happy birthday, honey!

so today is my husband-to-be's 30th birthday! we celebrated on sunday with a surprise party that i somehow managed to pull off in the midst of wedding planning. it was stressful, because for the last week things kept coming up with that (where to have it, how to do it, etc.) and i wanted to discuss it with bryan. i found myself almost telling him about the latest happenings in the party planning at every turn, and having to stop myself. it was an interesting lesson in how much i value being able to tell him everything! keeping something from him was sooooo hard.

anyway, on sunday around 10:00am, bryan wanted to go pick up the truck from the tire place. we had taken it on friday for new tires and inspection, and it failed inspection. so he had to adjust the back brakes and replace the front ones. he assured me this would take an hour. i did some calculating and figured (since i knew it would take way more than an hour) that if we left by 10:30, he went to the auto parts store and was home by 11:00, and then worked on the car for even 2.5 hours, he would be just getting out of the shower when everyone arrived at 2:00pm. no such luck. i left the house at 1:30 with my dear fiance banging away at the lug nut that the tire people had cross threaded. so of course when we all pulled up to the house a little after 2:00, he was standing there covered in grease and sweat. ha! he was at first confused, and then very pleasantly surprised. we had a great time with our friends and i am so glad that i was able to still find a way to celebrate his milestone birthday!

we are, i believe, officially in the final countdown. four days til the wedding! as you can imagine, we have been crazy busy. it seems like all we do is shop lately. we shopped for vases on friday night, i shopped for makeup and a few gifts on saturday, we shopped for some other stuff last night... i picked up a nice shirt and slacks for bryan at costco last night and he said, "well, okay, you better take advantage of me spending money like this while you can." i said, "i know! after the wedding, we are going to be TIGHTWADS!" and i mean it. i think. :)

today is my last day at work until october 10... so basically for 2 weeks! i have gotten everything done that is must-do before i leave for that long. i must say, i am so grateful right now to have an awesome boss (today she said at lunch, "you better work all afternoon, to keep your mind off of the wedding" and winked at me as she said it.) and a job that i can either take care of everything ahead of time or things will wait until i get back. as much as i miss the arthritis foundation, i would be completely stressed out right now at the prospect of not being at work for two weeks. instead, i am completely EXCITED about the wedding and not at all worried about work! yay.

let the butterflies begin

so people keep asking me if i'm nervous about the wedding. and i'm not. but today, the "holy crap i'm getting married next saturday" butterflies have starting flapping in my tummy occasionally. it's more of a revving of the engine than nerves though... like my body is at the start line of a big race and it's hitting its own gas pedal. man, that is a moronic similie but oh well. that's what it feels like!

we are officially in busy wedding mode, and it's fun and only mildly stressful. :) tuesday evening i went and paid our photographer (with starter checks from the bank) and visited with my grandma, who informed me that lois, my uncle bruce's girlfriend, took my flower girl basket and ring bearer pillow home to maryland with her to fix them up! i thought that was really sweet, and it is so nice to have even one thing out of my hands. grandma and i visited a while, then i went to look for a birthday present for bryan. his 30th birthday is next tuesday, you know... so anyway, then home again home again jiggity jig.

yesterday we had our final meeting with our caterer at main street station, the reception site. i am so glad we picked this caterer. i feel so comfortable leaving everything in their hands, i am not worried at all about where the flowers are going to go, how things will be set up, etc. etc. they are just good like that. then we did a little bit of running around and got home around 8 or so and opened the mail (got a couple packages for the wedding) and looked at each other and wondered if we needed to do anything else for the wedding. we decided we could take the rest of the evening off and just chill and watch tv/do non-wedding things on the computer. we had done enough for one day. :)

this morning i had a class and because i can't stop thinking about wedding stuff, i took my wedding notebook with me. i have a five-star brand one subject notebook and my co-worker in the class with me made fun of me because it is about 4/5 of the way full. hey, a wedding like this takes planning! :) well, i decided it was a good time to rewrite and update the to do list. my old to-do list from a couple weeks ago had been almost two full notebook pages, and there were only about 10 things left. well, i rewrote those things and added the other things we need to do and guess what. still almost two full pages. lovely.

