It's a Nice Day for a White Wedding

I've been meaning to tell you all about the wedding for the last few days but there is so much to share, the idea seems daunting and almost homework-like. An assignment that I've given to myself and have procrastinated to complete. And on the other side of the spectrum the professor side of me wants it completed, and quickly. So, after much adieu, I'll share the details of the festivities. Simply put, it turned out wonderfully.

The night before, also known as the rehearsal dinner, we spent just over an hour setting up the place before the bridal party began to show up. There was no wedding coordinator and the task of giving everyone their mark was left up to me. Something I hadn't hadn't considered until about two minutes before-hand. Maybe three minutes. Often I would turn to my aunt/Reverend just to make sure I had covered every detail. Between the two of us, the rehearsal went smoothly. We then caravan ed to a delicious Irish pub just a few blocks down the street to nibble on Bangers and Mash while enjoying Goose Island Honkers or a Smit'hwicks Irish Ale. The groom's men were happy to note that Bridge Man had picked out some sweet, sweet shades and their gift instead of something as traditional (and odd) as a flask or a money clip.

I woke up the next morning with nothing but nerves. Strangely enough, my nerves were not for the wedding at the end of the day but for my bride's maids hair. I wasn't confident that it would all get done in the limited time we had to work. I did two heads of hair myself before having my own done and I must say, it turned out well. Here is Moon Beam and her b-e-a-utiful do.

Not too bad, huh?
My hair also turned out so wonderfully! My friend K.B. who is a cosmo-in-training like I am was my hero and made my vision come true. I wanted something a little different. No veil and no crown. Instead I went with an Oriental Lilly and an ivory feather. Check it out.

Once I was completely ready I went with the photographer to meet up with my future husband. She was so insistent that neither of us saw the other before we got to our final meeting place that we avoided the glass elevators in case he was outside and took a maintenance stairwell only to find it locked at the bottom. It was hilarious! We trekked our way back upstairs and gave in to the call of the elevators. But not before she made absolutely sure Bridge Man was no where to be found. We made it, and boy was I grateful that it had worked out because that first moment Bridge Man walked in the room was breath-taking. He. Looked. So. Handsome. I can't wait to see the pictures of that moment because I'm sure I stood there with my mouth gaping wide open. Classy.

... to be continued...

6 Days

After nine wonderful years of dating, I will be Mrs. Bridge Man in t-minus six days! And what better way to commemorate these past nine years than with a photo montage of each fabulous one?

This is the very first picture ever taken of me and the Bridge guy. The guy to the right with the ball cap is Bridge Man's golfing buddy and one of the groomsmen in our wedding.



This was a camping trip to the Lake of the Ozarks with some friends. At this point, camping was about the extent of what we could afford but they led to some good times and some hilarious memories.

After our first year at college, away from the parental units, Bridge Man and I loved going to all the gorgeous outdoor locations only available in Southern Illinois. This is what the locals called the "Spillway." It is a four tiered waterfall that we would climb and swim in the lake at the top.

We took a weekend trip to Chicago where we visited the Field Museum. When done at the museum we decided to find some food. Off in the distance I spotted Navy Pier and suggested that. It was a beautiful day and I wanted to walk along the lake front. This was not the best idea, it took over an hour for us to hoof it the entire distance. There was no way we wanted to walk back to our car so we found a boat that was headed back that direction. It was miserable but fun.

This picture was taken at a benefit held for my mom the year she was diagnosed with cancer. My Bridge Man was and has been a huge support system for me during this time.

My mom took this picture of us during a family day trip to Starved Rock State Park. She conveniently framed the picture to include the word "Lovers." I love this picture.

This was Bridge Man's first trip to California to meet my crazy, fabulous family. We ended up using this picture as our engagement photo.

This photo commemorates the summer of weddings. Bridge Man and I wore these same outfits to three out of the nine weddings we've attended in the last year, not including our own.

Give Peace A Chance

I've been getting a bit wordy lately and I thought I'd share something I found on another blog that I read in lurkers-ville. I watched it and loved it and immediately thought of you. I thought you might like to hear the irony of something created over three decades ago that still pertains today. Peace.



Feel free to discucss. I love a good conversation.

Fun in a port-a-potty

My nephew, Wookis, and brother, Ruckers, came to visit this last weekend. Bridge Man and I decided to take the boys to a local festival. Wookis is pretty much past the potty-training stage. For the most part, he knows when it's time to let someone know that he has to use the toilet but when he gets excited and doesn't want to miss a moment, he may forget to let someone know of his dilemma. Apparently, while at the festival the giant slide was much more important than the rumble in his tummy and while going down the slide on Ruckers' lap he lost control of his bowels. Fortunately for Ruckers, everything came out solid and the mess was contained only to Wookis and his Underoos.

