Our life, our way

So as of last week, its official. Brian and I are headed on another cruise! This time we are taking my mom. She’s pretty excited. I think she wishes she had some of her friends that would go with her but she is excited nonetheless.

Back in college, she told me she want to go on a cruise. I had researched it a bit and realized that she better do it soon before they started requiring passports. It seemed to cost a fortune to me back in the day and we never made it.

Now that I know the truth about cruising and vacationing on a ship, it truly is my vacation of choice. Too bad, I can’t get everywhere by ship.  There is just something relaxing about knowing that no one is gonna call you. I miss the internet a bit but it forces me to not rely on my computer to be my source of entertainment. We get to spend quality time together. We chat and talk.

And its comforting to know that I can enjoy a cheap cruise line like Carnival for a quick get away.   I plan on trying the other lines like Celebrity and Holland or Princess one day, but for now, in our current financial situation, its nice to know Carnival is there.

For the price of what we paid for airline tickets to Seattle for two last year, we booked a 4-day cruise for 3. We selected the Carnival Fascination again because we’ve been on it before. Our hope is that a familiar ship and port will help us make Mom’s first experience 100% relaxing.

I don’t foresee her doing too much at port. We might see if we can get some shopping in. I think bingo and the casino will be big.

Bahamas here we come!

I have a lot to think about. A lot has happened this year, both good and bad. Just as anyone else, I wish the bad things didn’t happen.  For years now my friends from various stages in my life have also moved around the country as I have all of my childhood. So it makes it very difficult to see folks.  This year was special and unique.

I got to go on vacation twice with Lauren and Mike. Sonya has been here to visit on several occasions. I even got to spend time with folks back home in Biloxi. The “harem” as Brian likes to call them. It makes me remember how much I miss my friends. For a while there I almost forgot what it was like. I’ve made friends everywhere but not the kind of friends from before. Not the kind, you tell anything to. Not the kind, you call up randomly just to chat. My new friends, it seems like everything has to be planned. What happened to, picking up the phone when you are bored and head out to catch a movie?

But the year was filled with lots of bad news. Seemed like everywhere I turned I heard the word divorce. That is very sad to me whether the couple had kids or not. Unfortunately, many are not finalized because its never quick when it has kids involved.

We’ve gotten to spend good quality time with Brian’s Dad. I think he really enjoyed Seattle/Alaska. I wish we could do more for him to get him away from the drama that fills his life. I don’t think the stress is good for him at all. I saw him at Christmas and he looked tired and run down. It is wonderful that he is helping care for his grandkids but it takes such a toll on him. He should be relaxing and “enjoying” the kids not having to care for their day to day needs.  Hopefully things will lighten up for him.

We haven’t gotten to take mom anywhere this year and for that I feel really bad. She deserves it.  My goal is to get that taken care of the first half of 2012.

We’ve moved to a new house in 2011. It was a difficult decision. In a bad economy, how can you dive in and decide to buy a second home just to have two mortgages? But we did our math carefully based on our spending habits in the past 2 years living together and sharing finances and we did it! I am very glad we did. I love the new house. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my old house too. These first 4 months have been tight because of move in expenses (little fixes here and there) and the holidays. But we budgeted well and we didn’t incur additional debt! Now we just need to stick to our normal behavior in 2012 that we did in 2011 and we’ll still be able to take our vacations, buy our toys, pay down old debt and keep up with the mortgage. For that I feel really lucky.

I see lots of folks that make equal to or more than us and they aren’t able to do the things we do.  They probably have more cost in their life. Hopefully the economy gets better, and everyone will start to be able to breathe a little nicer as finances let up.  I can’t wait until our credit card debt is 100% gone along with student loans.  Another 2 years for credit card debt and car loans. I wish it wasn’t that long but I think the house was worth the delay and I refuse to give up vacations. After all we take pretty cheap vacations and the life moments and memories we have together are priceless. Who cares if people call me cheap. I’d rather take 3 cheap vacations than one super expensive one. Alaska was pricey but Alaska cruises are never cheap and we wanted to make sure Dad had a great time.  Balcony was nice but the price premium was still not worth it. Maybe later in life, but for now, I’m going bad to my cheap interior rooms.

