Wedding Fun Fact #3

You've been waiting for this post... right?

That's the groom's cake. It was so tasty! (Or at least what I remember of it. Come to think of it, I don't think I tasted it. But, it LOOKS good, right?)

There isn't really a fun fact about this cake. My mom found it. It looked outstanding. And I'm sure it tasted the same way.

Got to go! Busy day today!

Wedding Fun Fact #2

Today I will do my best effort to write a fun wedding fact on this Thursday. Today is in fact April Fool's day, but there will be none of that in this post.

We tried really hard to make choices in our wedding that saved us some money. In effort to reach that goal, we purchased our flowers from the best place on earth: Cost Co. They did an amazing job. I ordered them months in advance. And despite the fact that it was Valentine's Day, they didn't up the cost one penny. It was glorious. Don't believe me? Here's a picture of our wonderful flowers!

Photo by I-han Huang & Gloria Hwang

Beautiful, right? And, the sent me an e-mail after I ordered them and let me make substitutions. Not only that, but they called me the day they were delivered, twice, to make sure I was happy and knew how to take care of them. Best customer service ever. I highly recommend ordering from Cost Co! Plus, those flowers were outrageously beautiful!

Blog Out.

Fun Wedding Fact #1

Thursday's will make their best efforts to be about Fun Wedding Facts about my wedding. Even if they aren't that fun.
I wasn't prepared at all a day in advance of the wedding. Groomsmen, Robe, and I stayed up until 2 am printing them because BOTH of my printers wigged out on me. Apparently, two printers aren't enough. I'm pretty sure Robe was falling asleep between each set of print outs. We did 10 at a time. We had to wait and let the printer cool off. It was fun. It was interesting. Next time? There won't be a next time! But, if I'm ever helping a bride out, I'll help out by doing these a week or two in advance FOR her.

I'll try and post a picture of it next week... along with FWF #2.

Mrs. Bendig

I am now able to post from my new e-mail. So, here is my first post as Amanda Bendig! It feels awesome. I will try and post more now that I don't have wedding planning to do, but I'm still a super busy woman. Especially since I will be playing catch up. Keep your eyes open for updates.

First thing is first though: I need to catch up on school work, then update my new reader... THEN I can blog!

Until next time...

Mrs. Bendig

What are the blogs?

I've been too busy. Part of it is keeping up with my stud muffin. Here is some proof.

Ian empties everything he finds.

Oh, this is Ian just being adorable. He's practicing walking in hard soled shoes.

And he climbs everything.

He climbs furniture. Above, he's on the table where I try to do my homework.

I've also been busy reading wrong chapters for class, writing ridiculous papers on my learning philosophy, and planning a wedding that is less than a month away! Not to mention work and job searching.

The day must go on.

Graduate School

I've been trying really hard not to post about the wedding until after the wedding. It's rough! Especially because I'm in the last month of planning, that is ALL that I'm doing. So, I will try my absolute hardest to write about something else. (Don't worry, I will give wedding updates after the wedding... one more month!)

Not many of my readers know, but I am now a graduate student. I didn't tell anybody. Just a select few people. I was extremely apprehensive about it. There are a million factors that go into this huge decision. I mean, I have a 14 month old at home, the school is in San Antonio, job, money, etc. The list could go on forever. After many talks with Stephen, we decided it was the best thing for me to do, for the family. It will be another rough two years, but hopefully it's worth it.

I already love my class. Yes, class. Singular. Since I'm getting married this semester, I didn't want to overwhelm myself. So, I went ahead and took the one psychology class I have to take. I'm terrible at psychology. It's always my most difficult class. I don't really know why, I learn about the same theories in other classes, but it is never quite the same. Last year, I came to the conclusion, it's not the class, it's the professors. Psychology professors are all so very strange. And I simply don't get them. Same with psych students, sorry Bones. But, it's true.

I'm also having a rough time trying to come up with my path in graduate school. I don't know if I should get my teaching certificate or not. And if I do, should I get EC-6 or should I get my special education certification? I have never actually worked directly with students with disabilities. However, on every single career test I take, I score extraordinarily high in the special education segment. Last time I answered 80 something percent the same as a special education teacher. I would love to work with kiddos with disabilities, however, I don't know how stressful the job would be. I know that's a little bit selfish. And as I'm typing this, I feel like it's helping me make a decision.

Would a special education teacher PLEASE contact me and talk to me! Lol. Or, if you know someone, please point me in that direction.

Anyways, I need to get back to watching Lost (thanks Brad), preparing for work (my orientation), and reading some more for EDP.

