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Sasha

Sasha Lang

1992 – Feb 06, 2008 RIP

You are so loved little one.

May you be playing in fields of catnip.

Holy Crap…

I’m not sure what else to say but that. Every time I post, I think this is the busiest weekend ever, but again I find that I’m even busier than before. So to make a couple of very long stories short, I’ll make a list.

January 28th – Matt’s house officially goes on the market

January 30th – Matt’s house sells (oh yeah, by the way, they want to close Feb 20th…. 4 days after the wedding)

January 31st – Snow day for Matt, put a contract on a new house

February 1st – Spend the morning at the bank processing the paperwork for the new house loan

February 1st – Spend the afternoon shopping for refrigerators and window treatments

February 2nd – Spend the morning and early afternoon making changes to insurance for after the wedding and more refrigerator shopping

February 2nd – Spend the evening (relaxing) and watching the superbowl

February 3rd – Spend the morning at the doctor (about my knee again)

February 3rd- Spend the afternoon getting a HUGE list of stuff from the city inspector that we need to fix/upgrade before they will give the buyer an occupancy permit and then coming back to my parent’s house to start packing.

I feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions at once. We have to finish up last minute details for the wedding (Feb 16) close on the new house(Feb 15), move all my stuff out of my parents house and all Matt’s stuff out of his house to the new house (Feb 18), and finalize the sale of Matt’s house (Feb 20). Oh yeah, now we also have a list of things to do for the city by the 20th so the buyer can actually purchase the house.

And now after all this, I’m going to go finish packing my books then eat ice cream. I know I should be laying off the sweets because I have a dress to fit into, but holy crap. I need a break.

Oh and by the way… yay Giants!

Crazy Weekend

This weekend has been a blur of activity. Yesterday morning was my bridal shower. Several of mom’s friends went together on it, and it was amazing. They had great food, and I am fairly certain that everyone had a great time.

After the shower, I went over to Matt’s to give Sasha her IV fluids, and promptly cracked the IV tubing when I heated the fluids. That turned out to be a crazy problem. The vet was already closed, Walgreens didn’t carry any tubing, and the medical supply store was also already closed. I ended up calling an urgi-care center and begging for an IV set. The nurse I spoke with on the phone was very nice and told me she’d “toss one out back” and whatever happened to it, happened. So Sasha got her fluids after all. : ) After that, we went to Sam’s with Matt’s mom to stock up on groceries, and then had a very late supper.

Today were our engagement pictures with Chad.  We ended up going to City Museum in St. Louis because it was so ridiculously cold we didn’t want to be outside. Neither Matt or I had ever been there before, and it was amazing. There was so much to do and see. I was kinda bummed that my knee is still giving me fits because I would have liked to explore more with the guys. I can’t wait to see the pictures. Chad said that he hoped to have them for us by next weekend, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Tomorrow we get to make the final changes to the house before our Realtor comes on Tuesday to take pictures to post. She came over on Thursday night to look at everything, and we were so proud of the way everything looked. We were really bummed when she gave us a long list of things to change, so that is happening (hopefully) tomorrow. I grumble about moving more things around a little, but she is excellent at her job. If she says it needs to be moved, we’ll move it. We want the house to sell quickly so we can move on one in Alton. I have my fingers crossed on that too. : )

And now it is bedtime. I can’t wait until Wednesday when I’m finally able to sleep in!

Late update… (again)

Ok so I’m doing marginally better keeping this updated. It’s probably because I’m still not back to work, but whatever.  I have, at least, been productive in other aspects of life. : )

Let’s see, wedding stuff first. All but 4 of our wedding invitations have been mailed. Yippie! The last ones will go out tomorrow. I was really shocked to see RSVPs already arriving. The USPS must move a lot faster than I thought. It’s been really exciting to watch for the envelopes to come back. I can’t remember the last time I received mail that wasn’t a bill. It’s been fun!

Saturday was my friend Amanda’s wedding. Everything turned out really well (I thought). Her ceremony was very meaningful, but not extravagantly long. The pictures were very quick, and the reception was a lot of fun. She just did dessert and coffee because it was a night wedding. Everything that I had to eat was very good! I hope it was everything she wanted, and she enjoyed herself as much as the rest of us did.

On to our house update. Sunday morning we finally bought a dining room table! I was so excited. We haven’t had a table before, and it gets really really old eating on tray tables in front of the couch. Weekend’s Only was very good to us, we picked out a table that was originally $850ish and we paid $350. It’s the greatest thing ever!

