long time comin'

It's been over a month since I last updated my blog. Last time I wrote here, I was worried that no one would RSVP to my wedding, that people wouldn't get fed, etc. Now the wedding has come and gone.

My good friend Lori from work threw me a bridal shower / bachelorette party, we invited all my girlfriends from the Cities (and Jill, too!). Lori cooked burgers and brats for us all, had made great cupcakes and taco salad, and had games for us to play, then we hit downtown for some bars to have a good night.

I was on a strict "no soda, no coffee" diet for the three weeks prior to the wedding - I had gone in for a fitting of my dress, and had to suck it in a little so the seamstress could zip it up. Yikes. Didn't want to have to worry about that on the wedding day! I even gave up my Friday Caribou Coffee that I had been getting for the last year or so.

I got sick the week before the wedding, could have been flu, could have just been a terrible cold. I had a fever of over 100 degrees for two days, and had to miss work Wednesday and Thursday of the week before I took two weeks off from work. I managed to make it into work that Friday to get as caught up as possible, and ended up working an extra hour that day.

Aaron got to have his bachelor party the weekend before the wedding, which was pretty low key and laid back, but he had a good time and didn't get too wild.

The week before the wedding, people started showing up to the Cities as early as Wednesday and Thursday. We were entertaining people for days, and had a constant stream of guests in our house. It was really a great time, and great seeing everyone again.

The day of the wedding flew by so fast. We got up, gathered our things, and Ashley, Jill, and I went to get our hair and makeup done, then we arrived at the Earle Brown Heritage Center with hours to spare. We got photos done by our good friend Jamie, which was great, because he didn't even have to act professional around us, because we're all practically like family now.

The ceremony had to be held inside instead of out on the green due to uncooperative weather. It never actually rained during the ceremony, but it was only about 50 degrees outside, and I didn't want everyone freezing their butts off, even though I felt perfectly fine in my 50 pound dress.

The reception was a BLAST. I was worried we wouldn't get people out on the dance floor after our first dance, but Henry made it happen, and he was out there all night, pulling people onto the floor. The meal was fabulous, the guests had a good time (I think!) and we had a great time. I have never danced so much in my life in one night. I went barefoot as soon as we got into the reception hall because my heels were killing me. Well, my feet were killing me the next day - I should have worn flip flops or something.

We didn't leave for our honeymoon until Tuesday. We headed up north to Duluth, the North Shore of Lake Superior, and Ely, Minnesota. We stayed at a mansion the first night at a bed and breakfast in Duluth, ate great elk burgers, and watched the Twins play through the 9th inning before leaving for bed. We stopped by Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Bay to see the lighthouse that used to run there until the 60s. We stayed in a little town called Silver Bay at a teeny little bed and breakfast above a gift shop/coffee shop and had AMAZING cranberry/orange scones the next morning. Then we headed to Ely and stayed in a huge lodge with a lakeside view. A different type of place every night - Aaron sure planned that well!

We headed home Friday morning, got home in the afternoon, and have been working on getting the house cleaned up and our lives back to normal again.

This morning, we headed out in search of a kitten for Odin. He needs some companionship, and we wanted to wait until after we'd gotten home from the honeymoon before getting one. We searched a couple of the Humane Society animal shelters in the area, and finally found a cute little kitten to take home. Her name is currently Suzie, she's 12 weeks old, and a calico. She is very sweet and snuggly. Odin isn't too pleased right now with her, they are currently in separate rooms with a door between them so no fights break out. Hopefully in the coming weeks, he'll learn to tolerate her, and she'll grow up big enough to fend for herself.

Monday starts the Real World again, which I am and am not looking forward to. I want to get back to my regular routine, but coming back to work after being gone for two weeks is going to be ROUGH.

So that's my last month in a nutshell. Now that we're not so busy every weekend, I'll try to keep the weekend updates coming along!