Those were the highlights of the year. There is still so many more things worth mentioning but I better hop in the shower so that I can enjoy my last day of 2011 with my nephew, Tai.  Happy New Year everyone!

So one of the things I really wish I had more of as an adult is child hood pictures. I have a total of perhaps 5 pictures of my dad. Not that we owned a camera to allow us to be able to take pictures. But even if we did, all the moving around would have lost many as we downsized constantly. If that wasn’t enough then I’m sure the house fire or hurricane would have finished off the remainder. So my plan is to take lots of pictures but I also don’t want to miss life moments because I’m too busy capturing each one.  To fill the gap, I asked the family to go take family portraits.  Now if I can get the same done with the other half. For now, this is better than nothing.

Okay, so its a bit delayed…well maybe really delayed. But here are pictures from our trip to Seattle to visit Lauren and Mike and also to join them on a cruise to Alaska! They are books. You can click on image and be able to flip the pages.

whoohoo!!!

Since engagement over a year ago, I started thinking about whether I was going to change my name. With a decision made, I went domain hunting. My top three choices were all taken. I finally settled on www.kimlmacleod.com

But I own www.luongfamily.com so I also wanted one for my new last name. I coughed up the whooping $18.99 for GoDaddy backorder. The domain was registered at Network Solutions. It went through redemption to pending deletion. I was reading that GoDaddy is really bad and barely ever captures a domain other other domain snatchers….Crap, there goes my money.

To my surprise, a week ago I got an email that the registration was transferred to GoDaddy! I was so happy! I patiently waited for it to be added to account. Instead I got an email that it was now in GoDaddy auctions. WTF. So they bought the domain so that I would have to bid against others?

I later found out they allow more than one back order. So others wanting that domain could have paid GoDaddy too. *sigh* Today was the end of that auction. I waited till 10 minutes to end and sure enough someone bid. I waited till 50 seconds and placed my bid.

We are now the happy owners of www.macleodfamily.com

Now we can have our own subdomains and email addresses.

kim @ macleodfamily.com! yay!

Okay, so perhaps we can’t. But our friends sound A LOT better than us.

So a funny thing happened the other morning.

The nature of Brian and I’s work sometimes requires us to work odd hours. Early in the morning or Sat when its non-business hours. We are taking down systems that folks use to work after all. I finally had my turn at this.

I got up at 5 am to start the process. It only took about 30 minutes. I really didn’t want to stay up or go back up stairs and risk waking Brian up since he hasn’t been sleeping well. Therefore I decided to sleep on the couch and set the alarm on my phone. Sometime between that and my alarm going off, mom had come downstairs and gotten breakfast.

Later, Brian leaves for work and I start telecommuting on the couch. Mom comes down and wants to know what I did that Brian kicked me out of my room. Ummm….kick me out? Say what?!?!??! LOL

Today we went to the Sweetwater Brewery in Atlanta. Brian and I drive by it everyday to work and say we should go but never actually got there. Since Brian’s brother is a huge “beer” fan, what better destination.  I was a cool experience.  They have designated times that tours start and end on the website. However its really the time the open for drinking and the tours are a side thing.

We arrive and enter the building. There were folks there but not too many and the bar is not serving drinks yet. Shortly after our arrival the place starts to get packed. You can barely walk without having to say excuse me. They have 6 flavors on tap and you can get a little plastic cup or a nice glass to do your “tasting.” Each cup comes with 6 tickets. You bring your cup and ticket to the bar and claim a drink. If you have never had Sweetwater, you will want to try them all.

While all this is going on, they have tours of the brewery going on at random times. Which, of course, we participated in. I think everyone found a favorite. I did not drink. I was DD.

Everyone told me that the special day will go by very quickly. Most times the bride and the groom don’t get to sit down and take it all in. “Not me” I said.

Well, why else would we have a small wedding. I wanted to be able to see everyone…talk to everyone. AND WE DID!!!

