It's all coming together!

Come Dine with Me was a major success and it was fantastic to have a night in with the girls while the boys entertained themselves elsewhere. Thanks boys for vacating! We enjoyed some champagne and the southern food was a treat for the girls who'd never tasted anything like it! My key lime cake was delicious (although it was key lime/lemon as 4 grocery stores I looked at were ALL out of limes - I eventually found just one little green guy so had to substitute lemons for the rest of the recipe!) It was still great though! And now, since I was the first one of four to cook I can relax and just enjoy the meals to come! Next one is a week today at my Kiwi friend Lizzie's place. She's a vegetarian so it will be interesting, I'm sure. I hope she at least likes chocolate or sugar so that dessert is guaranteed to be satisfying! By the way, on Sunday I did make a big roast dinner (cooking AND dishes) for 6 of us as all the guys came over - so I think the trade off was worth it for the boys!

I haven't given away too many details about wedding plans yet since they've all been a work in progress. After some serious disappointment when a place quoted us something, then once we were ready to book it decided the original price they gave us was completely wrong...we've found a different place where we will be married! Horseshoe Resort near Barrie has ticked all the boxes for us! It will be on Friday August 5th since weekends were all booked up, but we are okay with that. We've decided since we know all of our families will not likely be able to make it down to Barrie we are going to have a small family/friends ceremony and celebration at Horseshoe and THEN have another party in each of our respective cities. We don't want to miss out on celebrating our marriage with any of our friends and family who think that maybe travelling/staying away is going to be too much - so if that's you - fear not! We are still going to have a couple of great parties in August!

As for other wedding stuff, it's all coming along slowly. I went to try on dresses last Friday night with some girls from work. Thank goodness for them as they can talk sense into my muddled head! Maybe it's because I've never been married or had the experience of finding the perfect wedding dress, but I tell you, I never felt so ridiculous. I tried on 5 different ones. The woman said "well Amy, you have the curse that everything looks good on you". Yes, I'll take that as a very nice compliment, but I did not agree. I looked like a dress up doll and felt so stupid! I think because none of those dresses were "the one" I felt so uncomfortable. The other thing that made me feel uncomfortable was the price! HA! £1800? Um, no thanks. That's "fairly reasonable" here (apparently). Something is telling me I'll have to leave London on this wedding dress quest! I watched a RIDICULOUS program the other night called "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding". It's all about Irish travellers (gypsies) who live in caravans and get married at 16. Their dresses were appalling. The bigger, the heavier, the puffier, the frillier - the better! The dresses weighed something like 150lbs! All putting pressure on their hips - the girls said "the more your hips bleed the better the dress". Well holy camoli thank goodness I dont live in a bloody caravan!!!!!! Haha! Oh side note - we tried to take pictures but because "the designers are afraid you'll copy the design" we weren't allowed. Yeah, LIKE I'm going to make the dress...sheesh. Another wedding dress adventure is happening on Sunday at a hotel where there is an 80% off sale - I have a feeling it's going to be one of those bridezilla warfare events!!! Wish me luck!!!

Work is going well - busy busy still - but it's all very good. I'm really getting some fantastic experience here and truly appreciate the non contact time (something I NEVER got at my old job at that CRAZY school). What I do with that non contact time is not neccessarily work (mostly blogging and writing emails) but I still get all my work done and have a bit of breathing room. Early morning running club was today - it was snowing juuuuuuuust a bit and the wind was quite fierce, but once we got moving we warmed up! Getting out the door at 630 to go running with a bunch of kids doesn't sound like everyone's cup of tea, but it is really pretty good and keeps me going for the rest of the day. Although this is the best job ever I still have to leave it... so Barret and I have interviews on Saturday morning for teaching in Dubai. We're not sure what we want to do yet, but hopefully it will give us a clearer idea if Dubai is somewhere we really want to go. Obviously, I will keep you posted.

Much love to everyone,
Amy