My Best Friend's Wedding

Thursday I will be making the cross-country flight to OHIO for my best friend C's wedding. She is the last one of the 15 of us that are still friends from college to be married. I could not be happier for her and her soon to be husband. She has truly found her partner in life. C is the closet thing I have to a sister--her sisters are even sisters to me. Care--I can't wait to be by your side as you say "I do" to wonderful, wonderful man. It seems like only yesterday we were in Dana Point on a beautiful sailboat on cool SoCal Feburary day when Sergio proposed to you. I can hardly believe I kept that secret from you :) Cheers to you and sergio!!

Still in my PJs and loving it plus other randomness..

1) It is saturday morning at 11:15am and I made a personal choice to stay in my PJ's this morning. With all the chaos is going on this month. I decided to forgo Yoga this morning and sleep in. Poor Louie (my cat) didn't know what was going on. He tried to wake me up at 8am when I normally wake up to go to Yoga and when I didn't move, he decided all was okay and he was going to sleep in too. He was cuddled up right next to me with his paws covering up his eyes.

2) We finally were able to get the missing pieces of paper for our BMW. THis all went down last week. Now we can register the car and start on the necessary mechanical issues that need to be fixed in order for me to start driving it. YEAH!! And we can focus on selling our Jeep--which will enable us to be car payment free for awhile!

3)My brother's wedding was terrific. I really do feel 100% about this marriage. What did it for me is when A walked up to the altar to meet my brother. She was bawling the whole walk down the aisle. She took his hand that he held out for her, faced the crowd and looked over at him and mouthed " I love you". My heart melted for my little brother. My mom and I were in tears the whole weekend and we realized why--he has found true happiness and love. Everything that he was searching for, he found in his beautiful bride. I have comfort in the fact that those two will always beat to their own drum and do what they want to do. E and I made a pact that we are going try to get together with them as often as we can because we want to start to forge a closer relationship. My hope is that my brother and A will want to as well.

4)We saw the new Harry Potter movie last night. I remembered why I couldn't get through that book--very dark and scary! E is a harry potter nut! He is dying to receive the 7th book. I decided that I would pick up the series again and read the 6th book and when he is done I will read the 7th. However, me not having any patience at all, I am so dying to hear what happens at the end of book 7.

5) Private or not private blog? I know this question has been raised by other bloggers a number of times lately. Each time I have responded to those internet friends, "do what you need to do, it is your choice." Now when I am faced with the choice and I am not sure what to do. There are few things that I can't blog about just yet for the fear of not knowing who is reading this. Part of me loves the fact if there those whom I do not know reading this blog and enjoy reading it, I would hate to shut them out. On the flip side, this blog has become my diary...i used to keep one as a kid and teenager. However this diary includes the warm advice and thoughts of others that I have come to know through their blogs. I trust and value their opinions so I don't want to hold back more of my thoughts or share in what is taking place in our lives.

6) I want so badly for my parents to sell their house in MI. They are in midst of a move to Atlanta. My dad is there now living in an apartment. Since May he has been separted from my mom. My mom is still in Michigan trying to get their house sold. My parents are high school sweethearts. Together in their marriage they have moved all over the country and have experienced this situation numerous times. However, I think this time the uncertainly of whether or not the MI house will sell has taken its toll on them. I am going to take some time off in September to go hang with my mom. I miss her so much. We were so spoiled when I lived in Chicago and they were in Ohio and then especially when they moved to MI. We were short drive away.

7) My favorite picture of my aunts and my girl cousins.

We laughed, we cried, we partied till dawn...well almost

The wedding turned out better then we all could have imagined. My brother and his new wife were happy as can be. There were many laughs, some tears-- tears seem to happen when our family comes together--our emotions run so close to the surface that the pure happiness evolves into tears of joy.

E and I hung out with my cousins all weekend long and we managed to close down the bar both Friday and Saturday night. Seattle is beautiful depsite the rain.

We visited my friends T and S who now live in Seattle. It has been a few years since we have seen each other. I am so grateful for their friendship. I also met their cute little boy, Owen. He filled me up with cute baby smiles and sent me off on my way with a cute little wave of his hand.

It was a very good weekend! Here is my favorite picture of the bride and groom.

Falling Behind

I am definitely lacking in my posting these days. The main reason is most of the stuff that is going on, I just can't quite talk about yet. Hopefully soon though. I appreciat everyone's thoughts from my last post. Many of you hit it on the head on the cause of my feelings regarding my brother's wedding. Truth of it is, I am not sure what to expect this weekend but I know no matter what I am there to support my brother and his soon wife and welcome them with open arms into our family. Many family members i have not seen since our wedding so it will be great fun to hang out rather then feeling like I need to circle room like we did for ours. My dress is hella sassy and my heels make me at least 5'6 so I am REALLY excited. hee hee.

