One More

On my 10th wedding anniversary this year I received a call telling me that my daughter was now a big sister to a bouncing baby girl. My daughter is adopted and her birth parents had another child. We had decided that we were done having more children. We have two wonderful kids that I'm sure I will write about more than once. I was okay with just two kids, I thought. I have always wanted two, a boy and a girl and I got what I wanted. But now I was being asked if I wanted another. I was shocked and excited and a little scared. My husband had just gotten back from Kuwait two days before and he was back home in Arizona and would be meeting up with me and the kids in Florida the next day. I thought okay I will call him and tell him the news and that will give him some time to think on it. I really wanted him to say yes but I was pretty sure he was not going to. He took the news calmly as far as I could tell, but his initial reaction was no and so was his final say.

I tried going over the decision from all angles. My daughter would have a sister to grow up with and as far as I can see there is nothing like the bond that develops between sisters. It was a little scary imagining the trials that I would have to go through with two girls only 21 months apart in age but I thought It would be so worth it. I thought I could quit my job and stay home with them, my daughter has been in preschool starting at the beginning of summer because I work mornings and my husband was over seas. I did not really want her to be in preschool so young. I wanted to keep her home with me at least as long as I had kept my son home. I also thought there will be one more to deal with the terrible twos and the girly attitude that seems to come with all females. But I love kids and whats one more right? One more to love and watch discover the world. One more to get to rock to sleep and midnight feedings. One more ... I wanted one more!

My husband on the other hand is very adamant that two is enough. I hear him! I understand but that tug is so hard to resist. That feeling like there is another part of my daughter out there and in a sense another part of me. This part is being taken care of by someone else I don't know. I have been over and over the good and the bad in my head but my heart only tells me one thing, run go get her now!

National monuments D.C.

The day after the Halloween wedding we go downtown to see the National Monuments in Washington D.C.! I was really excited for this part of the visit. I have never been to D.C. and its a beautiful day to go to. The weather was 78 degrees and sunny. The leaves on all the tress have turned into beautiful fall colors and I'm looking around just wanting to take a picture of everything.

Ben drives us down to a parking lot, we park and walk to the Metro. This is cool because I have never ridden on anything even similar to a subway. Danielle and I had to figure out how to use the pay machines. All the prices for the different stops are different and it took us a couple minutes to figure it out and not over pay. But figure it out we did.

We get to the stop we want and get off. The first thing I see is the Washington Monument. Its huge! It was really terrific to see it up close and in person. We walk towards it and I am taking pictures like crazy. I decide it would be cool to call my husband and tell him where I am at. When I pull out my phone I realize its dead:( So no phone call home.

We keep walking and the next one I see is the WW II monument. We take a group picture in front on the pool in the middle of it. There is so many people here its crazy. We keep going and we see the Korean War Memorial and then as I am taking pictures of the statues my camera goes dead too. Good thing there are other people in our party that are taking pictures. Maybe they will share with me.

Next was the Lincoln Monument Im walking up all those steps thinking of everything that has happened on those steps. Even Forest Gump happened there. LOL the bad thing was they smelled like stale beer:( . After we went to the Vietnam Wall. As we are walking up to the wall one of the guys is telling me how being in front of it is pretty powerful and you will see grown men crying and touching the wall. I'm thinking to my self a granite wall wont do that to me. I start looking at all the names and the people in front of the wall talking and crying and touching, then I see this little old mad struggling to reach up as high as he can so he can reach the name of someone he loved. He cant quite reach high enough. Two other men go over to him to help him reach this elusive name and I start tearing up. I'm affected.

Its getting dark and we walked forever to get back to the Metro. We are all starving and have had a great day soaking up history and sites and nature. I would love to go back with my family and share it all with my kids someday.

The Halloween Wedding

This is my first post and its long. I guess I never knew I had so much to say LOL.

So I decided to go to Washington D.C. to attend a wedding of a friend I have not seen in 16 years. We have known each other since I was 10 years old and were pretty close. She asked me to be in the wedding months ago. When we were a lot younger we had made a pact that we would be the others Maid of Honor when we ever got married. She was mine at my first wedding but when I got married again years later I could not find her. I was not in her first wedding but she wanted me to be there for this one. So off I go...


Day 1. I arrive in DC around 3:30 in the afternoon. I get my rental car get all situated and set up my GPS (cant live with out it). Start out on the road to Crystals house and almost right out of the airport I take the wrong turn and get rerouted which adds about 15 minutes onto my trip. I finally get to her house close to 5:00pm. We leave almost immediately to go to the rehearsal place.


