oh cottage weekend 2007...

i can't believe this year was the 7th annual. here's an end-of-the-night-camera-balanced-on-a-cell-phone-timer pic featuring our two newest members, but missing jeff. oh yeah baby. we's hot.

sucks.

i hate being caught off guard. i'm in valhalla cleaning out my desk and i stumbled across a card from my mother from around three years ago. i remember i had spent the weekend up there and we kept hunter overnight for melanie at my mom's house. i got up in the middle of the night to pee and saw her on the porch smoking... after she had supposedly quit a few weeks before. i was so upset; i remember yelling at her and her just looking at me, looking so embarrassed and sad and saying nothing. and i remember feeling awful for yelling but not knowing how to explain to her how much it was killing me to watch her kill herself. i still can't even put that feeling into words because i'm not sure they exist. and i can't put into words how she looked sitting there listening to me cry and plead and yell -- i remember her looking so small and defeated and when i think about it now, i want to crawl under this desk and disappear.
so as i was packing my bag to leave the next day, i noticed an envelope in my bag that said "steph (to read later)" it's a card from her... "the only thing i can say or do is to tell you i'll try again and i promise with all my heart that i will do my absolute best to stay 'quit'. i realized this weekend (before last night) how much of life i'm missing because of it. i do love you and i'll try everything and anything to make you and mel proud. love, mom"

i seriously could throw up. i hate that this office is just home to the most awful times in my life and i can't wait to start new. i love you, too, mom. and i'm sorry that it couldn't be beaten. i'm just sorry altogether.

update on bridesmaid dresses

i received the following email from my dear pal laura at netbride today:

Hello Stephanie,Thank you for your message.Your dresses are in transit to us, and we are expecting to receive them on Monday. Upon arrival, we will be shipping them to you to ensure delivery by August 3rd.

While it does not appear that the order will be early, as we had previously hoped, it will be on time.

so oh well, not early, but on time, which is FINE with me!

boring week

but! last night i was surprised visited by mel, heather, jan and becky so that was fun!!! i just wish my house wasn't completely torn apart when they got here. whoops. i'm mid-clean. sorry, girls. and what's worse? i had NO WINE. blaspheme.

in other news.... though i don't know why i'm mentioning it because you're all obviously counting down to the wedding on your own, but we are in double digits! 99 days. whoa. i gotta lotta stuff to do.

also, i start my new job at LEGO soon. whee! it's weird though, to leave a job i've been at almost 5 years. i have never worked in one place for so long. i am going in on monday to sift through all the crap i've accumulated (wow, did i even spell that correctly?) and dump it.

tom comes home from VT tomorrow, yay!!! but, i will probably be gone before he gets here because i'm leaving tomorrow for CW 2007. this year tom and andy's fiancee are joining us, so it'll be a packed house on saturday. here's hoping for good weather!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

son of a b.....

yeah, so as i was pulling out of my parking space, my neighbor was pulling into one and we collided. my first instinct was that it was my fault, well, because it usually is. but i'm really not sure this is on me. he definitely could see me before i could see him, so... ugh. my poor car is just going to fall apart soon.

106 days to go!

join spidey as he dances for joy!

gotta love free ice cream night!

our apartment complex sponsored a free ice cream night tonight, so we got to get all our faves (rocket pops, toasted almonds, strawberry shortcakes...) for free!! hunter got a sonic the hedgehog pop and a danny phantom. DELISH!

whoa.

today is a good day.

wedding checklist

so as i've been planning the wedding, i visit the knot on occasion (shut it, tom!) for my weekly dose of "OH CRAP I STILL HAVE SO MUCH LEFT TO DO!" with 109 days to go, here are my (mostly overdue, btw) checklist to-do items through july (with my notes after):

• Start planning the rehearsal dinner. Provide the host with contact information for your attendants and any other guests. well, we have a list of invitees and we've visited two places and i think, as of like 2 days ago, we decided on a place.
  
• Book rehearsal-dinner site. oh crap. i guess we should book it.
  
• Brides: Choose your bridesmaids' accessories (shoes, gloves, etc.) and either purchase or pass along purchasing information. choose them?? can i delete this to-do, because i have 7 bridesmaids who are all perfectly awesome and capable of choosing their own fabulous accessories. i'm already forcing them to wear a dress i picked out. isn't that enough dictatorship?
  
• Shop for and purchase wedding bands.it's funny, but i keep forgetting about these. i found a ring i love, but in new hampshire, so tom either just needs to trust me that it's awesome and i'll call and order it, or we need to get our butts in gear and go look.
  
