That's just crazy talk!

Yesterday I picked up my wedding dress! I’m so excited to finally have it and it fits! However, I’m not as excited for the next step… dry cleaning. I’m scared to death of the dry cleaner ruining it! The dress has a lot of detail so I’m sure it will be on the more expensive side to dry clean which means that there is more of a chance for them to ruin it. Ugh… but, I gotta do it since it was a sample dress and who knows how many women tried that very same dress on before me.

Rachel emailed me and said that the invites are all done and I should have them in the mail by Thursday! I’m so excited to see them in person!! All I’ve seen are the proofs on the computer, which does not show what they really look like since they are all screen printed. Rachel is very talented so I’m sure they are perfect! I can’t wait to have the invites all out in the mail. That will be a big load off my shoulders. I’m trying to get our website and registry all finished before they go out as well so it will be nice to have all that done…

This weekend is going to be very busy. Friday I only work a half day and then I’m getting my hair done at a new salon. I hate having to find a new person to cut and dye my hair. Hopefully I like this new lady. When I get home I’m going to work on the wedding invitations and hopefully get them all in the mail. Then on Friday night Phil and I are having a date night and we are going to see Transformers Dark of the Moon in 3D!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m so EXCITED!!! Transformers is my favorite movie – no joke. The movie comes out today and I’d love to go see it tonight, however, there is nobody to let Winston out and we can’t leave him locked up for 13 hours… not fair. So, I can wait until Friday I guess. Only because I love my dog…

Saturday a bunch of friends and I are getting together and we are going tubing down the Apple River! I’m pretty excited. This will probably be the last year we go for a while since I’m hoping to be knocked up next summer. So we will float down the river, get a good buzz in the middle of the day and then have a BBQ afterwards.

Sunday I don’t have anything planned exactly but Phil and I need to work on our yard and probably should work on the garden at the farm. So Sunday will be no fun but what are you gonna do…

Monday is the 4th of July and the office is closed! Yippy!! We don’t have any set plans nailed down yet but I’m sure we will do something with friends.

Tuesday I asked off work so I could have an extra day to get shit done. Phil and I plan to go to Menards and figure out our deck and maybe order everything. Then we are going to head to Woodbury and pick out his ring and hopefully the guy’s suits. There was something else we were supposed to do but now I can’t stinkin remember… I should probably write this stuff down. Anyways, busy weekend but it will be fun and we should get a lot done. :-)

This last weekend was both great and horrible. It started off great with a dress fitting. The dress is even better than I remember. Maybe I just thought it was better because it actually fit me instead of being 2 sizes too big. Either way, I love it. She just needs to add the buttons so I can bustle it and then finish a few minor things and then I get to pick it up! But then I need to find a dry cleaner… Now that I’m quite nervous about. I don’t even want to think about that yet.

Saturday I want shopping with my gal pals. It was quite nice to hang out with just us girls – no boys or kids. I feel like we haven’t done that in a long ass time. I found a few things, like my bachelorette dress or the one I’ll wear to Loin’s bachelorette party and I found a dress to wear to my bridal shower. Two more checks off my list! After I got home from shopping I relaxed for a tiny bit and then Phil and I went to Bart’s (Rachel’s hubby) family reunion/pig roast. It was nice to see them both. I don’t remember the last time I saw Bart… it might have been at their wedding, which was a few years ago!

Sunday was when it got horrible. I woke up and decided to keep my mind occupied since I knew it would be an emotional day so I cleaned the house from top to bottom. By noon, I was exhausted. I felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster all day. One minute I’m sad, then I’m crabby, then I’m angry, then back to sad. So, I didn’t go with Phil to his mom’s house to visit with the family. I just couldn’t be social. This was my second father’s day without my dad. You would think it would get easier with time but it doesn’t. I get sad and miss him any day but dates like father’s day and his birthday are very difficult. There are things I still can’t do and things that I find I’m finally ready to do. One thing I can’t do is delete his phone number from my phone. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that. I also can’t visit his gravesite or walk over to the bins where he fell. But something I found I was ready to do was to drive a way home from New Richmond that I thought I’d never be able to do again. I’m sure you think that is weird… But the last time I talked to my dad – the night before the accident – I called him on my way home from New Richmond. I talked to him the whole way home. There are many different ways you can take from New Richmond to Baldwin. However, my favorite way, the way I used to go, I couldn’t take anymore because it hurt too much. However, last week, after a year and a half, I took that route. It was difficult but nice at the same time. It gave me a little bit of time to cry, laugh, remember and miss him. Sometimes I feel like I’m a zombie because I don’t like to feel. I choose to ignore things that will make me get emotional and feel and I go out of my way to make sure that it doesn’t happen. I don’t want to be like that. I guess I’m writing this blog for myself. It sometimes feels good to get my feelings out – even when I’m not really talking to anyone.

I ordered my bridesmaid gifts today and I’m so excited to give them to my bridesmaids in exactly 3 months and 1 day!! I wish I could tell you more but I can’t due to the fact that 3 out of the 5 bridesmaids read this blog – maybe the other 2 as well… not quite sure. Anyways, I checked that one off the list! I have also checked off a few other things from my wedding to-do list this week! I called the florist and set up an appointment for next Saturday. This will be an easy task because I’m pretty care free about the flowers and I don’t need any for the centerpieces. I also called our officiant and chatted with her about the plans for the big day. The only thing I’m nervous about is the fact that she doesn’t do a rehearsal the night before. I’m scared that it won’t go very smoothly. I suppose if I wanted to, I could do a rehearsal dinner with someone filling in for her – that might be a smart idea. Then we could get a general idea of what to do.

Other news… On Friday I get to try on my wedding dress for the first time since I dropped it off a few months ago with the seamstress! I’m so excited! Hopefully it fits. After I try it on she will sew it all up and I get to pick it up very soon after!

