Sleeping Hot

Ok, here’s the deal. I am the first to say that I am the biggest cuddle person in the history of the world. I communicate via touch. I hug every person I care about as often as I can, I snuggle my husband on the couch, and I hold babies endlessly…and I love it. I love to cuddle. So, why, now that I am married and legally allowed to sleep in the same bed with another human being is cuddling turning into the devil????

Don’t get me wrong, I am totally the girl you want to vomit all over when you learn about my sleeping rituals. I brush my teeth, change my clothes, and DEMAND my husband lie in bed with me until I fall peacefully asleep. Poor Doug, he is such a night owl and I am so not, he promptly gets out of bed to go to the living room and do whatever it is that he does between the hours of 9:30 pm and midnight. PS3, TV, Super Nintendo, something….

Herein lays the problem. Eventually, Doug joins me in bed. I subconsciously slide over to him and shimmy up into his nook while he puts one arm around me and we do the classic spoon. For ten minutes. Before one of us is shoving at the other to move over or get off or throwing a blanket off. Only when you throw the blanket off, you quickly replace it because it is freaking freezing in the air of the bedroom. So then you’re mumble yelling at your significant other that you are cold because they are ditching covers. Flash 5 minutes into the future: QUIT TOUCHING ME IT’S HOT!!!!

It just seems to be that space between spoon one’s back and spoon two’s stomach harnesses enough heat to melt metal! Doug even said once that if he could figure out a way to turn that heat into energy we’d be millionaires.

So where the heck do we find some sort of happy medium? If you don’t spoon and you just touch arms or something, when you pull your arms apart they do that yucky skin peeling thing when two arms are cemented together by sweat! AND don’t you even act like you don’t know what I am talking about! If you have shared a bed, you know this problem! So we decided we don’t need to cuddle ALL night long. I told my Mom cuddling is overrated anyway. She just said, “Well, wait till you add a kid trying to get in there.”

Yeah….maybe hot spooning isn’t so bad in the scheme of things.

It's Okay Friday!

Have you ever noticed that on Fridays, everything that normally bothers you seems to suddenly be okay? I was reading a magazine and they had this section called “It’s okay” in which they listed all the things they thought you should come to terms with in your life as acceptable instead of stressing about things being the picture of perfection. SO - I thought it was such a neat thing and decided to combine it with the carefree feelings of a Friday and write all the things that I need to be okay with this week….so here goes!

It’s Okay…

*To like the word neat when it so often gets me made fun of.

*To cry when I am watching the Biggest Loser. Come on people that crap gets emotional!

*To be a chunky monkey because I am working on fixing it EVERY DAY.

*To be grateful that I don’t have to travel this weekend. It doesn’t mean I don’t love and miss you; it just means I am tired and broke.

*To listen to my husband when he says he wants to take the trash out in the morning. Even when it means I am going to bed with a kitchen that isn’t in a perfect state.

*To have spent $16.94 on Anita Blake novels this month. Yeah, they are gory and otherworldly and smutty and supernatural but they entertain my brain on the days it is just too worn out for intellectual thought. I am not ashamed.

*To be utterly in love with babies, but not want to have my own - YET.

*To miss my husband when he is at work. Yeah, I said it. It’s cheesy and silly to most, but I miss his face when it’s gone.

Happy Weekend!!!

Don't Wedding Plan and Blog. Just, Don't.

Well, I started this thing with super, duper good intentions but I learned an extremely valuable lesson instead: Don’t blog and wedding plan. It is impossible. I mean by the time you deal with dress fittings, centerpiece discussions, menu choices, music choices, cranky family members, wedding party, hair, make-up, hotels, repeat….you start to get pretty stinking busy and incredibly exhausted!!!! So as a result, the blog sort of fell by the way side – not for lack of desire, but for true lack of TIME – and when planning the biggest day of your life, time is of the essence! Luckily, I was blessed with a mother who is a ninja event planner. I’m not kidding here either. Everyone thinks their Mom is awesome, but this is a real situation where she truly has skills I can’t even comprehend. We are talking a genius of epic proportions. In fact, I don’t know how other brides do it because I had it “easy” as a result of my Mom’s ninja-ness and I was still stressed out!

If I spent the time my life deserves on each of the events that have happened in the past 3 months, this blog would be so long no one would have any interest in reading it. So I think I will nut shell it for you. I had an amazing bridal shower in November. It was classy and fun and complete with white linens, good food, games and tons of love. I have amazing family (by blood, DNA, law and love) that traveled long distances to be able to share this special day with me. There were many people there in spirit that couldn’t be there and I felt their love just as much that day.

