Lulu's Bad Day

Poor Lulu. 

The morning started off a little on the rough side. She knew she was in for it when I started combing out all her hair tangles (which she hates with a passion) only to dump her in the kitchen sink for a bath. I toweled her off and she had her usual "spaz-attack" where she runs around the house for almost an hour at full speed rubbing her ears around against the carpet. She hates having water in her ears! 

While Lulu was running around, I decided to give Buster (we are also sitting my parents' dog) a bath being that he is the smelliest dog alive. I had just gotten him wet in the bathtub when I heard some thumping against the wall and Lulu screaming her head off. I quickly shut off the water, letting Buster escape the tub tracking water EVERYWHERE. I raced out to see what happened and found Lulu hiding under my bed still whimpering. 

From the sound of the thumping, whatever she did happened in the guest room. It looked like she jumped on the guest bed to rub her ears against the sheets (ew) and fell off the bed. Somehow, some way, in that process she hurt herself badly! I thought maybe she would get over it, but after an hour of yet more screaming every time she tried to walk, I called the vet. 

Of course my vet said they were booked, but they gave me the number of another one. I called the second vet and they said I could drop her off for about 3-4 hours and one of the vets could maybe look at her in between surgeries. Excuse me? Drop my baby off? Hell no!

So I searched the yellow pages and found a vet in West Seattle. They were definitely more expensive than my usual vet, but I didn't care. I took Lulu there and miraculously she started walking around making friends with everyone. I was actually a little pissed- wasn't she in severe pain? She made me look like an overprotective crazy dog lady!

Well, then the vet touched her tail and she started squealing all over again. He couldn't tell if it was dislocated or broken so they did an x-ray. Turns out Lulu broke her tail!  

She is very depressed about all this as you can tell. I am also very depressed about all this because if her bone doesn't heal in 3-4 weeks, we will have to AMPUTATE HER TAIL! They vet is semi-optimistic that she will heal because she is still young and the break did not go all the way through the bone. It was more like a nasty crack than a complete break.

So now, Lulu's tail has to be in a splint for 3-4 weeks and we have to take her in once a week for them to re-splint it. She's also hopped up on pain meds. I feel so so bad! 

I will keep you updated on the tail situation when I know more... Keep your fingers crossed for the tail to stay! Be PRO TAIL!

New Stuff

Moving on to bigger news, Lowell and I got some new STUFF for the house. 

My parents were up visiting last weekend before leaving for France for 4 weeks! Ever since Lowell and I started getting wedding presents, we have experienced a serious storage problem. We just do not have enough cabinet space for all of our fancy new items! I guess that is one of the set backs to being spoiled. Lowell and I have been dreaming of a hanging pot rack where we could store our cookware and free up some space in the cabinets. My parents decided to buy it for us as an early wedding/shower/whatever present!  

It was a family-effort to hang it up properly (nothing worse than finding studs in the wall in my opinion) and we love it! Thanks Mom and Dad! And thank you too, Crate and Barrel!

I also just had to share Lowell and I got new barstools for our counter area! We got them from Cost Plus World Market at a good price! Lowell and my Dad had to drive all the way up to the boonies (A.K.A. Lynnwood) because all the other locations were sold out. Not bad for $35 each! 

Hike with Lowell's Dad

Lowell and I both had Friday off last week and went on a hike with Lowell's Dad! It was in the Mnt Rainier National Forest, called "Crystal Peak". It was a little more grueling than expected and we were all sore the next day. Check out the pics!

Starting out. Shirts on. No "Parker sweaty-back" yet... (It's a genetic condition)

Up and up and up

Jim pretending to be bear behind me (I have a bear phobia)

There she is!

Finally there! Amazing views of Mount Rainier and 2 alpine lakes. At the top of the world! Now getting down... ugh...

High Tea!

For my bridal shower, my best friend/m-o-h (that's matron-of-honor), along with my bridal party planned an adorable "tea party" wedding shower for me! It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. I will let the pictures speak for themselves:

The dessert display ... mmmm

How adorable is this little tree Emi made? She hung a bunch of mini-spoons, spreaders, powdered sugar dusters, etc. along with the cake cookies. I got to take the tree home at the end of the party so now I have these little mini servers to use at my next party! The best part is the yellow spoons. Not only is yellow my wedding color, but matches the accent wall I painted in my house! 

