invites!!

Here are some pictures of the invitations. I think they look pretty good, we have to fix the inserts before they will be done-but otherwise, they turned out pretty good. Also, the flowers were from a friend's wedding-and were pretty so I took a picture. Craig and I took this picture before the wedding in Chicago.

Minor Detail?

So, I might actually freak out this time. It wasn't a big deal to me that my bridesmaid's dress came in and was two sizes too small. I can live with the idea that our initial venue is not going to happen. I'm even coming to terms with the fact that I'm still not in love with my dress or shoes. This might be the straw that broke the camels back. I think invitations are soo important. The save the dates were nice, although not the original idea either. I took all our paper to the print shop here in town to be printed "professionally." Craig and I even went back on Friday to check them, but our minds must not have been really turned on at the time. To start with, they were really nice and printed a map for us-awesome! They even printed our return address on the RSVP-still awesome. The things I'm not happy with, they turned the landscape invitation into the other direction. Two of the inserts are the same size, and the reception card is the size of a business card. I wanted it to fill the pocket and be layered in height. I know this sounds picky, but that's how it looked on the invitation website. Now, I am going to have to do more work making magic with paper so it looks formal and not just thrown together. Craig is going to have a fit when he sees these too, which means-our night should be awesome. Why didn't we elope? I will post a picture of them in a little while, I'm going to try to fabricate something so I can tell Craig that was the plan all along.

Fifty Three Days!

I can't believe it's this close. Craig sent me an email yesterday appologizing for being so grumpy in the morning, and he said I was perfect because I was so patient with him. I actually got a little teary eyed that he thinks I'm perfect-and then I sent him an email asking him for money. haha! Not so perfect after all. I am hoping the janitors from school call me this week and say I can get back in my room. I really want to get everything organized before the first day of school. What the heck have they been doing all summer? :)
Last night I said, "hey Craig let's pick out some songs." He agreed, so we started with the cake cutting, hmm, what song would be played for that? And, who would have guessed we disagreed on every song. Two hours later, and still no song. I reminded him that I have basically two weeks to get everything for the wedding in order, and then I won't really have time to think about it let alone spend hours at a time looking for a song that no one, including us will remember. He said I can pick whatever I want. What the heck have we been doing all summer?
Rem is still itchy, although I think it's getting a little better. She is on her Fit and Trim food now, and always stares at me like I'm being mean or starving her. Maybe it's just my guilty concience. I added pictures of inspiration for our new bedroom. I am hoping for the floating shelves in the first picture. I love it.

sore sore sore

So, saturday after the swim meet I met up with Craig and a couple of his friends to go on the boat. We got to tube for a little bit, and today I feel like someone tried to yank my arms out of socket for three days in a row. Last night before bed Craig said, "I think I hurt my shoulder," today I realize what he was talking about-it's just sore muscles though.
He told me last night,"make sure I get up on time tomorrow." At 4:30 a.m. Buster meowed over and over until I got up to put him out. I dragged myself back to bed. So at five a.m. when the alarm went off I said, "hey dude, wake up, it's time to go." He said ok. Then at 5:30 I heard the alarm go off again, and I looked at the clock, and yelled,"you really need to get up." Then a tornado of a Craig ripped through the room, throwing all of the folded clothes onto the floor, dumping the laundry basket upside down in an attempt to find his wallet-which was on the kitchen counter-and blaming me for him being late. Oops! We need about 7 alarm clocks just to get that man out of bed in the morning. So when I got back up at 7a.m. I had to pick up all the clothes and make myself ready for swim practice-after 2 1/2 years living together you would think we had our mornings down pat. If I was a nice soon to be wife I would have just stayed up when Buster woke me to make sure my soon to be hubby got himself up, dressed, and had a packed lunch for work. In that alternate universe Craig is a happy man.

woohoo

WOOOHOOOO! I'm gonna get to hear the train, I won tickets to "So you think you can dance?" It's going to be at UofI in October. I had to submit a picture of me dancing to a radio station, so I sent this one! haha,I got the email this morning saying it was hilarious and they wanted me to go! YES! I love that show, and I get to go, first time I have ever won anything.