• Brides: Experiment with your beauty routine, self-tanners, and facials. um. experiment? i didn't realize i was supposed to do this. can mani/pedi and massage count to fulfill this one?
  
• Pick up your invitations.hee, i'm so excited for these. they aren't quite finished being made yet, but rest assured, that within the next week or two, we'll be having an assembly party.
  
• Brides: Buy any special lingerie your gown requires in time for first fittings. when's my first fitting supposed to be, i wonder? i'll have to check august's to-do's because i wasn't planning on getting my first fitting until september, you know, when yoga has turned me into a centered, meditating, ass-kicking goddess.

notice that MOST of it is "BRIDE" stuff. sigh. ok, back to procrastinating. have a great monday!

07.15.07

happy 32nd thomas! xoxo

sick dude.

so keli is a blog whore this week. two consecutive posts dedicated to her! tom woke me up this morning saying she had some dried blood on her neck. when i got up, i looked and she has this gaping wound on her throat. gross. so off we go to the vet at 11am. wish us luck: she needs it for wound treatment and general fear of the vet and i need it for getting her into the cat carrier and general fear of keli.

master impersonator...

this is keli impersonating a loaf of bread. she works long and hard at this trick. every day. it's tough being keli.

ow.

so i guess i have been doing some of the postures wrong at yoga...last night we had a small class so the instructor was able to help me a bit and WOW do i feel it today. my back is SO SORE. after class she said she does private classes if i wanted to check that out. does that mean i'm focused and might be good at this or i'm so bad i can't be in a regular class? i'm guessing the latter. whatevs. i can't afford to go to the regular class AND private classes. we ain't big pimpin. so regular class it is. and i'll just have to work on my posture with all the other sweaty peeps. ps, i think i mentioned in a previous post that it's bikram yoga, so it's like 107 degrees in there... there was a guy last night taking his first class. wanna know how i know? he came in with a SWEATSHIRT ON. yeah, it was off in about 3 minutes. i don't know how he even handled 1 minute in that thing.

fishing boys!

hunter and tom went on a fishing expedition yesterday morning. 7am!! they caught THREE FISH! and hunter hooked his finger on a bucket. otherwise, it was an excellent outing.

ahhhhhhhh!!!

we are under the four month mark, people. i repeat, we have less than four months to go.
the bridesmaid dresses will be here in two weeks!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok, ridiculously excited giddy freak out over. for now.

back to your regularly scheduled weekends.

thanksgiving in july??

first holidays first... happy belated 4th to you all. (hahaha, like i have a vast readership!) hope you enjoyed yourselves despite the stupid weather. it wasn't so bad for the early half of the day (which i spent inside a yoga studio sweating my ass off) but just as i'm putting up our summer string lights on the deck? pouring. yay. but who cares because i'm now on to the second holiday of my post... thanksgiving in july. now i know what you're thinking... turkey=yum. regardless of the season. but i'm not talking about food. i'm talking about how grateful i am for all of my fortune and by fortune i don't mean money, (ha. obviously.) i mean friends and family. there's so much going on in life, it's easy to forget how lucky we are to have what we have. that we're here. i have amazing friends who go out of their way to show me how much they care about me. i have a wonderful husband-to-be (note to married friends: when does saying "husband" stop feeling like you're playing dress up?) who not only dances like a madman, but loves me even when i'm at my crankiest -- which is NOT easy to do. and i read so much about people not being able to stand their in-laws. wow, how lucky am i? seriously, mine are The Best. and i get to share all this with my sister, who is just doing such great things for herself and really making a solid life for herself and her little guy. how fortunate am i to be able to see her almost every day? to be a part of that? and i get to have date nights with my favorite super hero. any random tuesday night, i can grab hunter from daycare and take him to dinner and a movie, where he can wow me with his math skills and infinite knowledge of tree frogs. all these things are constantly swirling around, surrounding me and i just wanted to stop and take a second to breathe and say thank you and i love you guys.

rat-a-too-ee!

taking hunter to see ratatouille tonight, which made me wonder what's actually in ratatouille. both sound very good. i'll post a review tomorrow about the movie. not sure when i'll get to actually try the dish.

happy birthday, mom.

we miss you every day.

namaste!

so i went to my first bikram yoga class yesterday morning. oh. my. god. i can't even explain the amount of sweat. the room was 109 degrees. 90 minutes later... i was blinded from the sweat. and i'm so randomly sore today. like, the right side of my neck, my left forearm, my right lower back... so weird. but alas, i am going back tonight! i might wear a super cool headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes. woo hoo! oh yeah, i'm stylin...