Christmas Time is Here

Since I've been slacking on the blog...

• Andrew wrapped up his first quarter of Chiropractic school today! He's on his way home and should be here around 1:00 am. I am so proud of all his hard work and amazed by his motivation to do what he's doing.
  
  
• I've been done with school for a week now and have been enjoying every moment spent at home. My dad shares my coffee addiction and always has a pot going for me. My family has a list as long as Santa's of Christmas traditions and we have slowly been working through them. It's so exciting that Andrew and I will be starting our own family Christmas traditions next year!
  
  
• I got my wedding shoes in the mail last week. My mom's two cents was that they look like Dorthy's shoes from the Wizard of Oz. I still love them.
  
  
• Tuesday I had my second and hopefully final surgery on my arm. If you didn't know, there has been a concern with a tumor I developed in my arm. God has blessed me with healing and I'm happy to move on from the situation!
  
  
• As of last night I'm finally done working for the calendar year. This week will be spent celebrating Christmas with the Peasley family and finishing up our last minute Christmas shopping/crafting!
  
  
• Remember the Reason for the Season this Christmas. Feliz Navidad!

The Beginning and End of Dress Shopping

As previously mentioned, my mom and I have had a difficult time finding a bridal shop that is still open for business in our area. Thankfully, we finally tasted success yesterday! Nevertheless, failure comes before success. We found a shop located in a quiet downtown area where very little seems to be going on. When we walked in the door we were greeted nonchalantly and were basically told it was useless being there without an appointment. Understandable under most circumstances. However, this little shop had no other customers and two people "working" (they were chatting with each other and found it an inconvenient road block in their conversation to have to deal with me). Somewhat frustrated, we decided not to waste any more time and headed to Grand Rapids.

In Grand Rapids we found a cute little boutique with superb service and selection.   I have a very refined, simple taste so about 90% of the dresses were an immediate "no". I quickly selected five dresses to try and the very first one I put on was THE ONE. I was a little freaked out to be happy that fast so I tried on the rest and even left without my dress. We thought it best to try one more shop just to be sure and to enjoy the experience a while longer. However, the entire way there I was thinking "why did I leave my dress at that shop. I'm never going to find anything else and I'll be miserable for months if it sells out." 

The third shop was also nice but every dress I tried on just wasn't right. From the overdone beading, to the fact that they weighed as much as I do, they just weren't for me. Panic set in when the realization that we had wasted an hour driving and looking at this shop and the boutique where my dress resided was going to close in 30 minutes. We frantically called them hoping they knew of a faster way to get back to the boutique. The owner insisted that it wasn't a problem for them to stay a little bit later for me and gave us detailed directions how to get back. Thrilled, we drove back to the boutique, attacked the Keurig machine, and bought my wedding dress!

I had been dreading wedding dress shopping due to the fact that I thought I would never find anything I liked within the constraints of my budget. My dress was actually UNDER my initial budget, imagine that! I'm still somewhat shocked that I bought the very first dress I tried on. It was basically love at first sight. The instant my dress was pulled off the rack, I knew I was going to love it. Obviously, I'm not going to give any hints to what it looks like since Andrew and I share this URL space. What's another 336 days when I've been waiting almost 21 years to see what my dress would look like. :)