One Year Ago...

... I wanted to say today, but I didn't get around to posting on the actual day, sooooo, on Sunday Dave and I celebrated our first anniversary. Doesn't really seem possible, but then I look at these pictures and in some ways they seem like a long long time ago. Time is so funny that way. It's been fun looking back and remembering the big day. It inspired me to post a bunch of pictures - some of the behind the scenes fun stuff that you might not have seen. Or maybe you have. Or maybe you haven't but you find them entirely boring, in which case you should stop reading immediately. This feels sort of self-centered for a happy anniversary post because Dave's not in most of the pictures. It's all about what I was doing the day before and the morning of the wedding. I also hope that's okay and the marriage gods don't unleash their fury. Anyway, what a crazy time. I would never want to do over the stress and craziness, but once we got down to about the day before, then it was just fun, because there were so many people around to visit and everything was coming together. (credit goes to Jenni for I think all of these pics)
I think this was Thursday - Jenni and I getting our nails done. Incidentally, they did a terrible job on my fingernails and they were pretty chipped for the wedding. ah well. (I don't know why some of these pics turned out sorta grainy)
What a total blast - seeing people I hadn't seen in ages! We had breakfast on Friday morning - mostly Red Lake people, but a few other great friends as well. (side note - I think Robyn and LaRonda were so overcome by joy at seeing all these wonderful people that they reverted back to the 12 year old practice of calling each other up and saying " hey, what are you wearing to the brunch? Brown? Cool! We can MAAATTTCHH!" They were also really cute and coordinating in black shirts at the wedding... hmmmmm....sorta makes ya wonder. Actually, they probably just have similar good taste, but I couldn't resist. I remember calling up these girls before Sunday night church (about 400 years ago) - hey, what are you wearing? such silliness)
Rhonda praying that the cake will turn out alright?


Rhonda singing a song over the wedding cake. A traditional Israeli blessing maybe?
Twila and the tater salad.

The morning of - doing make up in my empty Indiana bedroom.
At the hairdresser - my sweetie had flowers sent there for me! (yikes - I think the theory behind all the make up was that some of it is bound to come off by picture time, so better pile it on good and proper.)
Alabama - didn't look like she was suffering too badly.
wowzers
So pretty! - Jenni and Alabama

Getting ready at the church



Fast forward several hours -

It's sort of weird for the first year to be over. Now we're just old married fogies. = ( haha. No excuse to do something fun on the 9th of every month anymore - one year and two months - whoo hoo. = ( But it is fun to look ahead and wonder where in the world we'll be in 2 or 3 years from now. As for our weekend, let's see. On Saturday, we went to see the Julia/Julie movie. It was pretty good and quite humorous at parts, but by the end, I was ready for it to be over. Then we had a really nice dinner a place called the Grill Room. It was the best blueberry iced tea I've ever had. Sunday afternoon we were going to go on this safari thing. It sounds really neat - you take a covered wagon ride and there's all these animals that'll come up to the wagon - zebras, giraffes, etc, (but no elephants = ( ). It sounded like it would be a lot of fun, but Sunday rolled around and it was so hot that the thought of sitting in a covered wagon, just wasn't the happiest. We still want to do it, but maybe in November or something like that. So we ended up going to the Houmas House plantation about an hour from here. It was SO neat and I kept thinking of all my friends and family that I'd love to take there. = ) The tour was led by a jolly black lady and she was phenomenal - so very funny, she had some amazing pipes and sang a couple times, and played a piano that was there. I don't remember the name of it, but there are only I think she said 60 in the States. She had a lot of interesting history to share as well. For instance, she was talking about how you don't hear this, but there were actually free African Americans who owned slaves. She said her father's side of the family came from slavery, but her mother's side of the family owned slaves. All very interesting. And the place was beautiful and here's the really really terrible thing - I remembered the camera but forgot the memory card! We were so bummed. We might have to go back sometime just to take pictures - probably won't pay for the tour again though. Anyway, it was all really fun.

In other news, we are finally making some serious progress in unpacking. The living room isn't the best and is covered in empty boxes, but the empty is a good sign, right? We got a lot done in the spare room - Dave got more done than I did. I unpacked a bunch of our books, then sat and stared at the mess and wondered what to do next. I've been doing that a lot lately. I can't believe how fast my vacation time has flown by. I'd like to get a bunch more done before I go back to work, but I also want to swim in our pool and have some fun too. hmmmm... Well, I'm sure I've bored you long enough, so I should let you go now. Have a happy day.

