It seems that every where I look, there’s babies. I understand that the human race is a perpetually reproducing species (duh), but goddamn it seems they’re just everywhere.

I don’t know if a lot of these parents realise how precious their children are, though. A lot of couples have a lot of trouble getting pregnant, and their life dream is to have a child. On the other side of things, there’s people who really don’t want kids, but are the ones who have them.

Our friends are of the first group – they have been trying for a long time now, I think 3-4 years – to have a baby. I don’t know the ins-and-outs of what procedures they’ve had or anything like that, because you don’t like to ask, but I know it’s been a rough road for them.

Last night we got a phone call; my friend’s hubby spoke to Michael (they’re pretty good mates now), and then Michael handed the phone to me saying my friend wanted to speak. She said, “We came over Sunday but you weren’t home, and we were going to come over tonight but you said you were going for a drive so I didn’t know what time you were going to be home, but we have some news that we want to share before I tell everyone at work tomorrow – we’re having a baby!”

I was OVER THE MOON, to say the least. These two people are just the most loving people – they would do absolutely anything for their friends and family, and I can’t think of two people in my everyday life who deserve it more. I went out today and bought her a card and a giftcard for a baby shop (she’s only 15 weeks along, but I figured they’ll obviously need to buy stuff for the baby before it’s born!). We are just so excited for them.

It did make me think though – I’ve been on the contraceptive pill for about 5-6 years now. I think it would be devastating to me to try to avoid getting pregnant for so long, and then when it comes down to us actually trying, I won’t be able to fall pregnant. It’s a real issue that has just come up recently for me, and been accentuated by my friend announcing her pregnancy after so many years, but I guess I should be hopeful – after all, it’s a reality for them now.

I think I’ll just stick with the cats for a while.

As I will be out tomorrow (drinking, having fun, celebrating my Aussie-ness), I thought I should blog now. Even though it’s 11:18pm and I’m sooo ready for bed, I felt like I needed to blog.

So tomorrow is Australia Day, and I’m super pumped – I don’t think we did much last year, so this year is going to be lots of fun. My parents are having a BBQ at their place with all the family. I’ve made a zucchini slice/quiche thing to take with me; I’ll be interested to see how it tastes. But most of all, I’m looking forward to a day off work.

I think there’s something about Australians that is so unique – and I’m probably just saying that because I am an Aussie and that’s all I know; I’m sure that every other person from the world’s nationalities feels the same way about their own country’s people – but we’re just so chilled about everything. We’re the world’s lazybums. Today, being the day between the weekend and Australia Day, around half a million Australians took the day off work, with the damage to the economy being estimated at $250 MILLION. And Australia’s population is only 21 million, so what’s that – 2.5% of the population, roughly? But that doesn’t take into account how many of the population are actually employed, so it probably brings it up to around 5%.
Anyway, complete tangent. I was not one of the slackers today – I worked, but there wasn’t really a whole lot to do. I was bored out of my brain, to be completely honest, and really looking forward to coming home.

This is a complete ramble blog entry. I only just realised. I think I’m getting tired. Yup, I am.

I might try vlogging soon – it seems to be the way for a lot of people nowadays, and part of the reason for not blogging so much here now is because I’m typing all day at work, so the last thing I want to do when I get home is type a whole heap.

Anywho – AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE!!! OI OI OI!

Happy Australia Day, folks

*pst – less than 3 weeks till my birthday!*

Our wedding plans are coming along nicely.

There has been a bit of a saga over my dress, so I’m going to explain it all so you can understand how relieved I was last night to find out it was going ahead…

Firstly, I found the dress on eBay, and fell in love with it for its uniqueness. So I sent a message to the seller asking how much it would be and if the skirt part of the dress could be made smaller, to be told that it would be $170 + postage, and the dress’ skirt size is only as large as the hoop worn underneath. So that was awesome.

Then my mum came across another dressmaker, avabridal.com, who sell dresses on their site as well as make custom dresses. I emailed them for a quote on how much it would be for them to make and post the same dress. Their quote was about $50 more, which was fine with me because it was a guaranteed higher quality dress than the eBay seller’s (as they were aware of the quality of the eBay seller’s dresses).

However, we hit a glitch with AvaBridal when they told us that they wouldn’t be able to get the lace overlay of the dress in Hot Pink, and since my colours for the wedding are white, black and hot pink, it was kind of vital that they get it.

I asked if they might be able to dye some lace, or if they could get some in, and that it would be a guaranteed purchase from me if they could. I was told that the lace wouldn’t be able to be dyed, and that they would contact their fabric suppliers and find out if they could get anything in.

In the meantime, I contacted the eBay seller and asked if they were able to get the hot pink lace, because if both sellers couldn’t, then I’d essentially have to pick another dress. I never heard a response from the eBay seller, despite messaging them at least 3 times to ask.

So, much to my relief, I received an email last night from AvaBridal.com stating the following:

Hi Terri,
we can make the dress according to your requirements.

The overlay of the dress we can dye it in hot pink.

We’ll start immediately once payment is received. Dress will be finished and delivered to you in around four weeks after payment is cleared.

If you need the dress urgently, you can also place a rush order for a rush order processing fee of $50. For rush orders, dress will be finished and delivered in two and a half weeks.

If there are any questions or anything we can help, please feel free to contact us at any time.

Best regards,
Ava Bridal support team

This just made me so happy, beyond words. It means I can have my dream dress without too much more hassle (hopefully!). I just need to organise to make payment to them now.

In other planning, we ‘booked’ the venue for the ceremony today. The venue will still be open to the public, but we will have rights to park cars on the grass and such, unlike regular visitors.
And then tomorrow we’re meeting with our celebrant for our first consultation, to discuss what we’ll be doing and how we’ll be doing it, etc. and just get an idea of the process behind a ceremony!

Things left to do:

• Contact my Nan about her making our cake
• Contact my Auntie about MC’ing our reception
• Confirm venue for reception
• Finalise guest list
• Make and post invites out
• Buy shoes (for both of us!)
• Get Michael a suit
• Make my bouquet
• Send email addresses to my sister for Hen’s Day / Hen’s Night planning

So far, so good