Our kitchen table set. It's also a very dark wood (to kind of go with the cabinets in the house), counter height (love it!) and we got 6 stools - we may get two more.... And last, but not least... our living room set. We fell in love with this the moment we saw it. We'll be getting the sofa, loveseat, and ottoman. I love the deep seat and the color and fabric. We need to take some measurements and make sure it will fit in our great room. There shouldn't be a problem.
• The next few days should be just as hectic and I'm very much looking forward to it! I can't wait to get the keys to our house and park in my OWN garage! I'm so excited!!!
• Mom and I also began the search for a dress for mom for the wedding. It's proving to me much more difficult that we expected. More to come on that venture :o)
  

Snow Day Miscellany

A little miscellany to fill a lovely snowy day...

• I have a snow day today! While the morning part of it was self-imposed... Lindenwood actually called off the afternoon classes, people. I'm not joking. They haven't called off school for weather in 20 years or something like that. I'm glad I didn't make myself drive for my morning classes. Woo-hoo for snow days!

• I'm so sick of winter. This year has been especially bad with the multiple storms we've had. But overall I'm just tired of being cold. I want summer sun and 90 degree weather, people. Mmmm.... love it.
• We're coming down to the wire with the house. Rob and I bought a dryer on Saturday during Sear's appliance sale. Now all we need is a refrigerator, and furniture, and various other things... :o)
  

• Good news with the house: they fixed our carpet! The seam was REALLY noticeable in the great room and we complained about it, not really expecting much, but they fixed it! Our real estate agent said he's going to get us in on Saturday so we can walk through ourselves before the final walk through with Vantage. I hope so! I want to see it! Say a prayer that everything else that needs to be fixed, gets fixed.
• I'm currently researching home security systems. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm clueless as far as this is concerned, so any suggestions are welcome. Rob and I really want one when the house is done. I've checked out ADT and Brinks websites, so I'm going to make some appointments and talk to some people... we'll see.
  
• We DESPERATELY need to order our invitations for the wedding. We've been waiting until after the house is done because it's quite an expense, but now that I'm not on the loan, I can purchase them. We've pushed our time frame to the max... must do that this weekend.
• I'm officially the computer genius of my house. I successfully fixed the wireless internet on my brother's laptop, after Rob tried and failed. Go me!
• Deanna, who is doing the girls hair for the wedding, gave my hair a trim on Monday. She cut off about 2-3 inches. It should grow back nicely for the wedding. Right now though, I feel as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders (pun intended).
  
• We are approaching the 100 day mark with the wedding. I really need to get back in the gym. I've been successfully using the cold as an excuse to not go. I refuse to go outside in 10 degree weather in those thin gym pants when I'm miserable enough from the cold. But I really want to tone up for the wedding!

• I have a love-hate relationship with blogger. I LOVE blogging, but I hate putting pictures in my posts. First, it only lets you upload five photos at a time. Then getting them where you want and how you want them is a pain as well. But it doesn't help that I'm lazy and hate uploading pictures from my camera to my computer.
• I found out while watching Show Me St. Louis today that a woman that goes to my church is a pet photographer! She comes to peoples houses and takes pictures of their pets! I'm so doing this when we get the house to a livable point! She's got a website here. How fun!
  
• My dad is watching a show on TV about doughnuts, and I'm really growing a craving... Care to join me? Mmmm... chocolate long johns...
  

• My cell phone has gone off the deep end. It keeps turning itself off and on, off and on. The buttons aren't working right. Rob and I are going to go look at a plan on Saturday... I'm kinda bummed because I love my phone: I've had it for almost two years. But compared to my last phone, that's nothing. I had my first phone for about 5 years. It was great. Hopefully we get something good!
• Mom and Dad may be going on a vacation to Hawaii this year. I really hope they can go, they deserve it. But at the same time, I'm VERY jealous. I really want to go on a vacation. We thought about going, too, for our belated honeymoon, but I really don't think we can afford it. That, and our good friends Greg and Valerie (Valerie is a bridesmaid in my wedding) may be getting married in the Caribbean this December, so we'd need to save money for that trip! I can dream though, right?

• I'm now going to take advantage of this dreary, cold period and make some cookies and chicken and dumplings. Mmmm... since I can't have doughnuts....
  

Happy snow days everyone! Drive safe!