Wedding Weirdness - Part 6

As Erin discovered earlier, a 4 month dress delivery can be turned into a 2 week redelivery when there is a mistake in sizes. Interesting that it took 4 months the first time but the replacement dress is a mere 2 week delay. Such is the world of alterations. Weddings are all about people telling you that it takes 10 times longer than it actually takes to complete a task. I got pinned for alterations on my gown on September 21st and it would take (of course) over a month and a half to do the alterations. My appointment for my second fitting is tomorrow, November 1st. I called a couple of times over the past few weeks to make sure it was ok for my mom and I to come to the store and for me to try on the dress this Sunday. (My mom was headed to San Antonio for the week and needed to make the veil... it helps to see the dress first :)

So we show up last Sunday (3 days before the fitting) and they hand me my dress to try on for my mom. I was hoping to do the second fitting then and save myself the hassle of coming back on Wednesday. No such luck. I unzipped the bag and there was my dress.... full of pins. They had not even started the alterations and my fitting was in 3 DAYS!!! We asked them about it and they said "Your appointment is on Wednesday so we will sew it between now and then." Wow, ok. Then why exactly did I have to come in in mid September? This is the story of weddings, every timeline is expanded to fit your timeline. Had my wedding been in March, the alterations surely would have taken more like 2 months or maybe 2 and a half. Had it been in November I'm sure the alterations would have been a 2-3 week affair. I am looking forward to getting back to normal life where it takes 2 weeks because it actually takes 2 weeks.... crazy, I know but it's just the way I think it should be :)

I have been wanting to write a Bridal Shower blog entry, but i'm holding off til I'm at home and can add pictures :)

To blog or not to blog....

Well, I'm bored so I chose "to blog"...... sorry :) I've been thinking about what makes a great blog and I want to apologize for my lackluster blogs of late. There has been an occasional one I like but I'm boring myself at this point. I have been reading some good blogs of people I barely know for inspiration. (When in doubt, I always post pictures of Laney... I am doubting hard today, hence 2 pics :)

Good blog #1- Beth. Ok, the girl is hilarious and random and 100% real... that's what makes her blog so great. Plus she posts all the time so it's worth checking daily :) http://ulovebeth.blogspot.com/

Good blog #2- Laurie. Ok, unlike Beth (who I have hung out with a few times here and there) I only know of Laurie by way of legend. I admit, I am a blog stalker when it comes to her. Her blog is fresh, funny and I can relate to a lot of what she says. Bored? Give Laurie's blog a try http://flaminlarry.blogspot.com/

Now, instead of being inspired by the stylings of Laurie and Beth, I realized that I just don't have it in me to try to aspire to that right now..... planning a wedding seems to have drained me of all original or creative thoughts :) I'll just top off this entry with a list of things I am super pumped about this weekend...

1) My mom is in the air RIGHT NOW winging her way from Paris to Houston. I am the most excited about her coming... I haven't seen her since before the engagement and it's about time :)

2) Nate and I are going to STOMP tonight (we got the tics before my mom had her flight). I adore STOMP and am looking forward to seeing it for the 4th time.

3) Nate and I pick up our wedding bands tomorrow (kinda freaky.... really expensive)

4) I have my first bridal shower tomorrow thrown by my beautiful friends Amy and Leslie. I am sooooo excited about hanging out with some LH girls that I haven't seen in awhile as well as seeing some old friends from college.

5) Did I mention my mom was coming? (the only thing to make this better would be if my dad was coming too :)

***For Jen Cates

***Wedding update- I am getting closer to finishing the 11 step favors I am handmaking (240 of them). I only have 4 steps left and they are faster ones... I'm ready to be done :) I have all the stuff to start making the programs after I finish the favors (oh, and after we set the order of ceremony....maybe should do that first :P ). I am putting the invites in the mail this weekend and I'm looking forward to sifting through RSVP's (sad but true). I am currently doing exercises to strengthen my hand for when I start writing thank you notes this weekend. I think that's it for now..... if you read all the way to here then I am really proud of you :)

Fall Back

Daylight Saving time is upon us again (at least it's the season that we get an extra hour of sleep instead of losing it :) This Sunday remember to set your clocks back an hour.

Ok, now that my public service announcement is over, I googled daylight saving time because I thought it was this weekend but I wasn't sure. I found out something interesting... President Bush signed the go ahead on an energy study that moves spring forward to the second sunday in March (instead of the first in April) and moves fall back to the first sunday in November (instead of the last in October) starting in 2007. This study is seeking to prove that this will conserve energy, the website said "The Secretary of Energy will report the impact of this change to Congress. Congress retains the right to resume the 2005 Daylight Saving Time schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete."

