A Rockin' Good Time!!!

Dear Blog,

How often do you get to spend the weekend with your husband, mom, dad, grand father, grandmommy to be and a Volvo for an extended period of time? When your 77 year old grandfather gets remarried that's when!! And when he decides to get married in his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland!! (That's about a 7 hour trek including stops, etc from Charlotte, North Carolina). Here's how the non-stop PARTAY went down. Friday morning, Mumsy and Pere picked up Aaron and I from our Charlotte abode and we all happily piled in the family wagon. About 6 stops, several thousand calories and 8 hours later we arrived in Grantsville, Maryland. Since Grantsville is in the mountains it was only like 63.8 degrees when we got there, it felt great!! Larry Sprinkle could have warned us about the drastic temperature change, but we didn't hold that against him, we were having too great of time in the MD. I got to meet my new aunties and cousins, ate LOTS of food, laughed a lot with my parents and hubby, learned what a salt peter is, drove a lot, saw lots of Menonites, posed inappropriately with a statue, judged some of the Maryland people harshly, got yelled at by my dad, saw where my grand pap grew up and my parents honeymoon cottage.


Oh yeah, and saw Pops get married!!! I'm so happy for Pops and Grandmommy Ruth and I say that in all honesty and admiration. I thought I would only see Pops commit to never going again to Haywood Mall, to singing loudly at church, and always telling me about what prescriptions he's taking and how much they cost. What a lovely day to see him make a commitment to love and cherish my new Grandmommy. Cheers to the happy couple!!



xoxo,
Alison

Short Shorts Party '07

Dear Blog,

I always thought I should be famous and now I'm even more convinced. The jet setting life totally suits me. This Friday after work Aaron and I hopped on a plane and flew to see our friends Ian, Paul and Kate for the 56th Annual Short Shorts party. All I have to say is, this girl has still got it. You see, I was starting to think I was getting a little bit long in the tooth, if you know what I mean. And if you don't know what I mean, I mean old. The reason why is because the thought of going out to a bar, yelling my order at the bartender, pretending to have meaningful conversations over blaring music and feeling like shit the next day just doesn't appeal to me. I make it sound so much fun don't I? Even though I would rather play Scrabble on a Friday night than go out, it made me sad that I was getting old. So...with all this being said, I was a little apprehensive to make the trip and be at the disposal of Aaron's friends from college and this balls out (literally) party.

HAHA, I think I'm just under stimulated in the South, specifically the Charlotte, North Carolina going out scene. I'll have to say I was the life of the party. Well, I was the life of the party in my own mind and really, that's all the counts. The fun, crazy, say anything and make sure you slur saying it Alison came out. AND what makes it even better is that I was wearing a green, terry cloth, onesie. Ohhhh yes blog readers...and yellow patent leather flats. Straight seventies. Why was I wearing that you ask? Duh. Because it was the SHORT SHORTS party. Our friends have come up with ingenius idea of making people look ridiculous by wearing ridiculously short shorts in preferably the most ridiculous colors and basically get...well...ridiculous. Of course, some people, Kate Rybicki, managed to look completely great in her short shorts outfit, most people just looked silly. Aaron, Paul, Brian...everyone.





A great time was had, lots of laughs, lots of drinks and a lot of great dance moves and lots of bruises were shared. I kept running into that damn pipe that was so wrongly placed by the picnic table. Looking forward to next year.

Since the south is a good 10 years behind all other parts of the US, well except the Mid West, they're behind us, the short shorts party will not be making it down here. Aaron and I are afraid of what southerners would do if they were told they couldn't wear their Lacoste, seer suckers and croakies to a party. Just wait 'til we move though (don't freak out no plans yet)...it's on til the break of dawn.

xoxo,

Alison

The Namesake

Dear Blog,

I am a VERY busy person. In between selling my wares on the street, doing reports and having lots of meetings with my boss, laughing with my new BFF Jaimi who says hilarious things like "let's beat her over the head with a pinata" and has awesome ideas like "Alison, your husband really should pay all of the bills out of his check and you can just go shopping with yours," scouring my friends blogs and all of my shopping websites to figure the latest thing I HAVE TO HAVE; I have taken up hairdressing. You read right.

Here's the sitch. I love my parents. For lots of reasons but mostly because they always keep Bella when we need them to :) The last time they kept Bella they took her to get shaved because it is so HOT outside. Well the groomers did a great job except they left all of the hair on her head and she looks like a poodle. Now, I don't know about you but I think poodles are for *ussies and I didn't want my dog looking like one. So, I had the genius idea of cutting some of her excess hair off her head and shaping it into a mohawk!! I think I did a bang up job. Check it out!

xoxo,
Alison

Alison says...GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

Here at BellaFrench, I do not endorse many things over my own narcissism. As you will find that many of the blogs are about me and mine and how awesome or unawesome, but most of the time awesome, my life is. I am strongly against the blog turning into an adverblogitorial, that is a word I just made up but means that I don't want my blog to turn into a vehicle that touts products, movies, clothing, etc in return for advertising dollars. HAHAHAHA, like that would ever happen. I have completely climbed off on a tangent and am now heading back to the main point.