Blog out.

The Cow Jumped Over the Moon

Wedding Invitations? Done! I am mailing them out today. Franny came over yesterday and watched Ian so I could take care of business. Bless her heart. They are wonderful! Expect yours in the mail! I hope.

In other news: Ian went to bed last night, with whole milk. This means, not breastmilk. Then, he proceeded to sleep all the way through the night until about 6 o'clock this morning. It was glorious. It was wonderful. It was several very good adjective combined together! Now, he's playing with toys. He already ate and watched about 5 minutes of Sesame Street. He hates TV, I'm shocked he looked at it for that long.

I must go. I need to clean and things. Busy, busy day today! It's the last day of 2009!

Blog out.

Flower Girl Shopping!

Over the weekend Franny, Ian, Marissa, Lisa, and I went shopping to get Marissa's flower girl dress. It was fun! At first, Marissa was too shy to show us her dresses. She wanted to stay in the dressing room...

 See? She's in her dressing room. I ran to get a picture. Don't worry, I'm not posting the actual dress. You're going to have to come to the wedding to see that one! Keep in mind, the one she's getting is the cutest one. She looked absolutely amazing in every single dress she tried on.

That's the same dress. Isn't it gorgeous?! She FINALLY decided to look at herself in a mirror. She was refusing to look in the mirror. And, there are no mirrors in the dressing room. Don't worry, by the end of the event, we had her twirling around the room!

Marissa talked Lisa into letting her wear heels. So, she's putting them on. Just another adorable addition to the outfits.

Franny came up with a brilliant idea! She was bribing Marissa. Every time Marissa came out to show us a dress AND stood on the circle things that the bride stands on, she got to try on a different tiara/headpiece. Marissa loved this idea. She was WAY more willing to show us dresses after that. Way to go Franny! I'm am beginning to become very tempted into calling Franny, Super Nanny!

It was really funny because she'd always start out timid. Then, she'd open up. And it went that way  with every, single, dress.

Finally, it just wouldn't be Marissa if she wasn't running around in her dresses. Running, eating, playing, holding Ian. You name it, Marissa was probably doing it. With style and grace... in heels! She's a professional already.

I can't wait to reveal the actual dress! Especially because I think we may tweak it a bit. Needless to say, trying on dresses was a success. Now for the shoes... oh shoes. It might be my favorite part.

Blog out.

Scattered

I am missing my memory card. It was in the computer. Now, it's nowhere to be found. I'm sure Ian took it. I need to find it so I can post more pictures of my angel. And take them too.

Let's take a look back at adorable Ian when he was first born:

Could he possibly be any cuter? No. I don't think so. He is perhaps the cutest baby on the planet.

As much as I love Ian, I will now focus my mind energies on another topic. Though, you'll have to keep in mind that Ian is in the chair next to me playing. You know how I write when he's next to me. In that one sentence, he climbed down from the chair and is roaming around. See? He has already stolen the spotlight again.

Before I forget (though I don't know how I could possibly EVER forget), we got a new a/c unit. Or a condenser. We got one of those thingyies that go outside. Yes, we had one before, but it sucked. This new one is awesome! Mainly because it works. And it's pretty. It's bigger, it's grey, it's sleek looking. Overall, I'm pretty happy. Regardless of the 3 day turn-around. It wasn't hot outside, so I didn't mind too much. Oh, what's that? You want a picture of it? Too bad. I need to find my memory card. We have like 3 of them I think.

(Funny side note: Ian will not get rid of his blue circle block or his red building block. So, he's literally back to army crawling around so that he can hold both of them. Then, he climbs up an object with no hands so that he's standing and proceeds to walk around. What an odd baby).

My first potential pair of wedding shoes were too big. They are adorable though! If someone returns my size, I will probably buy them right up. But, I'll wait for them in the right color and size. If they don't get it in, it wasn't mean to be. The search continues.

It is time to finish my morning coffee and play with Ian. :)

It's Raining

It's about time. I'm so excited!! I woke up at 4:30 to some thunder. I stayed up a bit to see if it was true. It's been raining for way more than 5 minutes now. I'm so happy! When Stephen's parents came to visit us, they brought Honey. When she peed, it would roll on the ground. The ground was so hard and water deprived. I'm sure it still is, but this is definitely helping. I looked at weather.com and it's supposed to rain all week. Let's hope that the weather people are right for once. Is anyone else as excited as me?! I'm so excited that I want to get out my Caroline cup and mkake some coffee, but sadly my creamer is at my parents' place. So, instead I'm wasting all of my time that I don't have at zappos.com. I'm a VIP member now, this means free next day shipping. Don't worry, I've only ordered my first potential pair of wedding shoes, and I wasn't VIP yet. They should be here next week. Some time after Ian's costume arrives.

