Dress Drama :(

So I usually don't use this acronym, but O.M.G. I officially became Bridezilla this past weekend, but I think that is completely, 100% appropriate given what happened on Saturday afternoon. Here's the short version of the story:

-Owner of boutique calls me to tell me that my dress is in early - YAY!
-I drive to Longview to try on/get my dress. Along with me are my mom, dad, cousin (Matron of honor), and bridal attendant Sally East.
- I go into the dressing room... dress looks a little different than I remember - I ignore this and put dress on.
-Dress.... is not my dress. It took 5 months to get here and it is not my dress!! I cannot help but immediately start crying because I knew no matter what, my dress would probably not be here in time for me to get alterations done and be ready for my bridal portraits in June.
-Owner lady tells me to "Calm down" repeatedly and that "She'll do what she can" to get things resolved.


Flash forward to Monday - I end up having to do something I don't like doing. Owner lady calls me and says that she can get the dress but it won't be here until the first week of August. This obviously won't work at all because my wedding is the 3rd weekend of August and that would leave me one week to get my alterations done AND my bridal portraits taken before I had to go back to school for work week. I end up having to yell at her (she wouldn't listen to the advice I was giving her) and ultimately when she kept saying "That's all I can do" I had to threaten her with a lawsuit (technically it was breach of contract). This is not fun - I hate conflict. I also hate people not doing their jobs and thinking they can get away with screwing someone over. I emailed the lady several options (if she could find a different size - I would take it and she could get it altered for me, etc) which she apparently FINALLY listened to and miraculously found my wedding dress in a size 4 (I ordered a size 6 originally) and it will be here next week. Yes, she did the "impossible" by just actually listening to her customer and doing her a little extra work
(aka: her job) and got the problem fixed.

I am very glad that things are fixed and my dress will be here next week, but needless to say I am VERY unhappy with the service (or lack thereof) that I received from this particular boutique.

With that being said, I am somehow WAY less stressed about the whole wedding process which I guess is a good thing considering I was having constant nightmares (literally every night) about stuff going wrong with the wedding. Maybe I got all that stuff over with now, or maybe I didn't, either way I am getting married to an amazing man on August 21st and that is the only thing that matters.

Spring Fling!

First off - I am loving this AMAZING weather! I just spent the last hour and a half outside on my hammock reading Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Askaban and the temperature outside is incredible!

Have I mentioned how much I love spring time?? Well if I haven't - I LOOOOOOOOVE SPRING!!

Yesterday Casey and I spent the afternoon outside getting the yard back in order. We had the guys at All Seasons Lawn & Landscaping come out and put fresh mulch down in our flower beds and then I mowed the lawn while Casey edged. I'm not going to lie, I kind of like to mow the lawn. Makes me feel strong and independent - I don't need no stinking man to mow the lawn! (We'll see if I'm still saying that in the 120 degree heat of August)

After mowing the lawn I relaxed in the hammock for a while with Riley and then made fajitas on the grill. It feels so much better to have the lawn back. I want to spend every extra minute I have out there and that's a great feeling. Here are me and the cutest dog in the world snuggling on the hammock. :)





Now that I have had my outside fix, it's inside to eat leftovers and watch American Idol. WHOO HOO!!!



ALSO- Good news: I PASSED MY PPR TEST!!! I took it this past Friday and got my scores today. For those of you who don't know - this was the last thing I needed to do to get my full teaching certificate. I just have to do some paperwork, be observed one more time and then I'm a fully certified teacher which means that the journey I started a little over a year ago is almost fulfilled! WHOO HOO!!!

Oh Astros...

Well I went to my first Astros game of the season last night with my friend Amy and I hate to be negative, but it does not look like it's going to be a very pretty season for my boys. Having said that, last night was a lot of fun!

Amy and I met up before the game to try out a new restaurant near the ball park called Irma's Southwestern Grill and it was actually pretty good. We were thinking it was going to be this cool hole in the wall kind of place, but it was kind of fancy! The only drawback - they didn't have menus! I thought this was very weird, but I knew I wanted to order the shrimp tacos anyway, so I guess it wasn't too bad. The tacos were good and we of course ate waaaaaaaaay too much chips and queso. My favorite - YUM! After eating we strolled over to Minute Maid where.....

It was retro night! Minute Maid and we celebrated 45 years of the Astros. Everything was retro themed (1965) last night and it was so cute! The jumbo tron was in black and white, the t-shirt girls and guys were wearing astronaut outfits and 60's "spacey" looking stewardess outfits - it was really.... cute! I guess that's the only word I can think of for it!

Here are some pics from the night!





Even though my Astros lost (yet again) it was still great to be back at Minute Maid welcoming back my favorite sport.

Bridal Update!

Okay so I thought that surely I would be blogging non stop about the wedding planning but oddly enough I find myself so overwhelmed by it all that I am barely eeking by just getting things done. By the time things are "done" I don't even want to talk about them, so here is my update!

Venue: Vintage Villas, Austin, Texas

Caterer: Vintage Villas

Accomodations: Vintage Villas (we freaking love this place)

Cake: Michelle's Patisserie

Wedding dress: Purchased. Will arrive in May - hoping that I love it as much as I did in January!