it's all good... i've got 9 days to get it all done. :)

next week, i'll be a married woman!

this morning, my friend jodie sent me an email asking, "so, how many days off are you taking next week?" my heart skipped a beat. i have been thinking of this wedding approaching in terms of # of days (12), but to think of it as NEXT WEEK! wow. insane.

we had a very busy and awesome weekend. on friday evening, we went over to my grandma's house for dinner with my dad, uncle bruce and lois and aunt elaine and uncle jack. it was a lot of fun to get together and see everyone and eat some good food.

saturday was wedding shopping day! we bought gifts for the groomsmen and bridesmaids and toasting flutes for us (that match the glasses we registered for). then to buffalo wild wings to watch some football and eat, then home to play with our purchases and watch more football. i love football, is that weird? and more each year. it's weird. saturday i watched the clemson v. florida state game and was totally into it, but i really dont' care about either of those teams. crazy.

yesterday, we watched the last few minutes of "father of the bride" before the day's football shows started and i cried the whole 20 minutes we watched. i am going to be a mess on my wedding day. sara (maid of honor) is prepared with the tissues but i hope i can at least keep it together to some degree because i'm not a very pretty crier. seriously.

i typed up our wedding day schedule and my dad came over so that we could all go over it. somehow we managed to do this during the eagles football game. my dad made a point to reitirate to bryan that he had chosen the giants to win and that he thinks the giants will win the NFC east. bryan and i (both eagles fans) poo-pooed this idea and forgave him. then, as my dad left, a little into the fourth quarter, he said, "well, the giants are going to come back and score twice and win." now, seriously dad, that wasn't nice, casting your voodoo spells on the eagles and making them lose the game... guess my dad had to show his future son-in-law who's in control around here... :)

mourning the eagles' loss, bryan and i made our way to brown's island to meet with our photographer. i am very excited about the locations we've chosen to take pictures that day. now if the weather will cooperate... we were supposed to pay the photographer the balance we owe him, so bryan pulled out the checkbook, which i had remembered to bring. i did not, however, think to make sure there were checks in the checkbook. so we felt like idiots. but that's okay, our photographer is super nice and understanding. :)

we left there and met some friends at buffalo wild wings for even more football (poor redskins), then home for some much needed rest for the beginning of our next to last workweek as unmarried people. ha!

today i made my appointments for a spa morning on saturday, courtesy of my maid of honor and future sister-in-law, and i am SO looking forward to it! the only thing is, the only time they had available for me to start the services i am getting was 8am. so getting up early enough to be there by 7:45 will kind of suck, but hell, it's worth it!

alright, gotta go do some wedding stuff... i mean, work. ;-)

when grandma says you're fallin' down on the blog, you better blog.

okay, i know it has been a long time since i blogged when my grandma is giving me a hard time about it! :) (hi grandma!)

so, wow, it's been almost two weeks since i updated you all. give me a little break, here, i am less than three short weeks away from the big day! which of course means there are about a billion little things to take care of.

since we last chatted, tons has happened. i got home from my conference on a rainy thursday, which was followed by a rainy friday, a rainy saturday, a cloudy sunday and a rainy monday. for real. i was seriously deprived of vitamin d after that stretch. the rainy friday was spent driving through tropical storm/tropical depression/tropical pain in my rear ernesto. bryan and i thought we'd be smooth and take the long way to PA--64west to 81north. figured that'd take us AROUND the storm. no such luck. bryan was driving in practically torrential downpours for a good 6 hours. it got old real fast, but there was no escaping it.