Remember a while ago when I told my bridesmaids to fill out a paper and send it to everyone? It was pretty neat. I even found things out about my bridesmaids. 3 of us were almost named Ariel. That is Franny's real name. And, Amy and I had very similar forms. I don't know what that surprised me. Here is a copy of it, I don't know if you'll be able to read it.

You'll have to click on it to get a better view. Those were the questions that were asked. The last 4 questions were questions that they wanted to know about one another. It was even a little surprising on who came up with what questions! I decided to do this because none of my bridesmaids really know each other. I feel like they should at least have a feel for one another before we all have to be shoved into the same room together. Overall? Success!

Well morning, that is all. I shall relax for the remainder of the morning.

Rituals

I really need to update my 101. I did make a realization though. I wanted to start rituals with Stephen because I didn't think that we had any. We have 2 that randomly popped into my head the other day. Kisses and breakfast.

What?! Well, kisses. Every single morning before Stephen goes to work (and even on the weekend if he wakes up first), I get a kiss. Even if there was a fight the night before. It doesn't matter. I get a kiss. :) It is a great start to each one of my days. Maybe that's why I'm so optimistic these days. I love mornings. I love having them start off with a kiss from Esteban. That is ritual number one.

[As I'm typing this. I don't know if 'ritual' is the right word, but I'm going to use it anyways]. Breakfast! Every Saturday Stephen has been going to Maria's tacos and getting us amazing breakfast tacos. Apparently my parents have been doing the same thing. They are ooooooh so delicious.

I should go mark these off my 101, maybe tonight. On another note, yesterday my mom, Ian, my bridesmaid Franny, and I went to Weddings Unvelied. We looked around and left after an hour. In that hour, I won a $50 gift certificate to a delicious truffle place AND a 15% off of beautiful cakes. My first thought was that I could use it for Ian's birthday that's coming up. But then I thought, maybe I could let Janet use it for the rehearsal dinner cake. Who knows?! I'm really excited about it though. I could have won one more time and I probably did, but we left. It was way past Ian's bed time. He was a trooper.

I will leave you, not with words, but with a picture. Ian smash!

Just kidding... not leaving yet. I ordered Ian's Halloween costume and it shipped today. WE ARE SO EXCITED! I am going to try to keep it a secret until Halloween. But, it will blow your mind hole!

Nothing but a Manic Monday

Hello world! I had a busy weekend. It was my grandma's 70th birthday. It was pretty fun. Ian flirted it up with all of the ladies. He also sucked on marble floor...

I wish I had pictures. But, sadly, they're on my mom's camera. Hopefully I will remember to get them and share them with you.

As far as weddings go, I have made some progress. We have officially chose the location for the rehearsal dinner. We wanted something laid back and that gave a "Texas" feel for all of our out-of-town guests. I think we made the perfect decision. After I finish this blog, I will be working on my "Allow Myself to Introduce Myself." What's that?! It's a little questionairre/survey that I made for all of my bridesmaids. They are to fill it out 4 times and snail mail them to each other and myself. I'm pretty excited about it. I decided to do it because they don't really know each other. If they're going to be in my wedding and throwing parties, etc etc, they should get to know each other. We're not all in the same city either, so I just thought this would be a good idea. I'll share the questions, etc after I recieve them all. I don't want them to know why/how I came up with the questions until then! But, hopefully they like it and think it's fun.

I'm still trying to find the perfect wedding shoes. I think I've narrowed it down to 2 pairs.

Moving on... Ian. He is taking steps on his own more and more now. It's amazing to watch. He's such an amazing little boy. I feel like he's growing up way to fast. I know that people say these things all the time, but I mean seriously. He's almost 10 months old. That's old! I am pretty sure that he understands people for the most part when they talk to him. When grandma says "want some whipped cream," he jumps to her. When I say "no," he gives me the lip. It's really cute to watch his reactions to things too. Oh, my little angel. I know, I know. Where is my weekly dosage of Ian!? Here's a picture from the other morning. I bought Ian a toothbrush so that he could be a big boy and brush his teeth when mommy did!

Cute huh? I know. He thinks he's an adult. It's ridiculous.

I must go now. I have to mail out these things for the bridesmaids and get ready for my second day of the internship!! (Which is majorly fun, by the way)!

Blog out.

