Monday, August 25, 2008

on the eve of the convention

i don't know what rock i was under that i haven't heard this song until today...



mccain will be no different.

obama/biden 08

Saturday, August 09, 2008

dress shopping

so you may recall, from this post, that jason and i are going to be traveling to hawaii in the near future. as part of this trip, we intend to do a vow renewal 'ceremony' on a beach. and while it will be really informal, given that it's on a beach, it will still be a special, meaningful experience to declare to each other that even after ten years, three houses, four kids and two more college degrees later, that we are committed to each other and to our family 'til death do us part.

now, given all that 'mushy' stuff, i wanted to be sure that i still looked cute. as a sahm, my wardrobe is primarily comfort based. i cannot recall the last time i bought a dress, so i was on a mission. the last time i was on a dress shopping mission was for my wedding. check out these 'vintage' scrapbook pages that describe that experience:


i consulted with my friends about where to even look for a dress, and got an offer from tara to spend some time with her and she'd take me to some stores that were sure to have what i wanted. so i packed up the kids and my portable hotel (aka our pop-up camper!) and headed to the detroit area for some the dress finding mission. some of the experiences were the same - we ate breakfast at a starbucks in the macy's...i had an entourage (my wedding entourage was five people...vow renewal was three!).

tara's husband neil got the asian flu and called in sick to work to monitor the tots, while tara, her mom and sister and i headed to toledo to "massive mall". we went to three or four stores and i tried on seven dresses (unlike the one store and 30-some wedding dresses i tried on)...here's the rundown:

first, we've got the one i call 'senior prom'. why, do you ask, did i even try this on? pretty much because it was about the furthest thing from what i was actually going to buy and it was in my size. it actually doesn't look near as ridiculous in this picture as it did in the dressing room.

this next one was cute, but just not quite right. it's cropped a little goofy because the dress i did buy is in the background, and it's 'secret' for now.

then comes 'lady in red'. which is what i sang in the dressing room while i was putting it on. and despite the fact that the woman in the 'stall' next to me said that my singing was better than the music the store was playing, i only sang a small portion of this song. one thing i learned with this dress was that i really don't like the halter top look on me.

this dress was by the same designer as the lady in red dress. it looked really cute on the hanger. once i put it on, however, it was dubbed the 'june cleaver' because it really looked like i needed an apron and some high heels and i was all set to cook dinner.

this one tara's sister dubbed as 'christmas party cute' - cute, but just not right for the occassion. i also thought it was a little long.

and finally, this one was a finalist, but the big flowers were a bit distracting. the style of the dress was fine, it just wasn't the dress.

so there you have it. look for pictures of our vow renewal and the dress i chose in mid-september.

Monday, August 04, 2008