The one annoying thing we are dealing with is we got scammed or so it seems on a car we recently purchased. We wanted to get rid of our jeep so we no longer have the heavy car payment to get something used with no car payment that would last for a year or two until we can get back on our feet. Once Eli does quit his southwest job and flies for Regional carrier his take home pay will decrease and his loan payments will kick next year--so instead of trying to stay ahead of the game--we got screwed! Bottom line the schmuck that sold us this car--did not give us all the paper work. We have the title but not the bill of sale from the dealership that sold the car to him. In order to register the car we need that. The guy is MIA and not returning any of our phone calls. We tried to call the dealership--no luck--private seller who sells cars wholesale to Mexico. WE got HOOOOSED. The sad thing is I love this little car--1994 black BMW that is in almost perfect condition. We would need to do some work on the transmission but we were more then willing to put forth the $$$ in this car. Blah. Thank goodness we did not sell the jeep. We are just now the proud owners of 3 freaking cars! 1984 volvo, 1994 BMW and a 2004 jeep cheroke. Yes, go ahead and laugh. We are nuts.

Strugglin....

My brother's wedding is a week away. I am sad to say I am not sure how I feel about it. I will back up and let you in on the fact my brother and I have never been close. I was your typically bratty teenager and he was your typical aloof teenager. Never did we see eye to eye. I went to college, he visited me once. He went off to college, I never did visit. I moved to Chicago. I flew him up from school to surprise my parents when they were in town for my mom's birthday. In college he joined ROTC which after graduation he went to Korea for 18 months. He did Army Ranger School, became an Army Ranger. He went off to fight a war in Iraq, twice. He came back-he visited me in Chicago. He moved to Seattle. I am now going to Seattle for the first time next weekend for his wedding.

I barely know his soon to be wife. My husband is in the wedding. I am not. My brother and I were raised Jewish in an inter-faith marriage. My brother converted to Catholicism for his soon to be wife. My husband was asked to do the ceremonial Jewish prayer over the bread and wine for the rehearsal dinner. I cried when I found this out as this is something my grandpa would normally do but what crushed me was that I wasn't even asked to be apart of something that was the only thing my brother and I had in common. I looked at my wonderful, loving, caring husband through my tears and he asked me to stand next to him and we could say the prayers together. He said he would even try to teach me to sing them. This pulled a smile out of me b/c he and I both know I cannot carry a tune.

My mom says she needs me next weekend to be her rock. I am not even sure I can be a rock for myself let alone her. At least I have a cute dress and awesome shoes :)

Pool Bar Jim's Here I come..

I am off to Hilton Head Island, SC. I leave tomorrow night on the red eye from LA to Atlanta and then Atlanta to HHI. I am going for a wedding of a college friend. None of the guys are going, it is just us girls and the kids. This wedding kicks off the last of my 3 remaining girl friends (from College) to get married. M could not have picked a better place to celebrate her marriage. HHI is a little sleepy town. The people are friendly and everything is cheap! And it is where every Ohioan goes for their summer vacations. During the summer months on this little island all you see are minivans with Ohio license plates. Ohioans literally invade the place!

I had the pleasure of being introduced to this little getaway when I was in college. I lived there for a summer with 7 of my best girl friends. That was the best summer of my life. Waitressing and laying out on the beach EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I even managed to bring home some money for the next school year. ahhh such the life.

It will be a nice 4 day weekend to be with my girls and now their little additions--we were laughing as we were planning out our next few days and that we are now planning our mayhem around naptime---my how things have changed :)

It will be a nice getaway--as things are changing again at the Robbins' Nest. I can't talk about it now but will be able to talk about it in few months. Nope, not preggers. (sorry mom)

Celebrity..what???

It was another crazy, hectic and very fun weekend. Friday night, Eli did his first night flight and ended up getting all of his hours in that are required for night flying. He is now up to 25 hours! To get his private pilot's license he needs 40 so he is a little more the halfway there! Saturday we got up, headed to the airport to fly up to the bay area for a wedding. The wedding was nice, the bride and groom looked so happy. There were a couple of mishaps...two bridesmaids fainted. One during the ceremony and the other afterwards. Both were okay. The reception was at a beautiful country club in Berkeley. The view was amazing! As the reception went on, it seems as though I was the only one who was enjoying the open bar. As a result, I became chatty Kathy! I think my solitude in OC has caught up with me b/c anyone that I could have a conversation with, i did and I kept talking and talking...oye!

Sunday the A's were playing the Yankees. We managed to score tickets and made a mad dash to the game. The seats were amazing! The day was amazing and the best part is that the A's won in the bottom of the ninth inning, 2 outs and two men on base and marco scurato hit a 3 run walk off home run to end the game! After the game we headed to the airport to catch our flight back down to Orange County. As we were walking, a guy behind us was chatting us up. I had my Nick Swisher http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=430897
tee shirt on and the guy was like, you guys big swisher fans. I turned around and nodded my head when E was saying yes but now she is starting to dig on Travis Buck
http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=459941
This guy was like, yeah, I know those guys, they are great. "T" is a stud and will be a stud for a long time. Now it didn't quite register with us what this guy was saying. For all we knew, he could know these guys and it didn't dawn on us that he was an oakland A player as well.

We get our seats and we were chatting with a guy in front of us about the game and how wondefully exciting it ended. The guy was like, did you see Bobby Crosby in the airport. We were like no! Then as we relived the conversation with that guy and how he was asking about us being Swisher fans, etc that was indeed Bobby Crosby! Both us of were like DOH! i can't believe we didn't recognize who were talking to. As soon as we got home, we logged onto the A's website and looked up Crosby. Sure enough, it was him. DAMN!
http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=425853