Frustrated

So I'm having some frustration with this whole wedding thing. It's in one month, almost exactly. We sent out invites well in advance. We sent RSVP cards to go with the invites. We even put postage stamps on the invites, so all anyone had to do was say "accepts" or "declines" and drop it in their mailbox. Of the 65 invites we sent out, we've only received 34 back. The "RSVP by" date was almost two weeks ago.

People need to get back to me on this, or I won't know how many people we're supposed to be feeding. If they want to show up without RSVPing, I hope they ate something before the wedding.

How am I supposed to plan something like this when I don't know how many people are going to show up? GAH! SO FRUSTRATED RIGHT NOW. Thank you to all who got your invites in right away. Even if you can't make it, TELL ME, y'know? I'll just assume you're not coming if I don't get one.

Sorry for venting, but I go by the P.O. Box every day to check, and most days, there's nothing. And time is running out. Four weeks. That's it. Holy crap.

First it was a year and a half. Then it was a year. Then six months. Three months, now...only one. Eeep.

very busy

Wow. We've been super busy the last couple of weekends! I rarely blog during the week, and usually save it for the weekend, but we've just packed so much into every day.

Last week, we started working on installing shelves in our bathroom closet. Spent tons of time and money at Lowe's, bought all our supplies, painted the boards, measured, cut, drilled, etc. Then we find that there's lath and plaster behind the paint, not drywall like we were anticipating. The screws we bought won't work. Crap.

We got new deadlocks and door handles for our exterior doors to match the rest of the house's colors (antique bronze). Had to take the deadlocks back because the guy at Lowe's who re-keyed them didn't tighten them up all the way, and we couldn't get the key to come out. Got that fixed pretty easily.

I really don't remember what all we did last weekend. This weekend we got a LOT accomplished. We interviewed a couple of reverends for the wedding and picked one out, and we almost have all of the ceremony figured out. We got our wedding bands ordered. We got rid of all the clothes that we won't wear anymore, which freed up a lot of space for storing seasonal clothes. We don't have any closets for coats in the front or back of the house, so we don't have a lot of extra storage space, except the basement.

We donated all of the old clothes, got them outta the house. That was great. We got the guest bedroom mostly cleared out. Which is good, because Aaron's folks are going to be visiting us this weekend, and they'll need a place to stay.

CatMonster developed a twitch. Aaron says he's noticed it since we moved into the house, but we just thought it was the crappy carpet in here and his claws were getting stuck in it. He would walk, shake his foot like something was stuck to it, and keep walking. Apparently he's been doing that for a while. I trimmed up his nails and took his harness off, and he seems better now, so hopefully nothing wrong there. Aaron had done some research, could be a neurological thing. Kitty brain surgery is expensive, no thanks.

Aaron got sick on Thursday, took a half day on Friday, and also broke one of his molars on Friday. He went to the dentist today, and it turns out he's going to need a root canal and some other work done. He'll get the first part done this Thursday, and then it takes four weeks to heal from (at that point, there will only be one week until the wedding), so he won't have any more work done on his mouth until after the wedding. Sheesh. That's going to be expensive.

And I think that's it for now. Hopefully next week we'll have more! With Aaron's folks in town, I think we're going to go to the Valley Fair - it'll be the first time for us. I bought some new sneakers this weekend because my old ones are about 10 years old and have obviously lost their spring. I'm thinking I'll definitely need those for the hours and hours of walking around at the fair. I can't wait to eat everything on the planet on a stick, deep fried.

My idea (and I don't know if this already exists, but it SHOULD) s'mores on a stick - a marshmallow dipped in milk chocolate, rolled in graham cracker crumbs, and deep fried. Mmmm, I would eat 10 of those.

Okay, really, that's it for now.

House update!

Alright, we are officially all out of the apartment, and all moved into the house as of July 30th! Two weeks into living here, and we aren't even CLOSE to having everything unpacked, but that's okay, because we only have eight weeks until the wedding, and have put off a lot of wedding-related tasks that need to be finished now.

I went in for my dress fitting on Thursday, and with my shoes, the hem is the perfect length, and nothing will need taken in or let out on the torso, thank goodness! All she did was get the bustle set up, and she'll steam it the Thursday before the wedding. I have one more fitting with her after the bustle is complete, and we're done with the dress!