Lost and Found

One of he worst things about moving is it seems that things inevitably get lost. BUT once in awhile, things get found as well and that is a much happier tale! The casualties of the current move are - I can't for the life of me find my set of cake decorating tips. That's is terribly annoying because to go buy all of those would cost a heap of money and it's something I was hoping to use a lot in the future. arg. And I think there's a couple other things I've been looking for, but that's the main one. Although I couldn't find it when I was packing at the other place, so I don't know that I can blame the move on that. On to brighter sunnier topics - a year ago I moved down here from Warsaw and set to unpacking our first apartment. One thing I could not find for the life of me - the class ring I got from Grace College (it was a nice, not to mention the real deal [not cheap] ring that they gave everyone when they graduated and I really liked it). I was so sad. I searched and searched and could not find it anywhere. I remembered sitting in my room in Warsaw, taking the ring, I think a week before the wedding, and putting it one of my bags. I think it was in the load that Dave took down a week before, since I didn't want to worry about keeping track of it during the wedding and all. So when I was unpacking I ripped apart all those bags and suitcases that it might be in - nothing. So I tried to let it go. Lived without it for a year and survived so I was thinking I just might pull through when... suddenly... totally out of the blue.... I was cleaning up in the kitchen, Dave had been working back in the guest room. He came out to the kitchen and said "close your eyes, give me your hand..." I was thinking, he found my cake decorating tips. But nope - MY RING!! I could not believe it! That thing wasn't even on my radar anymore. He had been putting the luggage away in the closet, and then was fiddling with these storage drawers and moved them, and there was my ring, laying on the floor. I truly thought I'd never see it again.

New place and such

Hello all - I've been wanting to post some pics for awhile so now I'm just doing it even though I should be doing 9000 other things. I had part of this week and all next week off so I'm hoping we can get a lot done around here. This little picture tour only shows the few rooms of the place that look decent. I was going to add some others but didn't resize them and now I don't' feel like going back and doing it.
Trying to get the ginormous bookcase to the spare room. Dave and Rachel: 0, Bookcase: 1. = ( In the top picture, the bathroom is straight ahead, spare room to the right and our room to the left.
The sink in the bathroom (Dave's). Then there's another door and the shower and toilet is in the inner sanctuary.
This is my sink in our room. Then the door to the inner sanctuary, then the picture above. You could run around in circles all day here if please. Oh, notice the awesome mini florescent lights above the sink - love this little feature.

Rather self-explanatory. We got our room looking all nice but threw everything in the guest room. Oh my - you should see that room.
Drum roll please ... this is the view out of our bedroom window. Yeah, we don't complain about it too often.
One more drum roll please... I don't know how I forgot to capture this in the first round of pics. Our spacious walk in closet! So very lovely!
annndddd... Our own washer and dryer and dryer in there. This came with the apartment free of charge and we had no idea it was going to be here. It was left from the last person so we got it free. (not to keep, but to use)

Kitchen - love the counter tops. Love the sink, HOT water, and water pressure, not crazy about the dishwasher.
This picture doesn't show it, but the fridge is SMALL, way smaller than our last one. The stove and microwave, on the other hand, are amazing. Very new - I'm guessing installed a year ago and it was a guy who lived here before who hardly ever used the oven, because it looks brand new inside. The microwave also looks new except a place where it looks like someone fried a small hole on the inside - furthering my suspicion that a guy lived here before us. Anyway, I find it funny that the microwave is about 2/3 the size of the fridge, not that you can tell from this angle. Okay, I guess that's all for now. I'll post more as the rest of the place takes shape, should that actually happen. Have a great weekend everyone!

FRUSTRATED!

