By the Way, We Moved

Oh, by the way, we moved.

I told you that, right?

I didn't? Well...damn.

It did kind of get lost in there. I mean, there was that wedding in Seattle that I told you about and we were...

Wait.

Let me back up. Because this all really started July 22nd. And I can't believe it's been a month since then. Well, almost anyways. It actually really started at the beginning of July when my mommy and daddy were here. Not the craziness, but what spawned the start of the craziness that's been this past month.

When my parentals were here, Mom and I went wedding dress shopping. Every little girl's dream. I had been waiting to go wedding dress shopping since forever. Luckily, Tyler did right by me and I finally got to go. We spent several hours in a nice salon and a dress and a half at a not-so-nice salon and came away with no dress but two potentials.

Since going shopping for the ring with Tyler and having that "oooh" moment with the ring, I was expecting that "oooh" moment with the dress. I had an "oh" moment with two of them, but not the "oooh" moment. It was a "Wow, I'm gonna be a bride and I could actually be wearing this dress on the day of my wedding" moment, not so much as "this is the dress, I never ever ever ever want to take it off ever again."

But who knows, at the time, I was like, well, I go to Portland and go to one more place and then I'll just pick between those two if I don't find anything I'm more attracted to. No big deal, it's one dress, one day.

So, that led to July 22nd.

I got up really early and drove up to Portland and was in Portland by 10 a.m. I met up with Heather at her house and we went out to a most delicious breakfast, complete with mimosas, fantastic almost-Italy-worthy cappuccino, fresh croissants, tomatoes, and eggs. It was our pre-wedding-dress-shopping celebration. Then, we excitedly trouped over to Bridal Exclusives, the place in Tigard where she bought her dress.

The atmosphere was so nice. Never once was it about the sale, never once did I feel pressured to buy the dress (other than my own pressure of course). At one point, I was making some sort of face at myself in the mirror and the girl said to me, "You look like you're trying to talk yourself into the dress, why is that?" and then went on to say that if I don't have "that feeling" then that's not what we're looking for and I shouldn't try to make any dress into something it's not.

Even once I found the dress and was wiggling my joy (which apparently is a universal Kristen sign for "happiness" because both my sister and Heather were aware of it), the salesgirl made me put on two more, and then leave once I'd tried on the dress again and come back after a couple hours to make sure it was still the dress. It's still the dress.

So that was the 22nd.

On the 23rd, I rose again really early and drove back to Bend and spent the afternoon packing. I worked that Tuesday and Wednesday, and then Thursday morning we got up really early to drive to Seattle for Siobhan's wedding. Bridal events ensued through Saturday night (the wedding night), and then we trouped back home leisurely Sunday.

Sunday night we hosted the outlaws (soon-to-be-inlaws) for dinner and made moving plans. They showed up at our house bright and early (7:45 a.m.) on July 30th (Monday) to help us move. That commenced a whirlwind of moving (when the initial plan had been to do some moving Monday, not most moving), initial back pain, more moving, more back pain, and then finally, suddenly, we were in our new house and Maddie was stubbornly hiding in her litter box in a show of "everything has changed but this so I'm staying right here thankyouverymuch."

And then of course, I went to work for a week while we struggled to unpack, and Tyler's family remained in town so we had many family activities, and then they left and it was my weekend and the puppies were born and I bought my car and then my back stuff started.

Very very busy.

But the new house is wonderful, I'll show you pictures when I get to it. Nice big backyard, kind of a weird neighborhood outside of our block, but our neighbors are quite nice and the price is right. Lack of air conditioning would be the only drawback so far, I love not having to climb up and down stairs! And it'll be perfect when we get our little boy in a month!

I told Maddie that if she thought it was bad when we moved, just wait two months and she'd be in for a shock. Her little brother is something we've been trying to prepare her for, but I just don't think she'll understand until he arrives.

Not so busy now.

Ciao,
kc