Got Aaron measured for his tuxedo today, as well as got the tuxes rented for all the groomsmen and fathers this afternoon. Met up with our coordinator at the wedding venue and got a lot of details figured out, just a few left to do.

We (Aaron) realized there were a few more people that we'd like to invite to the wedding, so I had to make a quick trip to the paper store to get some more supplies for making a few more inserts for the wedding invites as, thankfully, we had more than enough envelopes. Just need those addresses!

Over the last couple of days, the garage had started smelling odd. Aaron had been doing some grilling, and thought maybe some fat from the beef or chicken had dripped into the coals and was making the smell. But it just got worse and worse and worse each day. I had stopped parking in the garage because I didn't want my car to start smelling. It smelled like sour garbage or something, but we literally only had our cars, the grill, and the lawnmower in the garage, so we weren't sure what it was.

So this morning, Aaron is getting ready to make some omelets for breakfast, and I notice that the light in the garage was on. The only reason I noticed this is because it was unusually dark outside for 10am. So I tell Aaron that I'm going to go out and turn the light off in the garage. And he says that since I'm going out there, we should try to find the source of the smell.

So he gets dressed and shoes on, and we head out there. And it's just awful. We open up both the big garage door, and the small door to let some light and fresh air in, and poke around. Neither of our cars are parked in there, so it made the search that much simpler. Aaron checked all over by his side of the garage with the grill and lawnmower, and I checked my side, which was empty, aside from a piece of plywood leaned up against the wall.

There was a nail sticking out of the plywood in the front, so I grabbed that (instead of wrapping my fingers around the top, in case there were spiders in there), and slowly start pulling it back. Nothing scuttles out at me, so I peek my head in over the edge of the board, and see the legs and tail of a cat! OMG. I drop the board and shriek, because I have apparently turned into a big GIRL.

Aaron comes over to me, and has me pull the board back again so he can see. Sure enough, a full-grown cat, not neutered, with no collar is back behind that board, DEAD. And apparently rotting. Who knows for how long! Aaron has me pull the board all the way away from the cat, and we can then see that rigor mortise has set in, there are maggots, and part of kitty's face was missing. Ick, ick, ick. I'm so glad we hadn't eaten breakfast at that point.

Now what? We need to come up with a plan. We go back in the house, grab a moving box, and tape it back together. And tape all the seams up really nice. And line it with a garbage bag. We brought another garbage bag out with us, grab a pole from a broken broom, and proceed to push kitty into the box. Aaron covers him with the second garbage bag, closes it up, and hums the funeral procession. We dump him in the city garbage bin for our property, toss the stick and the gloves, and go inside.

"Well, who's hungry for breakfast?!" Aaron asks. Ugh, no thanks. I go and shower, Aaron does so shortly after me, and we proceed to laze about for half an hour or so before commencing with breakfast.

The part where it was unusually dark this morning? Yeah, that comes into play later in the day. It rained half the day, on and off, which was kind of unusual in itself, mostly because even though while it was raining, it was still 90 degrees outside.

Aaron and I had gone out to the grocery store, and as soon as we stepped out of the house, it was like stepping into a bathroom where someone had been running hot shower water for half the day. You almost had to swim through the moisture in the air. It was unbearable. Just as we're leaving the grocery store parking lot, the sirens start going off. I look at the clock, it's 8:45pm. Normally the sirens go off at 9:00pm as a test. And they don't stop blaring. We park in front of the house, and the neighbors are all outside, doing Lord knows what, but definitely looking for a tornado.

Aaron had been looking at the radar on his cell phone's browser, but it must be slow, because by the time we parked, the direction of the storm shifted, and whatever was coming, was coming straight for us. Holy crap, I'm not ready for this!

So I start packing up stuff, candle, flashlight, laptop, blanket, pillows, phones, jackets, whatever, throwing it into a hamper. I get Odin into his cat carrier. I'm just getting ready to head downstairs and camp out in the basement with the spiders when the sirens stop howling.