I took it upon myself to clean up my nephew and his little mess but help was limited to the line-up of port-a-potties on one side of the festival grounds. These rectangular cesspools have three major design flaws; (1) they are not big enough for two people even if one of the two is under three feet tall, (2) there is no plumbing to speak of, the only liquid is the blue-green (and brown) mixture at the bottom of the hole, and (3) there is no air circulation. When the three-year old with a load of poo in his pants says "yucky" upon entering the plastic coffin, you know there's a problem. This, however is only the beginning of the fiasco that is cleaning up a poopy toddler in a port-a-potty. Not the most brilliant idea, I do admit.

There is a 1'x2' rectangle of space on either side of the hole that is the toilet. I decide to make Wookis stand on this spot while I clean him up to make the most of the limited available space. I need to remove his soiled shorts without him putting his clean little baby feet on the filthy surface but he has learned to take his shoes off while changing his clothes. His mama teaches him well. I pull one pant leg down, he takes his foot out of his shoe and out of the pant leg. I make him balance on one leg until I can get his shoe back on his foot. We repeat this process three more times until we get both articles of soiled clothing off.

To make matters worse, the two-sie was not as solid as I had hoped and left a brown trail down his chunky little leg. I reach for anything to clean him up only to find one-ply toilet paper that is almost as useful as using cotton candy to clean the soiled mess. This is about the time that I realize that the drawers that left a trail down Wookis' leg also left a trail on my left arm and hand. Wookis takes this moment of my horor to find the only clean thing in the port-a-potty; a hand sanitizer dispenser. He pushes the button, squeals with delight at his find and flings it into the two feet of stale, public toilet air. It was the cleanest moment of the whole ordeal.

By now, both Wookis and I have sweat dripping from our foreheads. He is standing, half dressed, leaning against me so he won't fall or touch anything. I am holding his bag full of toddler stuff and my purse in one hand as an attempt to keep everything as uncontaminated as possible. In the other hand I hold his poopy undies. My next genus idea is to dump the poo into the hole that Little Johnny considers a toilet and try to salvage the Spiderman underpants. Let's just say that each plop made a splash big enough to make contact. I quickly gave up on this idea and let the whole thing, undies, poop, and all fall into hole.

Hurriedly, I clean up my poor Wookis. I put on his fresh undies and shorts in the same remove shoe, enter leg, put on shoe fashion, times four. I soak both of us down with hand sanitizer and get out of that plastic toilet hell. He and I walk back across the festival grounds to meet back up with our party. All the while, thoughts of sanitized poo on my arm fill my mind. Sanitized poo is still poo, no? I am ready to go home and take a nice, long, hot shower.

The moral of this delightful story? I think I'll wait a while before having any children of my own. And when I finally do, we won't leave the house until there is no chance of an incident like this.

New Fangled Parenting Tactics

One day at work last week this woman came in to get a manicure and a pedicure. Two full hours of service. She comes up to the front desk to check in while balancing a car seat holding a less-than-one-year-old little girl and clutching the hand of a little boy no older than ten. The other receptionists and I look at each other with questioning eyes. What does she expect to do with these two children while having her piggies polished?

She left them in the waiting room while she went back into the spa to pamper herself. Left them in the waiting room. For two full hours. All alone.

At this point, I'm kind of doubting her parenting skills. Not once, during the two hour stint does she come out to check on her infant daughter or her way-too-young-to-be-watching-an-infant-son. Not when he started wandering around the waiting room pocketing eight-dollar bottles of nail polish. Not when he found the computer hidden behind the plant for use by employees only and began banging on the keyboard in an impeccable Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation only to stop when the manager of the salon asked him politely to knock it off. Not when he started tipping his little sisters car seat almost completely upside down only to stop when I decided it wasn't a good idea to have an infant child hanging two feet from the air by the straps of her little seat. "Mom" didn't say anything when her little boy decided to start whistling a tune that turned out to be no tune at all. He simply whistled at will for twenty-five minutes only to stop when his sister began to scream and he couldn't get her to quiet down. The "mom" finally came out, annoyed because her pedicure was cut short, after letting her infant daughter screamed for, oh, 20 minutes or so. The icing on the cake? She wouldn't pick up her visibly unhappy baby daughter because she didn't want to smudge her freshly polished nails.