ARG! I'm having an annoying day. I was so excited about having a Saturday to spend unpacking. Dave and I have been talking and talking and talking about how we should arrange this smaller living room. It seems there's a problem with every single thing we come up with. GRRRR!! I just have to deal with the fact that it's not going to look as nice as it did at our last place because we just don't have the space. (we also don't have cockroaches, which is nice) So we were moving the honkin huge bookcase into the spare room and would you believe we cannot get it back there? not enough space. And I was getting highly annoyed because I don't want nasty marks and dents in our otherwise nice looking walls. So we stopped that and it's lying on it's side on our floor. next idea. We're trying to find a way to fit all our electronic junk in the living room without looking like it's overloaded with stuff. We have an old nasty TV but a nice new computer monitor. So I said something to Dave about running the TV through our monitor and getting rid of the TV. I've heard of people doing that. It seems like a win win cause we could use one screen for multiple uses and then get rid of stuff we don't need. I started looking online and there are things you can buy for a relatively cheap one time fee and you get tons of channels on your computer. We are thinking about doing that. We don't watch TV that much and don't have that many channels now, but like to at least have the option of watching the news. And game shows. haha. Anyway, this is more channels than we possibly need, but we also don't want to have a lot of channels sitting there that would be of questionable content. So anyway... bla bla bla. Do you or anyone you know have something like this? Any info on that? Well anyway, our living room is ripped apart and most of the stuff has no where to go. Maybe we should just go to the water park and ride roller coasters for the rest of the day. That might put things in perspective, no? Esp. since I hate roller coasters so much that coming home to a frustrating living room might even seem like fun after that.

The last few days...

Hi all. Thought I'd stagger over here and write a little update. Oh the greatness of the length of the endlessness of the last several days. How sweaty they are to describe, how sleepy I am still thinking about them. Anyhoo... I'm trying to remember the highlights of our move and such things. Dave and I were up till around 2:30 Friday night packing. That was more like a low light. I was so tired I could hardly move and Dave was enthusiastically encouraging me to plod along. Why in life does everything always take longer than you think it will? Anyway, Saturday morning we started moving and we had 3 trucks and people helping which was great. Actually on Saturday I felt guilty for not doing enough. I was mostly in the new place telling people where to put stuff. We're on the second floor now - everything (well, almost everything) had to be moved up 2 flights of stairs and not a lot of wiggle room. The poor guys. Okay, this is gross, but when they FINALLY got our big ole leather love seat (which is poofy all over and not easy to move) into the apartment, it was extremely wet with sweat. Isn't that nice? One of the guys suggested we just burn it when we move. The one thing that didn't go up the steps was our ginormous bookshelves that they lived over the balcony - very entertaining. = P So anyway - now we're here but still have to go back and clean the other place and clean (oh the hideousness of the oven over there. I shudder to think) and such. Anyway, they stopped moving things around 5 - 6ish, but there was still more over there. Yesterday we went over and moved some more and used my friend's truck. It started pouring rain on the way to our new place. Fun and games. This morning, Dave and a couple other people got the last of it. So as for this place, I have the kitchen all unpacked but other than that, not a lot is really in order. Another fun little thing is that our air conditioner is not working and no AC in Baton Rouge in July is just not a happy thing. Thankfully at this new place, we have 24 hr. emergency maintenance and someone is working on fixing it. We're using a window unit tonight and hopefully by tomorrow it'll be fixed. So that's my excuse for not unpacking tonight. That and I'm crazy tired and have a headache. So we're soon to retire to the only cool room in the house. I want to post pictures soon. For the most part, I LOVE the kitchen. It's so much bigger than the last one. We can open the fridge and dishwasher and Dave and I can stand in it ALL at the same time. Amazing. The whole place is much prettier and I expect that cockroaches won't be as much of an issue (THREE in the last week at the last place). The rooms are very nice sized. The only real glitch is that the living/dining area really is smaller. And we filled up our last place to the brim. So now we really can't fit all our junk in here. At least not like it was before. We're looking at different options to deal with that small annoyance. But anyway, still come visit cause you'll have an ample sized bedroom to stay in for sure. Okay, I'm tired of cooking so I'm off now. I think there were things I wanted to say but have forgotten them. Maybe it'll hit me at some point. addios

Why am I posting at the late hour of 9:38??

