wedding dress shopping & august day in the life

i really dreaded going wedding dress shopping but it turned out great. and i found a dress! read more about that at i scream for sunshine.

DIY engagement photos

we took some cute engagement photos of ourselves as we walked around the college of william and mary's campus. read more about it on i scream for sunshine.

2013 -- week 28 -- our wedding party and an awesome weekend in flagstaff!

all you hear about planning a wedding is how stressful it can be. and i agree, it can definitely be stressful. but our wedding is still light years away so it's not feeling too bad yet. except for the dress. every time i think about anything involving the dress, i'm instantly stressed out. part of the problem is that i hate shopping, especially shopping for expensive things. i'm the kind of gal that needs to mull things over; i can't decide on anything right away. and when something costs more than $20, it has to be something i truly love to even consider buying it. small problem: wedding dresses cost more than $20 (unless i get something from h&m like i've been threatening). also, the idea of spending a lot of money on something i'll only wear once, is a bit of a stresser too. the other part of the problem is the wedding dresses themselves. they're poofy, lacy, long, intensely white, and made out of crazy fabric. they give me the heebie jeebies. so i've been taking it slow with the dress, trying them on when i see a place, but i'm still strategizing on the best way to tackle this daunting part of wedding planning.

i'm sure that i've mentioned it before, but we love flagstaff. it's a smaller, cooler (temperature) tucson. there's tons of climbing, great food, and a great music scene. so when we heard one of rcg's favorite bands, widespread panic, was headed to flagstaff we knew we had to go check it out. they played on sunday night at the pepsi amphitheater just south of flagstaff on I-17, and it was awesome. the space was super cool because it's all lawn seating so you can spread out and dance! we had a great time.

we had a great week, but the best part had to be when our brothers agreed to be in our wedding party! 

(thanks to sc, db, & sn for helping coordinate. we couldn't have done it without you!)

2013 -- week 23 -- a quick trip to mexico and another half birthday!

this week i got to check off two more things form my to do list -- crossing the mexican border by car and visiting a new mexican state, sonora. i think i'm more excited about crossing the border though, because it's my second border crossing in a month! but the best part of the trip was seeing tons of saguaro flowers. they're only supposed to bloom at night, but we were driving early enough in the morning that we still got to see them. and it was awe inspiring. these saguaro cacti are over 10 feet tall, probably over 100 years old, and the tops of each one were covered with delicate little white flowers. it was one of the coolest sights. i wish we'd had the chance to pull over and take some pictures to share with you!

you know how you're only supposed to eat oysters during the months that have an "r" in them? well, we broke the rules this weekend; we ate oysters in june. and they were awesome. because they were from a little oyster farm on the outskirts of puerto peñasco. it took less than two minutes from when they came out of the water to be placed in front of us, shucked and ready to eat. with a fresh lime and hot sauce, they were to die for. 

we ate six dozen in less than 20 minutes. fatties.

kitt peak is about an hour and a half away from tucson, so it's not a place we drive by often. but last weekend, we drove right by it, and couldn't resist the opportunity to pull over and take a couple of pictures. obviously these photos are totally posed because it's during the day and over 100 degrees, but how cute is my boo? 

what did you do last week? anything fun?

ps. bodanzalez boda is up and running for real now. check it out!

pps. i know i promised road trip posts, and i haven't forgotten about them, i've just been so crazy busy trying to get the wedding planned that i put everything else on the back burner. road trip posts will be ready soon. and so will wedding updates!

52 lists -- week 20 -- list your summer goals

my biggest goal this summer is to plan the bodanzalez boda. which is no small task. we're still trying to figure out the wheres & hows of it all, but we have lots of ideas. it's just making those ideas into reality that we need to work on.

ps. for those who didn't already know, the wedding will be in tucson, april/may/june 2014. check back on my blog for updates on planning and for the unveiling of our wedding website.

another big goal of mine this summer is to finally relaunch my blog. when i first started talking about it earlier this year, i only had baby ideas of what i wanted to do and how to do it. but as the year has progressed, i've done a lot of research, learned new things, and come to some conclusions. so now it's just a matter of finding the time to sit down and make changes.



what are your summer goals?

2013 -- week 17 -- summer is coming & our first engagement gift!

this week felt like the calm before the storm mainly because it was a normal week. which was strange, since last week was so monumental. but it was nice; nice to know that in between all of the crazy, and awesome things that happen in our lives, life can continue as usual. as for the coming storm, we haven't started any wedding plans yet (the thought of all that is still way too scary and overwhelming), but it's nice to be gently reminded, in the little things, like the spinning of the ring on my life hand or the congratulations from friends, of our changing relationship while still living our day to day.

2013 -- week 16 -- date night under the stars and our engagement!

growing up i wasn't super athletic; i played soccer for a couple of years, but who didn't? i wasn't good, by any stretch of the imagination. in fact, i was the joker near the goal box who would run up to kick the ball and watch the ball sail past me towards the goal. it was a disaster. i only played a couple of seasons before realizing that it was a waste of everyone's time. i was much more suited to running. i didn't need hand-eye coordination, something i clearly lacked, all i needed was a pair of shoes and a road. now as i've grown up, i've gotten lazy and developed asthma, so i don't run nearly as much as i should. but i do still enjoy being outdoors and getting the blood pumping, so we decided to play kickball (plus we wanted to make friends). we started in the fall and met such great people that we came back for the spring season, and have already signed up for the summer season too. and this season we're actually starting to get good, it's kind of exciting. (check out plan b!)

maybe one the best nights of my life was two summers ago in oaxaca. it was the day after i met rcg, and we went to a lagoon to swim with bio luminescent algae. swimming and shimmering in this lagoon was a once in a lifetime experience. but the night was made so much better, for me anyways, because you could see every star in the sky. you could make out constellations that you rarely could find and you could see both bands of the milky way. it was spectacular. and i got to share it with rcg. it was kind of like our first date. ever since that night, whenever the night is clear and the stars are out, we try and take a minute to enjoy the beauty of the night sky. so it seemed only fitting that we go to kitt peak national observatory, a mountain in the sonoran desert that hosts the world's largest collection of telescopes, for a date night. 

kitt peak has a nightly observing program ($50/person) where you show up before sunset and stay until well into the night to look at and learn about the stars, planets, moon, and the telescopes. we learned so much! and we got to see some of the coolest stuff ever -- the banding on jupiter, saturn's rings, and the craters on the moon. when we looked at saturn it was like a picture out of a magazine or a textbook; when rcg looked at it, his first words were, "holy shit". it was that amazing. and the telescope was powerful enough to show both saturn and jupiter's moons. it was crazy. but the night only got crazier -- after we drove down the mountain (the first mile with no headlights!), rcg pulled over and asked me to marry him! i'm still a little shocked, but in a deliciously happy kind of way.

one year.

thank you lp

for making me go to mexico,

rather than the dr,

to learn spanish.

good things happened there.

and i will forever be grateful.

six months.