"Terry says the only reason he signed the birth certificate is because he was drunk on moonshine!"

I haven't written a post in a very, very long time.  I know that, and I'm sorry, but I will explain it all here in this blog.  July was flippin crazy!  Eric and I got married and went for a week on our honeymoon, and as soon as we got back, the kids had only 6 days until school started, so we had to get them registered and shopped and get their schedules set, plus re-teaching them all of the rules of the house.  Little Man was a bit nuts for the week and back to square one on the testing limits department since he'd spent a week with grandparents.  This blog post is probably gonna be long.  I'm going to write it in pieces.

Firsty first!  WEDDING!  Dudes!  It was simply amazing.  I know most of you read my Facebook and have seen all of the 8804 pictures I've posted, so I'm only going to post a few of my favorites here.  First and foremost, I am OFFICIALLY AND LEGALLY a stepmother! (Click pics to make them bigger)

The dudes seemed pretty happy at the wedding.  Big Man didn't want to take off his tuxedo.  Little Man threw his jacket, vest, tie and shoes off as soon as he finished walking down the aisle.  He started undressing before he was even back to his seat!  I promise to you that I did not teach him stripping as a life skill.

Ok, ok, I need to back track a little bit to a few days before the wedding.  Eric and I hired a photographer that also happens to be a long-time friend of mine, but he lives in Las Vegas.  Therefore, our "engagement" photos didn't happen when we got engaged.  Rather, they happened two days before the wedding when he flew into the city.  We went to Broad Ripple Park to shoot them, and it was just beautiful out there.  Even though we took some pictures in a clearing near the pool, and the park itself was blaring loud, inappropriate rap music at high volumes.  It was odd.  The pool was full of little kids.  Anyway, here are some of the shots we got:

Ok, ok, so that's that.  It was really a lot of fun.  The next day was our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.  That was NOT fun.  It was really stressful for me.  I had no idea what I was doing, but everyone kept asking me what to do during the rehearsal, and then when I made a decision and told someone what I wanted them to do, a dozen people would chime in as to why that was a bad idea, and we should do it their way.  It wasn't that their ideas weren't good, because they were, it was just a load of stress on me.  There seemed to be constantly more than one person talking to me at all times, so I'd get very confused.  Besides, there was a wedding coordinator there for the whole thing.  And in the end, we ended up doing exactly what SHE said about every detail, since she was the most experienced one in the room.  I wish she hadn't been so quiet and had stepped up to take charge instead of waiting until everyone was done yelling across the room at me and quietly saying, "Karen, I think we should do it this way."  I should have just shouted, "Listen up!  Do whatever Priscilla tells you to do!"  Then I wouldn't have wanted to kick myself in the shins.  As it was, the rehearsal nightmare was only an hour and a half out of my life, and it went well in the end, and then it was time for the rehearsal dinner, which was just what the doctor ordered.  No fancy, shmancy to-do for us, no, sir.  We just invited the whole entourage over to play in the sprinkler and have a cookout.  It was a good time with good family, and it was perfect.

Ok, listen, I just left to go do some errands, and one of them was to the library, and seriously, dudes, w.t.f?!?  Has library etiquette completely changed, or is it just my ghetto-ass side of town?  I'm unbelievably pissed.  That was my only fun activity for the day, and those jerks completely ruined it.  Listening to a radio with NO HEADPHONES, several people talking on the phone, and the librarians not doing a dang thing.  One lady was arguing on the phone and shouting while sitting at a computer.  What kinda....ARG!

Back to regularly scheduled happiness.  WEDDING DAY!!  Let's just say it was maaagnificent, and here are some pictures.  If you can't tell, I'm a damn happy bride.  It's been a couple of weeks, and I can say I'm a damn happy wife, as well.  I officially had my name changed yesterday (and got a parking ticket in the process, boo).

First off, as I mentioned in a previous blog, we are crazy about action films.  We fell in love watching action films together, and we wanted to incorporate that into our wedding in some way, even though we had a formal to-do planned.  We got married at a theatre, and the theatre had some poster boxes out front, so we used those, and our friend Stephanie made these for us to put there:

And we had the marquee!

It was really beautiful at night.  Here are a couple of pictures of the ceremony.  I was very giddy during the whole thing and giggling, etc.

On another note, I have a double chin, and I hate it.  When did my face get fat?  I do not know.  The rest of me is not fat.  I read that chewing gum can help it, but 1) I hate chewing gum, and 2) isn't chewing what got me into this predicament in the first place?  Oooh, I need to go clean the kitchen for the only time today.  More on that later.

