By far, the shortest wedding I've ever been to

Last weekend, K and I headed to New Hampshire for a friend's wedding. The ceremony was beautiful. It lasted maybe two minutes. That's a pretty generous estimate.

The groom is a friend from when K was stationed in Louisiana, so it was a nice reunion for everyone.

For lunch after the ceremony, there was a lobster for everyone! It was the first time I'd ever eaten lobster myself (I'd tried a small piece, I think, from K or my dad). I'd definitely never gone through the whole process of cracking one myself. For dessert, there was blueberry cornbread. Mmm!

During the cocktail hour, the bride and groom stepped away to take some pictures in a sandbar on the water. Even though I nearly froze to do it, I escaped to take snap some shots of their best sides. A seal actually swam during their photoshoot!

The ceremony was in New Hampshire, almost at the Maine border. It was my first time in both states. They were as beautiful as I'd imagined. The weather was much cooler there than in VA, and the leaves were already starting to change.

After our lighthouse experience two weeks ago, I was excited about the possibility of seeing more in NH and ME. We got to see two in one place! It's crazy how different the beach looks a few hours north.

It was a beautiful weekend, but it went by so fast. K and I will definitely be heading back that direction someday!

For a minute there, I wondered if she had read my post about our first meetup

The dog park "date" went well. It was funny -- when I called Jill back, I explained that I had lost her number because I had phone trouble just a couple days after I met her. (It was true.) Jill immediately said, "Oh, good! I was worried I'd talked too much and scared you off! I have a tendency to talk about people I know but you don't know, and I just knew I'd bored you to death."

(Eerie, huh?!)

The conversation was much better this time, thanks to the welcome addition of our dogs and a few others at the dog park. Jill seemed more at ease. There were still a few times she revealed some random negatives, like how her husband said he's tired of their dog after 4 years, but how he probably feels that way because he hates his job and it's affecting things outside of work. I guess that random negative just leaves me more apprehensive about ever meeting her husband than anything (seriously, who "gets tired" of your DOG after having her for FOUR YEARS?!).

I'm still not going to be calling Jill up just to chat or see if she wants to go browse around the mall, but I definitely feel better about the one person I know in this area who isn't retired (well, besides my husband).

I'm either stupid or ridiculously optimistic

Remember that awful blind date I had recently? Well, Jill just called me to see if I wanted to take Piper on a dog park date.

I'm going.

It was the most I've bitten my tongue in a long time

I was in Target today when I happened to come across the Halloween section. I decided to check out the selection of pet costumes, and I took a picture of them and sent it to K so he could help me choose one for Piper.

A woman who looked to be around my age was in the costume aisle, and her young daughter was sitting in the shopping cart. I'm terrible about guessing ages, but this girl couldn't have been older than 4. She was excited about picking out her costume, and she pointed out a couple things she liked. Her mom shot down both of them: a "scary costume" (understandable, I guess) and a banana (I thought the banana would've been pretty darn cute.).

The pair headed over to another aisle full of children's costumes. The mom found a Snow White costume and immediately picked it up. "Do you want to be Snow White? You'd be so cute!"

"No."

"Are you sure? You don't want to be Snow White?"

"No. I want to be Ariel," the girl said, pointing at a costume nearby.

I thought of the various Halloween costumes I had growing up. How fun it was to pick them out, how exciting it was to wear them, how awesome it felt to get to be my favorite character for a day. I remembered the tutu I insisted on wearing for days after Halloween was over, and how my parents let me do it.

The mom kept trying for a good couple minutes to persuade her daughter to choose the Snow White costume. Finally, it got to the point that the girl screamed, "NO!" (Inside, I was cheering the girl for sticking to her guns.) The mom slowly pushed the cart down the aisle to look at other costumes. The girl fell in love with a Tinkerbell costume.

I was still waiting for K to text me back. I couldn't see the pair anymore, but I could still hear them. The mom was reluctant to agree on Tinkerbell. She hadn't given up on Snow White! I was actually feeling bad for the girl. What's so bad about Tinkerbell?

The mom tried mentioning that Tinkerbell has blonde hair, while her daughter had dark hair, "like Snow White." The girl said they could just fix her hair to be light for the costume. The daughter seemed to have made her decision.

The mom pushed her daughter back to the front of the aisle, where the Snow White costume was. The mom actually said, "You really need to make up your mind on a costume."

I wish I could say the whole exchange ended there, but the mom kept trying! It was ridiculous. I was THISclose to saying to her, "You're a lucky mother to have such a smart daughter. She's able to make up her mind, and she sticks with it. She's going to be a successful lady someday if you nurture that."

But I kept my mouth shut, since I know moms often get unsolicited advice from strangers. Besides, what I really wanted to say? "SHE DOES NOT WANT TO BE SNOW WHITE! She'll make an adorable Tinkerbell. If you like the costume so much, YOU be Snow White!"

There's so much to do here!

K and I didn't do anything crazy for our anniversary. I guess we're still so excited about finally living together (we're going on 3 months now!) that just having a "normal" night in still feels pretty special. K got me a cute little card, and we cooked some pasta and had wine with dinner. Then, we went to the gym, which has unfortunately become an abnormal event for us. Last night was our third night in a row, which is more times than we've been to the gym in weeks. Heck, it's probably more times than we went to the gym for the whole month of July (and we didn't do much better than that in August). It feels great to be getting back on track -- finally.