It was such a wonderful wedding. I am so proud of my family and friends for being such good sports about everything. LOL. The weather was perfect…not too hot or cold. No rain. No missing vendors. All of our guests were able to come to town minus the few that told us ahead of time that they couldn’t come. Pics and video will follow soon…as soon as we get them that is.

The morning started off pretty quiet. Felt a little weird. My family had to go to the store. I was home by myself getting hair and make-up done. It was relaxing though. Promptly at 12:30 vendors arrived as we were putting our finishing touches up. I got a call from Lauren a little later that the limo was there and they were headed over. This is when I got a little nervous. Not that they were really headed over to pick up the bride but how was everyone going to do. We really had everyone participating in the event. They were magnificent! hehehehe

I even got a joke in when Brian was putting the jewelry on. I think I fooled a few thinking Brian hurt my ear with the earrings.

After the very short tea ceremony at the house we all (minus mom and phong) headed over to the Dover rental home. I have to say, Ian did a great job decorating. Yay! Good thing Brian didn’t have to. Tea ceremony there went well. Poor Ian, he drank his tea…gave his “words of wisdom” and then got up from his chair. What about our good luck money? No worries, it was in his pocket.

Off to the venue for the “white people” ceremony. We had lots of time for pics so that was good. 5 minutes till 4pm Krista pulled us all into the reception room to wait for the moment. All guest were rounded up and sent to the back to get seated.  This is when the officiant says he is very nervous…

The ceremony was short, sweet and to the point. I think it took a total of 7 minutes according to the videographer.

Brian sealed the deal with a dip-kiss. It was perfect.

We went off to take pics with the photographer and videographer while everyone else started on horderves and cocktails. I was a little sad. I really wanted some food too. I picked it out after all. We get back right before 5pm to get ready for our introduction and the lead in to dinner. Surely all the horderves were gone! We do our amazing first dance. Yes, I said, “amazing.” LOL Everyone had good things to say. I finally sit down at my seat and Jamie, the event coordinator, had made us some plates with horderves. She then even got us drinks and our meals. Bless her heart. That was wonderful.

We started the night with a karaoke song before opening it up for dancing. Most everyone did dance but more importantly, most everyone sang a karaoke song or more. I had such a great time. Thank you to all for coming and being with us on our day!

Am I selfish? Are you selfish? It has such a negative sound to it, does it not?

Are we selfish to want family and friends with us on our wedding day? We want everyone there. We want everyone to have fun. We want beautiful pictures of everyone for our album. We want everyone to dance. We want folks to enjoy good food. We would like to pay for your expenses if that is a problem in this very bad economy. We would like to come pick you up and drive you down.

Man….we do sound selfish.  Selfish and perhaps even a bit controlling. But are we?

Brian was oh so ready to propose to me but said he had waited because his brother was getting married and he didn’t want to take away any attention from that because it was suppose to be all about his brother.  I wanted a Vegas wedding. But by doing so, our family and friends will miss out on that experience with us. Granted it is our day and as long as its what we wanted then its okay, right? WRONG. And anyone that states otherwise is lying.  If they weren’t then they wouldn’t be on that list of folks all “hurt” because they are not invited to the wedding.

We even decided to plan our wedding outside shutdown at his brother’s mill (when it shuts down then no one can take time off) and we set it so that it was the day after Brian’s graduation. Is this for our convenience? Not a chance. I can’t plan a graduation party because its the night before the wedding.

We planned everything almost a year out. We are making the hotel and vacation home arrangements. We are paying for most of it. We have reserved time from work and money on the side to take family and friends out while they are in town.

But not everyone will be there. Couldn’t get off of work…I guess I understand. I take for granted that I work in academia and perhaps I have more flexibility when it comes to getting time off of work. My bad, that I negotiate with my employer ahead of time of planned vacations for the coming year. I remember when Dalton State looked at me crazy because I said, 3 months after starting, I needed 4 weeks off to travel over sees followed by a week the following month.

So I suppose Brian and I are being selfish. We probably need to stop whining and feel blessed that there is anyone attending at all.