Sunday afternoon, with all the nice weather, we were able to finish all of the deck but the step. We did get the cement poured for the step to rest on, we just needed it to set before building and attaching the step itself. I hope we can do that by this weekend because we are calling our Realtor to list it, come hell or high water (as my grandmother used to say) on Saturday.  While Dad and Matt were finishing the deck, mom and I tackled the inside of the house. We reorganized and dusted rooms and set aside more things to take to storage. Overall, I think it really helped.

Yesterday, I spent the day painting and scrubbing the bathroom with Matt’s dad. It was very dingy and dirty before we started, but with the new paint and new caulk in the tub and lots of bleach, it looks great. The clean white paint really makes the room look bigger. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Back to wedding things, today Mom and I went to the rental station to finalized decorations and dishes for the reception. I’m getting excited finally because my to do list is gradually getting smaller. I still need a florist, but I have all my other vendors selected.  I really hope things start to come together like Amanda’s. She said that just before the wedding, things magically started working out. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that works for us too!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year all! While I would love to share all the fun photos of what I did New Year’s Eve, I don’t have any. Both Matt and I had a rough day and decided to stay home and rent a movie. Neither of us had seen any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so we rented 1 & 2 and ordered O’Charlies to go. We had originally debated about going out to eat then bringing a movie home, and boy am I glad we didn’t. When I got there to pick up the food there were people everywhere waiting on a table. It was so nice to walk in, pick up the food, walk out and drive home to eat in the peace and quiet. We didn’t get to watch the 2nd movie because it says it’s almost 3 hours long. We wouldn’t have finished it until almost 2am, so I think we’re going to try to watch it tomorrow night.

On a totally random note, go WVU! We watched the Fiesta Bowl tonight (WVU vs Oklahoma) and I had to listen to the announcers rave about Oklahoma that WHOLE GAME. It was the middle of the 4th quarter, and they were down by 20, yet they were still talking about how great the team was and how they can make a comeback etc. Very few positive words toward the West Virginia team. It irritates me so much. All they talked about was how they couldn’t believe the big underdog won at all, much less by 20 points. Makes me absolutely nuts. Anyway a picture to honor the evening:

Wedding planning is coming along I suppose. I’m down to needing a florist and then all the piddly little things that end up being last minute. I mailed out the bulk of the invitations yesterday, and I hope to have the rest out by the start of next week. We put an RSVP date of Jan 23, so I have to make sure people get them in enough time to mail back!

I thought about putting some New Year’s Resolutions on here, but I’m not sure what they’d be. I know what I’d like them to be, but I also know that I never keep up with them. I would really like to get to the gym a few times a week. Unfortunately, until my knee heals, I can’t do anything with my legs.  Thankfully my wedding dress is floor length so I don’t have to worry about that. I’d really like toned arms and back though for the wedding. We’ll see how it goes!

Merry Christmas!

Ok so that’s a bit late, but it is meant to be retroactive. : )

I had a fantastic holiday. My birthday was Saturday, and I went out to supper with my parents and Matt. We wanted to go see National Treasure, but Matt and I had a tux fitting at the mall that morning (which was probably a bad idea with all the last min Christmas shopping). Hopefully we can go see it sometime before Matt has to go back to work. After supper we came back to the house and had cookie and ice cream. Matt gave me the purse I’ve been visiting for several months, my hands free headset for my phone and the cute marshmallow bear from Borders. My parents gave me new jeans and a sweater (which I needed desperately), and Clark gave me the old school controllers for our Wii.

Sunday night we went out to supper with Matt’s dad David for Christmas. We all had a really great time. Monday Matt and I exchanged presents then we spent the afternoon/evening with Matt’s mom and grandmother. That night he had to go to Alton to play prior to midnight Mass at one of the Catholic churches. Tuesday morning I had Christmas with my parents then Matt came over for dinner. It was really great to have all the time to spend with our family and not be rushing around with a thousand things to do.

Today we spent almost three hours putting together our wedding invitations. We finished about 3/4 of the list before we ran out of addresses. I hope to have all of them put together and mailed by the end of the week. That should give people roughly 6 weeks to RSVP. After we take care of that, we only have the florist left to book and all the large things are complete. That just leaves us with things like favors, welcome baskets for the hotel rooms and other misc details. I can’t wait!

Snow!!!