Shoes: Probably the most difficult decision because I really, really, really, really really, love shoes. Like more than anyone should probably love shoes. Still up in the air. I'm thinking about something like this though:
Tuxes: DONE! We found a really great looking slim cut tux and I can't wait to see Casey in it!

Bridesmaid dresses: FINALLY found. I went with a David's bridal dress because it is basically impossible to find a dress that is accessible to all of my friends who are spread out across the country. Here it is!

I decided on "Horizon" blue (which is kind of between a royal and cobalt blue) for the bridesmaids dresses and I'm very excited about them. Hopefully they will be comfortable and rewearable for my girls!

Flowers: I know exactly what I want, I'm just waiting on quotes from florists at this point. NOTE: Florists are not very easy to communicate with. I guess there's always some holiday that keeps them busy.

Centerpieces: Picked out, again just waiting on floral quotes.

Wedding rings: Done! We got a great deal from Zales outlet.

Rehearsal Dinner: Planned and payed for - thank you Daddy! We are having it at (any guesses?) Vintage Villas! They were really great and helped us a plan a very nice dinner for our friends and family.

Now all I have left to do is:

• Choose and purchase invitations
• Purchase my veil
• Purchase my wedding day jewelry
• Purchase Casey's wedding day gift
• Figure out wedding favors
• Purchase our honeymoon tickets and accomodations.
  
• and about a million other tiny things that have to be decided on.

I can't believe we're getting married in 4.5 months!

Here comes Peter Cottontail....

Hoppin' down the bunny trail, hippity hoppity Easter's on it's way!

I love Easter. I'm not sure if it's the fact that everyone shows up to church (which makes for a nice time) and the weather is always lovely or what, but I just love this time of year.

Yesterday the kids got to do various Easter themed projects/worksheets and one of them was the "Bunnycopter". This is a super cute project to do with kids and my whole class loved it. I loved the fact that it gave me an excuse to let them go outside in the beautiful weather and play for a few minutes during non recess time.





Now that I'm FINALLY finished with this post, Easter has come and gone. I really gotta get better about finishing blog posts when I start them. We had a lovely Easter - church in the morning and spent the rest of the day with Casey's family.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrry Potter!!

I just finished Book 1 and I am totally stoked! It only took me 6 months, but I did it. Now on to Book 2.... hopefully it won't take me 6 months.

Oh and yes I know that I'm WAY behind on this trend, but a good book is a good book.

Why Not Minot?

Here's why not... it's WEIRD up there!

Last Wednesday I flew up to North Dakota to spend some quality time with my cousin Jen, her husband Chris, and my precious God daughter Abby.

(For those of you who don't know, my cousin and I are 2 weeks apart and are like sisters. We grew up very close, spending as much of our free time as possible together. I am very blessed to have her in my life. :) )

The trip up to Minot wasn't too bad. I drove to Dallas on Tuesday evening because I was flying out of DFW because it was several hundred dollars cheaper than flying out of Houston and I'm glad I did because it gave me an opportunity to hang out with my friend from high school - Sally. Sally and I were SUPER best friends in high school, lost touch for a couple of years in college, but are doing a much better job keeping in touch these days. We didn't do much but watch Bride Wars and eat animal crackers, but it was a fun night just getting to hang out. She is an absolute SAINT for driving me to the airport - love you Sal! My flights (DFW - to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Minot) went off without a hitch (except for the strange stares I got from the Mennonite population in Minnesota) and I finally made it to Minot. I was SO happy to see my favorite cousin and my beautiful God daughter. Abby turned 2 on March 5th and is SUCH a smart little girl. I am so proud to be her "AnSah".

The reason for my trip was to celebrate Abby's birthday and boy did we ever. Anyone watch iCarly? Well it looked like iCarly threw up all in my cousins house (we went a little crazy with the decor), but it was absolutely great because Abby LOVES "iCarlysam". We had a blast opening gifts and eating cake and I was sad to leave my family, but not so sad to be leaving the weird, judgey, cold, boring, Great Plains. (Disclaimer: If you are from the Great Plains or Midwest, I am sorry, but I just don't care for that area of the country). Here are a few picture of the party:

Jen and I posing as Carly and Sam. If you don't watch this show, you really should. Just watch one episode - it's so cute and funny!

Me and the Birthday Girl who seemed quite distracted by 6,536,294 gifts she got.
For the story about the bandaid on her head, see below.

At least Abby can tell how much of a princess I am - she decided I needed not one, but TWO princess crowns! So cute!

Blowing out her big girl candles!

Decorations

So about that large bandaid on that pretty little girl's head: The night before I flew to N.D. Abby was running through the house and fell into the corner of a wall and split her forehead wide open. 6 stitches and a dented wall corner later (yes the corner - with the metal part!) she had this lovely bandage on the entire time I was there. Ohhhh kids.

My flights back were not bad at all except for the fact that I had only got 1.5 hours of sleep before getting on the plane. By the time I got to Dallas and drove back to Houston, I was basically a zombie. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do to push through and finish that drive, but I made it thanks to my mom staying on the phone with me the entire way home. Love you Mom!!

And that.... was Spring Break 2010. Back to work (and now that I've finally finished this post that I started a week ago - I've already been back at work for a week!), but only 2.5 more months of school left!!!! WHOOO HOOO!!!