UPDATE!!!

Okay, I officially have the awesomest, coolest, bestest future mother-in-law EVER! I now have a dress on order, thanks to Carol, and will get it shipped to my house when I pay the other half of the cost in July. It'll be fantastic! It's simply the most beautiful dress I've ever seen. I always had these dreams the last 6 or 7 years of finding a dress that looks like it would be at home in a royal court, and boy did we ever find one! I put it on and fell in love with it, then tried on the dresses I liked at 4 different stores, eventually going back to the first one and the fourth dress I tried on to order it. It's a bit on the expensive side (like at least 5 times as much as I was thinking about spending on a dress), but Carol (aka John's mom) put the first half down for me. I feel so loved and spoiled and special and all that stuff. :) My plan for bridesmaids' dresses may alter slightly. Erika and Rachel are now on the lookout for a slightly fancier cut of dress that would accent mine well that we can still get in Skittles colors. We'll see if they find anything. That's about it for today. We went to Mount Rushmore yesterday and saw a couple billy goats within petting distance. They liked me. :) It was nice.

Then we went to a lake not too far from there and walked along a penninsula, and I thought we were walking on wood originally. You know how an old rotting stump that's sunk into the ground gets kinda...I don't know...it falls apart and is like a bunch of cut-off sticks pointing out of the ground, often times bent towards the ground after being trampled on by so many? That's what we were walking on, with woodchips everywhere. But it wasn't wood. I looked at it more closely, realized there were WAY too many stump-like things to be old trees, and realized they were all rocks! ALL OF THEM!!! The woodchips were rocks, too. It was AMAZING! You could wiggle them and pull them out of the ground just like you would be able to with old wood. It was rather comfortable to sit on, too! And it went all the way to the shora, about 50 feet or so and all surrounding EVERYTHING. And it was a pretty big lake. Amazing. Never saw anything like it before. I collected a few samples that I thought were especially beautiful, of course. I told John that I could make a mosaic table out of those, so that's the plan. I have to find a table with a sunken top so I can go back there and make myself a mosaic out of all the pieces of wood-like rock. I really should get going now. I have pictures developing and want to finish my graphic novel before we leave the bookstore.

Oh! One more thing...the song that I want sung at my wedding DOES have a background track, and Carol ordered that for me too. So if you've never heard Rascal Flatt's "The Day Before You", you will at my wedding. :)