Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Well, it's over. Jay and I are officially married! Woohoo!!! The day went very well and the few hiccups that happened, had already been resolved by the time I found out about them. I guess the best place to start is at the beginning.

Wednesday is really when everything got started. Wednesday afternoon at about 2pm I got off work. I had a million errands to run and was able to accomplish everything I needed to do. The out of towner's bags got dropped off at the hotel. (Unfortunately, no pictures of them, but trust me they were totally cute. I had gotten khaki canvus bags and used iron on paper to put our monogram on the front.) I picked up all the drinks we needed at the grocery store (the adorable guy that checked me out commented on how someone must really like milk and soda). :-) After all the errands were done, I was even able to have dinner with Jay and our best man and take time to breath and prepare for everything to start. My three friends from California, Jennifer, Maria and Erin flew into town that night. Their flight was delayed in New York so it was 2am before the poor girls got to Charlotte. Thank goodness, I had been drinking a steady stream of Dr. Pepper. I picked them up at the airport and expected that they would want to go straight to sleep, but we ended up talking until almost 3:30 or 4am.

Thursday was wonderful. We had planned to take a trip up to Asheville, but with the girls getting in later than expected and having things that still needed to be picked up we ended up canceling our trip which was a wonderful idea. My friend Jessica met up with us that morning and we dropped off some stuff with our caterer and my wonderful friend, Darby. Then we headed to Harpers Restaurant for what I consider to be the best chicken tenders in the world!

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During lunch we realized that there was going to be more rentals to be picked up then could be packed in one car since there were 5 of us in my car. After lunch we grabbed Jessica's car and headed to pick up the rentals. That was a wonderful experience as the folks at Party Reflections were wonderful and so helpful! After getting the rentals we grabbed the flowers that had been delivered to Jmom's house and headed back to put them in water. I cannot tell you how happy I was when I saw the flowers!

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They even more beautiful then I had expected. I had really been worried about them since I'd never ordered from the places we got them from and I knew there wasn't going to be much we could do about it if they didn't turn out well. So, with the work behind us, we headed to the mall to get our nails done. That was a wonderful experience and something I am so thankful we took time out to do. Jessica got great pictures as we were getting our services done, and my brother, Luke, showed up about half way into them. We all laughed and joked as we relaxed and plotted as to where we were going to dinner.


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We made a quick stop at JC Penny's before leaving. My brother, Luke, is rather small and his tux had fit except for the white shirt. I was surprised that the tux place had not had one to fit him, but we decided that having him in a shirt that was different but that fit would be better than having him in a matching shirt that made him look like he was five years old. Once that was accomplished, we headed to Cracker Barrel to get the California girls some authentic southern cooking! They of course loved it, even the fried okra. And my brother looked so cute pimping it with five gorgeous women! I wish I had a picture of that!

Up next... the Bachelorette Party!

Bachellorette Party

Once dinner was over, we headed to the apartment to freshen up for the bachelorette party. We were running late, but thankfully everyone else was too and we realized that nothing was going to be going on at 8:30pm in downtown which was our original arrival time. Our officiant's wife, and our friend Brandi, had already purchased me a Bachelorette Kit including a tiara, pageant style sash and shot glass that all proclaimed my status as a bachelorette. My friends from Cali has also brought a veil that had male organs attached to it, a pee-pee straw and pecker mints!


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It was so much fun! One of the most fun things was the two of my three brothers, Levi and Luke, decided that they would go with us girls to the bachelorette party instead of hooking up with the guys for the bachelor party. It added so much fun to have the two guys as our escorts and it was awesome for me to be able to share such a fun night with them.

When we got downtown we started off at this awesome Irish pub called Ri-Ra's. It was so beautiful and I'm so looking forward to going back on another night with Jay.




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Jennifer (our resident Irishwoman) even commented on how authentic it is to an actually Irish pub. There was a guy there playing guitar and a guy playing mandolin. It was so awesome. The atmosphere was great, the drinks were great and the music was great. Unfortunately, we had a couple of totally drunk preppy middle aged guys that kept giving us a hard time. They would take one of us aside and ask what was on my veil. When we explained it was a pee-pee, they said they knew that (then why did you ask, silly head!!!) and asked what the signifigence was. Um… hello! It's silly!!! We finally started telling them that it was a tradition within our circle of girlfriends. I think they were just seeing how many of us they could get to say "pee-pee". But whatever.

Eventually we got tired of dealing with them and moved onto this cigar bar called Madison's around the corner.

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Unfortunately, that was the only disappointment of the night. The bar is kind of out of the way, there weren't a lot of people there and they ones that where kind of scared us all. I think as soon as Maria had walked into the bar, this slightly off cowboy had bought her a drink. But the experience was salvaged by my mom and Erin getting up on the outside bar (where no one was) and dancing!


