My Wishlist

Runner-Up Best Overall Blog of 2005!

I'm a down to earth girl who loves to laugh at others...I mean make others laugh.
View my complete profile
Blogroll Me!   Review My Site   Site Feed MySpace Profile Facebook Profile   Friendster Profile

Enter your email address below to subscribe to The Art of Getting By and get new posts delivered to your in-box daily!


powered by Bloglet
Subscribe with Bloglines

 

"This is the most exciting day of my life...and I was pulled on stage once to dance at a Bruce Springsteen concert."
30 Rock

 

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us


This blog has been chosen
as a 2005 BEST

 

 

Monday, September 01, 2008

All That... Sans A Bag Of Chips

You know how you know you haven't done something in ages? I'll tell you how. You know when you can't remember how you did it in the first place. That's what happened to me this morning when I decided to log on, to my own blog. How pathetic is that? At thirty-one years old I am already forgetting things that I did or didn't do or how I did them and stuff like that. Geesh. If I can nominate myself as a strong candidate for having Alzheimer's in the future, I'd like to do so now. Really, I have to write it down here otherwise I won't remember. You all are my witnesses, but I digress.

As Sharon so politely pointed out, it's been just a little over two months since I last updated. Needless to say a lot has happened in those last two months and thus, that's the reason why I haven't had time to update to begin with. Let's try to go in order, shall we? To add richness to the story I plan on including pictures so get ready!

When we last met I mentioned that we were slated to move into our new house in mid July. All went well and we did just that. With only a few weeks left until the wedding (like I previously mentioned) we tried to get as much done as possible. While our house is pretty much in move in condition, there are still things that need to get done. This included getting three rooms painted and ordering an area rug for one of the bedrooms (the upstairs is currently all hardwood). The rest of the time was mainly spent organizing what I did bring, that mainly being gifts from the shower which, in large part, were kitchen related. I have been bringing my stuff in bits and pieces, mainly because I can since I moved from my parents house.

Front of Our House

In other house news, so far we have had a love/hate relationship with our pool. I love it, he hates it. See, all my life I've always wanted two things my parents never let me have-- a pool and a dog. When we found this house we had the first one and in the next few months I hope to be working on the second. So when we found this house with a beautiful above ground pool which does not effect your taxes, it seemed meant to be. Only problem is neither one of us has a clue how to take care of a pool. I'll spare you the details now, but let's just say that not knowing what to do or being unable to carry out what to do for whatever the reason, coupled with not being around much this summer to use it has made the pool a bit of a nuisance. I still love it though and I hope that next year, with less going on and, as Madonna once put it we, "get into the groove" it will feel like less of a hassle.

Our backyard, including the pool

After we moved in we had the little business to attend to of getting married. For the most part, this went off without a hitch...or, in this case, should I say with a hitch? Ha, ha. Amazingly the groomsmen all did show up, dressed in the right clothes and everything. Only one guy was running late that day, but as it turned out so was the girl I found to do my makeup so it didn't really matter. Apparently she was having car problems and called to tell us this at the same time she was supposed to arrive. I did have a backup if I needed it, but when things like this happen on your wedding day, it's like a domino effect. Incidentally her being late offset everything else. Thus things with the photographer seemed rushed and in a way, they were. While taking photographers I knew we were behind schedule to getting to the ceremony itself, but my girls wouldn't tell me just how behind. But like they said, no one could start the wedding without us, so they had no choice but to wait.

I don't know what time it was when we actually showed up, but drinking wine in the limo helped me care less about what didn't go right. Since neither one of us are super traditional people I wanted the ceremony to be a mix of the fun and the serious. So prior to my entrance, we decided to play "Somebody's Getting Married" from Muppets Take Manhattan. My parents were mortified when I decided to go through with this, but I told them to just trust me. Wouldn't you know when we did the receiving line that is the one thing more than anything else people told me they loved? To walk in I went pretty traditional with Pachelbel's Canon in D. On the way out we decided to "Rick Roll" our guests a bit by playing "Together Forever" by Rick Astley as our recessional music.

A bad shot of me walking down the aisle, but you get the idea

Our priest also made it to the event, wearing his sandals, yes I wrote sandals, to officiate. I felt like the ceremony itself took no time at all as did everything that followed. I never got to see the cocktail hour or all that was there as I was in the bridal suite with a fraction of the food that everyone else had. These are the drawbacks of being the guest of honor. When it came time to make our grand entrance, the DJ asked me if someone was saying grace before dinner. I had already confirmed this with the priest so imagine my surprise when that's how I found out he had already left. Granted we were running behind, but the least he could have done was tell someone he was leaving and attempt to say goodbye. Oh well, so we proceeded, without grace although there was a woman named Grace there, so I guess that's good enough.

I liked our DJ when I first met him, but he did give off an air of cockiness I couldn't quite put my finger on that night. It was just a vibe I got that pretty much was confirmed the day of the wedding. When I met with the DJ I mentioned how we wanted to do the traditional mother/son and father/daughter dances in the middle of the night as neither one of us really like being center of attention. Since he was only half listening he responded with something to the effect of, "But if you do it in the middle of the evening, less people will notice." Exactly, Sherlock.

Reception Entrance

I know it seems like a bit of an oxymoron to some to not expect to be the center of attention on the day of your own wedding, but we just don't like being on display. I liked the idea of a big party and all of that, but fussing over me, not so much. At any rate, the day of the wedding arrives and we're about to walk in and that's how I discover the DJ already cued up the first dances to go at the beginning though we had discussed and solidified the opposite. He acted like he didn't realize and he could still change it, but since we were buzzed and I didn't want to delay things any further, we went ahead and got all the dances out of the way in the beginning. And for us, honestly this wasn't so bad. For my dad, however, who is a lot like me and didn't get forewarning (though didn't get to drink nearly enough to prepare), not so much. By the way, in case anyone is interested in the nitty gritty details, Mother/Son dance was "I Hope You Dance" by Leann Womack (mom's pick), Father/Daughter dance was "My Little Girl" by Steve Kirwan and our dance was to "Angel Eyes" by The Jeff Healy Band.

