Back to the Grind... for Two Weeks

No doubt you may have noticed my wedding links have tripled over the past few weeks. At least I have. 'Cause really, who's reading this stuff besides me? I'm really just using this blog to log reminders to myself. Not as adventurous as my title claims.

Anyways, it's been almost a whole month since my last post. Really a whole month? Yep. I was busy with the last few weeks of school (SPRING BREAK! WHOO HOO! *rips bikini top off*) and then was in San Diego for a few days for the VRA conference.

Better write down my list before proceeding; otherwise I'll forget:

March 23 - Easter. We should probably go to church... Also one of my mother's birthdays... and someone else's birthday too. I know many people who have their birthdays at the end of March, all one day after the next. Can't keep up with all these Pisces-Aries kids...

March 28 - My sister's due date. If she doesn't go into labor, they will induce on the 30th.

March 31 - Begin Spring quarter: the second reference course. I have two weeks of "normal" life before I have to get back to my alternate life of schoolwork and not doing any housework or cooking. I suppose this next course is "advanced" reference... I hope it won't be too hard and that I won't have to write papers. I got lucky with the first quarter.

April 19 - Kathleen's 40th birthday party! I think they're hiring salsa dance instructors and we're having a real dance party. But she just found out that she's pregnant too, so the party will probably be a little bit more on the cautious side. They're handling the pregnancy very carefully this time around. If all goes well, that means I'll have two mamas with babies in my wedding party. :)

April 25 - San Diego anniversary trip. And if all goes as planned, this would be a coincidental, pre-wedding-to-the-day anniversary trip.

So last night as I was just about to drift off to sleep, I jarred myself awake with a shocking realization. Rick and my family structures are very alike. What I mean is - on his mother's side, he's got three aunts and one uncle. On my mother's side... I've got three aunts and one uncle. It gets crazier. I compared the offspring of each aunt/uncle on our sides respectively. 4 kids, 4 kids... 1 kid, 1 kid... 2 kids, 2 kids.......... there were two families that didn't QUITE match up, but if we bring the 4th generation into this comparison game, THE NUMBERS MATCH. It's crazy. 25 direct descendants of our grandparents on our mothers' sides.

What's more, on our paternal side, Rick's dad has one sibling, MY dad has one sibling. These sibling have 2 kids. EACH!

What does this mean???? It was slightly creepy. Because seriously, what are the odds that something like this happens?? Our maternal grandparents each had five children: 4 girls and one boy. Our paternal grandparents each had two children, and we each have 2 cousins. SERIOUSLY??! SERIOUSLY!!!!!!

So I fell asleep thinking about how cool it would be to have these family trees on giant poster boards up for the wedding. I even entertained the idea of doing a whole freakin presentation with powerpoint and laser pointers. ;) So this morning when I got up, I grabbed sheets of paper and made the family trees as similar in format as possible for comparison. It was great. Slightly creepy, but great.

The rest of today was spent throwing stuff out. We purged what felt like 200 lbs of clothes, got rid of our old TV that was sitting in the living room taking up precious space, and cleaned out old stuff that we didn't want anymore. We filled up my whole car with bags of clothes, household items, rugs... and my turtle pillow that my college roommate gave me. (ack, I just realized that it's gone! I kind of want it back... *anxiety attack*) Sadly though, after coming back from our dumping trip at the thrift shop, we looked around and there was still so much clutter. So tomorrow will be another cleaning day for me while Rick is at work.

So anyways, back to the wedding links and their tripled factor. This wedding stuff is SUCH an industry. But it's so nice to find blogs about bargain weddings and DIY stuff so I can get ideas on how to do stuff and find resources like free, already-made templates and REALLY CHEAP paper products. The only problems are that I want to DO IT NOW (and then I'd just sit and stare at them for oh, another YEAR) and the plethora of new ideas that I hadn't even thought of overwhelm me. I like having options, but this is crazy. How many ways and styles can we make our monogram? And what SHADE of brown to choose from their 100+ browns?! Should we get certain monograms for certain purposes? And are we really going to use the monogram with our wedding date on it after our wedding? It's all making my head spin.

I suppose that's why I've added those links. I can refer back to them when the time is right and I don't have to worry about losing a certain idea and having to retain all the information a year in advance. Did I mention that I still have a year to go? Just checking.

Really, the thing we need to do quite immediately before the rest of these details is set the date with our church. I've got a week before I become uber-busy again.