All 15 of us pile into the place and start figuring out whats what. The wedding coordinator asks who's the maid of honor when one of the other bridesmaids pipes up and claims the spot! Now this bridesmaid is a transvestite that really should have stayed a man. She is 6 feet tall blond frizzy curly hair that stick almost straight out. Not a pretty woman by far. When she self proclaims her spot as the maid of honor Crystal and I just look at each other and shrug, I did not want to make waves this early in the game. The trouble begins when the wedding coordinator wants to know the time line for bouquet throws and garter tosses and how the bridal party is going to stand. Amy the self proclaimed Maid of Honor never speaks up and says anything. I was lead to believe that the Maid of honor was there to help and assist the bride when she cant do whatever is needed. So I decide to speak up (shocking I know). I let Crystal know traditionally if you are going to throw the bouquet usually you have a second made to do just that so you can save your first. She lets me know she did not have that done so we nix that step. Then she tells me they don't have a garter either so we nix that too. Then we come to the bridal party. I let her know traditionally the Maid of Honor stands next to the bride and straightens her dress and holds the flowers when the bride and groom exchange rings. Well Crystal does not want to have Amy stand right next to her since Crystal is only 5 foot and 90 pounds soaking wet. She did not want to be dwarfed. I understand, so I suggest that we stand by height. That would put Annie the 5'2 bridesmaid next to the Bride then me at 5'8 then Amy at 6' going out by height. Amy was not happy at all about this. So we decide to stand traditionally and take a picture then stand by height and take a picture. Crystal decides she likes it by height. Amy is really pouting by this time but what can she say.



We leave and go to dinner. At dinner Crystal and I do a lot of story telling from our teenage years and have a really good time. Most of the other people are chiming in and laughing at our antics :) Once we are done we go back to Crystals house and sit around and talk for a while. Crystal tells me that she thinks that Amy is jealous of me. I know I'm cute but come on. Its getting really late so most people want to retire. Before hand Crystal had told me that her and all us bridesmaids were all going to stay at Annie's house and have a sleep over. Well Crystal is really tired and decides to sleep in her own bed so Annie and I get ready to leave. Crystal has to wake up Amy on the recliner to tell her to go with us. She says no I'm going to sleep here. Crystal tells her no your not there is not enough room. Crystal has her mom, two bothers, sister in law, and two other young friends staying there in her one bedroom apartment already. There was not enough room for Amy to stay as well. She gets up and we (Annie, Amy and I) all leave in our own cars to follow Annie to her house.



Once we get to Annie's house Amy comes up to me and says I'm stealing the bed. I said what bed? I'm sleeping on the pull out couch. She says oh I thought you claimed the bed. No... So then she asks both Annie and I if we got a present from Crystal? no. Well she then Quickly points out that she did and pulls out a silver compact with two mirrors inside. Annie and I are polite and say how nice. But what we are really thinking is how uncouth for her to bring that up. It definitely felt like a dig on Amy's part. The next day Annie and I both got the same present. We all get ready for bed and crawl into bed.



Day 2. In the morning I get up and Annie takes a shower. Then I went and took a Shower. Amy says she is going to go take a shower now and goes into the bathroom at 9:45 and does not come out until 11:45 looking the same as when she went in. The whole time Annie and I are starving and we almost decided to leave her there. If I spent 2 hours in the bathroom I would come out looking stunning! It can not take that long to get ready!! Oh My Gosh! Annie decides to ride with me to breakfast and back to Crystal's. Breakfast was a little embarrassing because people kept staring at us but, oh well. We get back to Crystal's around 1:00 and we have to be at the wedding place at 3:00 to give us time to get ready before the ceremony starts at 5:00. Crystal asks if we have our masks? I told her she never said anything about a masks but it does make sense since the wedding is on Halloween. So I decide to go to CVS and see if I can find one. Annie goes with me because there is a few things she needs. As we are walking out the door Amy asks if she can go too. I told her that she would need to take her own car because I have the bridal gown and two of the bridesmaids dresser laid out in my back seat. She looks bummed but says okay and takes her own car. We go to CVS and look for masks but they don't have any so both Annie and I got the other things we needed and we pay. As we are leaving I ask Amy if she got what she wanted. She says she did not need anything there. So then we head to Michael's looking for masks still and they are all out. I again ask Amy if she needed anything there and she says no. By this time I am wondering why she came at all? As we are walking out to the car she says she wants to get her nails done. We had already told her earlier when she mentioned nails that we had already had ours done. So I tell her that Crystal's house is just around the corner and there was nail place right in front of us so she could go then meet us back at the house. No.. she does not want to go alone and wont we go with her. We both told her that we did not really have time and did not really want to sit there. She decides not to go. We go get the car and wait for her to come around (she followed us there) she never comes around so we drove over to her spot and wave her on. She just sits there so we left and went back to the apartment. We get there in just enough time to pack up stuff and head to the wedding hall.