We went to Key West on our honeymoon!  We were totally nerdalicious on it, too, and did a ton of geocaching.  (Geocaching.com, check it out)  We flew into Ft. Lauderdale and drove down to the Keys, and just had a good road trip together.  Eric and I travel very well together.  There was a drawbridge going up on the way there, and that was pretty cool, and then a ship flying pirate flags went under it.  Our first few days at our hotel were awesome.  I think we were the only ones there.  It was seriously relaxing and exactly what we needed.  We did a lot of walking and bike riding and lying by the pool and watching movies and just not having a care in the world...until Thursday haha.  The hotel filled up on Thursday.  Key West is a party town, which we didn't exactly know much about when we chose our location.  That's really not our style.  Our hotel was on the "quiet" end of Duval St., but even so, it had its own piano bar, which was right outside of our hotel room, and very, VERY loud until late at night.  We didn't sleep well on Thursday, Friday or Saturday, and we had to leave Sunday morning at 5 a.m. to drive up to meet our plane.  After the third day of no sleep, we were kind of irritable, though we did have quite a few afternoon naps.  When we left there was a naked man outside of our room on the patio.  He was still drunk.  Not really our scene.  We enjoyed ourselves, but we likely won't go back.  We did like going somewhere we've never been before, and we went off the beaten path quite a bit, saw some parks and beaches and did some scavenging for geocaching, and then we went parasailing!  I was terrified but excited.

I am really scared of the water.  I wasn't afraid of going up in the air at all.  I'm not afraid of heights, but the boat, dudes, the BOAT!  I'm afraid of the ocean; and, furthermore, I don't like to get wet.  It's a complete sensory issue.  I can't really describe the feeling when water or Kool-Aid or spit or anything liquid touches my skin.  I can't tell if it's the getting wet part or the instant cold feeling as the water is drying or what.  It's not exactly pain, but I think it triggers the same feelings in my brain.  I DO go swimming and take showers, etc., I just have to know that I'm about to get wet and that there's going to be a towel nearby to get myself as dry as possible as quickly as possible.  I take very, very quick showers, and I dry off while still standing in the shower still immediately.  I just don't like it.  So, I was scared to go parasailing, but I'm not going to let this crap stop me from going on new adventures.  They promised me they wouldn't let me get wet, and they didn't, which I appreciated.  The view was amazingly beautiful.  Eric and I got to go up together.  Unfortunately, my Dramamine stopped working as we headed up into the air, and by the time we were back on the boat, I was feeling it.  I ended up vomiting over the side of the boat in front of ten people :(  That was embarrassing.  It was still a good experience for us.

Man, this is a long blog entry.

Anyway, we got back home, and a few days later, the kids started school!  I was a worry-face, like usual, about the Little Man.  We got all of their supplies, and we practiced some more writing and reading and numbers, etc.  We got a few new clothes and set up a school day schedule.  We weaned the Little Man off of naps and pushed the Big Man's bedtime back an hour, as he was waking up at 5 or 6 a.m. every day.  The Sunday before school started (yesterday), I was a wreck.  I was worried about the preparation for the Little Man.  As I've mentioned before, the Little Man is a challenge.  He's much less challenging than he used to be.  It's been he and I for so long now, working out the kinks in our relationship and working on his behavior issues.  His preschool teacher had told me that he was academically ready for kindergarten, but socially he wasn't there, yet.  I had seen so much improvement between ages 3 and 4-1/2 with him staying home with me and learning with me that I felt confident that by the time kindergarten rolled around, he'd be ready, and I told Eric so.  As the days toward kindy crept forward, though, I began to have my doubts, and I started to worry.  I was worried that someone would take a toy from him, and he'd hit them or scream at his teacher or not listen, etc.  I'm worried that everyone will know how to tie their shoes, and he won't.  I was worried that he would hate school.  He's been saying he doesn't like school ever since the middle of preschool last year.  Both boys flat told me they weren't excited for school to start, and they didn't want to go, and school was boring.

As it was, the first day of school was yesterday.  There was some confusion, as we'd gotten in the mail a card that said their bus number, and that's not the bus that picked them up.  Apparently there was the same mix up on the way home, because the bus was 30 minutes late, and Big Man said they made him go to the office with a note to fix it because he wanted to go on the right bus, and they kept telling him it was the wrong bus.  I was a wreck waiting outside for them for that long.  They got home, and Little Man tells me that he's tired of school already, and that two girls on the bus are mean to him.  He's got little bullies already :(  I asked what he did about it, and luckily, he didn't scream or hit them.  Big Man said he told the bus driver on them, and that was that.  Score one for the dudes!  They sat in a different seat this morning.  Furthermore, after Little Man heard that his big brother had stood up for him and taken care of the problem, he began shouting, "I love kindergarten, and I love my friends, and my teacher, too!!"  Then the boys both pretended to be teachers, and Little Man kept calling them "Mrs. Little Man and Mrs. Big Man" haha.  I'm really happy that my paranoia amounted to nothing so far.

Speaking of....the kids are getting home in an hour, and I've not finished my cleaning that I had planned for the day.  Since they go to school, I only have to clean the kitchen once a day!  It's a flippin miracle!  I usually clean it three times a day at least, if not more.  These two can't eat a Hershey's Kiss without somehow making it look like kitchenpocalypse 2011 in there.  I have loud music on that has curse words in it, too!  And, I watched Maury today, which is where the title of this post came from.  Never.again.  So much shrieking on that show, I thought the kids were still home. Crazy!

Ok, gotta get to it.