double standards

so, we have this friend who is single and in the market for a husband. she's a great gal, seriously talented in interior design, loves to entertain and cook for friends, and absolutely adores children. the only problem? she is an officer in the military and hopes to continue to advance in her career until retirement. mrs. d and i were working out with her (i'll call her the designer) a few weeks ago and half-jokingly said that maybe she would find a male nurse. that way, the guy would have no problem finding a job wherever she is stationed. it is totally reasonable for a man to ask his wife to move around for his job every 3-4 years, but it's not the norm if the woman is the one doing the relocating. the corporate world doesn't exactly reward people who move around that often. i guess it is possible to find a company, with several locations, who allows you to transfer to a different office. but really, would a guy willingly agree to a lifestyle like that? i think the designer will have to find a free-thinking kind of person. or maybe an author or someone in the same branch of the military so they can be stationed together. really, though, i think our first idea of the male nurse is the best bet. anyone know any male nurses looking for a wife?

dream wedding

so... as you probably guessed, the show totally changed everything about sara's wedding this past weekend. it was all a huge surprise to her, up until the moment that she walked down the aisle. there was a slight rain delay... as in a three hour delay, but most of the guests ended up waiting. while we were waiting at the original wedding location, they told us about how sara had met badgley and mischka while choosing her dress (which i can't find anywhere on b&m's website. it looked a lot like her original dress, but with a ton of bling on it). we also found out that the location had changed (which explained the lack of decor at the original location) and that it was going to be at this cool, old house down the road. some family friends were also waiting with us and told me about all the work that they had been doing all week to get the wedding location ready... painting park benches, etc. the ceremony location looked amazing and the flowers were to die for! the driveway was lined with white street lamps, white park benches and white pedestals holding gorgeous pink topiaries surrounded by candles. the reception was held behind the house in a gigantic white tent. you had to walk through a tented hallway to get there and you would never know that you were in a tent. there was a "waterfall" of pink umbrellas in the center of the tent that fell into a pool of pink rose petals. there were several different floral centerpieces on the tables and i tried my best to figure out how to take one home, but they were all to big to hide under my dress =) the food was delish and i wish i could do a better job remembering and describing it. crab cakes, shrimp and grits, corn bisque with truffles, etc. hmm... after we all started eating, they announced that emily west was going to sing the song for sara & bryan's first dance. she has an amazing voice, by the way. there was all kinds of stuff going on for filming that i'm sure sara will fill everyone in on. she will definitely do a better job describing everything as well. i wish i had pictures to share, but i kid you not, LH and i are both missing our battery chargers for our cameras. i ended up borrowing my mom's camera and then gave it back before downloading the pictures because they all turned out pretty fuzzy anyhow. so that's it for now... you'll just have to wait for sara to return from her honeymoon to get the rest of the story!

i take thee, lucky hubby

so, in honor of sara's wedding this weekend, i thought i'd take a minute to remember my wedding a couple of years ago. we got married in a small mountain lodge and it was perfect for us. that's the thing that i love about weddings: every one is so unique and the location and decor usually match the personalities of the bride and groom so well. one of my very good friends from college is going to have quite the opposite wedding from mine this fall. she is actually going to have a gospel choir singing at hers; i had a dj. she also has twelve bridesmaids; i had three. but you know what? no one was at all surprised about any of her plans, and i am so excited to be a part of her wedding. it is going to be a blast. know who else's wedding is going to be fun? sara's =) anyone else dying to get a look at the dress she picked out in NYC?



this was our cake. it was made by one of my mom's very good friends who still lives in the midwest. i remember sneaking bites of leftover cake pieces at her house when i was little... in fact, i wish i had some right now! i have yet to find anyone who can make a wedding cake as tasty as she can.


here is a picture of me with a few of the women in my family. we were having a blast dancing to "we are family." isn't it funny how the bride usually does more dancing than anyone else at her wedding? i guess it's because she is just so incredibly happy and wants everyone to know it =)



now how cute is this? our flower girl was just plain bored with our wedding. isn't she so adorable?


well, those are probably the very few photos that don't have LH in them, and you know how protective i am about sharing his picture with the entire world. so what did you guys have special in your weddings that made it different from anyone else's? or, if you aren't married yet, what would you include in your wedding to make it unique?

***WARNING*** YOU MUST HAVE A STRONG STOMACH TO READ THIS POST. IF YOU GET QUEASY EASY, JUST SKIP IT!

this house uses a septic tank and is not connected to the sewer system. that means that we have to be careful about what we flush. that includes tampons. during that time of the month, i am careful to dispose of that sort of waste very discreetly in a small trash can in our master bathroom. i empty that trash can about every other day and have never had a problem with that system. until today.

as i was putting some freshly ironed clothes away this morning (sorry, had to throw that in there), i noticed that there was some torn toilet paper on bozeman's doggy bed. upon further investigation, i realized that this was toilet paper from our trash can and that there was a tampon wrapper lying next to it. great. a thorough search revealed no surprises lying around the house, but i kept my eyes open, just in case. having made it through most of the day without any such surprises, i convinced myself that he hadn't dug far enough into the trash can to get anything worse than the tampon wrapper. wrong.