In the beginning of December, I had an amazing bachelorette party thrown by some really awesome BFF’s and it was everything I could have asked for! We had a slumber party and an intimate Italian dinner at B’s house followed by a night out on the town at Sing, Sing. Best. Dueling. Piano. Bar. Ever. It was soooo much fun that I seriously want to go back at least twice a year. We stayed in a hotel downtown (Thank you name your price on priceline.com!) and ate a wonderful breakfast at “Snooze” the next morning before heading back to Laramie. It was a great girl weekend complete with shopping and gossip, I couldn’t have asked for a better time! Doug stayed in Laramie and had his bachelor party at what was soon to be OUR home. They watched UFC and ate man food and while I thought it sounded completely unexciting, it was his idea of a perfect evening. To each his own….

Then, after much anticipation, the big day arrived marking the most monumental occasion of my life thus far. We were sealed in the Denver temple and returned to Laramie for a ring ceremony and reception the next day. Things went off without any major disasters and it was a perfect combination of days and events that lead to the most beautiful memories I never dreamt we could have made. We had an astounding amount of support from our friends and family and the reception hall was bursting with the love we felt from all of our supporters. It was a beautiful winter wedding and couldn’t have been more perfect for either of us. We had so much fun and we so appreciated the show of support we received from everyone near and far. The thank you cards we wrote will never suffice for the gratitude we felt.

Post wedding; we have done a lot of settling down into a life together, combining our households, our belongings, our schedules, our passions, our lives….we spent out very first Christmas together at our own home in Laramie. We didn’t travel anywhere because we didn’t want the stress of deciding whose family should get to have us for the Holidays. So we stayed home and began our own Holiday traditions for our own brand new family. It was, quite possibly, the best Christmas I have had yet. Our Christmas was followed by real life and returning to work, school and the real world. We have been adjusting well and just celebrated a perfectly lovely Valentine’s Day as a married couple. There have been many challenges of molding two 26-yearold’s established lives together, but every step of the way has been an adventure. Stay tuned for the post-marriage blogging which I am certain will be filled with entertainment galore as I continue to live this every day fairytale with the most amazing and hilarious man I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

Catching Up

Oh my how things have started to fly! On top of planning a wedding, Douglas and I have been very busy bodies!

We got the chance to go to the football game in Denver again. They lost this time but it was still a lot of fun! I am not a huge Bronco’s fan but we did get to witness the Heisman trophy winner Tim Tebow score his first NFL touchdown. The atmosphere of being there in person can’t even compare to watching it on the big screen at home. It really is a lot of fun. This game was super last minute, I love having a fiancée who is so spontaneous. He is a major keeper and I don’t know what I would do if he wasn’t so adventurous. He keeps our life exciting. Here is a picture of us at the Bronco stadium on Orange Sunday.

This impromptu trip happened to fall right around the time of our anniversary. Doug sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers at work. I will admit, it made me cry…have I mentioned how awesome he is? He went to the flower shop and wrote a personal card for the flowers but then had them delivered at my office so I would be surprised.

After the game while we were in Denver, we decided we would go to the aquarium. The traffic was bad and since we were close to the anniversary we decided to splurge a little bit in celebration. The aquarium was a lot of fun. I was pretty exhausted from the game but I could walk around aquariums for hours. Doug touched the stingrays but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was too yucky! I love the sea turtles though and I had a really nice time. We ate a delicious dinner at the aquarium after we had gone through twice.

I had to pick a friend up from the airport that night so rather than drive back to Laramie and then back to Denver again, we decided we would kill some time. We went to see Jackass 3D (clearly his choice, not mine) at the Movie Tavern in Aurora. It was pretty much the coolest movie theatre I have ever been to! You don’t even order concessions or anything until you sit down. Then you have a call button you push if you want anything and a waitress comes over to your seat to take your order. Not only did they have traditional movie theatre treats but they have a full menu of restaurant style food. The chairs were like the giant, puffy, leather office chairs that people have. Best. Movie. Theatre. Ever!

Then came Halloween. I don’t love this holiday at all, but it is Doug’s favorite. I decided because he does so many awesome things for me, I owed him big time and I participated in Halloween this year. I went as a zombie bride. My friend Meredith did my make up and she did an incredible job! We also carved pumpkins and had a really awesome time at that! For your enjoyment:
We are down to the wire on the wedding….I can imagine there won’t be much blogging related to non wedding related things for awhile. I have a fabulous Bridal Shower to blog about! Until then….

Wedding talk? Nah, let’s talk football.

I am going to throw out the disclaimer that this blog is LONG overdue. It is not wedding related at all, and for that reason I think I will love writing it. It is always a challenge for me to talk about anything lately and not squeeze the wedding into it!