Jest if you will, but that has recently become quite late. Dave might think a better question is why am I posting while he's faithfully packing all our dishes. I have no good answers. I just want to say hey in my fatigued state. What's going on? Not much. We've been packing a lot. Actually, we got most of it done last Saturday. Everything but the kitchen and our bedroom and some of our bathroom. Now it's time to put the smack down on that (sorry, flash back to RBI days). I've spent several evenings sorting through old cards and letters. I know I keep way too much, and I've tossed a lot of it, but let me tell ya. I've found some GEMS that I still can't bare to part with. I'm still probably keeping too much, but I'm making progress. baby steps. Dave just pointed out that it's not that much work to just take the unsorted stuff to the new place and sort it there. As in, we HAVE to pack the kitchen, you don't have to sort that at this very minute. True dat, so I finished the pile I was working on and um... found myself updating my blog. oops. A girl's gotta have a little fun, no? I honestly feel like I'm in a time warp right now - been reading so many letters from friends from so long ago and there's so many things I forgot about and then you read it and it just takes you back. Anyhoo... in other news, um... let's see... My sweet hubby has become quite prolific in the kitchen lately. He used to not cook anything. Then he started cooking with great help and guidance. Now he just says, I'll make supper and does it all by himself from start to finish. It's so wonderful! And he's been doing it a lot lately since I've been working long hours and he's been working shorter, sporadic hours. You won't hear me complaining! I'm trying to remember what all he's made lately - chicken tacos, regular tacos, Honey mustard BBQ chicken stir fry (something like that - one of our favorites), turkey burgers (which were perfectly seasoned and juicy)... isn't that impressive? He's also really good at making Rhonda's homemade tomato soup that you can find on her recipe blog which I would link to but I'm too tired. Anyway, I hope his mother is reading this! = ) Speaking of tired, something has got to change or I shall go out of my ever lovin mind! This early morning business is for the birds. No tweets found here. By body simply refuses to conform to such a schedule. Basically, no matter how crazy tired I am, if I go to bed before 11, I WILL wake up between 3 - 5 and can't sleep for anything. Now why is it if I stay up till midnight I can sleep till 10, but if I go to bed at 10, I wake up at 4? So then I survive the day but drag home and I'm so exhausted but try to stay awake until I can go to bed and do it all over again. It's a miserable way to live, let me tell ya. I guess I just did. Sometimes I take drugs and that's a nice break from it, but not a great long term solution. What is wrong with me, anyone know (as it relates to this particular issue, please)? Well, speaking of which I should go to bed. Tomorrow night is our last night to pack and then Saturday is the big moving day. I'm so happy that my friend got a babysitter all Saturday so she'll be with me at the new place helping unpack and set it all up. That thrills my soul to pieces. I can't believe tomorrow's Friday already. Where did the week go? Um, that's all. catcha later.

random pics

My baton rouge bosom friend Jan
Some of my treasures - read below and it will make more sense. The purple beads, lots of cross stitch, my AWANA car and trophy, and....
In case you missed it above - my real live hair! I think one braid is mine and one is my sister's but I'm not 100 % sure. I'm also not exactly sure why they exist - if we cut them off or what. Anyway, the odd thing is that each time I move, I really do throw stuff out, so how is it that this stuff has made the cut each time? I don't get it? Well, I get some of it, but not the rocks and beads.

breaking momentarily from the chaos...

I don't even know where to start, so I'll just start rambling. I'm so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open and I really want to go to bed, but I'm determined to write something while it's still the weekend (for some reason) and then you probably won't hear from me for a while. Life has been full of changes lately - nothing too big or anything, just jobs and housing and things like that. I recently started a new job doing full time child care for a family who recently relocated to Baton Rouge. They have 2 kids and they're almost 4 and almost 2. So far, it's been great. Of course some days have been rather challenging, but I love the freedom I have with this job to go fun places and do thing with the kids. We usually go somewhere every morning and come home and then it gets nice and quite for awhile while they sleep. Their mom works from home so I see a lot of her and we enjoy chatting. Well, I do anyway, I guess I haven't asked her if she enjoys chatting with me. They also have a nice big pool that we use nearly every afternoon. After my last job experience here, Dave and I (especially Dave - = ) both thought it was time I did something different. The last year has been filled with so many stresses and new things and a stressful job on top of all that just wasn't the best thing for us at this point. So now I come home totally exhausted, but in a much better mood. = ) The worst thing about the job for me is the insanely early mornings. Insanely early for me anyway. I have to be there by 7:30 and I don't usually go in my pajamas. So I'm gettin up way earlier than I believe God intended humans to awake. The really annoying thing is that my body just will not cooperate with this type of schedule. Last week I kept trying to get to bed early, only to make it after 11 some time. Then one evening I just crashed and slept forever and woke up at 10, and of course, couldn't sleep that night. So the next evening I was determined to not sleep at all in the evening and then go to bed early. I actually made it to bed around 10:00 which hasn't happened since I was 10 I think. SO, then I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and can't sleep! I was SO SO SO annoyed! If anyone has any brilliant suggestions, I'm open to them.