Getting so close

Today I drove the route to the reception place and finalized our directions for the invitations. I decided to not have everyone go through the country-but take rt32 which is only about 3 mi longer. Hopefully no one will get lost. We are getting so close and last night I told Craig, "it's only two months till the wedding, we might actually make it this time." He was sweet about it and just smiled and gave me a hug. The closer it gets the more excited I get, and really I'm not stressed anymore-now that the reception place is booked. I get the preview of the invites on Friday and then if I approve should have them all in my hands by next Wed. My new plan is to have them mailed by next Friday. Dude left for his business trip today-I slept in till 9. But then I did my running around, mowed, and I'm watering the lawn(well, the sprinkler is) Beth said the fair is in town, I think it's just the animals and stuff but I might check that out tomorrow or Thursday-just something relaxing to do to get me out of the house.
I thought this picture was funny, hopefully that won't be me-at least not until all the parents and grandparents are gone. hahaha!

A new week

I went and saw the centerpieces that Connie put together over the weekend and they are just gorgeous. I could not have done it any better. Yay! I bought two pairs of shoes-one was a slip on ivory sandal that I can spruce up with little pearls and they were only $6. The other was a dark purple suede peep toe high heel with ruffles on the front-they were a little more, but still under $30. I am so excited that I don't have to wear the gold yuckies that I got offline.
I gave the Remster a bath today-she is still all itchy, I don't know what to do with her. I looked up Dust mites and I don't think that's it, mainly cause it's only during the summer that she gets all itchy. I think I'm going to call the vet and ask him what else to do, she is miserable and pretty much licked all the fur off her knees. Poor baby!
Craig is going to be gone on business Tuesday thru Thursday-and I'm a little excited. The alarm goes off at 5 every morning so he can get up and go to work-with him gone, I get to sleep in till 7. woohoo! That reminds me, it's four o'clock I better go make dinner and make it look like I did something today. :)

Engagement announcements

Connie put engagement announcements in several papers. Our neighboor Beth brought one over for me last night from the Shelbyville paper.
It's official, the Timbers is ours! They wouldn't budge on the price, but we took it anyway. A few more details and we are all ready to go. We still need to order candy, print and mail invitations, pick a few more songs, figure out music for the ceremony, and well, the rest is just little stuff. Our list is definitely getting smaller, and now that we have a reception site, we can relax and enjoy it a little bit. The next few weeks are going to flyyyyyy!
Here are our next four weekends:
Jared's bach party, Tara's bach party, Craigs bach party, my bach party. Then I'm in school and there is no time to party!!!
I worked in my classroom on Wed. for 4.5 hours. Then I worked at home yesterday on lesson planning for 3 hours, and I don't feel like I've made much progress, this is going to be a rough semester-I should just get a prescription for prozac now :)
I will post the map about two weeks out, and try to post it so I can still write stuff. maybe Christi can help me with that. By the way-scroll down and see how many days there are till the wedding-whenever I want to make Craig freak out I just tell him how many weeks there are till he marries me...haha! works everytime.

View Timbers in a larger map

we drew a map to the Timbers. Please check this out and I will try to figure out how to get it in the invitation.

The Timbers-YAY!!

Craig and I went to the Timbers tonight to see the restaurant and the lodge. It was way bigger on the inside than we thought. It has high ceilings(with rafters), lots of electrical outlets, refrigerators, restrooms, solid floors, a beautiful scenery, and man I'm so excited. The lady even said she would be a little flexible with price. What a dream come true and a relief. We haven't signed anything yet, we are going to look at our budget, and let her know in the next couple of days how much we want to pay and see if she is ok with that. We will still need to find a few tables and about 100 chairs, but that's way better than floating around in canoes trying to dance to "Stayin alive" ahahaha! She actually had tulle to hang on the deck that runs around the pond, and there's a couple little ponds with a waterfall. Craig thinks one of the best parts is we can stay till 1:30. Party time. The lodge comes with it for two nights. There are six rooms, so we are trying to figure out if we can have people stay with us both nights. It's big enough that Craig and I wouldn't have to sleep in the same room fri. night and not even see each other in the morning. There's even a hot tub-hello relaxation. She said she had a family reunion and there were 22 people there-most of them stayed the night. I'm so excited and can't wait to get the invitations out and start celebrating.
My classroom is getting cleaned this week, so I can put up all my stuff soon. The stress is subsiding, I can actually unclench my teeth for a while. whooo!

