Cremes

I’m still recovering from the whirlwind that was my first American Thanksgiving. It’s almost seems like less of a stand-alone holiday and more of a gateway to a month-long frenzy. It was pretty crazy - Thursday we went and had dinner with family and chatted and stuff - the next day it was Christmas. Or so it seemed. People were fighting each other for shopping and good deals, stringing up their lights, playing holiday music. It was sort of crazy! Not to be non-spirited, I helped decorate my in-law’s Christmas tree, looked over holiday recipes, planned my own contribution (a cake!) and dug out my holiday music. My own tree is still only half decorated, but I’m getting to it. I think that this Friday, Mike and are I going to do the bulk of our Christmas shopping. I’m still really excited for the holidays, and I think that the apartment is really starting to feel like home as well. We moved in two new bookshelves, an entertainment unit, and a makeshift dining room hutch (which is actually part of the entertainment unit). We have more storage now but still a bunch of empty boxes and boxes that need to be unloaded. It’s definitely different from what I’m used to but it’s beginning to not be, if that makes any sense. I’m pretty happy here, even if I complain about being stuck in the apartment. Most of the time, it’s not so bad. (Especially when I have lots to do!)

My mom’s been talking about maybe coming up for Christmas if she can find a spare to do the mail for her while she’s away. We’ve been praying about it, so hopefully she’ll be able to make it. It would get her mind off of being lonely and everything. She’ll be so busy here that she wouldn’t have a chance to even think about being lonely. It would be nice if she would move out here, but I’m not going to pressure her into it. Especially since I have no idea how she would be able to afford it!

Anyways, I should probably get back to cleaning up the place and eventually decorating our tree. I’ve got loads to do, and we’ll probably only bring in more boxes next week so I’d like to get the place in good condition before then! Especially since I may be having company for dinner this weekend. I’d also like to have my Christmas cards out by the end of the week, so I’ll need to finish them and start addressing them too! Ah the holidays! So much to do!

We had a pretty good weekend, and got quite a bit of things done. We started moving some things out of Mike’s old bedroom at his parent’s house. We managed to sort out a few papers and get a chunk of his entertainment unit moved, which is soon going to be a part of my dining room furniture. I intend to keep placemats and such in it, and also it will be a home for my cookbooks and the wine decanter we received for a wedding gift. We’re slowly molding the apartment into how we want it. Still waiting on the bookshelf but I figure that a trip to IKEA is probably in the near future.

I went to see Casino Royale over the weekend, the new Bond film. I liked it well enough, but I didn’t really have anything else to compare it to so it was just another action film to me. I liked the stunts at the beginning and the dresses that the Bond girls wore were pretty stunning. Oh, and the new Bond is friggin’ hot. He has these blue eyes that just popped out of the screen. So pretty good, but I don’t think I would go out of my way to watch it again. I saw a preview for a movie called Dreamgirls that I really want to see, it looks like it’s about a 60s/70s era music group. It’s got Beyonce, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy in it, and looks pretty fun so I’m interested in checking that out.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is this Thursday so I’ll probably be MIA for a little longer than normal. We have dinner on Thursday at Ali’s (my father in law’s cousin) and then probably a smaller dinner at the in laws on Friday. And then we’ll be doing the normal oot-n-abooting for the rest of the weekend. I’ll probably avoid the shopping malls on Friday because it gets quite zany. Apparently stores open up extremely early and have these awesome deals that people punch each other over. I hate nutty crowds so I’m opting to sleep in that morning, maybe venturing out later in the day but if not, I’m happy either way.

Hope everyone is doing well. Leave me comments!

So today was another fairly boring day stuck in the apartment all day. Tomorrow I’m going out shopping for groceries with Mike, and I’m hoping to get my Christmas decoration shopping done as well. Not gift shopping yet - I have a few ideas for Mike but I’m pretty much clueless when it comes to everyone else. We’re only buying for the family and then we’re doing a “Yankee Christmas” or whatever it is they call it around here (everyone takes a number and #1 chooses a gift first, #2 goes next but can trade for #1’s gift, etc and so on - for more details leave me a comment and I’ll describe further). That makes it much easier for buying gifts for the family because we only have to buy one thing with a $10 value and then we’re all set. We just need to pick something up for Mike’s parents and grandmas; his sister is all bought for already! We’re on the ball, I guess.

Anyways, for this year I’m at a $100 limit for decorations and that includes all of them so this year I’m going to concentrate on the tree. I don’t want to get too many knickknacks for the apartment because when we get a house they might not fit well with the decor and whatnot. Or be apartment-sized in a house - that might not work! So the tree will be my holiday concentration this year. It’s pretty awesome to pick things out myself. So tomorrow I’ll look into getting those and then I’ll be all set to put up the tree sometimes next month.