We are also moving in 2 weeks. We were hoping to move August 1st, but our new place is making us pay rent form the 25th on, so we figure we might as well move then. All of a sudden, it's upon us and there's SO much to do and I'm so fried in the evenings. So hopefully it will all get done somehow. I'm trying to be much more organized about this move, so packing is more work than unpacking should be, hopefully. Anyway, our new apartment has washer/dryer hookups which is fabulous. It's also a bit further from campus which has it's pros and cons. The pro being that drunk college students won't be knocking on our door at 2 in the morning asking if Andrew lives here. (this happened Friday night and suddenly, moving seemed like a great idea again) I'm be farther away from my bosom friend which is the con. = ( But I think our friendship will survive the additional 10 - 15 minute drive. Speaking of moving and packing, I think I mentioned awhile ago wanting to get rid of all the stuff I don't really use, need, or like, etc. Well, the time has come. My bosom friend Jan came over last night to try to help me and encourage me to throw out all my junk. You should have heard us cackling like a couple hens at all my ju... I mean priceless treasures. Here's some of her words of wisdom. I told her wait till you see my rock collection and she said, "It's not a COLLECTION unless it's DISPLAYED." Hmmmmm, she might have just made that up. Anyway... upon seeing my beautiful purple bead necklace (looks like a toy sorta) she exclaimed, "WHY are you 31 years old and own something like this??? Get rid of it QUICK before anyone sees it!" Of course I don't care if anyone sees it because I'm telling you all about it. Then there's all the things that people have given me over the years, esp sister in laws for some reason, and especially little counted cross stitch things that were really cute. I told her that as I go to get rid of something, I'm haunted by the weeping face of the person who gave it to me. It's true. And then there's children's artwork. Weeping children are even worse than weeping adults. AHHHHHHHH. She tired to tell me that I needed to throw out ALL my cards and letters. I got them all in a pile in the living room currently, and I'm determined to get it all down to one small box or so of ones that I keep. Oh the weeping faces. Jan asked me what Dave thinks of me keeping all this stuff. I said, "What does Dave thing? He's worse than me! He still has a smurf collection (only it's not a collection cause it's not displayed) and the razor he used for his first shave!!" Among many other things. Anyways, I think you be proud of us, because the razor is gone, the beads are gone, and so are the real braids of my sister and I. And much more. ANYWAY, on to something other than packing and purging.

In other random news, It was our 11 month anniversary on Thursday. We celebrated by eating supper at Coldstone Creamery and then going to the levy and walking around and remembering how nice it is there. I have to tell you about Coldstone though. I got the coffee lovers (which I am not, not it's not bitter when it's in the form of ice cream) - it was coffee flavored ice cream with heath bar, roasted almonds, and carmel. Oh my. It was one of the best things I've had in a long long time.

Speaking of food, I made the terribly discovery, actually, I think I read it on allrecepies.com, that you can make any cake mix into cookies by simply adding 2 eggs and half cup oil. I'm here to tell ya, it's true and they are GOOD! I used up some cake mixes that we had laying around and wanted to get rid of. And then Jan and I made cookies with the kids the other day because a guy from our church is doing this prison ministry and one of the things they do is take cookies in. Anyway, let me just tell you that you really really should get a lemon cake mix and add 2 eggs and half cup oil. You don't even need to get out your mixer, just stir and drop. They were fabulous. Butter pecan and orange were also superb. You can also add things like white choc. chips to the butter pecan and cream cheese icing to any of them... oh boy. The end.

Rivedance is coming to Baton Rouge in November. I want to go so bad I can taste it, but after looking at ticket prices, I'm not sure it's worth it. A good seat clearly wouldn't be an option and even sitting in the nosebleed section is pretty expensive. I had just been talking to someone about how far we'd have to go to see Riverdance and how much we want to go, and then in the next few days, when Dave and I were walking we saw the sign for them coming right to our doorstep. It makes me ill to think about it.