And that's when the thunder and lightning hits. But it only lasted for 5 minutes, if that, and was gone. And I am not lying when I tell you it's still 90 degrees outside, and probably will be for the next three days. Ugh. And it's going to be so flipping humid. If I wanted weather like this, I would have moved to Louisiana.

And that's the most recent events in my recollection. More to come later, and some pictures of things when everything's unpacked and set up! I don't know where my camera is (I know it's in the camera case, but am not sure where THAT is), and it's a total disaster area in here, anyway.

Until next time!

busy weekend

Whew, we have been super busy! The seller agreed to let us start moving in on Thursday, even though they couldn't get us in for closing on the house until tomorrow. We started moving Thursday, and now have very little left in the apartment. It's basically the computers (no internet at the house yet), the TV, and the air mattress, along with a bunch of random crap that needs to find its way over to the house, like the feet to the furniture, fans, lamps, and little storage thingies.

One of my co-workers gave me a house-warming gift - a Scotts Classic reel lawnmower - no engine, just my feet! I thought about trying it out today on the lawn, but since we haven't closed yet, I don't want to do anything until I'm 100% sure the house is ours. It looks like it will work, even with the super long grass we currently have - just have to make a bunch of passes.

We moved Odin into the house today (Sunday). He was quite traumatized, and has mostly just been hiding under any piece of furniture he can fit. We've been gone most of the day, in and out of both the house and the apartment. Took us an hour to find him when we came back in the afternoon - he'd wedged himself under the ottoman in the basement while I was doing laundry earlier in the day.

We're going to sleep in the house for the first time tonight. We'd bought an air mattress to sleep on over the weekend (and now to use in the guest room since we don't have two beds at the moment), so this should be interesting. We spent the better part of yesterday vacuuming up spiders that had taken up residence in the corners while the house was vacant.

The closet in the master bedroom is odd. It's very deep, very tall, but has an angled side for some reason. We can't put a clothes hanger rod all the way across because of that angle, so Aaron came up with an idea to put a built-in closet from IKEA in there. So we headed over to IKEA and came up with a game plan for a built-in with multiple rods, drawers, and shelves that should work out well for the both of us.

We still have a lot to do, and it's going to take a lot of time, but I'm so excited to have our own place!

Also, we finally got some wedding registry stuff completed today and yesterday! People had been asking about it, and we didn't have anything up, so with not being able to do anything at the house, and being tired of sitting in the empty apartment, we got some stuff done. Still a few more things to take care of, but I feel like we have a good list set up for now.

here's what we know

Okay, after talking it over with our Realtor and the listing agent, we have come to a compromise. The listing agent and seller have agreed to let us move in this Thursday, the 23rd. We don't get to do the closing on the house until Monday, the 27th. The listing agent has guaranteed us that all the work will be done by today, except the wiring of the A/C, which will be completed tomorrow.

We just have to agree to not change anything on the house until AFTER the closing. So no painting, no ripping out walls, no tearing up the carpet, until we close. Should be pretty simple, as we weren't planning on doing any of that stuff yet, anyway.

We won't start moving in until after I get home from work, so hopefully the guy doing the A/C will have a chance to get it completed before we start going in and out of the house.

So, despite being super irritated and disappointed last night after the walk through, it's turned out pretty well in the end. So far. We'll see if they got everything accomplished tomorrow afternoon.

grrr

Another quick one. The final walk through on the house did not go as expected. Aaron said he was pretty sure it was going to happen, but I was pretty disappointed and irritated. Basically, we gave them a list of nine things to do, and they only got five of them fully completed. The rest were either half-done, or not done at all. I can't remember everything, but the air conditioning unit was not fully wired, the furnace was not fixed and cleaned out, the garage still had debris and the rotted sheet rock had not been pulled off the walls, and the washer and dryer were ALMOST ready to go, but the dryer was not fully hooked up to the gas, and there was no line leading to the outside of the home for venting purposes.