Craig and I had a pretty busy weekend. We celebrated our friend Bert's birthday on Friday night. Saturday I had a swim meet in the morning and then we drove to Chicago for a friend's wedding. It was in an architectural artifact museum and was very trendy and cool. The wedding was very special and our friend looked so beautiful in her dress. They had sweet baby rays BBQ ribs, chicken, pulled pork, spicy macaroni salad, and baked beans all served family style. They had a slide show with pictures of their families, and then had a first dance to the Seasons of Love song from RENT. Very cool. They had white cake with strawberry filling that was soooo good. I really enjoyed the service, which focused on Love and the challenges that humanity has faced because of the rules and ideas common to society, in the end "love wins" was what female pastor said. While this marriage was not legal, the bond between them and in the hearts of their family and friends was real.
Poor Craig drove all the way home from Chicago Sat. night. On Sunday I went to my friend Tara's bridal party. It was a lot of fun. The first game we played was to make a dress out of t.p. My team won. We also played a trivia game with questions about the bride and groom, I got 7 out of 10. I couldn't remember one of her cats names, which country they had visited together, and something else that I still can't remember:) She got a lot of nice things, and we are getting excited about her bachelorette party which is a couple weeks away.
When we got home I cooked dinner, mowed the lawn, changed our sheets, and swept the floor. Now I'm pooped and ready to start my relaxing summer week-thank goodness I'm a teacher. Hello lazy weekdays during the summer. Yayay!

Freak Out!

So, I looked on the calendar today, and realized I start school Aug.18. That's about six weeks from now. Which is about ten weeks from our wedding, which means I have a lot to do. I also saw that midterms are due by Sept.19, which means I sure hope I can get the 17th and 18th off. I am going to drive out to Hidden Springs again today and talk to the park staff and see about renting that area. I am hoping we can transfer our permit over there and not have to get a new one. I am also going to cut and sew up the fabric for our table runners today, think I'm going with squares. I would also really like to get this map thing figured out, but it's beyond me, and really we can't make it until we figure out exactly where we are having this reception. I also can't decide if we need to include an accommodations page since nothing near us is available. I can put the Effingham hotels, but I'm thinking our guests can just figure it out.
I looked at the calendar and we only get a four day weekend for Thanksgiving, so our honeymoon will have to wait until Christmas. You know, we get out Dec 22, and have to be back Jan.6th. That's crap, I thought it'd be longer than that. So, Craig and I are thinking about our passports too. What were we thinking!!! Wedding planner would come in handy right now. haha!

Hidden what??

I got the invites in the mail today-woohoo. Worked on the layout for the invites, and have yet to get a map figured out. Need to get Craig's help on that one. Dude and I took a drive out to Hidden Springs, which is about 10 miles south of Shelbyville. There was a nice big pavilion which had steps that led down to a grassy area surrounded by trees. It was so pretty-and as far as I'm concerned it's our number one back up spot so far. The lake is still flooded, so it's just about our number one spot all together. There are only like 2 turns and it's sorta secluded which would be nice-but we still need to see if it's available. The night was awesome though, nice quality me and dude time just hanging out looking for our reception site.
I took Remy to the vet today since she keeps itching. He said, first of all, she needs to loose about 23 pounds. :) poor Rem, no more table scraps. He also have her two huge pills to take twice a day, and she got some shots, and blood drawn. I would give her lots of treats to make her feel better-but like I said, she's on a diet. He said the itching is due to allegies.fun stuff. When we got home, I made myself a sandwich and left the bag of hamburger buns on the counter-when Craig and I went out for the night-guess who found them. Remy sure isn't in a hurry to start her diet-so we had to take her for a nice long walk too!! Finally getting ready to settle down and get ready for bed. I'll keep everyone posted on our decision with Hidden Springs.

wowee Malawi

Every year our church goes to Malawi Africa and helps build shallows wells for drinking water. I would love to go;but I'll be in school. I think if I was retired, or if they went in the summer I would be there in a heartbeat. Today I'm going to help my pastor put together a powerpoint to help get people interested in going. If you google Malawi shallow wells you will see some amazing photos and videos. Today I watched a video of a woman with a baby strapped to her back by a piece of fabric climb down into a hole, scoop water with a 5 gallon bucket, lift the bucket onto her head and climb back out of the hole. When she got to the top her piece of fabric started to come untied-so she just left the bucket up there balancing on her head while she tied her sarong back up, turned and smiled at the camera and took off walking on her hike back home. Things like this are amazing to me, and here I am complaining that our washing machine doesn't work-pretty sure they don't even know what a washing machine is. If you read this, take the time out of your day to do something by hand just to remember that there are wayyy less fortunate people than us, and they thank God everyday for the blessing they have. Let's all say MMMM the next time we take a drink of faucet water.