I am so excited! It has been snowing on and off all day, and we have roughly 3-4″! Snow is one of the major things that I miss being here. Mom and I laughed again how they put out a winter storm warning calling for 6-8″. I only remember two warnings back home and I think they were predicting 4-6′. It’s amazing how things differ. Once when the snow was coming down pretty good, I turned to Matt and said “lets go outside!” He looked at me like I had grown a second head and said “in the snow?” Ah the difference in the people from the plains and the people from the mountains I suppose.

As I was driving home tonight, I can see why folks here may think about panicking.  None of the roads have been plowed, heck none of them have even been pre-treated with salt or sand. I called Matt when I got here and he said that the usual protocol is to wait until all the snow is here and THEN try to plow. What crazyness! At this point, everything that melted on the roads this evening from traffic is now freezing into a lovely layer of ice over the snow that was packed down. How much simpler would it have been to plow continuously or even to just pre-treat the major roads? It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow. I have no worries going anywhere, my car can handle it. but I passed a gas station where 10-12 small cars were parked with their flashers on. Poor guys.

Happy Friday!

It is absolutely amazing to me how, even though I am not working, the days manage to fly by. I really can’t fathom working full time and planning a wedding, although I guess you just don’t try to plan as quickly as we are. I give all kinds of kudos to the ladies out there who are juggling wedding, work,  perhaps a new home, and family.

Today was a good day, I got both the invitations ordered and we went to choose tuxes and have Matt fitted. The invitations were a bit difficult because I didn’t really like any of the templates shown. Tuxes, on the other hand, were a breeze. I think we were in there for 30 mins tops, and we got a great deal! ($170 total cost discounted to $80) Yay for having an off-season wedding! We ended up with black tuxes, black vest, ivory shirt and black/red tie for the groomsmen. Our fathers will wear the same ensemble, but will have black on black ties so our mom’s aren’t stuck wearing red dresses. I’m really excited to see how everything turns out. We go next Saturday morning (my birthday) to try on the three jacket styles we ordered and choose one. This just leaves me with needing a florist, musicians for the ceremony and someone to do the ceremony itself. (the last being the most important obviously) We have a couple of options on a minister now, so I hope to nail that down this week. As far as a florist goes, we really aren’t doing a ton, we just need bouquets for myself and my bridesmaids,  a corsage for my mom and mamaw, and Matt’s mom and grandma.  I’m thinking I want something like this for my flowers:

I’m hoping the calla lilies won’t be terribly expensive around that time. I know I want to stay away from roses, especially red ones, because around Valentine’s day they are ridiculously expensive.  OhI also need hair and makeup ideas. Mom is going to ask Dawn, the lady who has done her hair for 8 or 9 years if she will open her shop for us Sat morning and do our hair. I really don’t want anything terribly extravagant, I was hoping for something like:

But I have naturally curly hair and I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible, so I’m also looking at something like this:

But we shall see! I don’t want something so complex that it makes me uncomfortable!

It’s been awhile…

since I posted, but I have been fairly productive. We’ll start with wedding things, since those seem to be all I get accomplished anymore. I found the DJ for the wedding today, we’re using a group out of Belleville that came very well recommended by a friend of mine. I’m excited about that. I know I probably should have contacted several, but this group came well recommended and I don’t really have the energy to call multiple people and set up appointments. We also picked out our wedding invitations. My goal tomorrow is to finalize wording and get them ordered. I did get the black envelopes ordered today, so they should be here in the next week. This weekend we should get the cake finalized. Saturday we’re tasting and talking to the people at the shop about the design.

In more depressing news, I went to the doc Monday for another post-op on my knee. He thinks the pain I’m having is from scar tissue that has attached itself to a nerve. That’s why the more motion I get, and the more I exercise it, the more it hurts, so for 2 weeks I get to do deep scar massage at physical therapy, then a couple of weeks of cortisone injections. If that doesn’t work, he’s going to have to go back in and cut the muscles and tissue again. This is absolutely NOT what I want to do. In addition to all that, he’s pushed back my return to work date till the first of February. I’m going crazy. Christmas is going to be so tight with the vet bills we’ve had and me not having much of an income. Now with my return date 2 weeks before our wedding, I might not get time off around the wedding to get ready. (Like Friday/Monday). It will be awful to have to go straight from our hotel room Sunday night to work Monday morning. I’ll cry.

So anyway, some good, some bad news in the past few days.  I’m trying very hard to focus on the good and push aside the bad. I keep telling myself what will happen will happen if I worry or not.