What does this mean for us? We can't do our closing today as we planned. We're going to try to push it back to Friday (our Realtor will let us know today if that's possible). It also means that we'll have to do one more final walk through before closing, which means I'll likely have to take more time off work than I would just for the closing to drive down to the house, back to work, and then go to the closing office (which happens to be in the same office complex that I work in, so that's good).

Well, they were close, but no cigar.

I'll let you know how Friday goes.

quick "hello"

Sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of weekends - we seem to be really busy all the way up through Sunday nights lately, and I haven't had time to recap the week.

We close on the house this Wednesday, the 22nd! I'm really excited, and can't wait to get everything in the house and out of the apartment. We've been really busy packing, and trying to hang out with friends as well, so not much time to blog.

I'll try to post more later, maybe after we move!

house, wedding, packing update

Well, this weekend has been VERY productive. We've got all of our seasonal clothing and coats packed, most of the kitchen packed, more living room stuff, and a little bit more bedroom and bathroom stuff packed away and in the garage. We still have four weeks left until we move, but I prefer the slow and steady pace to trying to pack up the entire apartment in a week before moving.

We got a lot of the house paperwork taken care of yesterday as well, and it just now needs to be sent off to our mortgage loan lady, which I'll do on Monday from work. We tried to do it from Aaron's work yesterday, but the scanner wasn't working right, and then we couldn't get into my work building on the weekends. Oh well.

Wedding invitations are almost done. I just have to print off directions, get a map back from a friend of Aaron's who offered to draw it up for us, print that out, and they're done! I'll be so happy to get them out of my hair! I don't know what I was thinking, needing to make them myself. But I guess it's given me a lot of time to figure out what kind of wording I want to use, as I just do one piece at a time. If I'd ordered invites, I would have had to figure out all the wording at once.

Today, we may spend some time cleaning behind the fridge and the stove. We'll have to do it SOMETIME, and Aaron figures doing it now once, and then going over it again right before we move out is the best way to go. Not as much elbow grease needed in the end.

Well, I'm out here in the living room, nursing a headache, and Aaron's in bed because he didn't come in to sleep until 1am or something like that, so it's probably going to be a slow start to the day. Which is fine with me...

Rock the Garden

This Saturday, Aaron, Bret, Jess, and I went to Rock the Garden at the Walker Art Center / Sculpture Gardens. It was SO MUCH FUN. The opening group was Solid Gold, a local group, then Yeasayer, a group out of Brooklyn, NY who have a very African tribal feeling to them, Calexico, a band from Phoenix, Arizona, who use a lot of horns and sound a little "south of the border," and then The Decemberists closed the set.

We arrived close to 4pm, with the first concert starting at 4:30. Everyone quickly grabbed their beer tickets, and I got me some cherry lemonade (since I don't drink beer). We found our spot on the lawn, set up camp, and the concert soon started. It was sunny and 85 degrees outside. We actually took the bus from Bret and Jess' house to the gardens so we wouldn't have to worry about parking.

Solid Gold is an interesting band - popular in Europe, but based out of the Twin Cities. We weren't sure how they'd translate from studio performance to live - but were pleasantly surprised! They were great! Yeasayer and Calexico were bands I'd only heard a couple of songs from on the radio, both were very good. Lastly were The Decemberists, performing their new CD, Hazards of Love, which is a concept album, all the songs go together to create a story. I'd only heard the whole album once, but it was great live, and I was happy they sang 4-5 other songs from their earlier CDs after the set. They ended with "Crazy on You" by Heart, because they have two female singers who were AMAZING. Very powerful vocals, and they were both able to pull of that song.

We walked downtown to have some drinks and food after the concert, and grabbed a cab back to Bret and Jess' to end the evening. I wore tons of sunscreen and was lucky to not get burned.

All in all, a very good, very long day. I am excited to see who they bring out next year!

Today is mostly a day of recovering from being out in the sun for 6-7 hours, working on wedding invites, and maybe we'll get around to doing some cleaning, too.