What is it About the Garage?

I follow a few other blogs.  Just a few... compared to the number some people out there read on a regular basis.  Maybe this explains why my blog is not on thousands of people's everyday reading list, that and the fact I don't blog every day. The blogs I do read, I read for pure entertainment plus they have a writing style to which I aspire.  I really miss my weekly brain candy when one of my bloggers goes more than a week between posts.  The nerve of them....how can they go and live their lives and not keep me in the loop with a witty or relevant blog post?

Today I noticed that my last post was ten days ago a long time ago and I thought to myself, "If I'm lucky there are people out there wondering if I fell down a rabbit hole or something.".  I know...it is very presumptuous of me!  No worries, I am here, living my life and not blogging.  It happens....so I guess I'll forgive my favorite bloggers for doing the same.  Sometimes life is just more important than the blog.  No! Life is always more important than the blog.

Having a happy Easter with these people
and not blogging.....

So... what have I been up to instead of blogging?  Well....there are a lot of spring golf tournaments and I just don't know how to say "no".  There are the dance lessons TJ and I are taking.  Plus, we have been doing some spring cleaning or as I'd like to refer to it, "cleaning this pit before friends and relatives arrive and see how we really live"... oh, and did I mention the wedding is in less than 2 weeks?  Really, I am not doing that much for the wedding compared to the bride who has done most of the work.  Far be it from me to butt in and take over her finely tuned wedding planning mojo.  I do find myself having panic dreams where I show up to the church and I don't recognize any of the people there or The Dress falls apart or no one shows up or fifty more than we planned for show up.  I'm sure these will become more and more frequent over the next few days.  I am just hoping that soon we will be able to relax, enjoy the moment and trust that all of the people we are paying will do their jobs and everything will go according to plan or as close to the plan as possible.


Let's talk about cleaning for a minute.  In my book, cleaning means mopping the floors, cleaning the bathrooms, dusting, vacuuming, maybe clean the dog nose prints off the windows, cleaning the cobwebs from the corners and putting away all the piles of crap that we have sitting around the house.  To my husband, cleaning means cleaning the garage.  What is it about men and the garage?  Every time we have a party or event at the house he feels compelled to clean the garage.  Why?  We don't ever eat dinner or serve cocktails there.  No one ever sleeps in the garage.  No one goes to the bathroom in the garage...I hope!  We don't even have a ping pong or beer pong table that people play in the garage.  But, without fail, he thinks we  (he and the mouse in his pocket?) need to clean the garage.  This time, since the event is bigger than a little Saturday night barbecue, he has gone way beyond the garage.  "We" are having the outside of the house painted.  The house is getting a total overhaul.  The bonus to me is that the painters are cleaning the outside of the windows after the painting is finished.  A job I was planning to not have enough time to do!  So, for three days the outside of our house has been chaos.  Once the job started and got underway we found out just how badly the house needed painting.  The timing may be a bit off but in the end, she looks very nice with a shiny new coat of paint not to mention clean windows.  On to the garage!

NOT!!!!!

Chaos comes before order.

We finally did it!  We have both always wanted to take dance lessons and with the upcoming wedding we decided to just do it!  After three lessons, I can say in all seriousness, we will never be ready for prime time by the wedding.  We may eventually be able to dance together without fumbling awkwardly through the steps...we hope.

Dancing with the Stars...here we come!

There is a very good chance the blog will be idle until after the wedding.  I'll be busy holding in my stomach trying to fit into my mother of the bride dress, enjoying all of our family and friends and dancing up a storm.  I promise plenty of pictures and hopefully no horror stories.

Bluebonnets Now and Then

In three and a half weeks I will not be sitting on this sofa at 8:30 at night watching TV alone in my pj's all showered and ready for bed.  Actually, there aren't many nights you can find me in my pj's and ready for bed at 8:30 at night!  I'm not even sick... unless you count severe spring allergies sick.  I played golf (poorly) today in hurricane force winds and a shower and pj's made perfect sense to my weather beaten body and mind.  I figure I need to enjoy these days and nights while I can and rest up the next few weeks before wedding palooza.

Last Sunday was bridal portrait day.  The weather cooperated by raining and getting very chilly.  We  had grand illusions of heading north to the hill country to take advantage of the bluebonnets for the photo shoot.  Drizzle and temps in the 50's do not say "outdoor photo shoot"!  The bride scrambled around and made plan B which turned out better than plan A!  Things work out that way sometimes.

Nice changing room!

We, well the bride and the photographer, found a lovely old inn in Brenham, Texas that would let us use the property for the photos for a nominal fee.  The Ant Street Inn provided us with a room for the bride to change into the special white dress and places to take indoor and covered outdoor photos in case of rain.  It was just charming!  Brenham was very quiet on that dreary Sunday afternoon.  There was one bright spot in a white dress being followed by a photographer, her mom and her sister-in-law (aka hairdresser extraordinaire).  We got plenty of honks, thumbs up and congratulations as we paraded through the town.

One of the bedrooms had an old elevator right in the middle of the room.
We thought it looked a bit like an ancient S&M apparatus....but I digress....

Mother Nature smiled on us and the rain stopped a couple of hours before we got to Brenham.  The gray skies provided lovely light for the photos and the town was the perfect backdrop with its old brick walls, wrought iron fences, secluded courtyards and quaint downtown streets.

the covered upstairs patio at the Ant Street Inn

The only thing we were missing was a nice bluebonnet field.  Things had dried off enough and we were feeling brave enough to have the bride stand in a big blue field in the white dress.  The proprietor of the Inn told us where we could find a bluebonnet field nearby and we headed out to find it.

Bluebonnets minus the bride!  
You didn't think I was going to satisfy your curiosity and give you a sneak peak did you?
Even though it is killing me to do just that!

This week marks our fourth year back in Sugar Land.  If you had told me four years ago that I would be standing in yet another bluebonnet field in four years with my daughter dressed in a white dress I would have been as happy as I was on Sunday.  A lot has happened in those four years and this is one of the best things yet.  So for the next little while I'll try to remain calm and enjoy my evenings on the couch in my pj's.