Wedding Dress Success and Tubing Disaster

~ Dress Success ~

My mom came to visit last week in the hopes of finding me a wedding dress that would make me look “bridal.” I assured her that I would not be wearing neon pink, black or anything in between, so the chances of me looking “bridal” on my wedding day (in a year) were high.

My mom, friend Mo, and I set off for the bustling metropolis of Spokane, WA and proceeded to spend a whole day shoving huge white billowy chiffon, satin, lace, polyester, and other synthetic fabrics over my head. My favorite fabric of the day was tulle. The more tulle there was under the dress to poof it, the bigger tool I felt like – Ha! Some of the dresses even stood up on their own when you took them off!!! Mo was a pro dresser/un-dresser and even helped me visualize by shoving all extra tulle between my legs to de-puff some out of control dresses.

The wedding industrial complex will tell you that accessories are a must:

It will potentially be snowing at the wedding, so this is a must:

Mo even found a dress to wear to the occasion!

After 4 stores, 30 dresses, 1 pushy bridal wench and 3 nice sales-ladies…we decided it was time for some fancy drinks. Key lime, chocolate and orange-sickle, best cocktails ever!

The next day I found the perfect dress at a wonderful store called Marcella’s. Marcella even made the dress herself! I had to leave it behind, but will get to see it next year…and so will you. Yay!

Cute Blue pic of the week:

Blue is bad in many ways, but chewing things up is not (usually) one of them. That is why we thought it was strange that she found some bridal brochure and ate half of it while we were at work. It can only be one of two thing; she does not want us to get married because she is jealous and wants Matt all to herself, OR they dip those bridal brochures in chocolate to get you more in the mood to buy a dress….I would not put it past those slippery sales-ladies!

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to go along with this tale. I did however include a re-enacted moment for you to enjoy.

~ Tubing Disaster ~

We were dying of heat on Sunday, and my mom had heard our wonderful stories about tubing the various rivers around town, so we decided to hit the Bitterroot for a float. It’s the flattest, slowest moving river, so we thought it would also be a great time to try Blue out on her first float EVER. We joked to my mom about the waterfalls and rapids she would have to navigate and she was a ball of nerves by the time we got to the river. We even drafted Blue’s dog friend Zorra to teach Blue the ropes of floating a river, and we were off!!

My mom and Blue started off a little shaky (even through the river was moving like .5 miles an hour) but quickly got their river legs under them and were bobbing happily downstream. Blue hates to swim, so she trotted along the shore with Zorra in their matching red life-vests looking adorable.

About a mile into the four mile float, Blue saw a deer on the shore and was gone in a red flash into the woods. Matt and I kicked over to the shore and Matt climbed up an embankment to try and chase her down. I stood there listening to some loud hissing and realized Matt had popped his tube on a branch. I tried to plug it with a wet (unused) dog poop bag to no avail. I kept my finger over the hole to stop the leak and tried to think, what would MacGyver do?

In the meantime, my mom had grabbed a branch in the middle of the river 100 yards down and was hanging off of it with all her might. At about 10 minutes she let go and I watched her float away, all four limbs flailing. What worried us was that she made it very clear in the first 5 minutes that she lacked the ability to steer the tube at all. Luckily she was still a spec in my sights when we found Blue and pushed off again.

Matt used his finger to plug the hole for about 5 minutes while we frantically kicked down the river to catch mom. But alas, the hole became the size of his hand and the tube deflated. Blue was annoying the crap out of us by scratching at our legs to get on the tube. Because she is a brat and always gets what she wants, I pulled her up to ride on the tube with me. Picture this, one inflated tube carrying 1 deflated tube, 2 drag bags filled with beer (that we never had the chance to drink), one standing dog, me in the tube, Matt hanging off the back and Zorra circling us in the water – what a special family portrait.

We caught up with mom down the river, and then she proceeded to get beached on a shallow part right in the middle and Matt had to walk up the river about 200 yards to get her up and out of her tube. Many tubing flotillas passed by my mom, including a topless chick who gave her some sage advice, “you should just stand up.” Duh.

While dealing with beached mom, the dogs decided to get into some mischief and found a dead animal carcass on the shore and took turns rubbing themselves all in it. Both of them were completely covered in black dead animal goo when they finally heeded our yelling and stopped rolling. A couple teenage girls on the shore thought it was cute that they were covered in “mud” and pet them – Huge mistake! The smell was so bad that I secretly hoped Blue would run away again so I would not have to put her in my car or bath her.

I could finally see the take-out at the bridge and have never been more exhausted from a recreational activity that is supposed to be relaxing. I tried to help mom out of the tube while some good samaritans on the bank tried to get a cactus the size of a plum unstuck from Zorra’s nose. Cactus safely removed and feeling much better, Zorra pranced over to a dead fish and swallowed it whole before Matt could pounce on her.

Safe to say that this float was Blue’s first and last one – I hope she enjoyed herself!

When we asked my mom what she thought, she replied that it was SO FUN and she wanted to do it again!! And you know what, I couldn’t agree more.