Birdie Gets Spayed

Our precious little Birdie girl got spayed last week. My poor baby girl!!! She did really well and has adjusted to life with the cone of shame (although that will come off this weekend).

She still manages to "clean up" her toys... or hoard her toys.... we're not really sure what she's thinking, but it's cute!

Her precious little face.

With those ears and that cone, I wonder what she is able to hear!

Nothing can stop her from chewing on sticks!

Or from giving kisses!!!

She's still able to curl up and get quite comfortable.

However she's been very cold lately - probably partly due to the fact that they shaved her belly.

I'm so proud of my precious peanut princess. But MAN does she need some exercise. We've been trying to keep her calm this week and not taking her for walks or playing with her too much (vet's orders).... you can tell she has a LOT of pent up energy. Only a few more days until she's "cleared" to go back to her normal activity levels. We can't wait.

In other news....

October 18th - first snow of the season. Thankfully it didn't stick around, but uuuuugggghhh I am not ready for winter....

Andy also made an awesome brunch on Sunday (snow day) - his parents came over so he went all out. Everything was delicious.

As far as everything else goes... life's just chugging along. Work is fine... my schedule was insane earlier in the month, now Andy's is insane.... this Sunday will be the first day in October that both of us have free together. I'm not sure we'll even know what to do with ourselves. I really wish we both only had one job each and worked during normal business hours... we'd be able to eat dinner together, take Birdie for walks together, have a weekend together.... but that's just not in the cards for us. Booo. 

Hmm what else. Well, today marks 9 weeks until Christmas. I am excited for the holiday season to begin. I haven't made a list in awhile... perhaps a future blog post will feature a Christmas list!!! Stay tuned. :-) 

I can breathe!!!!

Hallelujah! My string of insanity has ended. I feel like every since the beginning of September my life has been a moving train of madness. I SO wish I could have rested after Lani's wedding - not only was it just a very busy weekend, but I've also had a lousy cold for the last 2+ weeks. Enough already! But rest was not in sight... I had a craaaaaazy busy week at Job #1.


Job #1
I had a community concert on Thursday night...

another one on Friday night....

yet another on Saturday night....

and a family concert, with pre-concert activities, on Sunday afternoon....

And while I wish that meant I didn't have to be in the office as much during the week, I just had WAY too much to do to take any comp time. I also spent a good chunk of Saturday in the office as well (good thing I didn't have to work Job #2 or I would have been screwed). All told, I put in about 60 hours for Job #1 last week. The good news.... I've been doing this long enough now that I knew what needed to be done to make each event successful, and they were! I couldn't have asked for my end of things to go better. It was just a LOT of work.

But now I'm done!!! I mean, I still have plenty to do at work, but I can breathe a little now. Phew!


Job #2
Well, I'm getting a new boss at Job #2 starting on Monday. Not quite sure how that's going to work out.... but, with that change, I can assure you I am officially done with Saturdays. Woohoo!!!! Honestly now that I am done with Saturdays... I really want to be done with Tuesdays. Except I reeeaaaally like the people I work with on Tuesdays, and the extra money is needed. Guess I'll stick it out for awhile longer.


Food
Two adventures in food this week....

1) I tried my first breakfast sandwich from Hart's.

I've heard a lot of people talk about it and have wanted to try one for so long. Now I finally have! It was pretty darn good. Delicious sweet bun, egg, avocado, arugula, and sriracha mayo. Sounds a little weird but it was really good. It's supposed to have pancetta on it, but I had it without - I've not been eating meat for almost 4 months now,and honestly rarely miss it.

2) We unearthed the top tier of our wedding cake!

We were about 2 months late in having it, but oh well. I am very sad to report that it was absolutely disgusting. Pretty much inedible. :( My Mema bought our wedding cake for us - I was sad to throw it out as it's one of the last gifts I received from her, but Andy and I thanked Mema out loud and then ditched it. So so so so gross. I don't even think the squirrels will go after it in the garbage...


Birdie
Now it's time for the obligatory mass of Birdie pictures!!!

She went to the groomer for the first time, and now she is so pretty!

She's learned to jump up on the couch, and now loves to look out the window!

She still loves to chew on hands....

Her pictures are hanging on the wall at her doggy daycare! (I really want to steal them) They were obviously taken before she went to the groomer, haha.

And when she's not a little ball of energy, she is a sweet little snuggler.

We take her in to get spayed on Friday. While I am very pro-spay/neuter, I feel so bad!!! My poor baby girl is going to have to wear the cone of shame. :(


Now
Now it's time to spend some time on myself! I took Monday off... Andy and I went to see The Martian (I read the book and really liked it). The movie was good but I liked the book better (not a surprise there). I'm also trying to eat a little healthier, now possible as I made a trip to the grocery store. And I've done laundry so I have clothes to wear again. I know these sound like things normal people do all the time, but trust me, I sincerely have not had time. Now I do! Yay!!!

Wedding Weekend

This weekend was Lani's wedding, and when I call it a wedding weekend, I mean it. Friday night, Saturday afternoon/evening, and all day Sunday. Needless to say, today is Monday and I am draaaaaaaagging. I've also had a head cold for the last two weeks that seems to only be getting worse, so that is not helping either.

Anyway! Here's the recap.

