For Better and for Worse

Hello my sweet blogger friends. Happy happy Thursday to y'all! I'm sharing the longest post today about our  wedding aftermath with you today. I've received a lot of texts, emails and calls asking how married life is and how was our honeymoon? So I thought I would fill you in. It just so happens that Todd's car engine decided to completely seize up and leave him , his brother Kevin , and both his kids stranded on the highway service road 3 hours before the wedding.  And to make things worse, the day of our wedding was one of the hottest days in Dallas of the summer- like 106.  Luckily they were only a mile away from our apartment complex so Kevin began walking to his place ( he lives in same complex , so convenient) to get his car. By the Grace of GOD, 2 of my friends were heading to my place to do my makeup for the wedding, and recognized Todd after the passed him after exiting. They backed up and picked up the kids, then picked up Kevin further down the road and left Todd with the car. Kevin picked up Todd and they dropped off keys at a mechanic garage and asked them to have car towed to them. Todd said " I'm getting married in 2 hours, can you take care of the car for now"? 

Fast forward to the wedding, Kevin got Todd there on time and the ceremony and reception was awesome. Now we had a whole change of plans though with us minus a car. Todd and I had a room booked at the Ritz-Carlton ( gift from friend) and we were going to go straight there after the reception and a group of gals were going to pack everything up  and load up my truck . Lauren and mom were staying at our place and taking home all the gifts.  Lauren ended up having to load up the truck 2 different trips and then she got ride with a friend. Todd and I had to stay until the very end and helped clean up and haul the big containers in my truck to unload in our garage. THEN we headed downtown to the hotel. We lost 2 hours to enjoy the romantic room but that's OK. Once we got there we popped a bottle of champagne and basked in our wedding glow.

The next day was actually a nice lazy day at home and we opened our wedding gifts. Mom was going back home the next day so I was able to enjoy more precious time with her.  However, Todd and I had to make some decisions on what to do with the car. We made some phone calls for estimates on replacing an entire engine. Some places even said walk away and make 350$ for the metal. That didnt help us because Todd is in sales and Has to have a car. I work far away from office so we can't exactly carpool in my truck.  Then I remembered that my friends dad works exclusively and only on volvos. The kicker is that he's in Austin. He's giving us a family discount and said he would repair our car for us and work with us on payments. Sweet!  Soooo, we forfeited our honeymoon to rent a uhaul truck and flatbed trailer and we took dead car to Austin and I followed behind in the truck. We have some dear friends that live in the area and they were at the wedding so we stayed the night with them. That was nice! 

I knew that Todd and I needed at least one or two days somewhere close to decompress . We originally had plans to stay in San Antonio for 3 days and then wrap up in Galveston. With dads transplant and the wedding , I would have nervous breakdown soon. Luckily i still had points to get us a room on the beach in Galveston.  Those 2 days were heaven! We decided that it was a getaway and not a honeymoon . We want to have a true honeymoon that is planned out. Truth is , we didn't make any honeymoon plans months before because dad was in hospital and I wasn't going anywhere. 

We are also very blessed that with dad doing so well, he's selling the ginormous handicap van. So we (todd) are borrowing that until we pick up the car. I know that I married the right man in the perfect time of my life! All of this just makes for a good story we can laugh about later and a good blog post. Wink wink! 

I was featured for being crafty

Good morning y'all! I was featured yesterday over at Rita's blog : Curbside Creations. She challenged us to to basically get off our butts and get to work on some of our "projects/crafts" that have been sitting around. I bought a cool chandelier a few months ago and it needed a paint job AND i painted a birdcage that i've had for over a year. I have so many more unfinished projects to work on and this challenge definitely inspired me. I went to storage this past weekend and got all my Halloween decorations out so that is my first priority now. Happy Hump day!

Tuesday Tunes

I love this song thats fairly new to the radio. 

Lorde singing Royals.