I had no idea that Bush had the ability to change daylight saving time. Man, it'd be cool to be president... I think I'd go after leap year first :)

The Shadow Proves the Sunshine...

I flew to San Antonio yesterday for a day trip for business. It was really productive actually and I am very glad I went even if I am a bit tired now :P I had one of those random moments on the flight when God just reaches out and shows you something really cool about himself and I wanted to try to share it with you.

The weather in SA all day was gross, It was mucho cloudy and the sun never came out the entire day... just kind of dreary. As we took off the come back home we ascended through a layer of thick clouds... nope, still gray. We went through another layer, still gray. After we busted through the third layer, the sun was on us in all it's glory. It was beautiful with the tops of the clouds (that now looked white and fluffy as opposed to gray and blah) reflecting the light of the sun. I instantly felt better just being able to see the sun and I couldn't tear my eyes away from the window until we went back down underneath the top layer of clouds.

Ok, so here is where I try to not get all philosophical on you. I was thinking about it and the whole day when I was in SA I felt like there was no sun and I was depressed to not have it shining outside. When it's cloudy, we feel like the sun goes away.. but it doesn't. It's there above the clouds shining as brightly as always. Why, when we go through trials, do we begin to feel like God has abandoned us? We may not be able to see him, but he is still there... . not only that, but his glory is in no way compromised by the trials in our life. He shines just as brightly through our trials as he does in the "good times" of our lives. Not only that, but when we come out of trials and are able to see his glory again, it means so much more to us.... not because it is better, but because in that brief moment we are able to see a more true picture of his glory. Our suffering allows us to better understand and appreciate God's glory in our lives. I will stop here, because I don't think I can come up with adequate words to describe what God revealed to me yesterday and I know many of you have probably have similar revelations in the past. With that said, never doubt God's presence in your life and know that whatever you may be going through, his glory is still shining. However distant you may feel from him, he has not abandoned you and he will use this to bring you into a better understanding of him.

Cozy

Fact : It must be 51 degrees or lower outside for my office to switch off the full blast AC and for me to be warm in here.... it's a happy day :)

My day, oh excuse me, dayS in El Paso

I went to El Paso for a business meeting on Monday to discuss a toll study that I am working on for my company. Darrin and I left Houston around 8 in the morning and flew out there for our day trip. It was BEAUTIFUL!! The weather was awesome (sunny and 65), the mountains were clear and beautiful and it is a neat little place to drive around actually. So we go back to the airport to catch our 6:55 flight home and..... it's delayed. As anyone in Houston knows, it rained cats and dogs on monday. Now, the rain was over by the time we were scheduled to fly back, but the planes had experienced so many delays throughout the day that they were now running really late.

Our departure time was pushed back to 10:15 (ew.... this is El Paso time which means 11:15 CST with a 1 am landing time in Houston... yuck). We decide to wait it out and around 8:20 we hear this announcement, "Attention Houston passengers, the flight out of Houston that is coming to pick you up has been cancelled. They will be re-routing a plane from Dallas and your new departure time is estimated to be 11:00 pm. I am sorry to tell you this, but that gives you a landing time in Houston of around 1:45 am. " We talk to the ticket guy who tells us that it will likely be delayed further and maybe even cancelled if they can't find a pilot to relieve the current one. So at this point Darrin and I give up. We book rooms at the Radisson (freakin nice suite all to myself... not a bad way to spend an evening) and get tickets for the first flight in the morning leaving around 10 El Paso time.

Well, you guessed it.. our flight in the morning was cancelled (still don't know why) and we got put on an 11:05 with a stop in Dallas. I got home yesterday at 3:45 pm and I have to tell you, fresh clothes never felt so good :) As it turns out, the flight did take off Monday night, but not until 11:30. This put the 18 passengers who stuck it out (out of an almost full plane) back in Houston well after 2 am. No thanks, I preferred our method even if it did get delayed again, and again, and again.....

Good Game

Nate went to his first home Aggie football game this weekend. The Ags played hard and took down #19 Missouri..... Gig 'em Ags!!

OCD, it works for me :)

Ok, so to give you a little background into this post, I ordered a mother of the bride outfit for my mom from Ann Taylor a little bit ago and we ended up getting the last skirt they had in her size... The reason we ordered when we did was that I checked it online and noticed the sizes starting to disappear, so I called my mom and we went for it.