Last night I went to a math function with Dave. It was odd - if it would have been other grad students, that would have been one thing, but this was all undergrads from schools all over the country who were doing a summer program at LSU. Dave's advisor was having a party for all of them and told Dave that he and his wife should come. So we did. hmmmm... it was interesting. Oh the nerdiess in that room. I was bored out of my mind until I went to talk to the professor's wife. She has a magnet on her fridge that says, "I'm too pretty to do math." I liked her instantly. Anyway, chatting with her was nice. Oh, to back up, what drew me to her and the kitchen was in the living room everyone was sitting around and all of a sudden they were saying things like two is three, six is three, ten is three, five is four, eleven is six, four is cosmic... I thought first of all that they had all lost their nerdy little minds. Then I figured they were all talking about some high level math thing that I couldn't hope or want to grasp. It was odd. Anyway, on the way home, Dave told me no, it had nothing to do with high level math. It was just a silly riddle. So I ask you, do you get it? One is also three, forty two is eight. bla bla bla.

Well, congrats if any of you are still reading this. Hope I haven't bored you to tears. The next 2 weeks will be spent packing ferociously. I hope you all had a fabulous weekend.

Scrapbook II

Here's the next round of pics for your perusal and hopefully enjoyment. Most of the pages are here, but not quite all of them.


As you may note from a bunch of the following pages, I fear I may have twisted the tail of one of the sacred cows of scrapbooking - I ended up printing off most of what I wanted to say on the computer rather than handwriting it all out. The reasons being that I could fit so much more writing in that way and it just looked neater. I know it's not as personal and I hope the scrapbooking gods are not hot with furry.
This page I hated so I mostly started over and redid it. It's better but still not my favorite. I didn't post my absolutely unfavorite page. I wanted too but it had too much personal info plastered all over it. = )





I loved this pic of Josiah at the reception so I wanted to put it in, but it looks sorta funny if you see it full size - giant baby crawling through tent eating the grandparents with flower growing out of ear....

Pretty cake - thanks Rhonda! = )
I used those brad thingies for the first time and I really liked em.
The End

More news from me even though my fan base seems to have shrunk to microscopic proportions...

* sniffles and sobs

* I don't know where to begin

* I'm scared this might bore you all to tears.

* I don't want to do that.

* Maybe I'll just leave now....

* I didn't.

* In no particular order at all:

* June 9th was our 10 month anniversary. I only mention that because I have mentioned the previous 9. This is the first one that we both totally forgot until days later. We were busy running around getting ready for our trip and stressing over what to get each other for our birthdays. Well, I was anyway, I don't know what he was doing.

* Today I discovered, found if you will, in our kitchen (which is laughable because our kitchen is the size of a pin head, an EMPTY DRAWER that has been empty ever since we moved. What in the stinkin world?? Every drawer and cupboard in this place is full to overflowing and that has sat this empty one for almost a year. That is no longer the case. (I told you this would be boring)

* I have the giggles right now. Everything is hitting me as hilarious, even though it probably isn't.

* This afternoon Dave called into one of his favorite radio shows and talked to the guy, Greg Koukl on STR, one of his heroes. He was pacing around the house afterwards, unable to finish his sentences and unable to concentrate on anything. And analyzing everything he said and wishing he had said things differently. It was amusing. I do the same thing as far as analyzing past conversations for things that went wrong. If I was on the radio, I'm pretty sure I'd expire right on the spot.

* If I/we don't make it up to Red Lake this summer (the prospects of which are looking very slim), it will be a whole year that I go without seeing family and friends up there. That hasn't happened for a very long time. I'm sad at the thought, but such is life I guess. I feel like I might as well be living in Europe. I don't think the plane tickets would cost more anyways... and then there's the Belgian waffles and changing of the guard.

* The other Sunday we were driving home from church trying to decide what to eat for lunch and Dave mentions, "Well.... we do have lunch meat at home..." I grimace.... Dave in a weird voice... "Not so sexy, eh?" HUH? Again, probably not funny at all, but at the time... oh my. We do like our Sunday lunches sexy around here... so odd.

