A proposal

As made obvious by my millions of status updates involving my wedding...I am in fact getting married.  The funny part is that the process was happening without an engagement ring.  Josiah had proposed once before and didn't know if he could muster up the creativity to come up with a second stab at it.  I was honestly fine with him just giving me back the ring and saying "I love you...here ya go."  Luckily he did better than that.



He called me today and told me we had dinner plans at six, that his sister would be watching Rylee, and wouldn't tell me where we were going.  We went some place neither of us had ever been before, Tony's Resteraunt. I thought everything was really good: the food, the location, and the service.  I really hoped he wasn't going to propose in front of all the people in the restaraunt though! The sweet part came later...he drove me up to a spot in the mountains (that David showed him of course).  We hiked down onto a rocky outcropping that overlooked the lake and he had me sit down while he pulled two sheets of paper out of his pocket.  It was a timeline of our relationship...all the ups and downs...break-ups and make-ups.  It ended with talking about how we always come back to each other and we are quite obviously meant to be together. Forever and always. <3

My Wedding Thus Far

Pretty sure I've done more wedding planning in four days than most people do in four months. Let's start with Sunday.  I not only went to Storybook Bridal...but walked out of the store, dress in hand, one hour later.  A year and a half ago I found my perfect dress and put a third down on the order.  When it arrived I had unfortunately called off my wedding, so I asked her to sell it for the remainder of what I owed. Upon return I discovered that she had indeed sold it, so I bought the floor sample for a whopping $400 dollars.  The only problem with the dress is a broken strap which my mom can easily fix. 

Tuesday I both ordered my cake from Coco's Cupcakes (a business owned by a frequent Dutch Bros. customer) and had an appointment at David's Bridal for bridesmaid dresses.  I decided on red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, tuxedo cupcakes (chocolate and vanilla layered) with cookies and cream frosting, and lemon cupcakes with a lemon cream cheese frosting.  They will be arranged on a beautiful five tiered stand, decorated in my colors, with J & B (B & J would just be inappropriate) on top in chocolate letters.  I'm so excited cupcakes are probably my favorite thing in the entire world. 

The appointment at David's Bridal went about as smoothly as anything could possibly go.  I love and appreciate my girls.  No one was picky or complained even once.  They all agreed on not one, but two dresses.  My mom said it reminded her of the movie "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants."  The pants were the same but somehow they fit every girl and really looked good.  Though every girl in my bridal party has a different body type the dress looked great on every single one of them!  :) The dresses will be plum colored so now we're on a mission to find gold sparkly shoes and accesories.  Let me know if you know of good places to find these!

I had an appointment at The Glover Mansion today which also pleasantly easy.  They do more than we had initially realized.  They take care of flower arrangments, table set up and tear down, centerpieces, a wedding coordinator, and food/drinks.  Our coordinator has a very detailed timeline for what will be going down that night so it should all flow beautifully!  After the ceremony takes place outside everyone will migrate inside for appetizers and drinks.  After forty-five minutes the food stations will open.  The first station is a mashed potato martini glass station, then a prime-rib/turkey station, and finally a salad station.  There will be a keg of Coors Light and a tab on the bar until it runs out...in which case guests can pay for drinks.  The bartender will be on all night.  There will also be iced mochas, peach tea, and strawberry lemonade.  There will be drinking, dancing, and all around a good time to be had by all!

To do list: Find shoes for the bridal party, nail down a photographer, find Rylee a dress, get the tuxes, and send out invitations.  Pretty impressive how much we've accomplished so far. 

Side note: August is gonna be one heck of a month.  August 6th:  My 21st birthday.  August 17th: My Bachlorette Party.  August 19th: My wedding.  Get ready people!

Rylee's Eyes

As many of you know I recently took Rylee to North Idaho Insitute because one of her eyes seems to go unfocused or slightly wander; the experience was TERRIBLE. By this age Rylee is fully aware what a medical office entails; and goes into a  panic whenever we enter one.  We had to pin her down not once or twice, but five times for eye drops that she screamed through.  We then needed the help of a nurse to hold her down so that the eye doctor could look at her eyes.  He was far from helpful.  Any treatment options that he offered are things that we initiated and he said that we could try.  He didn't seem concerned at all...like the condition would fix itself or wasn't understanding how often it's happening.  He asked is it once a week, once a day? Try ten times a day at least!

Josiah and I both tried to make an eye patch fun and appealing today to Rylee but she will just not have it.  You even bring that thing near her and she immediately starts balling. Unfortunately she's a two year old who emcompasses a very strong willpower (wonder who she got that from). So I did some more research (because apparently I can learn more online than by taking her to the doctor) and after reading discussions written by other parents with similar situations this is what I know.  Do the patch and it will make your child's strong eye weaker; now they have two weak eyes. Literally every story I read ended with the child needing surgery (which does finally fix the problem).  This literally breaks my heart.  I get teared up just sitting at my computer and writing about it.  I can't imagine sending my two year old into surgery.  So I don't see the point in patching her eyes or making her wear glasses when in the end it won't work!  I don't know what to do.  I don't know.  I see it getting worse by the day and I just want to fix it.

While googling information I came across a Yahoo Answers page with seven responses and amazingly one lady mentioned that there is an amazing pediatric eye doctor in Spokane, Washington named Jeffry Snow.  Out of the entire world wide web for a woman to name an eye doctor in our area seems like more than a coincidence...maybe it's God telling me something?  I don't want to go through another horrendous eye exam but maybe it's necessary..

The Joys of Motherhood

Oh, the joys of being a mother.  There are many of them, but cleaning up vomit...not my thing.  I walked into my room this morning and thought "why does it smell like puke in here?"  I  found blankets covered in unmentionables, and a smelly daughter who had slept in it all night. I had to hold my breath to assure that I didn't add to the mess.  I started a load of laundry and gave Rylee a good bath.  Even now, she smells like a mixture of baby lotion and throw-up.  Yum!

Since she seemed to be pretty happy and feeling better, we decided to run a few errands.  I took two pairs of my jeans to Affordable Alterations to be hemmed and stopped at TJ MAXX for nothing in particular.  I love going shopping when you dont think you need anything, because you find out you were so obvioulsly wrong!  I bought a pair of 3 lb. weights (since 5 lb. were too much for my Jillian Michaels workout DVD), a carseat mat,  a "Busy Mom Bible," an Express shirt that was on clearance, and a new Fossil watch (that was only 39.99)!

One of those Days

You might not want to be a young mom, but you know you enjoy reading about our crazy lives.

Yesterday was one of those FML kind of days.  I prided myself on finishing three papers ahead of schedule, but of course after I did that, my computer decided to CRASH.  "My computer wasn't working" is the new "my dog ate my homework" excuse, and I was embarrassed to use it.

 I immediately took my laptop to Geek Squad after class, but the guy was NO help.  He actually told me to take it to a different repair shop because "they'd get it fixed quicker than they would."  What a great employee.

You might think that taking online classes would be easy, but you're wrong.  You're at the mercy of technology, and the second it malfunctions, you're screwed.  I wish I was smart when it came to computers so I could charge people $85 just to "recover their data."  I cannot wait until I'm done with school.  

Hopefully, today will be a LML day.  No school, no work, and no stress.  Yes please!