Part of the reason we were OK staying home on Tuesday night was that we'd done some special things in the days before.

On Saturday, we went to VA Beach for an Italian festival. There was a strolling musician and of course delicious Italian food and wine. We got to crush grapes with our feet, which was something I never thought I'd do! It's definitely a slippery job, and the grapes stick to your feet a bit when you get out.

And of course, we had to eat some delicious Italian dessert.

K was kicking himself for forgetting to wear his "Kiss me, I'm half-Italian" shirt. At least he chose wisely if he wasn't going to wear that one.

Plus, our shirts resulted in an unexpected change: As we were walking to the oceanfront, a passenger in an oncoming car leaned out the window and yelled, "BOOMER!" to us (the awesome call of Sooner fans. The initial yell is, "BOOMER!" The response is "SOONER!"). Our new friend was also sporting Sooner gear in the form of an OU hat. I was so excited by the pleasant surprise that I was jumping up and down. (I'm a dork like that.)

I love lighthouses, and K's boss had told us about one near VA Beach, so we checked it out. There were actually two. They were so neat! The brown bricked lighthouse is Old Cape Henry. It was completed in 1789 and established in 1792. It was the first lighthouse built by the federal government! It's one of only 9 lighthouses to be registered as a National Historic Landmark.

You can actually go inside the lighthouse! You have to climb quite a few stairs and even a ladder, but it's worth the view.

The black and white lighthouse stands only feet from the historic lighthouse. It opened in December of 1881 and is called New Cape Henry. It's beautiful!

Then, on Monday night, K and I went to a concert. We saw After Midnight Project, who we didn't know before the concert; Halestorm, who we'd just seen Sept. 11 in Richmond; and Chevelle. The concert itself was great. K and I both loved AMP, and Halestorm was just as impressive as they were 9 days earlier (that girl can wail!). Chevelle sounded exactly as they do in their albums, which was awesome to see (and hear).

K and I saw a few concerts in Dallas and even some in Louisiana in the last year. They were all in big venues, and a couple were even outdoors. A few of the concerts were hard rock, so there were crowd surfing and moshing going on. You could jump, and you could definitely move if you wanted to. The two concerts we've seen in VA have been in pretty small venue. They don't allow moshing (which is fine with us) or crowd surfing (that one is a little of a bummer, since K and I have both tried it, but whatever). Somehow, though, prohibiting those actions makes everyone just stand around the whole time. K and I decided by their second song that AMP was awesome. We wanted to jump around and enjoy ourselves (not moshing, but moving to the music), but the girl next to us kept looking at K like he was crazy. Oh, well. She just wasn't as fun as we are. :)

One of the perks about a small venue, though, is that we got to meet everyone after the show. That actually made me a bigger fan of Halestorm. They're so fun, and they're really down to earth. The drummer is my favorite. (He's on the left in the second picture.)

This weekend, we're back to traveling. We leave at 5 something tomorrow morning to fly to Boston. We'll drive from there to NH for a wedding, and then we'll be staying overnight in Maine. Hopefully I can see another lighthouse or two while we're there -- I've already looked into the ones nearby!

Two years, already?

Time flies when you get married, send your new husband off to war, work out the whole time he's gone, welcome him home, plan your "real" wedding, and then move across the country together to live with each other for the first time in your entire four-year relationship!

(Did we seriously do all that in two years?!)

It's been an unconventional first couple years, but I wouldn't trade them for the world. I'm stealing these words from a picture frame K and I bought together several months ago:

I love you not only for who you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

One of our very favorite pictures from the wedding, taken with our matchmakers, whose wedding we met at. (Thanks, CG!)

Lord, thank you for blessing me with such an amazing man who brings more love and laughter to my life than I ever could have imagined.

We're keeping it!

After a couple days of getting used to it, K and I both feel a lot better about our bedroom set. Your comments and suggestions definitely helped me feel better that first night we got it. I guess I have a tendency to panic if things don't look exactly how I thought they would. (See: guest bedroom) Since I'm pretty new to this whole house decorating thing, I tend to doubt myself pretty easily.

I was able to do some decorating in our bedroom yesterday, which definitely helped the look of things. We still have boxes around the room, since we haven't moved into our dresser yet. I guess we figure we've been living out of boxes and 3-drawer Tupperware "dressers" for 3 months. What's a few more days?

The style of our bedroom set and the decorations I put up give the room a more romantic, elegant feel than the rest of the house. I like it that way. It makes it feel (to me, anyway) more like a romantic retreat.

I have one other idea in mind that will only increase the glam factor. I'm a little nervous about the execution, but it just might work. I can only hope this finished product looks even half as good as it does in my head. Either way, you can bet I'll post pictures as soon as it's done!

Shit, shit, shit

K and I ordered our bedroom set on July 6. We got it today. And it does not quite look how we thought it would.

We underestimated the height of our mattress, and we also didn't realize how high the mirror above the dresser is.

Does it look that bad? Be honest, please!

[As I see it, we have three options: (1) Keep the bed as it is, if it doesn't look stupid. (2) Remove the box springs -- but then, where would we put it? Also, we're supposed to use the mattress with the box springs. However, the bed has a ton of slats running across it, so we may be OK. (3) Return the bedroom set to switch for a new one that hopefully won't take an additional 2.5 months to arrive.]