We get to the wedding hall and bring all our stuff in with no help from Amy (yes I sound a little bitter by this time. I'm getting a little peeved at all her pouting) Annie asks me to do her hair which she had asked me much earlier as well. She states we can just chop off her head and do what we want then give it back:) So I blow out her hair then do her make up, Crystal curls her hair as well. In the mean time I am answering all of Crystals calls to help her into her wedding gown and helping her find stuff. So then I do my hair and makeup and finish the brides makeup. Amy is no where to be seen this whole time she is getting her own dress on and doing what ever it is she does in the bathroom. 15 minutes before the ceremony is supposed to start she asks if someone can do her hair and makeup. I tell her she can ask Danielle (Crystal's sister in law) to do her hair. Let me just say Danielle's help was invaluable! Danielle does her hair and then she asks her to do her makeup and Danielle says she does not know how to do makeup and that Amy would have to ask me (which she does not want to do) so Danielle asks me for her. I said I would after she puts on the basics like foundation etc.. So I get ready to do her eyes and ask where her eyeliner is. She states she only has brown which I say is fine. Then I ask for eye shadows and she pulls out these horrendous colors which I had to find more appropriate colors for a blond. When we get to the mascara she states she did not have any. What Woman goes to a wedding to be the "Maid of Honor" and does not bring makeup. This is part of being a woman! Finally we are ready to start the wedding at about 5:45pm. 45 minutes late!

The wedding starts and goes off with out a hitch. It was beautiful and Tim (Crystal's Brother) performs the ceremony with a beautiful speech and ends with I now pronounce you husband and wife! The funniest part of the whole ceremony is the guys all walked out to the Imperial march for Star Wars. They are all geeks!

We had a lot of fun at the reception dancing to old 80's songs, talking and eating really good food!
The whole time Crystal, Annie and I were out on the dance floor Amy never once came out. She stayed at her table the whole time watching everybody. I'm thinking to myself that if you want people to talk to you and to notice you get out there and socialize. No one was going to go over there and baby her. I was approached twice asking if she was really a man. Duh. You did not need to ask just look it was very obvious.

Crystal had told me that once the reception was over that we would be camping on a golf course. This confused me and I kept wondering how that would work. Well when we got to the campsite it looked like a normal campsite. I asked Ben (the groom) about it and he said no we are just next to a golf course LOL. We set up tents, well actually we waited while the boys set up tents and started a fire. We sat around telling stories and drinking a few beers. I was not drinking much because I did not want the pain the next morning. That did not stop some other people from drinking all they could. At one time I ask where Amy was. I thought I had seen her car pull in when we got there. It had but she never got out. We sat around that camp fire till around 4 or 5 in the morning and she never once joined us. Oh well her loss!

We finally decided to go to sleep. The sleeping bags come out and everyone decides where they are going to sleep. Danielle, Tim, Bo (Crystal's other brother) and I picked the only other 4 man tent available. I was wondering how 4 people were going to sleep in there but we fit. We laughed and giggled at stories and jokes for at least another hour and listened to Bo snored like a mutant cricket (his nickname coined by Tim) I was not asleep long when I woke up because I was so cold I was shaking. See the sleeping bags were rated to 50 degrees and It had gotten down to 39 degrees and we were pretty much directly on the ground. I got up and went to the mini van and crawled inside there to sleep. Still I was freezing. Ben cam around to get his jacket out of the back (which I was using as a pillow) So I handed that to him and according to him I demanded he turn the van on. I don't remember that I just remember thinking it would be nice if he did. The filter must have been off my mouth and the words just fell out. He asks me doesn't it get cold in Arizona? I say yes, in the winter, at night when I'm in my warm bed inside! then he asks me to turn it off in a couple minutes to which I reply why, are you low on gas? no.. and he goes back to bed. I wake up about an hour later hot because I had the heater on full blast:) Besides the freezing cold and the hard ground it was fun and I loved meeting new people and telling stories fireside.