Dear Blog Readers

I have no air conditioning so I am sitting in my parent's bedroom at 5 am. I still have not done Save the Dates. Sorry. They will get done when I have air conditioning.

Sorry for the ridiculously short post. More later.

Blog out.

The Tell of the Cursed Apartments

I love my apartments. I don't think this is a secret. I don't know if I've mentioned it before or not, but it is love. We have had 3 different apartments in this complex. I loved them all. The first one, was because they accidentally gave us a 2 bedroom when we wanted a 1 bedroom. They moved us for free into our second apartment. That one was wonderful too. Stephen recently saw the people who live in our second apartment, he says that they look cooler than us. They have musical instruments. I think this makes them way less cooler. That would drive me mad. I am aware they can play instruments all day long. I am also aware that I have a baby who needs to nap. I would like to go to their place when they have kids and play instruments while their child tries to nap. Enough of that. I'm sure they're cool. That isn't the point of this post.

Our complex was turning our office into an awesome, cool place. Right when their plans happened, the first catastrophe happened. Here's how it went down: I was at school all day. Stephen was somewhere... I can't remember where, I'm sure he knows. Stephen comes home and asks if I heard anything. Then, I come home. There are firetrucks everywhere. I counted 10. (Did you even know there were that many trucks in all of Austin?) I forget about them, go to sleep, wake up. There are still 2 firetrucks there. I'm watching the news later and I see our apartments. Apparently, they were on fire. That's not the best of it. It was the building right next to me and Stephen and we didn't notice it was on fire. Don't judge us, we weren't home all day long. In my defense, I was pregnant. That makes this acceptable.

I found the good in the burnt down apartments. For months, we had a security guard drive around at all hours. But, he was only driving around the burned down apartments, which we were next to. Rad. Then the office continued to be built.

Move on a few months (about a year now, come to think of it). Two incidents have occurred. One wasn't at the apartments, but it is still noteworthy. Stephen went for his nightly walk and there was a helicopter and policemen everywhere. After a while he asked a cop what was going on. "Oh, a guy stole a car and led us on a chase. He then crashed into the median. He's wearing dark shorts and a dark shirt" etc etc. Funny, because he described Stephen's clothes. I then made Stephen come home and protect me and Ian. Lol. So, not directly related to the apartment, but close enough.

Finally, last week. I haven't been watching the news so I don't know if it was on there or not. Stephen again is going on a walk (I really need to do these walks, apparently interesting things always happen). He comes back and says there are cop cars driving all through our complex and on the main street and that there is an ambulance, etc in our complex. He said it looked as if they were looking for someone. Bah! I never see any of this! I went outside to check it out, he wasn't making it up. I still have no idea what happened. I do know that when Ian and I were leaving the next day, there was a guy in a forensic vehicle driving around asking people questions. I then saw him put his gloves on when he was talking to one guy... I wonder what happened.

My apartments are a very interesting place. I love them. I know what you guys are thinking, I don't even live in the ghetto. I actually live in a nice place. When I lived in the supplemental student housing on the East side, I constantly came home to cops. But, I don't live there anymore, so it's weird when it happens now.

End of story.

Side Notes:

• Ian took real steps on his own the other day, but he didn't even notice. I know he can do it now, he's just lazy.
• Jackie is a bridesmaid.
• I am really tired today.
• I need to send out the save the dates... the wedding is less than 6 months away. Why am I such a slacker?
• School starts soon.
• Ian is the cutest baby in the entire world.
• I cannot wait to be a wife.
• Ian is currently pretending to read a book. He's even flipping the pages. He is so funny.
• I added a followers link to the right. FOLLOW ME! Jackie complained, so I fixed it.
  

Blog out.

The Goggles of Mommyhood

I haven't posted in forever because I thought that I lost my memory card. I found it. It was in my camera. Don't question me. I didn't want to post without Ian pictures. He is so much more interesting than my words.

You readers should be proud. I have gotten a lot of wedding details decided. I bought things. I scheduled things. I e-mailed vendors. I made a calendar of events. Amazing. Stephen picked out his groom's cake. It is a neat idea. We decided on the the cake-cake... adorable. Budget? Check. Guestlist? Mostly done, I need addresses. Dresses? Check(ish). Oh lovely.

Oh, this is a shocking revaltion, I cooked dinner for the family. A real dinner. Amy did help. But, I cooked. You can start breathing again. I'm trying to cook more.

Okay, onto Ian. He is starting to "talk" a lot more. Still no momma.... just dadda. We are going to the Riverside fountain today. It should be fun. He liked it on the 4th of July. Scarily, after he pulls up onto furniture, he lets go and just stands there... by himself with no help. It terrifies me.

