Long Time No See

Not exactly "back," but not exactly gone.

My first summer being a "Work From Home Mom" has proved challenging. The hard part definitely isn't the "home" side (though, Break: Needed.) - the "work" side is what has proved challenging. Especially when I work from home, until I get an appointment, at which time I need to leave home - alone.

But before I know it, the summer will be over, they'll be back to school, and I'll spend my mornings not working because I'm just so lost by the quiet.

And then I'll only be able to blame the dog. (Who, by the way, is wonderful. And extremely time consuming. But also very cute.)

A few recent pics to share:

Mike and I at a good friend's wedding in May.

Alyssa fishing during our camping trip in June.

Evie sitting with "Mom" (Oh, Gawd, I know.) at the beach.

Alyssa and Evie after a boat ride.

(Nick doesn't "do" pictures often, unfortunately.)

I appreciate the checking in, friends. :)

Even by my Chinese Canned Ham friends. Because, why not?

I miss you dearly.

Meet Evie

As if things weren't crazy enough around here, we have added a new member to the family.

Meet Evie - she's a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

We got her at only six weeks old.

Now eight weeks, she's a biting and pooping machine, but when she sleeps, I can hear my heart of ice crackling from the thaw.

She is very smart and learns quickly, so I'm hoping that potty training gets better...soon. :)

Trashy

Hi Friends. :)

Short update to excuse my disappearance because it's all the creativity I can muster:

I am officially a REALTOR in the state of Minnesota. I am STILL in training classes, but I'm trying to get out with people on appointments and such to get a little experience under my belt. To answer EVERYONE's question: No, haven't sold anything yet, but busy as heck anyway. I should be getting my first listing within the next couple of weeks. :)

Things are heating up with Nick getting to be that super fantastico magical number his mother keeps telling him about ("When you're 12, you get to decide where you want to live!"). Things have been really trying in this area of my life lately. However, we have FINALLY started the Total Transformation program that I received months and months ago. We've gotten through the first disk and it gives me a lot of hope - I plan on posting more about this later on.

I finally got to do a "Trash the Dress" (I like "Rock the Dress") shoot! We shot them at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Here are a few:

I hope you are all doing well. I'm trying to make my rounds on the monthly reader catch-up, but I can't make any promises. :) Miss you all.

Regret

All in all, I would say my wedding day was a beautiful day. I was so incredibly happy all day that even all the mishaps couldn’t stop me from smiling. Almost my whole family was there to be with us and it wasn‘t for something sad or terrible for once. And in the end, we accomplished what we set out to do: to become husband and wife.

But looking back now, I wonder what I spent that year of my life on. The planning and DIY tasks - they really didn’t consume as much time as I like to think. I spent that whole YEAR planning a party that was over in a few hours. I spent a whole year making plans and decorations that never even got used. All that time just for a few hours? I regret putting my life on “hold” to plan this thing when it obviously wasn’t needed.

And then, of course, there is the money thing. I promised myself we would not go into debt over the wedding. I promised myself (and my mother) that I would be more careful with this credit card. I knew we’d carry a little bit on our card until Mike got his tax return, but I wasn’t going to over that! Then little by little, the credit card added up. When I had my brother and sister caring for the kids and my grocery bill just wasn’t going to be gracefully extracted from my bank account any more, I charged it. Anything we needed (or, admittedly, wanted) but couldn‘t quite afford, I put on the card. And it added up to a lot more than Mike will be getting back. We are making HUGE monthly payments but it doesn’t seem to make a dent. I regret spending too much money when I know I should have been saving. I regret emptying my savings account to make a credit card payment instead of demanding that the church coordinator give me my deposit back NOW.

I have my little regrets over the wedding - waiting until the last minute to do a lot of stuff, being so stressed out and busy the day of, doing pictures before the ceremony but not getting that private moment with Mike when we first saw each other, letting people who didn‘t know what they were doing run my music when it was SO important to me. But really, those are very trivial things when I think of the time and resources that were piddled away on the whole deal.

And now. Now they are more than just regrets. They are mistakes. Because I lost my job yesterday. I have no money in savings. I have a huge credit card debt that is going to start accruing interest at the end of this year. I effectively screwed myself - which I SWORE to myself I would not do. I put my blog - the one thing I love that could actually bring in some sort of funds - on hold for so long that I lost my reader base. I put my family in jeopardy by spending my money frivolously.

Last month, Mike and I sat down and took a long hard look at our finances. We cut every corner we could in an effort to pay down our debt faster and hopefully get our savings going again. I finally got smart again, but it wasn’t soon enough. And now that our funds have been cut, we are going to have to do more than just cutting the unnecessary, we are going to have to make sacrifices.

I wish so badly that I could look back on my wedding with fond memories of “the happiest day of my life” like so many other brides. But for now, I look back on it with regret. Not in the marriage, of course - just in what it took to get there.

Here's the church...

And here's the steeple...

But if you opened those doors, you wouldn't see any people.

We did pictures before the ceremony. ;)

Well, it's about time.

Impatient

My photographer is running behind in getting me my pictures, so I asked her to at least email me our "Thank You" pictures so I could get some cards printed up. She embedded the pictures instead of attaching them, so the quality isn't good enough for Shutterfly. But, it was good enough for blogger. :)

It was a fun idea - but I wouldn't recommend doing it to anyone unless their photographer could ensure they'd have a high quality edited picture available soon after the wedding. I'm now one month past my wedding and haven't even started writing my thank-you cards, much less ordered them. :

Oh, rain.

Our last vacation, we left and the Wisconsin Dells flooded. It rained on my wedding day. It rained almost the ENTIRE time we were in Chicago and made for a rather ugly exit.

But it was okay. THIS hotel (unlike the last few hotels we've stayed at) had the Food Network.

Oh sweet Food Network. Oh sweet Iron Chef.

Couple that with some hearty, bacon-rich pizza

and I call that one hell of a honeymoon.

Behind the Scenes

If it rains on your wedding day...

It's supposed to mean good luck.

I think the rainbow we got (and the hopefully awesome pro shots along with it) could count as that.

I'm officially a Mrs!

And one of the family

Props to my photographer allowing us to use some of our engagement pictures as family pictures. And props to my brother for keeping the kids [mostly] clean while they waited to jump in.

No Kidding

Showering

Miss Patti and me at my bridal shower over the weekend.

Mr. T

My new nephew - Born June 27th

Individuality

She has it.

publek nuditeh monkeh

*Taken at the Minnesota Zoo*

Interest

I officially have less than one month until my wedding.

Because I'm well aware that discussing my ever-present wedding dramz would get tiring (currently? getting the girls at the banquet hall to WRITE ME BACK. Or call - I'll even take a call!), I decided that the only way to liven up my little pink blog o'happiness before my *return to normal* was to post some pictures (at random, of course. How else?).

Feel free to comment still (I do love it so), but understand if I don't have time to answer any questions you may have, like, "Amy, why is there a picture of a monkey playing with himself here?" (srsly. I have one.)

Also - nothing like driving something deep into the ground, right? ;) My post Hunted was published on another collaborative blogging site. Check out Bloggers Annex if you get a chance - in addition to mine, there are other REALLY good posts there by some bloggers you may know. If you feel so inclined, you can also join and submit your posts for publication.

This is probably why she claws my couch

Alternate title: I need to find better things to do with my time off work.

RAWR!

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Roots

Wordless Wednesday