we made it to pa in one piece and hit the sack so bryan could rest up for his big day the next day: bachelor party #1. and party it was. i, of course, was not invited. instead i spent some quality time with my future sister-in-law kelley and future mother-in-law jan. i did, however, get a very sweet--albeit drunke--awakening when bryan got home. he had a very good time, and even came home with a door prize--a men's leather jacket from banana republic! okay, it wasn't a door prize. he found it in the floor of a bar and thought it was a good idea to put it on and somehow none of his companions saw anything wrong with him wearing someone else's leather jacket out of the place. so he came home with it. car keys in the pocket. someone else's car keys mind you. the class that graduated his high school a year after them was having their class reunion at the bar where he confiscated it, so we returned the jacket to the girl who had coordinated that event the next day. we have since discovered that the man whose jacket bryan "borrowed" came back to the bar accusing people of stealing his jacket and became so irate that he was arrested and spent the night in jail, in the drunk tank i presume. he was apparently quite intoxicated yet his best argument to the police was that he was the designated driver and his car keys were in his coat pocket. so i guess it turns out bryan is the hero for "borrowing" the jacket and playing fonzie the rest of the night.

the next day, sunday, was the klinger family labor day gathering. one of bryan's cousins just had a baby and i believe at least 5 people in bryan's family either told me not to wait too long or made some comment about how bryan and i should be next with the baby. alright, people, let us get hitched first and THEN we can think about babies for you all.

monday we came home and back to the real world. most of last week was spent either at work or shopping for wedding stuff or discussing wedding stuff. we got a good bit accomplished, so much that we've really taken the past few days off from it. back to business soon.

this past weekend was bryan's bachelor party #2. his brother kevin came down so that bryan could party again, this time with his virginia contingent. i'll avoid sharing details of his arrival home in the wee hours of sunday morning, but let's just say that he still smelled of alcohol when i got home from a shopping trip yesterday around 6pm...

my saturday was awesome--i got to spend time with some of my favorite people! drove up to staunton to see my mom, brother and sister and fit my sister's bridesmaid's dress. luckily, the smaller size fit her perfectly--no alterations needed! yay! we all went to this great store called fashion gallery and i found a very cute top. it was so good to see my mom, bro and sis--i really wish i got to see them more often. every time i see vic and zech they seem to mature more and more. it is freaking me out that my sister will be able to get her learner's permit in just a couple months and when my friends look at pictures of my (13 year old!) brother they think he is hot!

on my way to staunton, i passed many a car flying the UVA flag, and got the football itch really bad. i called my dad to see if maybe i could score his second ticket and meet him there at halftime, which i did. and thankfully, my good ol' wahoos put one in the W column! we sort of won by accident (the other team missed their extra point in overtime), but hey, it was damned exciting and fabulous to see my team win! it had been years since my dad and i got to go to a football game together, too, so that was tons of fun.

sunday: shopping with neener! my stepmom has been stressed to the max about finding something to wear to the wedding, so we headed to short pump on a mission, with bridesmaid leslie as back-up. i knew the task at hand was doable, it was just a matter of forcing neener in the dressing room with some dresses and dressy clothes that i knew would look good on her. and we succeeded! even got shoes to match!

and today, back to work, where i had my first "intro to conversational spanish" class, lunched with erica (my mistress of ceremonies) and even managed to get a little work done in spite of the screwy VCU financial systems. and now that i've updated this blog FINALLY, i think i'm going to go downstairs and read some more of Wicked, it's such a good book! it's the back story of the wicked witch of the west from the wizard of oz, and it is hard to put down.

i can't, however, leave without acknowledging the importance of today's date. it's hard to believe that 9/11 was five years ago. watching the news tonight and remembering, it just seems sort of surreal still. i was so fortunate to not have any loved ones killed in the attacks, and yet i mourn for all those who did. i just can't imagine what that feels like. i remember sitting alone in my apartment that day after i left work trying to figure out what i should do. there were so many people i wanted to be with on that terrifying day, yet none of them were in the same place. i am reminded how fortunate and blessed i am to love so many people, and to be loved in return.