This is the first year in quite some time that I’ve been looking forward to Christmas, and I honestly can’t wait to start playing the Christmas music, doing the shopping, wrapping, and this year I’ll be doing some baking (not much, it’s just the two of us!) making a gingerbread house at Val’s, and decorating… ah! It just sounds great and I’m very excited. Yay Christmas!

So we are now officially married, recognized by all parties concerned. It’s such a relief to know that. Once we get our marriage certificate back by mail, we’re going to run around and get other things done - like putting me on Mike’s health insurance for one! So now I’m definitely living here, with no risk of deportation! It’s crazy that all of this planning has finally come to fruitition - I’m here and married.

The wedding itself was pretty short and sweet. We got to the place in Kemah around noon. I had my hair done at 10 by the place near our house, and they did a pretty good job putting it up. My hair is still really full of hairspray! We had to pick up a guest book and cake knife at WalMart before leaving so it probably looked funny for Mike to be in his suit and me in a white sundress, buying wedding stuff. Anyways, we got there about an hour before everyone else was supposed to get there and we helped clean up and decorate a little bit, before I had to get into my dress. Literally took three people to help me into it. I must have gained a little bit of weight recently (which doesn’t surprise me in the least) because the dress felt really tight. Anyways, so people started coming in and they all wanted to see the dress and everything, so I was pretty busy talking to people until the JP arrived. After he got there, he wanted to do a quick run down of what he had planned, and then we decided to get started right away pretty much. After the ceremony, we chatted with the JP for a little bit, but he didn’t stay long. Guess he wasn’t interested in the free food? (Refreshing change!) We had Olive Garden lasagna and breadsticks for a small lunch, and it was soooo good. I love Olive Garden. Lucky for us, there’s one right down the road from us.

So after people had eaten, we cut the cake and served that. People started trickling out after that, it wasn’t really a long event. Mike helped me out of my dress about 30 minutes after that, when most people were already gone. I put my sundress back on and we went back to cleaning. After we had the truck loaded up and said our goodbyes, we came back home, and fell asleep. Well, I was almost asleep anyways. To finish off the day, we watched Desperate Housewives while eating Kraft Dinner. Ah, married life!

Today is supposed to be furniture delivery day but we didn’t get a call from the store last night about a delivery time (which isn’t all that surprising) and I’m waiting until the stroke of ten am before I can call them and harass them. It’s ticking me off a wee bit that they didn’t give us a time (or actually call like they said they would). So I’m sort of just waiting around so that I can find out when our furniture is getting here. If it even gets here today. We’ll see anyways. I’m hoping they come before noon because I want to go help Val clean her house since she brought me to the doctor on Tuesday. Also, I figure we’ll end up over there anyways since Abuela (Jose’s mom) is coming in tonight from California and I’m sure there will be some sort of family meal or at least gathering. I don’t think I can stand another day stuck in the apartment either. And I ran out of Family Guy to watch yesterday so I’m going to have to break into something else.

So wedding this weekend! I’m so excited to get all my stuff figured out; new licence, new cell phone, and eventually new car. We should be able to start this stuff by next weekend, I’d like to get my licence first since that is pretty much my ID and it’ll help to get other things accomplished without having to bring a marriage licence everywheres. We are going to need to get some sort of filing cabinet or safe to keep all these important documents in.

Well, time to call the store. Wish me luck!

I’ve sat down like ten times to write something here and I always either get distracted or lose interest in writing it. My almost daily entries in college were probably out of boredom or something. These days it’s really hard to sit at the computer and do nothing when the apartment is such a mess. It seems as though every time I get it in near functioning state things get kinda crazy in here. Not to mention that we need to empty out Mike’s room at his parents’ house and find a place to put all that stuff. I’m allocating Saturday to that, for sure. This has gotten a little ridiculous. It’ll be nice when everything is sorted out.

This weekend is the wedding. It’s going to be at family friend Wes’ place. He owns a mystery dinner theatre and he’s welcomed us to use it for the wedding. Yesterday we picked out the flowers and the cake, and I picked up a kit to make wedding favours. Once I clear off some room in here I’ll get to work on those. We got the justice of the peace all sorted out - paid and given directions. We have our marriage certificate. We’re all good to go. It would be nice to have some insurance though, ended up having to go to the doctor yesterday because of an infection.

Last weekend we got our bedroom set, and it’s going to be delivered on Friday. That means I definitely need to clean out the dining room and the bedroom, so there is room to get around! Right now we have loads of boxes and garbage bags that need to get out of here. We need to get back to IKEA and buy our bookshelf, and maybe a couple of storage boxes. They are pretty handy, and only about 5$ a piece which is quite reasonable when you’re on a budget.