So I get on today to check on the outfit (yes, I AM weird and no, this is NOT the first time I have done this) and I notice two things.... now all of her sizes are gone and Ann Taylor has cut each of the three peices in her outfit to under half their original price (because they were running out of sizes and most mother of the brides are not size 0). Anyway, long and VERY boring story short... we made the price adjustment deadline (by 5 days) and so the outfit is costing my rents half of what they thought. This made me feel excused in my OCD of checking the site... a dangerous thing as now I will use this to justify my OCD in how I eat my gummy bears and every other aspect of my life :P

Today has been productive... We made our car reservations for the honeymoon (we'll be cruising around St. Croix in a Jeep, thank you very much :) and we managed to find wedding transport for less than an arm and a leg so we reserved that too. Oh yeah, and I worked and was actually productive professionally as well as personally :)

Oh dad, I forgot to mention... I found a dime in the elevator this morning, you better watch your lead there :)

Wedding Weirdness - Part 5

I was talking to a coworker of mine about wedding stuff and I was explaining the unfortunate timing of having to pay for the rings and the second part of the honeymoon (and many other things) all within the same credit card bill..... It's gonna be a big one :P

The conversation proceeded a little like this,

Her- "Well, aren't his parents paying for the honeymoon?"
Me- "Ha, no... why would they do that?"
Her- "Well, it's the groom's parents' responsibility to pay for the honeymoon."
Me- "Um, we're adults so we are paying for our own trip.... I've never even heard that was their 'responsibility'... you sure?"

and on it went. It's amazing the expectations that people put on their parents financially even after they've been financially independent for years. I understand that my parents owe me nothing, and I treat the fact they are giving me money for the wedding as a blessing and a generous gift, not something they are supposed to do. When she said that the groom's parents are supposed to pay for the honeymoon, I could almost hear my dad laughing all the way over in France.... He's always said that the honeymoon (like the rings) is your responsibility. If you can't afford a blow out vacation then DON'T TAKE ONE!!!

For those interested in wedding plan progression, it is going well. We have most things in place including all of the invites addressed, stuffed and stamped. The favors are coming along well and I hope to be done with them in the next couple of weeks (crafts tend the drag on when you are doing 240 of them :). We have all of the paper for the programs and some of the ribbon (we are hunting down more and have so far been met with success... a strange and unfamiliar outcome with us and ribbon) as soon as we get the order of the ceremony down, we can start designing and printing those. We have already used half of a color ink cartridge for the printer we bought last weekend and seeing as how the print on the programs isn't black... we'll be needing to replace that at least once in the near future.

I broke down and decided I didn't want the stress of buying bulk flowers of unknown quality, so we ordered all of the bouquets and will just tackle the other flowers. We have ceremony music as well as first dance music picked out (not gonna tell because I like the surprise :) and now I am on to picking out hostess gifts. The bridesmaid gifts are done, the gown is being altered, the shoes/accessories are bought, the guest book is in my room and I think my days of getting a package a day are going to begin to go away.

I think this is long enough :)

People that have made me smile this weekend....

1) So, a few weeks ago I sent out an evite to come help me address all my invitations and then put them together. I have to admit, I was relieved and shocked that so many of my friends were willing and happy to help. As it turns out, Nate and I bought a printer and printed the envelopes (they look fabulous :) and so that party yesterday was just an assembly party. It was SO GREAT to have some time with those girls, especially the ones that I haven't had the opportunity to spend time with recently. And, we were able to do something in half an hour that would have taken me hours to do on my own... thanks girls!!

2) A special smile goes out to Jana and Katie who wore almost the exact same outfit as me yesterday..... That must mean I was in style, right? Well, if not at least ya'll are going down with me :)

3) Amy and Leslie made me smile this weekend as I got to hear about their plans for my Houston shower and saw their willingness to use their time (which neither has a lot of right now) to pull it together... thanks girls!!

4) Nate gets a smile for lots of things, but specifically for a) not thinking I'm insane for stocking up and buying 10 packets of chicken taco seasoning after we finally found it, b) devising a plan by which we can outwit the fabric stores and save ourselves a trip to Sugarland, c) thinking of getting Chuy's creamy jalepeno sauce to go (yum!), d) Liking (alot) the same custom blinds that I did at Home Depot... now we just have to afford them along with new lighting, bathroom countertops and flooring, kitchen flooring and hardware, and about 1000 new door knobs to put on the mass amount of doors that his condo has... should be fun :)

A gross oversight to this original post was me neglecting to include some moments from item number 1. Please allow me to amend that now :)

Moment 1- Liz Hodges... "Haha, oh dear. I got excited because I thought I was assembling Nate's parents' invite, then I realized that I was just reading their name on the invitation."

