Saturday evening, and our weekend has already been busy! Thursday night, we had dinner with Andy Baron, wife of Mary Chipman, one of Mike's partners. They're also two of his dearest friends. We had an absolutely WONDERFUL time... (at least it's crispy!) Yesterday morning, we went to meet with Mickey's florist in Lewisville. We ordered most of the florals we'll need, but today remembered some we'd forgotten, so we'll have to go back. Or at least call. Then we came back home and worked a bit longer. Last night we drove out to the Hall of State and met with the caterer. They were holding a party there, and it was a perfect opportunity to see their presentation and taste some food. Both were excellent, and we're still working out a few pricing details before actually signing a contract.
Today, we drove out to Canton for First Monday. This is basically a huge flea market with everything in the world you could possibly be looking for. We went with the notion we'd get stuff for our place in Endicott, but all we ended up with was books. :) Then we went to Town East Mall to meet up with my niece, Candice, who is going to be our flower girl. We shopped almost the entire mall before we reached the bridal store. We found a dress for her that she absolutely loved, and we picked out a veil for me. Two more items checked off!!
Now we're just trying to recuperate.... we're both pretty pooped, and tomorrow we drive back out to Kemp to spend some time with my mom. Busy, busy, busy...
OK, it's been a LONG time since I did a diary update, but there's a very good reason... I've been doing TONS of photo resizing and uploading from our trips. For those of you who don't already know, we went to Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, and La Ventana Arch. I didn't put any comments on the Grand Canyon or La Ventana pictures, because really, what can you say? "This is another picture of the Grand Canyon... this is Mike standing in front of the Grand Canyon... this is the Arch... this is Max running toward the Arch..." I didn't want to insult your intelligence. :-) But there is one thing I want to point out on the Arch pictures... Max is standing behind a root, in a picture with Mike... Max mistook it for a stick and was trying to dig it up to play fetch with it. LOL. Oh, and there are a few new pet pictures up, too.
The big news is that BridesMart called... MY DRESS IS IN!!!! Yayyyyy. We're thinking of going to visit it.. kind of like it's in the kennel or something. LOL. Also, we went last night and registered at J.C. Penney's. They have an online registry, plus it's nationwide, so we finally broke down and picked out china, flatware, and glassware. OK, time to upload this, so everyone can see what we've been up to!
Yes, I know, it's been awhile. I was busy editing an Access 2000 book, and then we were on the road. Tonight, we're parked at the Silverton resort in Las Vegas, happily hooked into water, electricity, and telephone. We hustled on our way to Las Vegas, because we were having our mail shunted over to us. Now we can make a more leisurely trek over to Dallas, and hopefully we'll get to stop over at a few places, including the Grand Canyon, which I've never seen.
We spent Monday night at our (hopefully) soon-to-be home. It was wonderful. It rained overnight, and we got a chance to see what the roads would be like after a shower (not too bad, really). We walked with our realtor and saw the bounds of the property (it's HUUUUUGE), then later that afternoon Mike took Max for a walk down to the Palouse River, which more-or-less borders our property. They flushed some pheasants and a couple of deer (apparently both are abundant in that area). For pictures, click here.
Along the drive, we read through the Territorial seed catalog and picked out which seeds we wanted to order for our new home. I would put up a list here, but I doubt anyone but us would really care. :) Basically EVERYTHING but tomatoes (our season is really too short for any kind of tomatoes). Hopefully lots of it will actually come up and I'll be able to put my canning and preserving books to good use! Keep your fingers crossed!
Well, I guess I'll sign off now and go get a shower, do some reading, and nod off. Take care!
OK, I'm feeling much better now. I had the flu and was absolutely miserable for about a week, but now I'm much better. Mike has been taking excellent care of me, including making chicken and dumplings (comfort food... mmmm). Anyway, at this point I'm just down to a nagging cough and have pretty much abandoned the sick bed. So we're just packing up the RV as we go along, getting ready to head back to Dallas for awhile this weekend.
Friday I tried to make jelly. It was an awful mess. And it didn't jell. :-( I was trying to make 3-berry jelly (strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry). I did it exactly according to instructions, and now I just have this really expensive ice cream syrup. Oh, well. It was just my first attempt. I think next I'm going to attack blueberry jam. No straining!!!!! (Incidentally, I've grown to hate cheesecloth.)