Now, I've never had any children of my own but does this seem inappropriate to anyone else? Maybe I'm not akin to this new form of parenting skills. New skills that include letting your children fend for themselves. Survival of the fittest. If that infant child cannot handle hanging upside down from her car seat then, sorry to say, but she won't make it in this dog-eat-dog world. Am I right? Is this now how we do this thing called parenting?

A Beautiful Thing: Part II

That Sunday, the last day of our trip in California was the day we, as a family, were going to scatter my mom's ashes into the Pacific ocean. Where the five of us, her children, decided it was most appropriate. There were some upsets during the course of the day. Drama including people who are uncomfortable with their emotions, the emotion churned up when you mourn the passing of your sister/daughter. Looking back, their uncertainty was understandable but I'm glad that we all were there for the final moment.

Once on the boat, we played a collaboration of my mom's favorite music on a portable CD player. We cruised around the harbor for a while in the electronic duffy. The box of my her ashes sat next to me and Maestro. Conversation gradually ceased. I looked across the duffy at my aunt who was mouthing the words to a Wilson Phillips classic, "Hold On." Behind her dark glasses I could see her tears. To her left, my grandpa had his hat pulled down over his face, his eyes glazed but unwavering. The emotions of the moment became overwhelming and this group of hard-headed people broke down. There was not a dry eye on that boat.

When the sweet, sweet words of Tanya Tucker sang through the speakers of that boom-box, "Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today.? To take you to his mansion in the sky," we all sang with the chorus. It was a beautiful moment.

We stopped the boat under a bridge where we chose to scatter her ashes. We all took a handful of petals plucked from red carnations, her favorite flower, and tossed them into the water. Each of us took a moment to scatter some of her ashes into the water until there was a small amount remaining. My grandpa held onto the remaining ashes. I didn't know until later that day that he had saved them for my grandma who was unable to go out on the boat with us. They later scattered them in the back yard of their house. The home in which my mom was raised.

As we rode back to the boat dock we laughed and cried. We remembered. It was a beautiful day and I wouldn't change a single moment.

A Beautiful Thing

As you know, we returned from a family trip to California last week. Everything went swimmingly considering the quantity of people per square footage. For the most part we all got along. And as for the few squabbles that took place, they were to be expected. I can only stand the sight of your smelly socks on my totally chic, totally bohemian purse for so long.

The first day we were there, we spent time catching up with everyone in between catching up on some overdue sleep. Flying with seven, inexperienced travelers takes a lot longer and a lot more effort than it was for just me and the fiancee last summer. But as I look back on our short, five-day stint in the O.C. I am so glad that, through all the chaos, it worked out. This trip was something that the seven of us have been looking forward to since the beginning of the year.

We spent the second day at The J.Paul Getty museum in L.A. If you are ever out that way, I highly recommend checking out this place. Although we only made it through one building, the three hour drive in rush hour traffic on the 405 was totally worth it. And the pièce de résistance; the garden maze/fountain. Absolutely stunning.


That evening we shared with family. My grandpa cooked burgers on the grill while the kiddies played on the grass and a few of us perused some of my grandma's old photo albums. I attempted to take pictures of the photos I wanted to have for myself such as my mom's senior picture from high school.

Keep in mind, this photo is pre-photoshop so I will have to work on editing out my reflection. But wasn't she beautiful?

Or there is the picture that my grandma refuses to take down from it's frame on the wall. The one that everyone points to and laughs, "Is that YOU?"

I'm not sure if it's the stripe of the bathing suit or the poorly placed ruffle, but there is something about this picture that screams, this baby is going to grow up to have thunder thighs and a ba-donk-a-donk to match. (I'm not looking for compliments, I've grown to like (read: accept) my thunder thighs.)

We spent the next day on the beach. The boys went surfing in the early morning and by the time the rest of us showed up they were sufficiently battered and bruised to spend the rest of the day lounging around. I loved the times we all sat around and simply talked. To me that was the point of the whole trip; to reconnect. For these moments, I was in my element. I would sit silently and listen to what everyone had to say. I loved that my younger siblings were so comfortable in an environment that I had grown to love so much as a child and that they knew so little of before the trip.

However, no matter what, the most meaningful part of the trip was that next day, Sunday. It couldn't have been a more meaningful day. (Did I mention that it was meaningful?) However, it's getting late and I need some sleep so I will continue this in a few days. At a time when I am not half asleep on my keyboard and will be able to give the story justice. Until then, nighty-night.