Croup Was Not on the List

I just caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I have the biggest, puffiest, darkest circles under my eyes I think I've ever seen.  This will not do for wedding day pictures.

You see,  last week, The Wee One had this little fever.  Nothing to really worry about because it's happened a few times this spring already.  He sneezes a couple times, rubs his eyes, I break out the Benadryl and we're all good in a day or two.  But this time the fever came and went and came again. Then this cough.  Just a tickle at first, and then a gasping, wheezing, barking cough that got worse at night. I didn't need the pediatrician to tell me it was croup, but we went anyway, just to be on the safe side. 

Sure enough, a quick trip to the doc and two prescriptions later, we're home bound.  We've done all our puzzles and coloring books and stickers and markers and stamps and used up all our bubbles and tormented the dog and built a tent in the kitchen and made all the J-E-L-L-O we can stand and rocked and rocked and rocked and rocked and stood in the steamy bathroom and if I have to watch Mary Poppins one more time I'm going to lose it. Really and truly. (BTW, Redbox, you saved our weekend.)

I can't stand seeing my baby sick. No parent can; it just breaks your heart right down the middle. There is never a good time for a sick child.  No matter what the circumstances, it's exhausting. You're up and down all night: comforting, getting drinks of water, refilling the humidifier, administering medicine taking temperatures.  The fact that we are also trying to orchestrate a wedding and live our normal day to day lives has completely drained my reserves.  I'm depleted. Hence the bags.  Heck, the bags under my eyes have bags under them.

Since I can't his the pause button on life, we don't have any choice but to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Today while our son napped I got as organized as humanly possible.  I have a To Do list broken down day by day until The Big Day.  Thankfully, starting Tuesday, help arrives.  And first on the roster: my parents.  My mom is pretty handy with a glue gun (That's a gross understatement by the way. With nothing more than a pile of Styrofoam peanuts and some floral wire my mom could pretty much reconstruct a life-size model of the Titanic. And do it better) and my dad is the type of guy that doesn't know what it means to put your feet up and relax.  

Next through the door will be my BFF of twenty-two years. That doesn't even seem possible, but we've both got the mortgages, kids and gray hairs to prove it.  She is my rock, my voice of reason, and my breath of fresh air, all rolled in one. She makes me laugh when no one else can, and laughs with me when no one else will. 

And last but certainly not least, my soon to be father-in-law will arrive, followed shortly by my soon to be mother-in-law and her BFF, a.k.a. 'the other mom'. Thankfully, they all already know their way around our house blindfolded, and are ready and willing to roll up their sleeves and help.  My mother in law cleaned our entire house, top to bottom when our son was born.  She vacuumed the base boards.  Not to mention the jillion loads of laundry and MONTHS worth of food she cooked and and froze for us.  In one weekend.  I will never forget that. 

We've got a LOT of ground to cover, a lot of yard to tidy up, a lot of lights to string and tables to set up and food to prepare. The next six days are going to be kind of nutty, but I am so, so looking forward to everyone that is so near and dear to us being here.  It isn't every day that family and friends come together like this, and I plan to soak in every minute of it.   

Eleven Days!

And I've got a sick kiddo on my hands.  So in lieu of a long winded update, how are these for cute?

I'm quite proud of how the invites and favors turned out. 








Next up on the To Do List, order flowers.  I STILL haven't done that.  That will happen Wednesday morning when the flower lady gets back from her vacation. 

There are still a small handful of things to be done here and there, namely, assembling the music play list, but aside from that everything has to either happen the day before or the day of, or has been delegated to someone else.  Love you, babe!

We Have Pie!

And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. I was starting to really wonder if there would be any food at this wedding at all.  The sweet little lady that sits outside the general store and sells baked goods has agreed to make ten pies for our wedding reception.  All that leaves to get ready are the drinks and maybe some fruit trays to round out the food table.  Totally doable. 

Last week I made a trip to my local grocery for some barbecuing supplies, and I took a lap through the flower department.  Lo and behold, I was impressed.  They had a nice assortment of really lovely, bright, reasonably priced bouquets. Just the sort I'd been looking for, in fact. Why had I not noticed this before?  Or, a better question would be, why did I overlook the grocery store that's five minutes away?  The woman working in the floral department was incredibly nice and helpful, and when I asked what would be available in a few weeks she was very reassuring that I could get the same assortments.  She said making a hand-tied bouquet for me would be no problem and they could do a simple one in the neighborhood of $20.  Twenty dollars! The people at Central Market wanted $65 just to talk about it....

Having those two details taken care of feels really good.  People will eat, I'll have something to hold on to.  The other big things we took care of this last week were finding My Love's suit and ordering our rings.  We found the suit Monday night on a marathon trip from mall to mall to mall, and in the end all our trouble paid off, because he got the whole thing for $80.  That's unheard of for a suit. I'd fully expected to blow the better half of the budget on his outfit.  He still needs some accessories, but that part is easy.  The rings we found online, from the comfort of our own home.  His is here, and absolutely perfect. Mine is in transit. 

We have 23 days to go, and so far, have only spent a little more than half our budget.  Can you believe it?  My little calculator thingy on theknot.com says we have just under $500 left to spend.  Which is good, because we still need to pay for those pies and flowers,  buy some beer and wine, get the marriage license......