Moment 2- Bonnie, with a distressed look on her face... "Hey Abby, this one doesn't have the liner in the envelope..." Me, looking at it carefully... "That's because it's an outer envelope." Bonnie, looks at her other hand and realizes the lined envelope is in it..."so it is"

Moment 3- Liz Osborne... "Man, I'm only on my third envelope and I'm already running out of slobber."

Moment 4- Me, looking at the last envelope that needed to be sealed..."Ok, who wants to lick Nick?"

Snakes on a Plane

Bonnie sent me this in an email and I thought it was too good to not pass on to my reading public. I certainly have not seen the movie Snakes on a Plane, nor will I ever due to my extreme dislike of both snakes and stupid movies. However, I appreciated this picture as I hope you will too. My favorite is the last picture that shows that buckling your seatbelt does result in making you fearless around (or at least oblivious to) snakes.

For some reason, this is as large as it will make the pictures... so squint and enjoy!

You can take the girl out of college, but you can't take the college out of the girl...

Whenever our office reaches a certain percentage of "time on job" (time billable to clients), we get breakfast the following monday. I love that.... free food is perhaps one of my favorite things EVER.... I suppose I'm not as far away from the college will-show-up-to-any-random-meeting-for-some-free-food mentality as I thought I was :)

Random plug, if you haven't seen the movie "My date with Drew" it is hilarious!! Thanks to Leslie Follmar to opening my eyes to this priceless documentary. Also, if you know Michael Hanna, this guy will remind you of him for quite a few reasons... it made it even funnier to me (kind of like the way my enjoyment of Napoleon Dynamite increased when Erin likened Napoleon to Ben Cooper :)

Me versus the spiders..... round 4

So for the fourth time in the last two weeks, I have been greeted in the morning by a gigantic spider chilling in my room. I get up this morning, start to walk to the bathroom and squint towards the door and notice yet another one. Helpful hint... If you notice a spider (with no movement involved) out of the corner of your eye in the dark when you just woke up and it's 5:30 in the morning... the spider is way too stinkin big!!! But that's how all of these ones are.... I've been describing them to people as silver dollar sized and I'm sorry to say that it isn't an exaggeration. Anyhoo, so I proceeded to tiptoe past him without turning on the lights (don't want him to catch on) and got the Raid and sprayed the living daylights out of him (I hope). He did manage to make it under the bed (dude was FAST and made it across the room under a constant stream of household poison) but I am going to assume that the Raid has to have killed him... it's either that or not sleep :P

A benefit though is that I have gotten less and less girly about it..... Spider 1 was an easy kill, spider 2 was blocking me into the bathroom but I hopped over him, got the raid and sprayed him to death, spider 3 approached me just as I stepped out of the tub so I calmly put a towel on and, you guessed it, got the Raid and sprayed that sucker down. I used to freak out and not want to hop over/ walk near/ get dressed infront of a bug... It seems I have evolved :)

And now for your engineering moment of the day...

I was using the TxDOT standard spec book to figure out the price/sq yard to remove existing asphalt pavement for a job I'm on (glamorous, right?). This is item 105- Removing Stabilized Base and Asphalt Pavement.... as I'm reading this, I look down at item 106- Obliterating Abandoned Road. For those of you who are as curious as I was about what exactly it takes to obliterate a road, the following picture has been brought to you from the TxDOT manual by the magic of screen capture... enjoy :)

And now for the quote of the week (from a few weeks ago :)-

"Now that I'm on drugs, everything's fine again." ~ Mike Santino... haha, not going to give a context on this cause it's funnier this way :)

Double Digits baby!

I love theknot.com (a site that takes obsessive behavior to a new level yet makes it socially acceptable), and on our site today I looked at the number of days left and....

Now for a great wedding movie quote....

Her Mom- "Look at the picture of that girl... you're much prettier than that girl and she's getting married."

Julia- "What does pretty have to do with getting married?"

Her mom- "Everything.... You have to get married before your hips start to spread and you get facial hair which, by the way, comes from your father's side of the family..."

Julia- "I'm exiting the car now."

-The Wedding Singer

Got Gas?

So I am sitting at my desk when the guy across from me asks, "Can you hear that?" I answered. "Yeah, what is that?!" Two minutes later there is an announcement over the building PA....

