...breathe in breathe out...

on a stressful day (or in my case week) these two make me feel all better and I'm so thankful for snuggle time :)

snow snow go away

Jack and Winston are waiting patiently to go outside and play in the snow. YES! I said snow!

So way down south here, practically at the beach, in eastern North Carolina, it appears that even I can't escape the brutality that is this winter. I was so happy to not be home in MD with the 40 or so inches that they are currently stuck under. But, Mother Nature decided to dump a few down here. Ergo, New Bern's blizzard of 2010. I've come to learn that it NEVER snows down here (this is the 2nd time in a decade... the 1st was last year and they got about an inch). It is also the coldest winter in 20 years! Needless to say I was miserable, but the dogs loved it! Check it out...

snow up to Jacko's belly! Winnie burrowing into the snow
Jack making a run for it!

Winston covered in snow

Win is SO excited

Winston mid-stride

Winston hopping like a rabbit

Win in the backyard

Jacko eating the snow

and my favorite... the close up of Jack with Win chasing him in the background :)

the goods outweigh the bads

another good... After meeting with a JCrew wedding coordinator in December with Carly and Emily (two of my wonderful bridesmaids who went with me so they could try on dresses I liked for them). We were assured that the dresses I had selected weren't going anywhere because they were sooooooo popular. Especially in Navy, they would never discontinue a dress in that color. I spoke with her again last week, told her the exact styles I had definitely decided on, the fabrics, and the color. Again, everything was fine, we didn't even need to order them until April or March. Then yesterday, disaster struck. Yeterday, Carly emails me... "Get online, I went to buy my dress and it's not online anymore".

I get online and sure enough it's not in the wedding section, they have replaced it with a similar, yet not as cute/fancy version of itself. It IS however in the sale section of the website. Oh wait, but not in Navy. After calling every single JCrew in the country that carries the wedding collection, and customer service, you would think this dress never existed. It was just a figment of our imaginations, absolutely no where to be found. Every JCrew wedding coordinator and customer service agent had the same thing to tell me - "That dress is completely sold out, we don't even have a sample of it. There aren't any anywhere". I had to laugh because it was all so absurd. We discussed our options, order the other, ugly one; buy the white one and try to dye it; pick a different dress in a totally different fabric; pick a different dress not from JCrew.

Then Carly's genuis instincts kicked in and she checked EBay, and low and behold there it was. Advertised as: "sold out online!" She informed me today that she has since bought the dress, her style, her fabric, her color, HER SIZE! All is well with the world again.

the good the bad and the ugly

The Good: after being very worried about my dress at the seamstress's (for 2 months) due to a phone call where I was put on hold, but not really, and could hear everything they were saying... "Where is this dress?" "Oh here it is, what were we suppoed to do?" "We still need to put these on..." then been told directly after overhearing this conversation "Oh yeah we've been done for a while, we were waiting for you to call to make an appointment. I wanted to scream YOU are supposed to call ME and tell me when it's ready to try on! But I didn't (very proud of myself) most likely because I was too excited that I could try it on for the first time in months and it would finally look like the dress of my dreams. I just said ok well I'm calling now and I would like to make an appointment for next Saturday. Their reply was "Oh, that won't be possible, we only do alterations appointments during the week." *pause for the sound of dreams being crushed... whatever that may be* I did however call back today and speak with the actual seamstress who agreed to come in to meet me on Saturday, after explaining that I'm not able to come in during the week as I have a full time job in NC, and the dress is in MD. So thank you Dora, Doris, whatever your name is. Now I can put on my dress after it underwent serious cosmetic surgery... and maybe get a few tears out this time :)

The Bad: you would think this would be posted under good things, but... while my save the dates are completely finished... addressed, sealed, stamped... The post office here in New Bern closes at 1 pm (precisely when I placed the last stamp) for an hour for lunch I suppose. So I laid down to rest, thinking I earned it, and found myself asleep without an alarm set. I woke up promptly at 4:10 pm. You can guess what time the post office closes. Yup, 4 o'clock. Missed it again. (We missed it last week because we weren't done addressing the darn things... and we missed it yesterday because we went at 5 pm to buy stamps) So they are STILL here, sitting on my coffee table. If the post office opened at 5 am I could go before work, but I've gotta wait til I get off at 11 tomorrow... BOO

The Ugly: me... just up from a nap (messy messy hair) and angry that I slept my way through getting this stupid things in the mail finally. Oh well, tomorrow is another day...