Speaking of household budgets, Mike allotted $100 for Christmas ornaments for our tree! I’m so excited to go out and buy those, and I’m pretty excited to put up our tree, even if it’s fake. I wouldn’t want us to have a fire in the apartment, and really, dragging a real tree up two flights of stairs would be a pain in the neck. So I’m going to make the best of the fake tree. I’m actually getting super excited for Christmas and I can’t wait to be putting on the Christmas tunes and watching Christmas specials and just really getting into it. I just have a feeling that the holidays are going to be awesome this year. First I have the wedding and then Thanksgiving, which should be pretty fun in themselves.

Well, I apologize for the lack of cremes around here. So few people read this anyways! I will try to post more in the future but there’s not much to write about, so we’ll see how it goes!

So I finally have time to sit down and write up this huge story about my trip to Montreal and my exodus from the Maritimes.

I got on the plane Saturday evening (October 21st) full of excitement at seeing my husband/fiance after being apart for 4.5 months, which I believe is the longest that we’ve been apart since we started seeing each other in the summer of ‘04. Alley was safely tucked away at Alyssa’s house and half of my luggage was waiting behind at Mandy’s. I had two carryons and two checked luggage with me, one of which was being emptied into Mike’s suitcase that I requested he pack as little as possible in, and he was taking the suitcase that I filled with weddingy stuff (so as to catch as little attention as possible at customs). When I got to Montreal, I called Mike from my cell phone to figure out where he was and it turns out that he was waiting on the outer rim of baggage claim where I ran over, kissed him, dumped my carryon and coat at this feet, and then waited for what seemed like forever for my two checked bags. Once I had my bags we had to figure out a way to the hotel. In the end, the shuttle bus was actually more expensive than the taxi. (20$ each, or 35$ for taxi) We also didn’t know where we would get dropped off with the shuttle and since everyone was very french the language barrier was definitely present.

So we got to the hotel and checked in, it turned out to be a lot fancier than I expected. Hard to believe that the Hilton took our measly $90 bid from priceline when they usually take in $480 a night! I was expecting a nice hotel, but my goodness. We relaxed in our room for awhile, but eventually the hunger pangs got to the best of us and we went in search of food. The hotel is kinda of laid out in a weird way, so it took us awhile to find the restaurant. It definitely wasn’t a cheap meal either, and so much food! We had the salad, main course, and dessert thing, and we were definitely stuffed when we left there. The next day, Sunday, was our day to relax and just spend some time together. We left the hotel a couple of times, usually with the intent to find some food that wasn’t $100 per meal. We found some cute places. With the signs all in French and having no clue what the shopping areas were called, it took us awhile to find where we were going in that regard. Our first lunch out in the wilds of Montreal was near a skating rink, at the Subway. Later that day, we had dinner at a place called Deli Planet, which was pretty neat because it had a superhero theme (which Mike really liked!) and even the menus were made to look sort of like a comic book. That evening, Mike and I relaxed in the hotel room; I watched Desperate Housewives and he ironed his clothes that he was going to wear when we went to the consulate.

The next day was the big day - interview day! The interview wasn’t really what I imagined that it was going to be. I assumed we would be in a little room or office with one of the consulate people and they would get all my paperwork and interview me there. It was a little more complex than that. First of all, I made sure to get there earlier and I’m glad that I did. We had to go through security and our things were searched and some were held downstairs for the duration of our visit to the Consulate. Our cell phones and my Purell hand sanitizer were among them. Anyways, so we went through security then up the elevator to the main consulate. Then we had to go to window #14, where she looked at my letter and my identification and then issued me a number. We probably waited for about an hour or so until our number got called. Of course, Mike was in the bathroom and I was like crap! So I gathered all of our things together and headed toward the window that I was called to. (Mike found me later, I guess there had been a line in the men’s! Weird, I thought.) He asked for a bunch of my papers, and he asked me a few questions, the generic ones like “Where did you meet, has he visited you in Canada,” etc, and then he gave me a slip of paper, told me to pay our fee to the cashier and then bring the receipt back. After that we waited some more, but no longer than a half hour and I think it was more like 15 minutes. So then we went into a little room, but it was still a window sort of set up, with a big glass wall in between us an the officer. She asked me more specific questions about how we met, when we decided to get married, and why we chose to live in the US instead of Canada. I must have answered well, because she had me take an oath saying all the information that I had represented was true and then she handed us a slip of paper telling me I could come pick up my visa at 2:30 the next day. And that was that.

