Update of Updates

<peeks around corner>
Are you still here??

So. There's a lot to talk about here and it's going to be a huge mess but I will get it all out and now I can really get to blogging again.
Firstly, to explain my random sabbatical from this online, public journal; I came home early from the college program. Before you judge me, realize that I was never getting credit for this adventure and merely went to enjoy the experience, get that chance to at least sniff out what reality is actually like (which, obviously, no better place than Disneyland, right? reality galore!) and live away from home, do my own personal, introspective DTR with Mark. Only problem was, I didn't need five whole months. In coming home early, I wanted to just finish out the lasts few weeks of the internship and not be explaining to countless people WHY, and HOW, and WHEN, and WHY again. I didn't want to be constantly thinking about leaving.
A) I hate feeling like a quitter. Or at least not sticking out till the end of something I got myself into (aka, "quitting")
B) Sure, let's think about leaving all the time so we never forget so then it feels like forever to finally actually be leaving. Sounds lovely.
C) It is Disneyland, after all :(

But I mean really, once I got engaged, why would I stay somewhere that isn't really helping along my education, I wash dishes all day long [life skills? Nah, I'm just a maid] AND I simply don't fit in anywhere? Plus, no pianos to speak of. No, I want to be with my fiance planning all these necessary wedding things and I want to spend this holiday season with my family.
Gmail and skype and texting and phone calls are just not the way I want to nail down all the wedding preparations. Sorry.

Secondly (except more like First-and-a-Halfly), I was actually surprising Mark in coming home. He knew I was planning on quitting before January but I had told him more along the timeline of the 'week of thanksgiving'....
I lied.
I came home on saturday, the twelfth. Had to implement the most extreme self control I have ever managed and not go see Mark that night. My mom and I got back to the house around 6:30 and I played my lovely piano for a little bit (teared up cuz I'm an emotional sap [and a complete silly mess from working at Dland]) and realized I totally suck now that it's been three months.
Fine, I don't "suck", I'll just actually have to sit down and really practice some things, run through my Handel book of finger exercises a couple times and unsloppify my technique. Boo and a half.
Mark works twelve hours on saturdays, 5:30-6 or something horrid like that. And it's the end of his work week. So popping by his place when he's completely exhausted and frustrated with all the stress and only being able to stay a couple hours before he should go to sleep just didn't sound all that enjoyable. So that's why I stayed home and spent some lovely time with a certain bestest buddy and her [kinda cool] hubby.
But on sunday morning, Mark and I have church at 9 am (wooty mcwootsauce) so I woke up, quite easily I might add, got all prettied up and went over to his house to wake him up. It went a little something like this;
<walk up to front door>
Oh, wait. It might be locked. Oh, this'll be fantastic....
<knock-knock>
....waiting....
<opens door>
Mm, same ol' bachelor pad.
Huh, I wonder why his light's on...maybe he's already awake?
<tiptoe quietly so as to not click heels on tile>
Baha, silly boy. All curled up in a ball with the light on.
<jump on bed, kiss cheek>
me:"Why are you sleeping with the light on??"
<lays like dead slug>
<rolls over>
<lays more>
<about to poke his cheek>
him: "Whaa--how are you here?"
me: "I'm magic!!"
<pause>
him: "No, seriously. How are you here??"
me: "Surprise!!"

I thoroughly enjoyed that. He seemed pleased as well.

Now, thirdly; since I've been back (a grand total of four days) I/we have--

• Whipped up a rough draft guest list; just a general idea of all the people we know [and holy dang if there's not a lot of you!!]
• Began gathering up already owned decor and picture frames
• More and more lists
• Booked the temple [more to come on that]
• Found THE dress [second one I tried on. EVAR. Huh, go figure]
• Sent out facebook event to rake in the addresses [I'll just need to ignore my notifications number for the next little while....it's kind of skyrocketing o_O]

And there's still so much to do. Thank goodness it's all for one of the biggest, best decisions I will ever make and I'm having a good time. Hopefully the good mood holds out till February. Oh, mama.

