the story of right now

- I have never in my life enjoyed looking at photos of myself as much as I enjoy looking at our wedding photos. The cosmetology team I hired was worth every single penny. I truly felt pretty on our wedding day.

- John let me buy an elliptical! It's being delivered on Saturday. I can't wait, especially after getting on the scale this morning and seeing a number I've never seen. (PS - my scale all of a sudden changed to metric. Way to confuse me at 7:00 in the morning!)

- We also bought a patio set. We spent too much money this weekend. I love how our yard is coming together, though.

- Is it normal to want to snuggle my cats instead of go to work? It's a dilemma I face every day.

- Sometimes I still wake up in the morning and think, 'how many days until the wedding?' Then I realize it happened TWO WEEKS AGO and nearly faint. How did that happen?!

- Summer is already going by too quickly. I blame it on working 40 hours a week. Seriously, it is not cool being stuck in an office during prime beach hours.

remember the time I said I was buying a house?

We have been so busy lately. I've had wedding questions from my planner to answer, decisions to make, INVITATIONS TO MAIL OUT [this took FOREVER], and the list goes on. It's been an especially stressful couple of weeks on the house front, though. It seems like the seller is the slowest person on Earth. There have been lots of bits and pieces that need to be sorted out - papers to be signed & permits to be shown, and of course we've been dealing with the ever-difficult VA.

We are getting a VA home loan that John is eligible for after serving in the Army for 8 years. They are pretty picky about some things, but they are also SO SLOW at getting anything done. But there was one thing that ticked me off - John had to sign a piece of paper stating that he was not going to be deploying in the next 12 months, because if he was, the VA considered it "bad faith." REALLY!? If he were to deploy [which he won't; his time was up almost 2 years ago] the bank would say we reneged on the loan. I just couldn't believe that. How can you tell service men and women that they cannot buy a house if they are to deploy within 12 months? How awful is that?!

Anyway. Rant aside, things are moving along, albeit a bit slowly and stressfully. [Stressfully is not a word but I just made it up. Don't judge]. We should be closing next week! Hopefully the move will go smoothly because by the end of March, we will be in full-force Wedding Mode. Please bear with me through the sporadic posts until June - I cannot even believe it's March already. I don't know where the last 2 months have gone.

PS - our 4583745 feet of snow is finally melting. Please, weather gods, please melt it all away before we move next weekend!? Please?!

PPS - my first wedding dress fitting is next weekend also. -freaking out about fitting into it-

one big announcement coming up...

Bullets because it's been forever...

-- Winter 2011... I will never forget you. One of the major reasons why I have not posted in forever is because of the weather. We have not been on Mother Nature's good side since Christmas. We broke the record for amount of snowfall in January with storm after storm. We got one storm that dropped 30 inches, another that dropped 18, a few that dropped 5-6, oh and let's not forget the ice storms that came by too. We lost power completely a few times, and we lost our cable service (phone, TV, internet) for over a week. Not to mention, the snowbanks at intersections are SO HIGH because there is nowhere to put the snow. It was pretty bad for a while, but luckily we have had over a week with no snow so it has started to melt a little.

-- Wedding is in 99 days! I'm almost finished with the invitations and then it's on to the favors. Then the table names, escort cards, programs...am I forgetting anything?? My dress finally arrived so I have my first fitting on March 12th. I'm so excited for that. I need to purchase my shoes by then (aka flip flops) and any undergarments I plan on wearing. My shower is on March 19th and I finally finished our registries at Bed Bath & Beyond and Target. Those were painful! I feel so awkward picking out all these gifts for people to buy me.

-- **BIG ANNOUNCEMENT** We bought a house! This is another reason why I have avoided the interwebs lately. I have been so excited about this, but we wanted to keep quiet until we were sure that it was a done deal. It's an old farm house that was built in 1869. It's a flip, so it's all renovated and move-in-ready. We are tentatively set to close in about a month, so it's going to be a really hectic and stressful couple of months coming up. Not only are we finishing up a million little things for the wedding, we are also picking out paint colors and new furniture and Oh Em Gee! The excitement!

So, there we have it. My life over the last several weeks summed up in a couple bullets. With everything we've got going on, I still want to make it a priority to fit in exercise and healthy eating so I feel beautiful on the big day. I'm looking into buying some Zumba dvd's - does anyone have any suggestions?