Getting to Know You- Texas Women's Bloggers

I’m linking up with my Texas Women’s Bloggers group today with a series Getting to know You. I missed last month’s because I was a little busy so I’m glad to catch this one. This months questions. 1. If you make money with your blog, how do you do it? The answer is I don’t. I have received a free book by writing a review and I received a credit to a wedding site for also writing a review and that’s it. Maybe one day I will look into it but that’s not anytime in my near future. 2. How do you increase your blog readership? I really do try to comment back and I used to be very active with giveaways, etc. I have since slowed way down and even lost a few followers along the way. Life happens like my Dad being in the hospital and planning a wedding at the exact same time. I did good to blog even when I did. 3. If you aren’t originally from Texas, what brought you here? I am an original born and bred Texan from Dallas 4. If someone were to hand you $10,000 (no strings attached), what would you do with it? Easy- I would have nice down payment for a house and we could move out of our apartment. 5. If you were a color, what color would you be? Hmmm, its not secret that orange is my fave color so I would go with that most of the time. There are times though that I feel quite Gray or is Grey? 6. What are your blogging strengths? Weaknesses? Lets start with weaknesses- I blog in my spare time at work ( I got to office at 7am today) but my work laptop does not play nice with Blogger. All of my posts turn out as one ugly paragraph now. I would say a strength is that I blog for myself and quit worrying about how many followers I have. I have literally met some amazing friends through this blog and I hope that my strength is my honesty and sincerity.

Tuesday Tunes and memorial

Last week on September 11, not only was it a somber day from the memory of our terrorists attacks but a good friend and coworker Fred passed away suddenly from a heart attack. Our team at work literally felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath us. Many of us had just been on conference call with him the day before. I have mentioned Fred a few times in my post because I would go to many of his performances at our Symphony building to hear him sing with the Turtle Creek Chorale (TCC). This past Saturday was his funeral/memorial and it was so beautiful. The TCC sang around 5 songs and it gives me chills thinking of the beauty of their voices. Not a dry eye in the house after they sung. One of his friends who stood up to speak mentioned to us that he had a choir practice on Monday night and the last song they had sang was It is Well with My Soul. Are you familiar with that song and the history of it? It was written by Horatio Spafford in the late 1800’s and he wrote it after suffering huge tragic family events. His business was destroyed by the historic Great Chicago Fire in 1871 and so he decided to move his family to Europe. He sent his wife and daughters ahead and the ship collided with another ship and all 4 of his daughters died. Horatio then wrote this hymn as his ship passed near where his daughters died in the ocean. No song but lyrics today. Here are the lyrics: It is well with my Soul When peace like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know,a It is well, it is well, with my soul. Refrain: It is well, (it is well), With my soul, (with my soul) It is well, it is well, with my soul. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ has regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live: If Jordan above me shall roll, No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life, Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul. But Lord, 'tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait, The sky, not the grave, is our goal; Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord! Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul. And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll; The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, A song in the night, oh my soul! I have to share with yall something incredible that occurred last night to me. Earlier in the day on Saturday , I had to drive to east Texas to assist my friends with a moving sale and I had committed to helping them. I got up so early and packed a bag with a change of clothes to wear to the funeral and I grabbed a small handbag to use. Once I arrived at the location of funeral, I took out the small bag so that I didn’t have to carry my huge purse inside. I had noticed there were 2 tickets in the small bag but I just pushed them to the side and never looked at them and stuffed in my Kleenex and lipstick. Fast forward to last night and I was straightening up , I picked up the small purse to put away and when I pulled everything out- the 2 tickets were from a performance that Fred sang in from 2011 AND it had his name and address on one of them from when he purchased them. The crazy thing is that I had used this purse many times and as you know dozens of concerts since 2011. Very random that while I’m at his memorial , his name is on a ticket inside my purse. Life is short- tell your friends how much you appreciate them.

Tuesday Tunes

To Have and To Hold

Hey y'all, I'm back!! I left a MS and returned a MRS. I have SOOO much to tell you but I will need to spread it out a little. Not a good start back to work today. I was doing great feeling great and was happy to be back when around 11am what seemed instantly i got very dizzy and sick sick.

I'll spare details but i drove home on lunch hour and now working from my couch. I sure hope this is just a 24 hr thing so anyway i thought i would bang out a quick post. My work laptop does NOT like me blogging and always messes up. Hence half my post before pictures and then rest of post after pictures. Oh well! Truth is, i will just post a bunch of pictures today and will explain more later.