* In regard to the scrapbooking pages that are above or below, depending on the mood of blogger today... it's been so fun going back and pouring over all these sweet pictures of our love when it was young and fresh. I bought from Creative Memories, these sappy, mushy, bordering on tacky, sayings all about love, for our scrapbook (was there enough commas in that sentence?). The other day I was scrappin ferociously and we were having "one of THOSE days" of um, wedding unbliss, shall we say. Dave was flipping through pages I had done and reading them when he reads/asks aloud: "Have I learned the song that is in your heart and do I sing it to you when you have forgotten?" Oh my, I thought I might burst a seam. At that moment, my tacky little sayings seemed so utterly ridiculous. I told him the song that is in my heart is "Pick up your dirty socks!" and "Help me clean up this dump!" and things of that nature. We had a good laugh over it all.

* This afternoon I made home made twinkies, for which I am famous for in these parts. Not really actually, but I have made them before and they have been so amazingly good. Today they are just bla. And I wanted to take a bunch of them to my friend who lets me do my laundry at her house and loans us wedding clothes and such. Now I feel bad about giving her less than perfecto baking. boo sob.

* After almost a year of marriage, we discovered yesterday that we disagree over which way the TP should on the holder. We're excited about something new to scrap about. I honestly don't suspect it will be much of an issue, if the past year is any indication, but the song in my heart is definitely UNDER not over!

* It is common knowledge that I tend to be more pessimistic while Dave is the optimist. However, I have discovered as of late, (which I find to be a bit backwards) that I'm more trusting (gullible?) than he is. He thinks EVERYTHING is a scam and does not miss an opportunity to be suspicious. Some times I think I may scream if I hear the words "It sounds like SCAM!" one more time. I, on the other hand, am still holding out hope that we will get rich working 10 hours a week on our computers and will find a house for 5,000 that is the most adorable thing you've ever seen.

* I want to post something here that I found very funny but I'm scared it's just too inappropriate so I guess I won't. shucks. but I really want to.

* Last night we went to Borders and I got reading this book and could not put it down. We almost had to spend the night there, but thankfully, they let us out the back door. Anyway, you should check out the website. What an incredible story - basically, a family with 2 boys and the one apparently very very disturbed and was plotting for years to have his family murdered. He finally was partially successful and his mom and brother were both killed but his dad lived, forgive him, and became his best friend and advocate. That son is now on death row. Anyway, not exactly light and fluffy reading, but an incredible story. I came home and looked it up online and started reading more and watching interviews with the dad and couldn't pull myself away. Although some wise people might question the wisdom if staying up till 2 reading gruesome details about murder plots and family shootings. Anyway, the testimony of the father is incredible. At first I was really impressed with him, then I watched more of the story online and learned that his son had plotted 3 times before to kill them all, finally pulls it off, runs off to Mexico, then when he's on the stand, cries and acts remorseful. He goes out to eat with his family, knowing the whole time that there is an assassin in his house waiting to kill them all, except for him, and could have stopped it at any point, but never ever does. Then I struggled with wondering if that is beyond the realm of forgiveness. Seriously. How incredible sick can a person be? Anyway, on that cheery note.. I was not going to go into all that.

* Dave and I are looking for a new apartment and did not expect it to be such a headache! Basically, we have to give a 30 day notice for moving out of our place, but nearly every place that is renting wants to rent immediately and won't hold anything. So you have to take something without seeing it, or give a notice without anything lined up for sure and hope the right thing comes up. We were ready to put a deposit down on one place without seeing the inside, after asking a lot of questions and all, but when we went in to talk to the lady, someone had just beaten us to it. She said rarely do they show any of their places - people put down deposits all the time without seeing them. ARG! And we also have some confusion about when our lease is actually up so we're not sure what to do. Right now it's up Sept. first but it's supposed to be Aug. first and we could get it changed to Aug. 1st but we don't know yet where were going. But if we leave it at Sept, it won't necessarily be any different then either ... anyway... Hopefully something comes up in the next week or so that someone would hold for us. That would be the best possible situation.

* I think I have reached the end of my rambles.

* Have a nice Sunday.