We were pretty happy leaving the consulate knowing that we wouldn’t have to go through an appeals process or figure something else out. I called my mom from the train station (loads of restaurants there) and told her the good news. After that we had lunch (Mike promised me a panini while we were waiting for our interview) and went back to the hotel room to have a nap. Later on, we dressed up and went out to a fancy dinner, where I proceeded to get quite drunk on wine. It was one of the fancy places were they just keep refilling your wine glass so that you have no idea how much you’ve drunk. Instead of romance that night, Mike had to fetch me some gatorade and make sure I didn’t get sick! Ah well, it was all in celebration.

The next day we slept in and lounged around for awhile. By the time we got out of bed we had to hurry so that we could eat lunch and then get to the consulate in time to pick up my visa. After picking it up, we did a little bit of shopping and I purchased some souvenirs. We went to bed somewhat earlier that night because we needed to get up for our flights the next day.

The airport system was kinda crummy though, because Mike and I couldn’t be behind the same gates. But later I found out that it was because of U.S. Preclearance, which is the awesomest thing in the world. Basically it means that you go through customs before you board the plane, so that when you get to the U.S., you are a domestic passenger and you just mosey on to your next gate. So awesome. No more almost missing connecting flights!

Anyways, so after a quick breakfast from Burger King, we boarded our flights and took off. My flight was much more successful than Mike’s, however, because he got delayed in Newark by a few hours because of mechanical problems. I got back all nice and fine, met up with Mandy where the shuttle dropped me off, and then we went to the mall and I had my last Pizza Delight supper for a long time. We did a bit of shopping then headed back to her house. We watched some movies and pretty much just hung out, and pretty much the same the next day, although we had yummy Swiss Chalet delivery and then went to collect Alley from Alyssa’s house. After that, we took a cab to the airport hotel with all my stuff. Of course we had our own little mystery when we got there, because they somehow LOST our reservation. I had to make another one, but holy cow the people that work there are RUDE. You would think that people that have to work with customers that have just flown in or are about to fly out would be a little nicer. Anyways, we got into our room and Alley was happy to get out of her cage.

I didn’t sleep a wink that night, no more than like 2 hours. I was surprisingly awake the next day, although I think it was all nerves. I hate flying and I was a little nervous about customs. However, U.S. preclearance has now arrived at Halifax, it was seriously only there for a few weeks. I was like, wow - great timing on my part! Anyways, so I got there and checked in (took a little while to find the US checkins, they sort of moved it out of the way) and got my bags checked and on their way to Houston. I didn’t know how long it would take for me to go through security and get my Visa stuff done, so although I was tempted to have breakfast with Mandy (who came with me) I didn’t want to risk missing my plane, so I called Mike to let him know that the nice lady that checked me in changed my flight so I would get in like 3 hours earlier (so nice when I had Alley with me) and then we hugged and I went through security. Of course they did all the extra checks on me (it seems like I get flagged a lot for that lately) and I even needed to carry Alley through the metal detector (she was pretty doped up and didn’t struggle at all).

After security, I got to the customs desks and I announced that I was travelling on a K1 Visa. The guy was like… oooohh boy. He apparently almost messed it up, because he was going to get someone else to do it so that my file wouldn’t be locked for 24 hours (which would have sucked) and so then he tells me to go into a room and fill out a form and then wait. After they looked through my packet and everything, he has to verify my identity by asking me some questions, and then he told me that I was good to go. I asked if he needed to see Alley’s papers, but he said she looked healthy enough to him and that it was fine. (Alley was - thank goodness - sound asleep.) So after that I stepped out into a large room that had about 5 gates. None of them were marked, so I just wandered about until I saw one that had a sign saying Newark on it. I checked the flight number, and it was the right one, so I sat down. I noticed a little restaurant over in the corner, so I decided to have some breakfast first. I had just enough time to eat before boarding started, so I guess that it was wise to go through security when I did.

The rest of my flight was pretty uneventful. Alley woke up somewhere between Newark and Houston (it was a 4 hour flight) and started drooling a lot (no good) and the second flight was pretty bumpy so I was feeling sick too. But we got in at 2:50 Texas time and got down to baggage, where I met up with Mike. We took my bags, and then headed out to pick up more kitty stuff, then we came home to our apartment. And here we are! It’s been a crazy few weeks but things have settled down quite a bit, and I’ve even got most of the apartment pretty cleaned up. Last night Mike said to me, “you’re making this place a home” so that made me feel pretty good. It still needs a little bit of organizing (esp our clothes but what can you do with only one dresser?) but it’s come a long way since I landed on Friday. Once we have our bedroom furniture and a bookshelf it’ll be much better. I’m pretty excited about our future together!