About a month ago Doug and I were given the opportunity to experience some really awesome things football related…and we enjoyed every second of our football packed weekend.

We started our Saturday off with the grand opening of the Wildcatter stadium suites with my Mom. It was a pretty awesome privilege to get to see the game from up there! UW lost but that seems completely irrelevant. We got to see what a phenomenal facility they turned out to be. They are SO NICE!!!! Let me just throw that out there. There are private suites but there is a big general area (which is where we were at) full of tables and chairs, stadium style seating in rows, a bar with stools…lots of cool things. We ate delicious food and watched the football game. You might think being so far up and away from the field would be less exciting but I actually thought that the view provided from that level of height (Bird’s Eye they say????) was quite phenomenal, and despite the loss, we still bleed brown and gold.

The following day we got the opportunity to go to the Denver Broncos game. I am a Colts fan through and through but Doug cheers for the Broncos and I have never been to a professional football game in my whole entire life, so I was totally jacked for the experience! They played the Seattle Seahawks AND they won – which made it even more exciting! I didn’t own a single thing Broncos (can you blame a girl, orange is SOOOOO not my color) so before we left town Doug bought me a t-shirt that sports the Bronco head so I would fit right in. It was incredibly hot in Denver that day and I forgot sun block so I burned to a crisp! However, it was pretty incredible to see a football game like that in person.

The half time show was a silent gun drill that the Marine Corps put on. It was pretty incredible. They marched in unison, did the gun drills in sync, stayed in perfect formation and all of it without one. Single. Sound. Not a count off. Not a beat. Nothing. It was amazing.

It was a fun weekend full of football madness and for two days I didn’t talk about the wedding to Doug…..I think he thought it was the greatest gift a woman could give.

Tuxes vs. Wedding Dresses = Tuxes Win

I have decided that the men get it easy when it comes to weddings. When I went dress shopping…………….well actually we don’t need to rehash that because there is a whole blog dedicated to it, but "simple" is not a word I would use to describe it. However, simple is exactly the word I would use when it came to describing the experience of picking out the tuxedos.

Cut to Men’s Warehouse in Ft. Collins where Doug and I sit at a desk waiting for help. The consultant comes over, she shows pictures of tuxedos to Doug and he chooses a base tuxedo. This process was 10 minutes, flat. Next, the consultant pulls out the color swatches and fabric designs for the vest/tie combos. Doug settles on a color/fabric/pattern combo for the groomsmen within 3 minutes. Not. Kidding. Cuff links? “Sure,” he says and decides on them within 10 seconds. Suspenders? Check. Shoes? Check. Wow…..and then we move on to the Groom tux…..

Doug decided on the same coat and jacket as his groomsmen. He picked out a super tasteful Calvin Kline, might I add, and it made me a proud fiancée. He actually laid his colors out to try to decide white on white, white on black, black on black, etc…..but even with the further in depth process for his own tux, we were in and out of Men’s Warehouse within an hour. It was amazing. Incredible. I am still speechless thinking about it. Speechless and impressed and proud. My man doesn’t mess around.

I can’t give you all the details of the decisions Doug made because we have to keep some things a secret, but I will tell you he picked some amazing tuxes out and maybe (just maybe) he has a shoe surprise up his sleeve…..

Once, Twice, Three times a ……. Diva?

Sheesh this wedding business is time consuming! It’s official. I have two dresses AND I will wear two dresses. Yep. I said it. Two. You see, my oldest sister has this long-sleeved beauty that is custom made all the way from England and we commonly refer to it as the “sister dress.” It has seen a lot of weddings. It has been worn by some awesome ladies. The legend must live on. When it arrived I didn’t think I was going to fit into it. I mean for Pete’s sake we are talking about four different women here, four different body types, four different ages of the brides-to-be at the time of marriage...but by some “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” style miracle, it zipped. It needs a good cleaning, a few adjustments to modernize it, a hoop skirt to wear under it….but it is official that I will wear two dresses during this wedding extravaganza.

I justify this in many ways….firstly, it is my day (or two) and I am only doing it once so I can do what I want. How’s that for an attitude? Secondly, it will be December and I am going to be cold. I am going to need long sleeves for those outdoor pictures at the temple – bright pink arms are very unbecoming. Thirdly, I need two dresses because I am having two separate occasions. That way at both events the dresses are crisp, wrinkle-free, clean and ready for action. Finally, well, did I already say I do what I want?

Ok, so this is a little unorthodox, but what about my life have I ever done the way people say I should? Methinks the answer to that is: nothing. We are 65 days out. Did I mention we haven’t done flowers yet? Mom, are you reading this? We need to do flowers….