Picture time:

Ian and I this very morning! He's getting so big.

Everything is blurry but Ian, I'm so good.

(You're welcome, for knowing somebody so awesome)

This onsie is adorable. My moms bought it for Ian. It says "I'm no cry baby!" It is perfect, because he is a cry baby.

Stephen took this picture a while ago and thought he was so clever.

I adore this picture of Ian. Priceless.

During the 4th of July, we got some naked pictures. They will be great for when he's older. :)

Austin Energy shut off my A/C yesterday for 30 minutes and it was 80 frickin' degrees up in this joint. It woke Ian up. He was all read and sweaty. I, luckily, have a child who sweats when the temperature is 78 degrees or above. Poor kiddo. It went back down after an hour. The damage was done. He was awake.

Alright. Well, I got to get to work now. Not to mention, drink my coffee.

Amanda out.

4th of July

Happy 5th of July! I hope that everyone had a good 4th. I know we did. I was very nervous about it. Of course Ian had a good 4th last year, but he was in my belly. I just didn't want the fireworks to scare him. Here is a progression of our night:

We are about to leave to go to grandma and T-bone's place. Ian's outfit is adorable. We ended up meeting up the Aaron and Rachel there too. Then we began our journey to the fountain park. (My mom had us an entire picnic all packed up, omg, delicious).

Ian in the water! At first he had clothes on, then he had none, then he crawled right to the middle, the he went flat and was like a worm in the water. It terrified me. Ian LOVES water! I had to run and get the camera. He was putting his face in the water spout you see. Fearless. Do we have ourselves a swimmer? I (and mostly Stephen) sure hope so!

Then he hung out with T-bone and snacked to pass time. He was so excited that he was being allwoed to stay up past his bedtime. It was adorable.

The fireworks started!! Ian loved it. He was just mezmorized by the fireworks. He just starred and starred at them. But, he was exhausted.

Ian is still watching fireworks and trying not to sleep. My mom gave him back to me and he promptly fell asleep during the finale. They let a few fireworks go off after the finale, that woke him up. He slept the whole way back to the apartment. And he slept wonderfully at night.

It was a successful 4th of July! Ian loves fireworks! I hope that everyone's weekend has been wonderful. Tune in tomorrow for Mommy Goggles Monday.

P.S. Amy is coming up on Tuesday for Wedding planning!!

Blog out.

Where, Oh Where Have I Been?!

Wow... what a busy time I have been having. Not all of it was busy though, but I was still out of it. Let me start off by explaining to you that I have a cold, I think. I am congested. Which is okay, I don't really mind not being able to smell or taste. But somehow, I'm thrown off. I'm pretty disoriented (more so than usual). For example, on Friday last week, I thought it was Tuesday. That's not just one day... that is several days off. I was on the very wrong part of the week.

Mix that in with Father's Day, visitors, Eric Clapton, work, baby, wedding planning, it gets exhausting. So, I've been being exhausted. I'm sorry. I will never avoid my blog this many days in a row again. So much happened, that I need more than one post to talk about it. The following topics will be talked about within the next few posts:

• Father's Day
• Amy!
• Wedding
• Eric Clapton
• Ian

Father's Day was awesome. I cannot remember if I already wrote about it or not. But, I'm going to tell you about it anyways. It was awesome. Stephen's parents came up from Houston and we all had lunch at my parent's place. My mom's brother came too because it was his birthday. We had amazing steak and shrimp. I'm assuming it was amazing because 1) it usually is and 2) I'm sick remember? I couldn't actually taste it.

Stephen couldn't figure out what to get his dad because the man has everything he wants, much like my dad, but we'll get to that later. Stephen ended up going to Spec's and getting his dad some delicious beer and a mug that says "Party Naked." Oh Stephen. The beer was a great idea. Stephen and his dad love drinking beer of all kinds. The mug... need I say more?

My dad got some binoculars. They are specifically for football games. I did much research on them and they are awesome. He had a pair, but they were no good... I had to give him an upgrade.

Stephen has been whining nonstop about wanting an external hard drive. I saw no point in it. His computer has uber amounts of memory on it. However, I couldn't think of anything else to get him for Father's Day that he really wanted. So, I ordered him an external hard drive. It is where we store EVERYTHING now. I guess we shouldn't bog down our computer's space.

Anyhow, Father's Day was uber. Needless to say, there will be some awesome information coming your way over the week (and next week). My wedding planning has finally gotten off the ground! Ian has had some awesome developments too.

Tune in later!

Blog out.