As if putting together that tree wasn't enough, Emi also made HOMEMADE petit fours (a.k.a mini cake bites covered in fondant) with a "B" written in icing on the top of them! 

Tea sandwiches, homemade scones, yum yum! Emi even found napkins with a "B" on them to use. How does she think of everything?!

Enjoying our tea party out on the deck. I'm not smiling a big smile because my mouth is full of yummy food! My sister, Ashley/m-o-h (that's maid of honor) came all the way from Spokane to come to the shower. Thanks, Ash!

Us playing "Fiance Feud" (Emi's spin on "Family Feud".) The girls broke up into teams and tried to guess items in categories like "Lowell and Becca's Favorite Food" etc. Kelsey, who hasn't known me as long as everyone else actually got the most right! What a perceptive lady!

Then of course came present time! I told everyone I might have withdrawals after the wedding because I've gotten so used to opening presents. It's easy to feel like a spoiled brat! 

(Cute wrapping job, Amy!)

My ever-growing rehearsal bouquet and Mollie. She gave me the serving set that Lowell and I will use to cut our cake at the wedding! Isn't that sweet? 

As if Emi didn't go above and beyond enough, she also made me a cook book! She emailed my family members and asked them all for the recipes to their favorite dishes. She entered them into this website called Taste Book where you type in the recipe, add a photo and they send you a custom made book.  (With extra spaces for recipes to be added!) One of my favorite presents by far! It is very touching to flip through the pages and see what family and friends included. It makes me feel very loved! 

Thank you to all of my WONDERFUL FRIENDS! It always amazes me how much they are there for me and how much they care! I am so lucky! 

Arriving at a mail box near YOU

Our wedding invitations! 

Trying to be the most frugal bride I can be, I decided to make my own wedding invitations. It was a little extra work, but actually really fun to do it myself. I found the yellow color I wanted at a store called PaperZone. When I asked the lady who worked there about the paper, she told me some amazing news! The paper came in "parent sheets" - a.k.a. huge sheets of paper that PaperZone cuts down to the size you want it to be. The parents sheets were only $1 each and one parent sheet gave me 30 small sheets!

With my yellow paper already cut down to size, all I did was buy off-white card stock and printed 4 invitations on each sheet. (We drove all the way up to the Everett PaperZone that was going out of business to buy the paper at 30% off. We are getting really cheap in our old age!)

 

Then I hired a professional paper-cutter to cut them down to size for me. He's pretty cute for hired help, I'd say! He ended up not charging me a dime!

Once everything was cut down to size, my bridesmaids Emi and Mollie came over to help me assemble them. It took about 3 hours with all of us working together.

It probably would have taken less time if I wasn't such an idiot! I counted up our invite list to find that we were inviting around 210 people... so I planned to make 210 invitations... Thankfully, after making about 170 invites Mollie pointed out that most invitations went to houses of at least 2 or 3 people. Ahhhh! I have PLENTY of extra invites now! The next picture is of Mollie' fancy double-sided tape tool. It was a lifesaver and really fun to use!

Special thanks to Mollie, Emi, and my hired paper-cutter for making these effective yet inexpensive invitations possible! 

P.S. If you have received an invite, please RSVP as soon as possible! Also, don't forget to fill in your name on the RSVP so I don't get too many nameless RSVPs in the mail. It can be hard to figure out who they came from! :) 

Deer Creek Hike

Okay, so Lowell was going to blog about this hike, but he is making brownies instead. So, I guess I'll take the lead on this one!  Just right off of the I-90 corridor is a little hike called "Deer Creek" that is actually so much more than just a creek...

We did about 10 miles total round trip, but we got to see a lot!

The views from the valleys were gorgeous. 

What you do not see in these pictures are the huge numbers of FLIES. It was a really warm the day we went on this hike, and the flies were driving me crazy. Lowell accidently swallowed one. But not me, my mouth was fixed tightly closed just in case...

 

Look at that picture. We should be on a Nature Valley box of granola bars.

At the top of the hike was a beautiful lake (we forgot the name of it...) where we ate our sandwiches. Lowell was so hot he was determined to go for a dip in the water. He didn't want to get his khaki shorts all wet, so instead decided to swim IN HIS UNDERWEAR. I told him it was gross- almost like a baby swimming in the water with a full diaper, but he didn't listen. So, I did what any good fiance would do, I took pictures of him! Haha! This on is PG for the kiddos...