I am a bit worried about having my dress so early. I'm so in love with it and just wanna show it off to everyone (namely a certain fiance of mine) and wear it every day but gosh darn it it'll just hafta stay in the bag and hang in my mom's closet or something so I don't have such easy access to it....

Wasn't even supposed to dress shop today [er, yesterday now...this is the problem with blogging and not immediately posting, /sigh]. Was going to go check out a craigslist truck out in peoria with Mark early this [that] morning but he got an email and the truck is in a garage so we wouldn't be able to see it till 4pm and he has school from 4-9ish so that didn't work. So we went back to his apartment to clean and watch 'Once Upon a Time' but then he got called in to work.

And who likes to clean alone? Certainly not me.

So I called my mom and she told me to come on home and we'd sit down to talk over wedding plans.

Then all of a sudden we were wedding dress shopping. Just for the heck of it. To kinda get an idea of what's out there. It was still pretty early in the morning so we window shopped for about an hour and 'visited' about three different stores (and a couple long-gone shut down shops) before going back to AZ bridal. 

For some reason I was totally convinced and kept thinking to myself, "No way I'll find one today. We'll just look around and see what's 'on the market'." I may have been telling myself that to ward off the guilt that kept creeping in for not having my best friend/MOH there, when she really wanted to be there for dress shopping and I wanted her there as well....

But there'll be shoe shopping, and bridesmaid dress finding and all the other requirements of being a bride and MOH duo.

And so I fill out this weird form so I assume the employee can help me find exactly what I'm looking for in a wedding dress....
"I want to not look fat and be able to breathe...oh, and let's make it white I guess."
Like, seriously. Do you really gotta know ALL that?? o_O Silly.
She showed me to the racks that have the sleeved dresses on them and told us to grab six. So we did. The first one was beautiful. It was a lace-up which felt a lot nicer than I thought it would. Being tied in was a weird experience [thank HEAVENS we tossed corsets out as a necessity]. However, the supported hug of the bodice was nice. But it had that weird bunched up messy-poof skirt thing that I just don't understand.
K, fine the Belle-look is

whatever. Cute, if it's your thing [which it isn't mine].

But when you get to the point of

looking like a four year old took a stapler to your skirt I say, "whaaa??" And thusly, the first one got a 'yeah you look nice but let's see what else there is....'

The second one...I immediately loved. I had a dressing room that was straight across from the stagey mirror place so when I opened the curtain I got a first glance experience like I was in the place of everyone else who's gonna see me in it (namely, Mark) and I quickly found that in that split second moment there was a little 'ding!' in my head if the dress was something I could envision myself getting married in. And that second dress...in the famed words of Taylor Kerby, "I'm so attracted to myself right now!!"

Then turns out it's a little bit out of our budget, so I put on the brave face and return to the dressing room to <cross-fingers> find something even more fabulous.

But dress after dress and eight dresses later (and a small heart-attack after a teensy rip sound trying to pull one over my apparently too-wide behind) I was still glancing over at the 'favorite' hung on the wall to be used for comparison. Except there was none. I put the 'favorite' back on and just let it hug me in all the right places and felt so skinny and so beautiful and wished so hard it would just be March right then and there with everything all figured out and ready, set to go.

Turns out we could get a 15% off discount on the dress and they even threw in the lovely veil for free! Woohoo! Didn't know I even wanted a veil till they held it up to my head. 

I tried to come back with Allie later so she could see it, too (plus I just wanted to wear it again) but they'd accidentally already sent it off for cleaning.

Boo.

But I still has it! So it's all good and I'm so, so sos,o,so,soeoidlj excited!!!

Excited, I am.

But now I wanna get in the shower cuz I feel all gross from running around everywhere doing all these productive things today. So...bye, y'all!

I'll be posting more regularly now, promise :) Thanks for reading!