Now the big news... our loan was approved on our property! This is the acreage in Spokane that I wrote about on January 27th. And an insurance policy is in the works, so we should be closing on it (God-willing) the first week in March. We're both terribly excited and can't wait to get on the land and start working on getting the buildings and the vegetable plot in order. We've got lots of big plans for what we want to accomplish; we'll just have to see how much of it we can make happen. I'm still chugging along through my dowry books, (UPDATE - This page is no longer available so the link has been removed.) trying to absorb as much of the information as I can. I've almost finished a poultry-keeping book (should have that done by tonight) and then I think I'm going to tackle the outbuildings book. So many books, so little time!!!
Mike's been tech-editing Auto-CAD books for Sybex for about a week or so now. He hooked me up with his contact there, and I think I might be about to work on something for them, too. Keep your fingers crossed! My lady-of-leisure status may be coming to an abrupt end! (God-forbid! ;-D )
I'm sick. I've been sick since Thursday. So no updates until I'm over this. :(
I have an announcement to make!!!! We're married!!!!! <Major happy dance!!!> No, don't worry, we're not forgoing the big shindig I've been telling you about for over a month now. But we are Islamically married, which is just as married as the legal thing, at least in our book. :) And speaking of books, part of the requirement of an Islamic wedding is that the husband-to-be has to offer the bride a dowry. Traditionally, this has been something that will help sustain the wife in the unfortunate event that they are divorced (sniff, sniff). So Mike, love of my life, racked his brain for days, and finally came up with the PERFECT solution... books!!! Books about living in the country, to be exact. LOTS of books. To see the full listing, click here (this link no longer available).
Oh, yeah... and Mike's been haggling with the caterers about our reception... more on that when it's resolved, and I'm not so euphoric. :)
We got back from L.A. yesterday at about 7PM. MUCH more reasonable than our last trip! It was great fun. The first night we had dinner at the Engine Company No. 28 in downtown L.A. I had the herb-crusted chicken with mashed potatoes and asparagus, Mike had the shrimp risotto, Peter (our friend) had some kind of sandwich (club?), and Ken had some kind of salad and something else (I don't remember what). After that, we drove to their house (gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous house!!) and made blueberry muffins, then went to bed. The next morning (very early; Ken had a flight to NY) we drove all around L.A. and Simi Valley until about 8:30'ish, at which point we called David (Mike's brother). We went over to David's house, bearing blueberry muffins, and picked him up to go to brunch, at the Beverly Hills Cafe.
After that, we drove down to the Farmer's Market, after a nice driving tour of Beverly Hills (yes, I saw Rodeo Drive; I wasn't impressed... you can get overpriced ANYWHERE). That was fun. We bought a little statuette of a beaver (I'm collecting them) and looked through all the antiques. Mike and Dave kicked themselves for giving back some kind of robot toys they had when they were kids, cuz now they're worth several hundreds of dollars.
ON TO MOM AND DAD'S!!!! Had a BLAST there. We went to the Living Desert and looked at all the animules. We saw the cutest little baby foxes, but they wouldn't let us have them. Something about laws or vicious bites or some such nonsense. Anyway, we did that, and we had lunch, and we went shopping at the mall in Palm Desert. Bought jeans, overalls, work shirts, socks, and jewelry cleaner. Oh, I forgot to mention.... Mom made the BEST blueberry pie I ever tasted. I'm still kicking myself for forgetting to get another piece yesterday morning. Oh, well.... maybe she'll give me the recipe (hint, hint, hint). We watched a home movie of Mike, David, and their sister Nancy with Mom and Dad as the kids were growing up (you fell in the snow!!). That was alot of fun. And we looked at OODLES of pictures. Heard plenty of cute stories, including Michael's first words. If you're interested in that one, you'll have to email me; I can't publish it..... Flew back last night, and that's pretty much all she wrote!
OK, so what's going on with wedding planning? Not a whole lot, except we're really narrowing the guest list down a bit. I've been bugging my Mom and Step-Mom about putting together their invite lists, so that I won't forget anyone... you know how that puny brain stuff can get. More as it happens....