The next few items on my wedding to-do list that I want done this week are to call chair rental places, make my veil (hopefully it turns out), find a hair stylist, buy my bachelorette outfit and book our honeymoon. There are many more tasks of course but it helps me to write down only a few things to do and then check them off the list. If I wrote a list of everything I would just get stressed out immediately and not do anything… So, hopefully those items will be done by the end of the week. However, I’m quite sure that we won’t book the honeymoon this week. I’ve been meaning to do that for months now and it just seems to never get done. Probably because we haven’t’ decided on a place to go yet… Eh, it will get done eventually.

That is all for now!

I have decided to grow some balls and start P90X. I was flipping through the channels on Sunday morning and a P90X commercial came on and it got me pumped! I’ve been doing Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred and it is getting boring and I’ve wanted to do something new for a while now. I’ve always been scared of P90X and I think the most scary thing is that it takes a lot of time (around an hour a day). But, there is exactly 94 days until Phil and I get married and I want to be in the best shape of my life when we get married (a little goal of mine) so it seems kind of perfect. I thought I started it yesterday by doing the first video, shoulders and back. However, I just went online to see the “schedule” on what DVDs you should do and in what order (there are 12 DVDS) and I did not start with the right DVD. I guess there are three different workout plans you can do. I decided to do the P90X Lean workout plan. This plan has more cardio and less weight resistance training. This seems perfect for me since I don’t want to end up like an unattractive muscle woman (not that I would anyways I’m sure, but you know...). So I guess I start the plan on Tuesday. I really hope I can do this every day (except Mondays – I’m giving myself a day off). I don’t want to start and give up right away. If I can finish the 30 day shred then I can do P90X right? I only wish I could get Phil to do it with me…

Yesterday morning when I woke up I looked at Winston’s “special area” to make sure everything was looking okay and his balls looked yellow and they sure didn’t look like that the night before! I instantly knew that that wasn’t normal. I took a picture of it but I’ll save you from having to see it – it’s pretty gross. He was also acting weird – all depressed and mopy, didn’t want to do anything but sit or lay down and he panicked when he had to pee or poop. So I called the vet right away and the technician said it sounded like he had an infection and he should probably come in but she would have the vet who did the surgery call me back and tell me what to do. So I went to work and a little while later she called and said she wants to see him and that she is sure he has an infection. So, we made an appointment for that afternoon. The vet was surprised to see how bad it was and gave us two different antibiotics, more pain pills and a topical spray to spray on his balls. She said that she is glad we didn’t wait any longer to bring him in because they would have had to do surgery again to get the puss out of there, etc. They also gave us a different thing to put around his neck to protect him from licking, which looked like a life jacket because he kept scraping his balls with his cone. I asked if he would be able to still lick his balls with the life jacket looking thing and she said she would be very surprised if he could. While at the vet, he didn’t try to lick them but right when we get home, lo and behold, he could reach his balls… dammit. So we had to put the cone back on and tape the edges so they weren’t so rough in case he decided to scrap his balls again while trying to get to them. I feel so bad for my Winnie Winston! He has to take these meds and wear his cone for 7-10 days. I can’t wait for him to be back to his normal self. It breaks my heart to hear him cry.

Last night I was driving to New Richmond after work to go pick up Winston. It was 101 degrees outside and the same inside my car since I have no air conditioning. I made it to Roberts and then decided that if I could barely handle the heat - how is Winston going to handle the heat after he had just had surgery? So, I called Phil and asked him to meet me at the vet so we could bring Winston home in the Civic w/air conditioning. My poor baby looked so tired but he was happy to see us! He had an allergic reaction to the stuff they used to wash his surgical area and now his balls are bright red. Poor Winston. He gets to wear a cone on his head for a whole week because he is a licker. Even with the cone on his head he still tries to lick his balls. Silly boy. I felt like a horrible mother leaving him to go to work today. He is only happy when Phil or I am petting him or talking to him. Otherwise he starts to whine. :( My little cone head…

Over the weekend I went to the farm and started on the garden (the background of our wedding ceremony). I got there a little before 9 a.m. and shortly after me, my Aunt Laura showed up to help. We started pulling weeds and wishing my brother would wake up so he could come out and pull all the trees. Not too long after we started he came out, got the skid steer and we pulled all the “weed” trees out. The only picture I will show you at this point is most of the trees we pulled - and this isn’t all of them.



I don’t want to give away the surprise until the project is done! So, Justen pulled all the bigger trees and then had to leave. Pretty soon after he left my wonderful friends Josh and Loin showed up to help. Josh shoveled up the rest of the small trees for me and the rest of us pulled plants out of the ground and weeded the entire garden. After 5 hours of work and a nice burn line, I decided to call it quits for the day. The hard part is now done and it should be much easier to finish the project. I can't wait until it's done and I can see how much better it looks.

After all the yard work on Saturday Phil and I started our yard work at home. I mowed our grass for the first time (and the first time in my life!). So I developed a burn on top of my burn from the day before. After the yard work I ran to Hudson to get groceries and some suntan lotion so next time I won't burn. ;) But it's all good, when I woke up this morning most of my burn had already turned into a tan! My first tan of the season. I love summer. :)

My Winny Winston is at the vet today to get his manhood chopped off! When I left this morning, I said goodbye to him and I started tearing up. I know, I know… it is just a dog. But he is my baby!! I’m worried about how he is going to do and I’m going to miss him. It will be weird going home and not having him there and then waking up tomorrow morning and not having him there… :( I can’t wait until Tuesday at 5:00 when I get to go pick him up!! Phil just got him to the vet and he is weighing in at 58 lbs! My big boy. :-)