In the land of lawyers...

I spent a good portion of today going over a contract and determining whether my client had a claim. It's always a nice surprise when you get the actual contractual language in front of you and you're shocked that it says EXACTLY what your client said it did. I can't tell you how many times someone has misread, not read, or misunderstood what they agreed to in a contract. Turns out THIS time, she DID read it correctly, and she DID have a claim. A pretty strong one at that. I mean in the land of law there is always an argument to be made on the other side and nothing is EVER cut and dry 100% in your favor. This one looks good tho, and if the drafters of the contract have a SINGLE brain cell working in their head, they will most certainly give my client what she is asking for without all the time and expense involved with a court case.

1 down, 109,853,208,905,480 to go...at least that's what it feels like.

In other news...I finally heard about my rings for those of you who keep asking me and I keep saying I have no idea. My ring and new wedding band will be ready for pick up on Wed. night. WOOO! I can't WAIT to get my ring back! Although, at this point it's probably smarter if I just don't wear it and keep it all nice, shiny, and buffed for the wedding.

I picked up all of my girls' bridesmaid gifts. I love them so much that I was tempted to buy one for myself. But, I refrained...no guarantee that I won't go back and get one in the very near future ;)

I've decided to attempt to be "crafty" this weekend. After I get the garden planted on Saturday (yay!!!), I am going to attempt to make part of Trina's flower girl gift. Fingers crossed. You all know how absolutely UNcrafty and UNcreative I am. I am a total waste of space in the artistic realm. That, and I don't really have the luxury of a lot of time to sit around and play with it until it's perfect as I would usually do. Maybe if I had 36 hours in a day...but I don't. Unfortunately.

Since I got the seating chart pretty much completed over the last few days, one of the last big ticket items I have left to do is the Welcome Bags. Hopefully I have enough time between now and the wedding to get it done...those and the kids' activity bags. 24 days and counting.

Rain Rain Go Away...

Well, so much for my yardwork to-do list. It has rained the last few weekends in a row, so I've been unable to pull out the bushes in the front yard AND unable to put my french drains in.

Don't get me wrong, I love the rain...it's making everything so green and beautiful. But, my backyard has already turned into a swamp, and we're no where closer to installing those drains. And, with the weekends running out, as much as I hate to admit it, we probably won't get to any of the yardwork (except for planting my garden next weekend) before the wedding. I really wanted to get a lot of it done before all of our friends and family were in town and coming over to see the house, but c'est la vie.

In wedding news, I've managed to get a few more things done/planned.

• Final meeting w/ the DJ was Wed. We met and planned out all of the entrances, music, and whatnot. I truly love our DJ! He absolutely LOVES being a DJ and has really great ideas about what to do/play. I'm pretty confident that he's going to keep the party rocking!
• My wonderful father and fiance went and rented the limos for the bachelor party, bachelorette party, and the day of the wedding.
  
• I had my 2nd dress fitting on Thursday. AMAZING! The dress fits like and glove, and the bustle she made is absolutely beautiful. I couldn't be happier with how it's coming out. She has a few little tweaks to make, and then it'll be done. If anyone needs a seamstress for wedding dresses in the Metro Detroit area I would HIGHLY recommend Angela at Bella Alterations in Livonia. I give them an A+++
• Friday the prenup was finally completed. I drove out to my attorney's office Friday morning to sign all of the paperwork.
• Many finalizations have been made with the place cards and favors. Just a couple more things left to do there.
• Tracked down almost all of the people who did not RSVP on time (and there were A LOT). Shockingly, a lot of them are actually planning to come, so I'm glad that I made the calls.

Other than that, I have a few more things to do. I have to make the seating chart. Wednesday I'm going to get the bridesmaid gifts. Saturday I have my final meeting w/ the florist. 28 days!!! We're almost there and I'm getting SOOO excited.

Congratulations!

My wonderful, intelligent, handsome fiance got the job he was vying for today!!!

Congratulations baby! I love you!

Random...

