I bet you're wonderin'...

why I haven't posted anything new in a while? You're thinking "she can't have fallen off the planet because she's been commenting a bit." So why haven't I been posting?

Mostly too busy to even think of anything blog worthy. But I've been toying around with an idea. hee hee

I also wanted to give Darly a chance to answer Island Girl's questions...but she's been busy too. I'll have to do that in a separate post. And thanks to Bone we will be offering a more frequent Darly session...it may be more questions you ask her...it may be (like Scone suggested) questions that she asks you!...or it may just be her very own creation. The gal has talent...don't know where she might be getting that from at all.

So here's the idea I was playing around with.

How much does it cost to go to your neice's wedding?

Well let me see...

Airfare for 3 on Southwest: $714.30
Car Rental from Avis w/ discount: $166.32+ taxes
Car parking in Denver: $29.94+ taxes
Hotels (yes two...one in hometown & one in wedding site town): $384.45
Kennel for animals: $108.50
update shots for dog to stay at kennel: $145 WAIT A MINUTE! All I really needed for her to stay at the kennel was the kennel cough shot so that's: $16.50 The rest of that was the "well it's due next month, so you might as well save yourself a trip..." stuff
Haircoloring/cutting & styling for me: $129+tip

And finally (I think, unless something else comes up) a gift for the Bride & Groom. I was telling DH that whatever we give we should also add on the price of the Flowergirl dress that neice sent us...so say we were planning to spend $100, we should spend or give $135 to cover the dress and maybe more than that to cover shipping the dress to us as well.

I should also mention that we're being sneaky. So far I haven't heard anything from the bride or her mother that we need to be in town early for anything...ie. a bridal shower. (When I married into this family my MIL threw me a shower so that all of DH's female family members could meet me. It was very nice and I got a lot more loot! At the same time they had a shower for DH with all the men & the kids. So no, he didn't get another bachelor party. ha ha) We get in one day before the wedding rehersal...we aren't going to tell anyone that and will let them know we are there at about 8pm of the day before the rehersal. That way we have an entire day to ourselves to do what we want...otherwise we could get stuck at SIL's house doing nothing and eating food that we don't really want.

But here's the deal. In Dh's hometown where niece lives there's a tradition of CRASHING Wedding Receptions. If you're getting married in town...expect for the entire town to show up at your reception. MIL said at some receptions they hire a "bouncer" to keep uninvited guests out. But MIL says that the uninvited guests usually bring gifts, so she didn't think the "Crashers" were a big deal and kinda liked the tradition. But neice is on a tight budget for her wedding and she wants a formal sit down dinner...in order to afford this she has a very small guest list. In fact SIL was talking to her cousin/best friend about the plans and mentioned the date...so cousin was all excited and planning to come to the wedding when SIL had to tell her that she wasn't invited. So to avoid the wedding crashers, neice is having her wedding 2 hours away from hometown...which is why the extra hotel is necessary. DH & I were bummed because this means we won't be able to attend Church in his hometown. While I've seen the Church where he was baptised, I've never been to a service there.

I hope that DH isn't keeping a running tab on how much this is all costing because my mom got all whiney when she heard we were going back to Michigan this summer. Dh said we would try to go visit her in October when we normally take our family vacation...might have to stay with her to afford it. YIKES! I just thought of a pretty good idea... arrange a house swap with my brother & his family. We could go stay at his house in Florida and they could come stay here in our house...we use each other's cars & take care of eachother's pets...and then have our vacations. Hummm? I wonder if my husband & brother would go for this idea? I'm thinking NO!