**Poof** Another Weekend Gone!

A good weekend.

Well, let me clarify just a bit. Any weekend in which Highlander is not killed these days should be considered a good weekend. (Anyone living with me during wedding planning should be getting Hazardous Martha Pay. Seriously.) Consequently, as he's predominantly upright and virtually unscathed, we’re considering the previous one a “good weekend”. Here's the haps.

Friday afternoon was spent doing errands. The DVD player in our bedroom gave up the ghost, so we ran out to Best Buy to pick one up. We also looked at some dresses for the kids, some wedding decorations and cake toppers. I don’t think we actually bought much of anything for the wedding.

Highlander helped implement an idea I had (equate that to “put in hours of work making something I wanted happen”) on the invitations and I think we have the graphics and text the way we want them. So, of course, the printer is acting up now. We’re checking on a couple options, but as we have stamps in hand, we’re hoping to have invitations ready to go in the mail this coming weekend.

Saturday morning, my eldest daughter (and the rest of her team) competed in the Governor’s Cup challenge for her Academic Team. While the team didn’t win, she did well enough in the written assessment portion of the competition to have earned her FOURTH medal this year and they were notified that (because other team members also did well on the written portion) they are going to City Regionals, too. So, kudos for my girl.

After running her over to the competition on Saturday morning, I knocked out the grocery shopping (before 9AM, while the grocery was still mostly empty) for the week and then returned home. Did a little housework until she finished up and then I took all my girls out shopping for dresses to wear in the wedding.

This project has been holding up other wedding plans and I’ve needed to get it marked off my list, but truly I’ve been dreading it. Trying to find dresses for them all that are something they like, similar in nature and appropriate for the occasion…oh yeah, and priced in my budget…has been something I’ve been deeply afraid to start. I’ve looked around a little online and H and I hit a store or two on Friday afternoon, to do some preliminary work on this.

However, on Saturday afternoon, I had knocked all of it out in two hours, hitting only four stores. Now that the colors are finalized, I can get on with decorations, finalize things with the cake, etc., etc., etc. What a HUGE relief!!

I was hoping to stay with a blue/periwinkle/silver color scheme and, believe it or not, I’m still there! The older girls found some blue dresses (with some black lace) that they like and I found a gorgeous periwinkle dress for The Baby. The Baby’s dress was on sale and I got it for $31, but the deal of the CENTURY was the price I got for the other two dresses. These are cocktail dresses and I hadn’t even looked at the prices when the girls tried them on.

When I did, I was pleased with what they were going to cost me, but when I got to the checkout, I learned that they were 65% off.

Oh, Baby!!

So instead of the $135 I was going to have to pay for TWO dresses, I got them for $47. I could have kissed the sales clerk on the mouth. Three dresses that work AND that they like for a TOTAL of $78…in TWO HOURS OF SHOPPING???? I gotta say it again…

Oh, Baby!!

Highlander was finishing up the invitations while we were gone and when we got back, I just didn’t have time to bake the chicken I’d intended to fix for supper. Soooooo, we went to the Applebee’s in our neighborhood, and had a very nice meal.

The kids were having some friends over on Sunday, so we finished up housework before people started showing up at noon. A couple friends of mine had planned to come over and talk wedding plans with me and do a cheesecake tasting (one of the girls will be making cheesecakes for the dessert at my rehearsal dinner), so when they showed up, we took a ride to the wedding venue to talk about staging and decorating and various WONDERFUL ideas that they had.

Then we came back and sampled some VERY yummy white chocolate raspberry cheesecake and some key lime cheesecake. I gotta tell ya, the choice was incredibly tough. Had I not been planning to make a couple derby pies myself, I think I’d have taken them both, but, in the end, the key lime won out. It’ll be a nice contrast to the rich, chocolaty derby pie.

The girls also advised me that, even though I hadn’t asked (nor had I intended to), they had already requested the Friday before the wedding off from their respective jobs, to come help me with cooking and decorations. They told me that they were completely at my disposal Friday (and Saturday morning) and I can’t tell you the relief that came with THAT particular gift! They are two of the most incredible ladies and have been there for me through the last painful years of my marriage, the unbearable divorce, and have delighted in watching me fall in love again. They have known I would marry Highlander from the beginning and have (like he has, like the kids have, like so many others have) been waiting for me to “catch up”. They are the ones that tease me about “never marrying again”, and, right now, I don’t know what I’d do without them.

Like an idiot I argued with them about how they couldn’t do that. It was just too big a gesture. (One of them is the CFO of a hospital and has gone back to school to get her Masters, the other works for a non-profit organization and has elderly parents and inlaws that keep her EXTREMELY busy when she’s not at work. Yeah, neither of them has this kind of time to give me. That’s my point.)

I was told that it had taken so long for me to accept that my own happiness was valid (and then to do what it took to make that happen), that they didn’t have the “time to argue” with me about what they were going to do to help facilitate the wedding. They just completely ignored me, began listing out what they could help with and told me to send them a list to let them know what I needed. When I tried to pay the Cheesecake Diva for the cheesecakes she’d made (as well as the ones she would be making in April), she refused to take my money.

Sometimes, I really don’t understand how I’ve gotten as lucky as I have to have such wonderful, considerate, GENEROUS people in my life. But you better believe I’m very grateful!!

After they left, I slathered the chicken I hadn’t cooked the night before (under the skin, over the skin, and in the cavity) with garlic and various Italian herbs (rosemary, basil and a little oregano) and some olive oil and started it slow roasting in the oven for the next hour and a half. That was at about 5:30 and I wanted to throw together some SuperBowl snacks for Highlander (and whomever else around there wanted to watch the game and root for Chicago...Colts fans couldn’t even get a cracker…;) so I set about that task.

Some corn chips and salsa, some potato chips and onion dip, and some pepperoni and cubed cheese with various snack crackers. I also threw some mini candy bars out there and some homemade chocolate chip pecan cookies fresh from the oven. The rousing start of the game by the bears (after they won the toss) brought a great sense of elation, but into the second half, it was fading pretty fast. I was in and out as dinner and cookies were demanding my attention, but Highlander wasn’t having nearly as good a time as it appears Tony Collett was having. Plus, he had no pizza bites.

We had a little roast chicken, stuffing and corn just before halftime and then started gearing the kids towards showers and getting ready for school today, as another weekend did that thing they always do.

Vanished into the cosmos.