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The bouncer had to get them down since that outside bar wasn't stable enough for them to dance on. Unfortunately I was in the bathroom at this point, but there's plenty of photographic proof that it happened! Up until this point, I had been doing really well with the drinking. I had stuck to my jager bombs and was doing very well. But at coyote ugly this girl bought me a shot of Petrone! Not a good idea!!! I could literally feel it washing over me and knew I was going to regret it later.

Since Coyote Ugly was sucking, we decided to head back to Madison's which was the best decision we made all night (thanks Levi for the suggestion).


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The ball games were over and it had almost completely cleared out. We were able to claim seats on the cushy couch and the boys got to play pool until they kicked us out at 2pm. On the way home some people decided they were hungry and mom decided to take everyone to stake in shake. When they were closed they started talking about going somewhere else. Levi kept piping up and saying that I needed to go home. My other friends were listening to my protests that I was ok, but Levi knew I was only trying to take care of everyone else and not ruin the fun. He insisted that the car we were in was going home. He was so wonderful and helped me get into the house and into bed. He wouldn't leave until mom got there with the other girls and he knew someone was going to be there with me.

Next up... Friday's activities.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Our 2 Year Anniversary

I know, I know, it's been a very long time since I blogged anything. Well, needless to say it's been a little busy lately. The wedding was wonderful (blog coming soon, I promise!), and life seems to have only gotten more busy since then if you can believe it. In the last 7 weeks, Jay and I have moved his mom and my mom, my middle brother has come into town at least 2-3 weekends, my oldest brother and mom came from Asheville, my good friend from Michigan came to visit for the weekend, and my best friend's husband left for a 15 month deployment in Iraq (which involved a quick trip to Fayetteville to be with her the first night). All that to say that it's been a little crazy. I've realized lately though that blogging was one of the main things that I did for myself while Jay was out to sea. Now that he's home, I need to take the time to do it more. And I guess that is the best segway into this blog.


Today is my and Jay's 2 year anniversary. Now I'll have to give you a little information because we have lots of anniversaries. We have one in December which is the anniversary of when we first met; we just celebrated 11 years this past December. We have one in January which celebrates our first kiss; we just had our 7th anniversary this past January. We have one in August which celebrates the first time we saw each other after 5 1/2 years (it's also the first time we... we'll you know); we'll be coming up on our 2nd year for this one. We have one in June that celebrates when we got engaged; that one will be the big *1* next month. And now we have our wedding anniversary in March of which we're about to celebrate a wonderful 2 months in a few days.


But I think today is one of my favorite anniversaries. Today is the 2nd anniversary of the first time I told Jay that I loved him. Truthfully, I had known for a while. I just didn't know if I had the strength to go through the divorce I knew was ahead of me. But today was the day I realized that the prospect of happiness with Jay would be better than the overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction I had been dealing with for the entire life of my marriage. So I sat down to write Jay an email. We had been corresponding since the Novemember prior and we had learned a lot about the people we had become over the 5 1/5 years we'd been apart. So, 2 years ago tonight, I wrote an email that ended with these few, but extremely powerful words.

"I love you Jeremy. I always have, and I always will."

Little did I know that those 11 words would change my life forever.

It hasn't been the easiest 2 years. In fact, some of the hardest moments of my life have been since I pushed "send" on that email. But saying it has been worth it would be the understatement of the century. Not only do I now have a life with my soul mate, but I am a completely different person. Over the last 2 years, I've realized that I am stronger than I ever gave myself credit for. I've survived a divorce, a 4 month separation from the love of my life imediately followed by an 8 month deployment which allowed us very little communication other than email (one time we went 9 weeks between phone calls), a trip across country by myself, two relocations and job searches, and three different apartments.

Through all of that I have become a person who when faced with a few week separation due to job training says (and truly means), "I'll miss you terribly!" And then starts planning all the stuff I'll be able to do with that time to myself. A woman who realizes that for a little girl who had no girlfriends growing up, I'm blessed with one of the most amazing and supportive networks of female friends. I'm learning more and more what it means to be "professional", and gaining an ability to put my personal feelings aside. I'm learning that critisim makes me better. And most of all, that I'm not perfect... and that's OK.

But above all, though... I've learned what it truly means to be "in love" with someone... So in love that you feel it in your entire body. So in love that they are constantly in your thoughts regardless of if they are 3 feet away or 3,000 miles away. So in love that you truly understand what Aristotle meant when he said, "Love consists of one soul inhabiting two bodies." So in love that without thinking you pick the thing you know they like instead of the one you like. So in love that without thinking they picks the thing you like instead of the one they like. And after being apart for a total of 6 1/2 years, knowing that at the end of the day, he'll be laying there with his arms open, ready for you to fall asleep on his shoulder, even if that means you drool all over it.

To the love of my life, my soul mate, my lover, my very best friend... happy anniversary. I'm so glad those 11 tiny words, changed my life!

Cheers to many more to come!

Love,

your adoring wife