Rumblings from the deep south

Howdy! Well, where to start. It's been a great week and now it's good to be home (I think). As I had aforementioned, we were heading to GA for Dave's cousin's wedding on Saturday and were planning on making a little trip out of it. We left Wednesday morning. The idea was to leave around 10 - 11, but that turned into 12:30 - 1:00. So we were annoyed about that. Not surprised, but annoyed none the less. So Dave had arranged for us to go somewhere Wed. evening and I didn't know where we were going. It was the first time in the history of our relationship that he was able to keep a secret I think. = ) And it was a lot of fun. Anyway, as we were driving along, I see this vast expanse of water and wondered aloud - WHAT IN THE WORLD? IS THAT THE OCEAN?? Can you say DDUUHHHHH!!!!! For some reason, as close as we live to the coast, it never occurred to me that we might be going there. I just assumed he found some nice little town somewhere with pretty scenery, even though he had made it clear we needed swimwear and sunscreen. hello! Anyway, would you believe, my little fluffer nutter cake took us to Orange Beach in Alabama. It was SO SO SO SO very splendid to be there, and it was fine that we got there a little later, since the afternoon would have been a little smokin hot. So we spent all evening at the beach and it was gorgeous and I hadn't been to the ocean since um, 2001 I think. It was great! Thursday we headed to GA and Dave's parents and brother were there as well as aunts and uncles. Um, what else - the wedding and reception was lovely. It was good to be with family again. I got the worse haircut of my life right before we left which was a lot of fun - one side was longer than the other, it was choppy, 2 haircuts in one... ARG! Anyhoo... I went back to the same lady to try to get it fixed yesterday. It's still not great, but okay. Back to the wedding, Dave and I are sort of disasters waiting to happen. At the ceremony, he had the camera and then we left it sitting on the bench when we walked out. When I realized we didn't have it, we started looking all over and it was GONE. We freaked out of course. Thankfully, when we got to the reception, someone came up to us right away and had picked it up and brought it along. Whew! The next evening, we went out to eat and I left my purse on the floor at the restaurant. I didn't realize it until we were at Walmart and Dave said he didn't have his wallet and we needed to buy something. Went back to the restaurant and they had it in the office. Whew again! We headed back on Monday and made good time. Today, the homestead is relatively in order again and that's a nice feeling. Well, I guess that's all for now.

Hooray! it's a trip!

At Orange Beach in Alabama.




Rehearsal dinner
Pictures of people you don't know, most likely... Dave and his cousins and grandpa
Dave and I with his parents
I was taking a picture of Dave and his brother when someone jumped in the shot. Think they might be related?
At the outdoor wedding reception. It was at such a pretty place.

killing time waiting to get food


Dave and his brother, mom, and uncle making some music - the first time I heard him play trumpet.
Sunday evening we went to Longhorn steak house for supper. It was Dave's birthday and mine was the day before so we both got ice cream.

In honor of Dave's birthday, it appears I got stoned.

Mornin

Well, I wanted to post a bunch of pictures before we left, but sadly, tis not happening. We're leaving this morning for GA after we finish getting ready, which will be who knows what time. We're going to Dave's cousin's wedding and taking our time getting there. I haven't been out or the state or barely the city since Christmas, so I'm really looking forward to it. I don't really have a lot of interesting news or anything. The last few days have been a lot of running around. I'm very tired. I know where my keys are. Um, I guess this is just hey and have a great week everyone!

Hello Idiot, I'm Rude.

Quick story - Today a friend picked me up to do some running around (we've been doing that a lot lately). At our apartment building, right by the street is everyone's mail boxes with their apartment letter on the box. So my friend pulled up on the street, right in front of the mail boxes, instead of using the parking lot (thankfully). I jumped in her vehicle and was also yacking on the phone when I looked up and something seemed very wrong. And then I shrieked, "THOSE ARE MY KEYS!!!" Would you believe, last night when I got the mail, I left my key chain (with my name on it) and my house key, car key, and mail key, right in the mailbox slot. I could NOT believe it. First of all, all you have to do is look at the box which has the apartment letter on it, and there ya go. Or help yourself to my car, whichever you prefer. To top it all of, some bafoon, must have stumbled upon this set of keys, and rather than choosing to do something helpful about it, went to the trouble of finding a big yellow piece of paper and a pen, and left me a note attached to the keys still hanging in the mailbox door (drawing further attention to them). The note said, "YOU'RE AN IDIOT!" Thanks. I sorta sensed that without your help. Arg. Anyway, could have been bad, but thankfully, we live in a safe area of town populated by really obnoxious college students.