Mother/Son dance

Dad/Daughter dance

Our First Dance

Because You Can't Have Dancing Pictures Without One of Ninety-One Year Old Grandma

My father in law did get a lot of nice pictures and even a few videos, but I don't know where he was during our first dance as he had no pictures of that. He did, however, have pictures and videos of the bane of my existence, the organized dancing. I tried my damnedest to keep it out, but come hell or high water, these people need their Macarena!! God bless them all.

Something Horrible Was Happening Here

As I mentioned earlier, we're not overly traditional people. I also don't like cookie cutter weddings. As a result, I didn't do the bouquet toss or garter exchange. I always found it to be awkward anyhow. Hey! I just caught the garter of someone I probably don't know and now I'm going to put it on someone I just met in an incredibly awkward moment of public humiliation. Sound fun?? No thanks, I'll pass. I also don't think my DJ took me seriously when I said in lieu of the clinking of the glasses, I'd like Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl" (my favorite song and a real crowd pleaser to boot) to be played every hour, on the hour. Instead he threw me a bone and played it once, and even that was far into the night. I did make sure that my wallflower self got on the dance floor though. It was the least I could do.

Jessie's Girl!!

I Feel Like This One Says, Thanks For Coming

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you're interested in seeing the professional pictures, i.e. getting ready, on location, posed and perfect, shoot me an email at aogbgirl@yahoo.com and I'll give you behind the scenes access to the online proofs. There are also more pictures uploaded to those of you who have access to My Space or Facebook. If I haven't added you as a friend on either site, let me know that, too.

Next up was the honeymoon. Thankfully we had a bit of a breather in between the wedding and the trip as our wedding was on a Saturday and we left on Thursday. We took a nine day cruise to the Caribbean, specifically Bermuda, St. Maarten, St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. Neither one of us had been on a cruise before, so that was fun, but I have to admit nine days is a bit much. I would love to go on a cruise in the future, but I think it would be more fun to go with a group of other couples, girlfriends or family. This is only because if you are with just one person and said person, ahem, doesn't want to do certain things, there are other people to do things with. Also when you're only with one person for that long there's only so much to do or say. We were very lucky though as we had a kick ass table in the dining room of two other couples and ourselves so dinner each night was fun and delicious, not a chore.

Our Dinner Table

We did a lot of fun things on our cruise and a lot of relaxing, but I couldn't imagine writing about it all now after all that I wrote above. Let this be a tip to you. This is why you shouldn't take long hiatuses from blogging kids! I will tell you though about the most exciting thing that happened on our trip...I was a winner at the casino! I barely put any money in to win too and it was from a 25 cent slot machine! Nice, right? I didn't even know I had won or what I had won when my machine started dinging. total strangers started gathering around me out of curiosity, but "hubby" had no idea it had happened. I could see him in the distance, losing his quarters, but he didn't look up and couldn't hear me (as often happens anyhow). It wasn't until they had to come over and hand pay me since the machine doesn't spit out money over a certain amount that I could go to him and fan out my winnings (as seen below). When all was said and done I won a little over a thousand bucks which, as anyone who has ever cruised before knows, basically covered most of our on board expenses and a little of our port expenses, too.

Me and My Winnings

But now it's back to life, and back to reality. Tomorrow I go back to school and the kids start Thursday. I have to say though that I'm ready to go back. This summer flew by because I had so much going on, but typically I get bored the second half of the summer. I like keeping busy. The paperwork and the preparation, not so much, but still. My commute will be further since the move so that's one change, as well as my moving my classroom as I told you about in the previous post. I got as much done as I could this summer in terms of setting up so I'm in pretty good shape now. We don't have class lists yet, that's always a last minute thing that changes constantly anyhow. I heard through the grapevine though that I have fourteen students (my max in the new room is fifteen) but the breakdown may be 9 boys and 5 girls...ouch. This means if the boys act up, and sorry but they often do, there's really no way to separate them in the new room. It should be interesting and at the very least, different from past years. I hope to give you more regular updates about the day to day happenings now that the major things are no longer keeping me from blogging.

One last thing, for those of you who have been kind enough to ask, my mom is doing well. She finished her chemotherapy up a little over a week before the wedding, which was good. She's now done with all treatments, but has to take a pill for the next five years as a precautionary measure. She was nervous about taking it as there were possible side effects to that, too, but so far, so good. She's glad she had the wedding the same year as being sick because it kept her busy and kept her from becoming preoccupied so I guess it's true when they say God doesn't give you more than you can handle. I'd like to think so anyway.

And there you have it, the last two months the Reader's Digest version. But enough about me. So, what's new with you?

 

 


Blog Roll [−]

Blogging Chicks [−]

Blogger Chicks [−]

Blog Linker [−]





Google
Futon Critic
IMDB
Melodic.net
80's TV Themes
Slyck
The Onion
Television Without Pity
Modern Humorist
Best Week Ever Blog
American Idol


Carnival-small

Who Links Here

Listed on Blogwise
Join BloggerChicks
Blog Flux Directory
ESL and EFL Blogs
Best news blogs

Nubbit Blog Directory

Bloggy Award

TFS 100 TopBlogs

Top Blogs Personal Personal Blogs Personal Blogs Top 

blogs

 

  online