Bachelorette Party
Lani's Made of Honor lives in Canada so she waited until she could be here to have the Bachelorette Party. Lani wanted to go out to dinner and have cocktails after - she ended up choosing the Longhorn Steakhouse to be Bachelorette Central. Kara and I went together, which was very nice - I sometimes find group things like this strange because while the bride knows everyone, I most definitely don't, so it was good to have Kara by my side. :-)

I decided to sport a "double ponytail" - basically one ponytail on top of the other to make your hair look extra long. It was kind of cool!

There were 8 girls total and we ended up just sharing appetizers and a dessert. The bummer of the night was that I had such a hard time hearing conversations - my ears have been plugged for over a week because of this darn cold!

Kara and I were both in agreement that we didn't want to stay out too late so we said farewell after dinner and headed home. :-)


Rehearsal
The rehearsal was moved an hour earlier at the very very very last minute, so I spent my morning in a total frenzy trying to get a million things done. I had to pick up my dress from the tailor, get gas, pick up my prescription, buy a wedding card, get cash for their gift, do laundry, etc.

Speaking of gas.... check this out...

Gas for under $2!!!!!!! Can you believe it?!?!?! I love Costco.

Continuing on... their 3:00 rehearsal came before I knew it. We practiced walking down the aisle twice, and then boom - done. Their officiant wasn't able to make the rehearsal so it was short and sweet. Lani and Danny (the bride and groom) seemed pretty pleased. :-)

I headed straight to the rehearsal dinner afterwards. Andy met me there later - with the last minute time change he (along with a lot of other people) ended up not being able to make it to the dinner until later.

Lani's goal for her wedding was to fold 1,161 oragami cranes - 1,001 for good luck, and 160 to give as part of their favor's to their guests. When we got to the rehearsal dinner her mom dropped a stack of paper on our table - they were still 60 cranes short. Thanks to a Google tutorial, I taught myself to fold origami cranes and did so for about 2 and a half hours. Even Andy pitched in when he got there and folded quite a few himself.

When I went to bed on Saturday night I couldn't fall asleep because I just kept running through the steps to fold a crane in my head! Ugh. Turn off brain!!


Wedding
I had a hard time falling asleep the night before, and I ended up being woken up super early by Birdie. Luna (Will and Rose's dog) was dropped off for the day at our house at 6am. Andy had agreed to get up and take care of Luna so that I could sleep. Luna didn't even make a peep and Birdie instantly knew she was there.... she barked her little head off!!!! So much for sleeping in. While Birdie and Luna more or less were crazy dogs together, they did have a moment of suuuuuper cuteness that I managed to get a picture of.

How adorable is that?!?!?!?!?

Ok so back to the wedding. We started at 9am at the salon for hair, makeup, and changing into our dresses (except Lani). The hairdresser was actually the daughter of one of my coworkers at Job #1, which I thought was pretty cool.

I really liked the way she did my hair too - bonus!

Lani's Maid of Honor did our makeup, and I was really pleased with how that turned out too.

So I thought my head looked really pretty. :-) The dress however... well, it zipped. But boy did I feel uncomfortable in it. It showed every.single.thing.

My favorite part of the entire day happened at the salon. The flower girl (Lani's niece, Grace) decided to do her own makeup.

It was adorable, and I really wish they would have left her lipstick on for the whole day. :-)

With everyone dressed it was time to head to the venue. Lani's mom got us a limo to ride in - fancy pants!

We got to the venue an hour and a half early so we were able to walk around and check out the decor. Lani did a fall themed wedding that incorporated music notes, cranes, Pocahontas and Captain America, and duct taped flowers. It was certainly a personalized wedding!

With 30 minutes to go, we got Lani into her dress. Nerves were running high and there was a little stress over lacing up her corset back "just so," along with a missing bridesmaid bouquet (the photographer had it). But by 4:00 everyone was ready to go.

I missed a lot of pictures from this point on because my phone was stuck in our "getting ready room" and I wasn't able to get it until dinner. Boo!! Anyway, their ceremony was outside and for an October wedding, they hit the jackpot with weather. It was a gorgeous day. Lucky! The ceremony was without a doubt the shortest ceremony I've ever been to, but I know they wanted to get it over with asap, so it was exactly what they wanted! Then it was time for obligatory photos. And then finally....

I got to see this guy!

Andy really had my back through this whole wedding process. I really appreciated his support and encouragement, so it was nice to finally be done with wedding responsibilities and just get to hang out with him. He was even a good sport when I dragged him outside for a sunset picture (although you can't tell the sun is setting at all... bummer).

The best two things about her reception - 1) The food! Well done Casa Larga, everything was delicious. 2) The guests! Ok not all of them because there were a ton and I have no idea who most of them were, but Lani very generously invited a lot of our coworkers from Job #1, and since we like the same people, they were all coworkers I like! It was really fun to hang out with them at a non-work event. :-)

There you have it! Lani and Danny are now married. Despite shampooing my hair twice, I still feel like I have hairspray in my hair. My feel still hurt today from wearing heels all day yesterday. And that's where we stand today!!


In other news, I think I am finally off the hook for my Saturday shifts at Job #2. WOOHOO!!!!!! And while I have 3 community concerts and 1 family concert this week (yikes), Job #1 should be much calmer this time next week. And our transition to our new CEO has been pretty tame. Sigh. I think I might just about be able to breathe now. :-)