just a few minutes ago, i got back from walking bozeman and had to give him a bath when we got home because he had poo all over his behind. want to know why? because when he squatted to go, it didn't all end up in the pile and some of the poo was still attached (i thought) to the hair around his tail. being the doggy mommy that i am, i took the poo bag that i was using to bag the poo and lifted up his tail, prepared to pull the rest of the poo off of his hair and into the bag. well, i pulled a little and then had to keep on pulling because it wasn't attached to the hair, but still coming out of his behind. my gag reflex started to kick in about the time that i noticed that what i was pulling out was really something white and covered in poo. you've probably already guessed what it was: a tampon covered in poo. eeeeewwwwwwww!!!!! the girlie side of me was gagging all the way home. the dog-mommy side of me was mad at myself for leaving something out where bozeman could get into it and eat something as disgusting as this. and then, the wifey side of me was thinking, "wait until i tell LH about this one!"

two whole years

sometime during the second semester of my sophomore year in college, i heard about a group of people going to russia on a mission trip who were looking for a few more people to be on their team. this excited me for two reasons: 1) i had been interested in missions work ever since going to a church summer camp in 7th grade and 2) i had studied the russian language for three years in high school. so, of course, i applied to go with them and they accepted me.

before leaving to go to russia that summer, i sort of started dating a friend from high school who was an all around good guy. nothing serious and definitely safe. he ended up emailing me during my five weeks in russia, saying that we probably weren't meant to be together and he "didn't want to hold me back." he was right, and i knew it, but i was still broke up about it. since we were living and working in such close quarters, everyone on our team knew about the "break up" and a few gave me some good advice. one was one of the team leaders and another was one of my roommates who was a few years older and much more mature. they both told me, totally independent of each other, that they thought i should stay single for two years and try to concentrate on what god had to do in my life. funny enough, my dad also said the same thing, but also emphasized that i should concentrate on graduating from college. and no, i hadn't told him what these people had advised and he didn't even know them so they couldn't have told him for me. to top it off, i found out that a guy i had had a crush on since my freshman year in high school was moving across the country for a job for the next two years. i considered that my sign from god that i should follow these people's crazy advice, because obviously that guy was going to move back in two years and marry me!

i'll just tell you right now that that guy was not lucky hubby and is insignificant to rest of the story. not one week after getting home from russia, one of the guys from the trip called me to basically say that he wanted to date me. he had been like a big brother to me on the trip and i had never thought of him that way, and i figured the easiest way to let him down would be to tell him the truth: i wasn't dating anyone for the next two years! ha ha! this was going to be the best line ever. i never could have guessed that god would also have a one-liner for me.

there were three guys i had a hard time not dating during those two years. in fact, i just decided not to give them my line and try to forget about the whole two year commitment thing. wouldn't you know it, every single one of them would get no further than the second date before telling me that they "didn't want to hold me back." when the second one gave me that line, i just gave this sarcastic laugh and then had to explain that i wasn't laughing at him, but at how i knew god put those words in his mouth just to show me that he knew what i was up to and that it wasn't going to work (duh). sometimes it's nice to know that god has a sense of humor, you know?

anyhow, i ended up surviving through those terrible two years. i kid, i kid... it wasn't terrible and i'm so glad that i did follow through with the whole two year thing. i really figured out who i was, who i wanted to be and what kind of man i wanted. i think being single for that long taught me to turn to god in my loneliness and rely on him for so much more. it also really prepared me for having a hubby who deploys and has to work a lot. and it makes me feel better when i don't understand something that i'm going through at the time, because i can remember my two years and think about how it was all part of a greater plan.

oops!

i'm here! and LH is with me! and we're doing great! i apologize to anyone out there who was worried, distraught or just plain sad. i kind of took an unplanned, unannounced sabbatical from blogging. part of it is LH's fault. if he didn't have such a great schedule right now and wasn't home so much, i would be spending way more time on the computer. instead, i get to have fun with him in the middle of the day... taking walks, going running or to the gym (little-man still checks my ID every time i go in there), running errands, and lately, watching star wars 4, 5, and 6. do you know that i've never seen any of them? LH realized this when we were playing lego star wars over the weekend and he is determined to right that wrong. last night, i fell asleep through the middle of 5 and will have to finish it tonight. so far, though, i really like it and can't believe i missed out for so long.

anyhow, LH has been about 60% of my distraction from blogging. the other 40% goes something like this:

"hmmm, i think i'll sit down and write a blog post" ... "oooh! but first, i want to see what sara has written about her wedding reality show lately" ... "oh, and the pioneer woman has a new website. maybe i should check it out" ... "did felicia's son say anything funny today?" ... "how is k adjusting to her new surroundings?" (you get the idea. i can't link to all of your blogs, sorry!) ...

and then, i would soon get to this: "oops! according to the schedule i wrote for myself this morning, i was supposed to be pulling weeds in the front yard for the past hour that i was reading everyone's blogs. next, i'm supposed to be organizing LH's "everything" room. i guess i better get off the internet quick and get something done around here before LH gets home." ... "oh man, that's his truck pulling up right now. bozeman, let's go say hi to LH!" and that's just about how it happened.

and soon, i just plain grounded myself. i decided that i couldn't blog or read blogs until i had finished my list. well, LH could tell you that i am kind of overly ambitious with my lists. obviously, i always had too much on my list (including running 7 miles in the rain with mrs. d) and never got around to blogging. i should probably just be honest with myself and include "blogging" on my to-do list and we'll all be happy here. right?

this whole situation kind of reminds me about the time i stopped dating for two entire years... which i'll write about next time =) and i promise that i won't take another sabbatical before i write it. i'll leave you with a picture that we took while horseback riding on our honeymoon.