Wedding excitement - RSVPs

Matt and I dropped 125 wedding invitations into the mail nearly two weeks ago and what a relief to have that major task off our plate. And now I have a new favorite part of wedding planning: checking the mail! I'm already an excited mail checker, its almost always the first thing I do after work and if Matt checks it before me, I get a little bummed. But now it's ten times more exciting because our RSVPs are rolling in!

Every day I rush to check the mail and pull out all the RSVPs and then Matt and I guess who they are from based on the post stamp location. There are a ton of Seattle peeps so we almost always get those wrong, but some other cities are easier for us to figure out. So far we 52 confirmed guests. It's incredibly exciting to see all of the friends and family who want to celebrate our wedding with us. I can only imagine what it will be like to actually see all of these people in the chapel at Gonzaga and then eating, drinking and dancing the night away with us!

Today we had one RSVP come in that left us cracking up (I'm still giggling) and a little embarrassed. Some how one of our RSVP postcards was only printed on one side. The address and stamp side was fine but the RSVP side was completley blank! I guess somehow the printer missed it. So Josh and Joy got it and were probably a bit confused as to how to reply and had to write in hand "Josh and Joy plan to attend" on a completely blank postcard. Oops! Not sure how we didn't see that before it went out, but I am just hoping it was the only one! Totally hilarious. Here's what our RSVP card should have looked like:

Mac N Cheese Attempt 2

Way back in February I decided to try out Mac N Cheese recipes, inspired by a Mac N Cheese of the month club I learned about. Turns out I can't keep up with a once a month plan and as soon as the weather got warm I haven't had much desire to cook Mac N Cheese. But we did try out a new recipe in April when Megan and Becca came to visit.

The recipe was really hard to follow...it literally took Matt, Megan and me to interpret the directions.

The presentation was good though:

We didn't love the overall recipe but we did enjoy the top crust layer. Instead of the big chunks of bread we used in our first attempt, we use shredded bread and highly recommend this technique.

And of course, like any good Mac N Cheese, it smelled delicious. YUM!

Final verdict: Recipe was too hard to follow and we will not try it again but did pick up a few new techniques we can apply to future batchs of Mac N Cheese. I'm already planning our next attempt, it involves a unique and tasty presentation of the Mac N Cheese. Stay tuned...

Heading west!

Two weeks from today I'll be flying into here:

I can't wait to be back home for a visit. I haven't been back to Portland/Vancouver/Battle Ground since Christmas time when it was a snowy, icy mess! I arrive on Wednesday the 26th and leave on Monday the 31st. During that time I'll have two dress fittings, my bridal shower, hope to accomplish some wedding-related DIY tasks and then of course I'll be soaking up lots of quality time with family and friends. And I promise to post a blog with pictures after the trip!

I'm alive, just busy!

Wow, I definitely fell off the blogging bandwagon...Matt also had the same problem, a sign that this is just a very busy time for both of us.

I've been consumed with work, much more than I care to be and I am hoping the demands taper off by the end of August. It turns out that Summer is our busy time in charter school enrollment. We have quite a few new schools that are taking up a lot of my time, but the biggest drain on my time is Louisiana. Before this job I new very little about Louisiana and the more I learn about it, the less desire I have to ever come back. Since June 30th I've been in Louisiana (in either Baton Rouge or Shreveport) for 21 days. I calculated that and that means I've spent 52.5% of my time here. Over 50%!?! Crazy, huh?

Time is just flying by with all of this work travel and having to work weekends, late nights, etc. Since the last time I blogged:

• Matt and I celebrated the 100 days until the wedding! Now we are down to 74 days.
• We attended two weddings in one day
• We celebrated our engagement anniversary (from afar because as you can guess, I was in Louisiana)
• Matt's parents came to visit us
• I booked travel to come home late August for my dress fittings and a bridal shower
• We booked our flight and hotel for the wedding week!
• Matt kicked off the interview process in NYC with 15 interviews with different schools from Seattle U to Northeastern and lots of places inbetween

Well I have lots I want to blog about but most of those things include pictures so I will have to wait to blog until I'm back in Knoxville. I miss blogging!