"Attention, we have ruptured a major gas line right outside the building. The winds are in our favor right now, but if they shift something could ignite. We will leave it up to you whether or not you leave. If you do leave, do not drive infront of the building."

ummmmmm, and then another announcement...

"Attention, we have ruptured a major gas line right outside the building. The winds are in our favor right now, but if they shift something could ignite. We will leave it up to you whether or not you leave... but there is a lot of gas out there."

Uh yeah, so I left. On my way home I caught a strong smell of gas as I passed the building on the other side of the highway. Kind of a scary thing.

Great Weekend

Things I learned this weekend in San Antonio-

1) Putting on a wedding dress does not a beauty make.... I got my dress this weekend ( yay!) and I put it on and I was disappointed. I suppose the dress did not adequately make up for the lack of concealer on my face, the lack of attention to my hair, and the fact that I didn't sleep as much as I should have. I put it on again last night and was much happier with the results :)

2) Pottery Barn Outlet is quite possibly the best place ever to buy furniture.... I'll have to go back there when Nate and I get a house :)

3) If you drop your car off for service and tell them to call you when it's done, an hour and a half brake job and a 20 minute oil change will take a total of 10 hours (not even kidding). Side note, calling to ask about the progress of the car will do little to speed up this process.

4) Every dress made by White HouseBlack Market is cute and fits me perfectly. AND they have an outlet in San Marcos... I bought my dress for leaving the reception there this weekend :)

5) Pottery Barn now markets paint colors. Through Benjamin Moore, you can find all of the colors used by Pottery Barn in their catalogs. This is GREAT because you get to see that color wall in a real sized room in the catalog and have a better feel for what it will look like in your home. This was info I got from my sister-in-law Amy and I fully intend to use it when Nate and I start painting his place :)

6) My niece has way more of my brother in her than is probably good... sorry Amy :)

7) My niece has two new loves.... shiny things and yanking at your hair and putting it into her mouth.


It was a great weekend including wedding dress fun, outlet shopping, going to the Aggie game and just hanging out with my family. I am so blessed to have them :)

Evite

I have grown accustomed to having at least one evite at almost all times.... this reflects more on the popularity of Evite than my own popularity :) Last week I hit zero... what?.. no events? But I like checking them at work, I enjoy opening the page and feeling the anticipation of things to come. I was pretty sad actually. I opened Evite this week and thanks to some well timed birthdays, I saw this instead-

Woo Hoo!! Evite has returned to me with a vengeance!! Happy Two-post Thursday ya'll :)

Wedding Weirdness - Part 4

Fact- You will spent more time on random little details of the wedding than you will on the big stuff (location, cake, etc). So far the two things that Nate and I have spent the most time on are trying to find ties for the groomsmen, and trying to find the correct color and width and style of ribbon for the cake. We still don't have the ties settled (we can't find more than 2 of anything that works for us and yes, we did once drive to 6 different area JC Penney's..multiple times each... trying to track down multiples of three different ones that worked without finding any more at any location.. go figure)

On the ribbon, we finally bought some that wasn't as dark as we wanted, but it'll do because we are tired of hunting and it is darker than anything else we've found so far. Our search encompassed Michael's, Hobby Lobby, at least 2 Wal Marts, and multiple JoAnn fabric stores. Our 'acceptable' ribbon was courtesy of Harwin when I went to buy bridesmaid jewelry.

On a happy note, my dress is in!!! I am going to pick it up this weekend when we go to visit my brother and sister-in-law in SA!! Now let's just hope that it fits :P Working is such a bummer when you are about to take a trip.. we're leaving around 4:30 this afternoon for SA and I can't wait!!! Just 9 hours and I can leave work behind for three days :)

***Funny side note- the spell check on "Harwin" suggested I may have meant to type "harem"

Summit Annoyances

Soooooo, I was all geared up for Summit Hoe Down this year... ready to jitterbug with Stan and two-step with all my buddies. I scheduled my wedding showers around it... seriously. I ran into Stan at church and he was like " Are you coming to hoe down??" and I said "Yeah, Oct 28th, right?" and he said..." No, they changed it to Nov 4th this week"

Ummmm, ok... that would be the date of my ONLY out of town shower. I hate how they do this. I planned around the retreat last year and two weeks before, they changed the date and I couldn't go. (they also changed the how down date last year among others) Practically the only event they didn't try to change the date on last year was the New Year's Eve party.... that one they just kept going back and forth btwn cancelled and not cancelled until we ended up planning the whole thing with two weeks or so of notice. ARG!! I will not be sorry to leave the disorganization behind.... Now where will I wear my new cowboy hat?