Busy bees

We've been busy.

Very, very busy.

In a nutshell, here is our last few weeks:

Cindy and Linds C. came to visit me!

They blew two free round trip tickets on a trip to li'l ol' Casper, Wyo.  Instead of going someplace warm, like the Virgin Islands, they came to hang out at our place!  Linds met Todd for the first time and we all spent some "quality time" together.  We're at Vintage Wine Bar, one of my most favorite places in Casper, in the photo above.

We made a fire and Todd fashioned a stick into something Linds could make s'mores with...

We also went out for St. Patty's Day, had a big karaoke night out, shopped downtown, met Cindy's parents for brunch, and ate a lot.

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I've traveled a few times here and there in the state for work.  

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Our house is drowning in the deep dark depths of renovation.  We had some flooring guys come in last week to redo our living room and sun room floors.  This means everything from those two rooms is now in our dining room.  I think there's a piece of furniture missing from this photo.  And it is MUCH dirtier and dustier in there now...

It took a week for the floors to get done.  Then they had to redo them all...over...again.  There were major flaws and we weren't paying for that.  They're fixed and beautiful now!  Here is a before shot...

We had a few places that needed patching...

We've decided to tile the entry way to make it more durable, so we had the flooring guys use that wood to patch.  Our entry way hasn't been fixed yet...

Here is the finished floor!  We're moving stuff back in to these rooms tonight.  We still have to fix a few cracks in the plaster in there and paint. But we'll just move stuff to the middle of the room and keep it covered while we work...

  

Todd also got the ceiling drywalled in the master bedroom and we put spray foam insulation in there...

And the upstairs bathroom is 100 percent gutted.  Todd and his friend Mike went to town on it last weekend.  Mike's coming back up from Cheyenne to help finish up the job...

  

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While they were doing that I was hard at work trying to find my wedding dress.  My mom, sister Stacey, and Linds H. met me in Fort Collins, Colo. What I expected to be a long weekend of shopping was shortened by the fact that I found my dress the very first night!  I'd put a picture on here, but I can't run the risk of Todd seeing it!  

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We also picked out our puppy and have decided to name her Lulu.  We'll be getting her this weekend!  Rigby is blissfully ignorant of the fact he will be a big brother soon.  Todd with Lulu when she visited our house...

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I'm fairly positive I'm going to fail my classes.  I have been so busy with other things I'm just not doing anything on my classes!  

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I found the biscuit cutter I've been searching for for years!  

It doesn't look like anything special, but it's a large old biscuit cutter.  One that makes jumbo biscuits.  You can't find those things these days!  I am very thrilled!

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Oh yeah, and we've been planning a wedding.  We finally got a venue nailed down!  We have a ceremony site, a pastor, a tentative time, a dress, a nearly complete guest list with contact information...  It's falling into place!  

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So, that's about it.  That's why I have been inconsistently posting.  I'm going to try to be better!  If I have time...

Expanding family

You thought I was pregnant, right?

Nope!

But we are adding a little one in about a month...

A Black Lab puppy!

The folks we went ice fishing with bred their full blood Chocolate and Black Lab dogs and are giving us one of their puppies as a wedding gift! Super nice, right??

They brought two of the puppies over last Friday for us to look at.  They are so cute and it was so hard to decide, so we went out to their place yesterday to take another look.

There are 12 puppies in total and many of them are already spoken for.  It was still fun to play with all of them though.  This is what it's like to be swarmed by squeaking, chewing, licking puppies...

We took our two puppy contenders outside to see how Rigby would react.  He was confused by the puppies on Friday night when they were at the house.  Actually, more than confused.  He acted like they were aliens and is terrified of them.  Or maybe he realizes he's soon going to have to share the love.  Todd wonders if maybe he doesn't associate them as little dogs.  Whatever his problem is he certainly is not amused by them and will do anything to not even look at them...

The girl we finally picked is on the right.  She has warmer eyes.  The other girl just didn't seem to have a connection...

Our lil lady is on the left in this shot...we don't have a name for her yet.  Suggestions?

And here's the new crew!  At one point, the puppy was at Rigby's feet and she reached out her little tongue and licked his leg.  That didn't seem to warm Rigby up.  He still had to be MADE to stand that close to the alien...

He'll warm up to her...right?

M.I.A.

My mom saw this lost dog ad on the local news page for Hermann, Mo., a couple days ago.  It makes me so sad!


I imagine this poor family - with kids - having a fun day in the country at the winery when all of the sudden their lil' dog doesn't come back when called.


It also makes me think of Rigby.  Sometimes we wonder if he was really abandoned or if he ran off and couldn't find his way home. (Of course, when he was found by my mom he didn't have a collar, so who knows?)


Regardless, we would just DIE if Rigby were gone.  Aside from this dog's size he looks remarkably like Riggs too.  And the description of him being extremely friendly and careless when it comes to approaching people is Rigby spot on.  


I hope this family finds their dog!
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A Berger-area family is searching for their dog that went missing from Bias Winery on Monday night.


The dog, named Riley, went out for a run with the other dogs and he never returned. He is a 2 year-old black lab/corgi mix.  Male, fixed, up-to-date on all his shots and microchipped. He was not wearing a collar. He is extremely friendly and careless when it comes to approaching people.

Barn raising

I've realized that no matter how easy-breezy you want or think your wedding is going to be there is ultimately a bazillion things to think about and they begin to swirl together so you can barely separate them and know where to start kind of like this run on sentence which feels very much like how my mind is working these days.

I'm a planner kind of bride.  I know how things should flow, look, feel...  I'm used to planning get togethers and outings and thinking of all the details that need to be done.  But I was just looking at my The Knot wedding to do list and had a brief "Holy Crap" moment.

I think this is exacerbated by the fact that we still don't have a venue.  However, with any luck we may have a candidate!  My mom sent a couple pictures last night of a barn that looks awesome and I am SUPER hopeful about.  It's owned by my parents' old realtor who my mom is going to talk to about its potential.

If this doesn't work out we will just about be at the end of our Hermann, Mo., list of reception venue possibilities.  This thought makes me shudder because I REEEEAAAALLLY don't want to have to start this process over in a different town - particularly one I don't know as well.

And I really want to have it in Hermann.  It's so quaint!

And my poor mom.  She has talked to about everyone in town and has run around just about everywhere trying to take pictures of places to help me see if it would work.  If Hermann doesn't work out then all her work was for nothing too.

Come on barn!

Rude awakening

5:10 a.m.

Twenty minutes before our first alarm was supposed to go off.

I heard Rigby's tags jingling then...

Heave...hack!  Heave...hack!  Heave...hack!

I threw the covers back.

"He's puking!"

I flipped on the bedside light, burning Todd's retinas out, and jumped out of bed.

By the time my feet made it to the floor I heard another wave of heaving and hacking.

"Oh no!  TWICE!"

I ran upstairs for the Resolve carpet cleaner, a sponge and the whole role of paper towels.  Todd got out of bed and we both started taking care of a spot, only Todd realizes I had grabbed Oxy Orange, a degreaser, and had already sprayed it on the floor. Fortunately, his brain worked enough at that time to remember the Resolve was right there in the basement.

"Why is it, when Rigby pukes, he always chooses a carpet to do it on?  Even upstairs where there are hardwood floors he goes for the rugs."

5:20 a.m.

We climbed back into bed and I turned off the alarm.  I needed a little more time to get rid of that jump-out-of-bed-too-quickly sick to your stomach feeling.

6:45 a.m.

Up and at 'em.

We're thinking the world would be so much more on time if everyone's alarms sounded like something puking.