I've been leading a relatively mundane but busy life the last few days.

Friday, I came down with some nasty virus (thanks Mom!) and it's still hanging around. I was laid up all weekend with aches, congestion, chills, etc. Most of the really bad stuff has faded, but I'm still highly congested and it's developed into a pretty nasty cough. New lungs, please! Anyone?

Saturday, my dad came over and he and Ryan power washed the patio and sealed it. It looks really good! So, that's one more thing checked off the "landscaping" list. Up next weekend is installing the french drains to eliminate the wonderful "swampyness" of my backyard. We were going to tear out the bushes in the front yard last week, but it's been far too rainy for Eddie to come in with the backhoe (we don't want to destroy the front lawn). So, here's to hoping for good weather on Thursday so my wonderful future brother-in-law can snag the backhoe and pull out those bushes for us! Thanks for saving our backs the labor of 8 ginormous bushes Eddie!!!
So, my landscaping list currently is this:

• Thursday - tearing out bushes in front.
• Next Week - Planning my garden planting!!! I'm thinking about putting in a Snow Fountain Flowering Cherry Tree somewhere in the front, or something along those lines to give the garden a little depth and dimension. I'm super excited to start planning out the flowers I'll use!
• Next Weekend - french drains, weed & seed, and some sod placement.
• First weekend of May - planting my veggie garden & planting flowers in my newly cleared front garden.
• Second weekend of May - if we're ambitious and not completely bogged down in the wedding crunch, we're tossing around the idea of putting a garden in the very rear of the yard, complete with pavers and a LOT of new top soil. It'll be a HUGE job, so it will completely depend on timing. We may wait until after the wedding, or for next summer to take this monster on.

Monday was quite busy at work. Lots of prepping for court because I was just too sick to do it over the weekend.

Today, I wasted half of my day in court. Got up at the crack of dawn, drove to Warren, arrived for check-in first thing in the morning, and the hearing didn't go until around 11:30. It ended up being a total waste, and I've got to do it all over again in 2 weeks.

This weekend is annual inventory weekend, so the office has been bustling getting ready for the inventory count of every item we stock in all 8 locations. I hope I get out of here at a decent hour on Saturday...before dark would be preferable, but not probable. I guess instead I'll just hope I don't have to come in on Sunday.

In other news, Ryan's currently on the road to Florida. When I talked to him a few hours ago he was already in Tennessee. He's making some really good time. He won't be home until tomorrow night so I get the bed ALL TO MYSELF tonight!!! I'm actually pretty excited about it, can you tell?

Kiva Plug

Just thought I'd plug Kiva for any of you who don't know about it. Essentially, Kiva allows individuals around the world to lend money to entrepreneurs across the world. Individuals band together to fund the loans for these people. I think it's a really wonderful cause, and can make a tremendous difference in someones life who does not have the luxury of walking down the street to the bank to get a loan.

Ryan and I have been participating in Kiva since 2007. It started with one $25 dollar loan, that was paid back and then rolled into a second entrepreneur. Every time we get a loan repaid in full, we roll that into a new person needing a loan. After getting our initial $25 back from two different entrepreneurs, we decided to put a little more in and now we fund 4 people at once.

Check it out if you get a chance: http://www.kiva.org/

Wedding Checks

I have a rather large "To Do" list on my phone right now with regard to the wedding. Every time I can check something off, I have to add something to the list, so it's become my never ending To Do list. I have 44 days, and it feels like not nearly enough time. But, some recent check marks I have are:

• Purchased my champagne toasting flutes and cake serving set. I love them, and think they are super cute. Take a look:

• I met with my cake decorator, Rose, and went over my cake design. I am absolutely in love with everything she recommended. I can't believe how much work she has to do to decorate my cake--she's air brushing each individual gum paste flower because she can't get them in my colors. She told me that because of my cake they closed off my wedding day and aren't accepting any more orders. Ahh! But, Rose is totally excited to be decorating the cake. It was so cute, she was clapping she was so excited! Now, I just have one more cake flavor to pick!
• Groomsman gifts are on order. Ryan is pretty excited about them, so I hope all the guys love them and use it as much as Ryan does.
• Bridesmaid gifts have been pick out...now I just have to go buy them :)
• I've nailed down some of the music we'll be using for entrances, dances, etc. Or, at least I thought I did, until Ryan expressed his dislike of my choices. So, I guess it's back to square one on that one. I want to use Chris Brown's Forever for our entrance song...he's adamantly opposed. Boo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7TFWV5m-WY
• Rehearsal dinner invites were sent out in the mail this morning.
• I've nailed down price and availability for the handicapped van we have to rent. Now, I just have to finalize the contract.
• I've been working on things for my favors and place cards too. But, I'm not going to tell you what, because the favors are one thing I'm keeping absolutely secret.
• The picture frames came in for our table numbers, and my mom went to pick them up this morning. So, now we can start making the table numbers this weekend! I'm super excited to do these -- our mock-up came out SOOO cute!

So far, we have 122 people coming, and 23 regrets. We've yet to year from 175 people...but they still have one week to send their RSVPs in. I've put my sister (MOH) in charge of calling everyone who does not respond, because I have to let some of my vendors know a final head count 30 days out.

I'm still waiting to get my engagement ring back and with it my brand new custom wedding band. I called a few weeks ago, and they were still waiting on the diamonds to come in. I'm really starting to miss my engagement ring a LOT. It's been months since I've had it.

Other than that, I still have a list about a million miles long. Why didn't I get a wedding planner again? ;)

House Work

I decided when we bought our house last year, that I wanted to expand a garden that already existed in the backyard so that I could have a huge veggie garden. I didn't think it would be that big of a project: get rid of a little bit of sod, till, sink the boarder, and voila we have a garden twice the size it was.

Haha, if only it had been that simple. On Friday after work we decided to start on the project and get the sod torn out. I pulled out the existing boarder, and started cutting the sod with a shovel.

About half way through I hit something, but assumed it was probably a rock. Turns out, it was my main Comcast feed to the house. Comcast, in all their brilliance, dropped the main feed to my house less than 1" below the ground surface. When the sod was removed, the feed lay right on top of the dirt. Thanks Comcast. Turns out there are two other cables that are too close to the surface. Now, we've got to dig 1 foot deep trenches for all of the cables. So, instead of taking Saturday to till, and lay the boarder, we dug trenches. During our trench digging, we also discovered that our soils is solid clay about 4" down. We also found a variety of strange buried objects such as tar, shingles, cables, nails, entire empty bags of mulch, plastic, etc. It was fun excavating at first to see what things were. Then, after digging trenches, Ryan decided that he thought adding a pathway would be nice. I agreed, so we ran up to Lowes purchased some pavers and some sandstone. We were able to level and lay the pavers before it got too dark.

Sunday, we began early in the morning (had to be at the 'rents for Easter Dinner at 5:00). We laid the rubber bumper to hold in the sandstones, dumped and leveled the sandstones, sunk the brick boarder, and then coated the dirt with gypsum and lime to help break up the clay and give us more fertile soil. Then, Ryan got to till!

Even though it took WAY more work than we anticipated at the beginning, we ended up with the most beautiful garden. We more than doubled it's size; it's now 8.5' X 26'. I now have a ton of room to grow all of the veggies I want! And without further adieu, here is the finished product:

































I'm planning to grow some green beans, cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, a variety of peppers, lettuce, onions, and strawberries.
In the rear of the backyard I'm going to start growing some wild blackberries too, yum! I can't wait to start planting at the beginning of May!!!

In other news: Today I received a Lowes gift card as a wedding present from my Great Aunt & Uncle who will not be able to make it to the wedding! It was so fun to get a gift early, and a very, very, very useful gift. Ryan and I are just at the beginning stages of working on our yard...I'm sure we'll make about 1000 trips to Lowes/Home Depot before the summer is out!