Last Tuesday night Aaron and I went on a date because lately we are two ships passing in the night. We went to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant and then to our favorite indie theater and randomly decided to see "The Waitress" with everyone's favorite, the beautiful Keri Russell from Felicity fame. Little did I know just how great that movie would be. I'm about to make up another word and call it a dralomedy (drama, love, comedy). The movie's plot is about a woman who is in an oppressive marriage and is planning to leave her dick of a husband (sorry, mom) until she finds out that she is pregnant, thus thwarting her plan. She is famous in her small town for coming up with a different recipe for pie everyday and after she finds out she is a pregnant a lot of the pies have names like "Pregnant, miserable, self-pitying, loser pie." Pretty hilarious if you ask me. The theme of the movie is women empowerment and making sure you get what you deserve out of life, not what someone else thinks you deserve, mix in a love affair and you get the dralomedy. It was done in such a way that it was hilarious and incredibly moving at the same time. Aaron loved it and I have a feeling that I'm going to be getting "The Waitress" dvd for my birthday or Christmas or something. (Hint, hint)

Check your local theater listings and go see the movie!!!!!

xoxo,
Alison

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!

Dear Blog,

Once again waiting for the inspiration to hit before the big blog. Well today it hit and almost bowled me over and I was like, okay, okay, I'll blog dammit. Soooo...I think all of BellaFrench readers know that 7-7-07 was not only a momentous occasion because that day only occurs every 1,825,001,756,496 days, but even more so because my mate got married!!! Holla!!! It was really a great weekend, I had so much fun and loved getting dressed up in my bright blue dress and watching my little matey walk down the aisle. She looked so beautiful and radiant just as every bride should and I was oh so proud to be her mate-ron of honor. (get it?? mate-ron of honor...oh whatever). On Friday night, obvy, we had the rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner. I thought the rehearsal went relatively smoothly considering Faris and Cay-Cay each had 22 bridesmaids and groomsmen, respectively. Faris' church wedding directors were shockingly nice and I say shockingly because I've been scarred by Mrytle and Flyrtle. If you don't know, that's a whoooole 'nother blog. At the rehearsal dinner we had to say a toast and I think I did the half stand like 15 times because everytime I was getting ready to say something one of Cay's friends would stand up but finally I got to stand up and say something and shockingly (or not) I got choked up in the middle of the toast, but Rita said I managed to spurt a few touching words and made both her and Mate get a little teary. That's what it's all about folks, making people cry. Speaking of crying, did anyone notice the matron of honor bawling up at the front of the church? And when I say matron of honor, I mean me. (Can you tell I like having an important role?) I didn't have any tissues because I thought to myself, "I've got this, no need for tissues." That's what I get for assuming, that I've "got" anything. I will always need tissues because I cry at commercials, much less my best friends wedding. Geez Louise. Since, I've been married all of 6 weeks I will bestow some mate-ly advice upon the married couple.

Wait, who am I kidding. I have no advice so just look at this pretty picture of us instead.

P.S. No, Dad, I will not change my signature hand on the hip, head tilted to the side. I'm working it, it works for me. I'm keeping it.

xoxo,
al

Shurts' semi seasonal slip n' slide spectacular

Dear Blog,

So, obvy, our slip n' slide spectacular isn't going to be semi seasonal but I couldn't mess up my roll with using all "s", so thus, it is semi seasonal. On this blog I haven't really mentioned too much about my and Ron's new house. We moved all of our shizzle in about a month before we got married and tried to get everything all nice and neat before the wedding so we wouldn't have a nightmare to come back to after the honeymoon. We love our house, living in a house is so much better than apartment dwelling. Anywhoodle, so we've wanted to have a big bash to inaugurate our new house and so in planning to do so, Aaron came up with the brazilliant idea of making a slip n' slide so everyone could relive their youth. I told Aaron that I never really liked slip n' slides when I was kid because of several reasons,
a) i didn't like being outside
b) i didn't like throwing myself on the ground
c) i didn't like the friction of skin and rubber
d) i didn't like flaunting my supermodel body in front of all of the other elementary school children, kids are mean and I knew they would be jealous.
But, I told Aaron that now that I'm grown maybe I would like doing the above. So, on with the show. We invited a slew of people. I don't know what exactly a 'slew' is, but that is a word my grandmother used and I like to say it. A lot of people showed up brought alcohol and their bathing suits. Aaron grilled burgers and dogs and we all had a great time!!





Oh, Aaron spent a LOT of time making the slip n slide, so please be sure to comment on the fierceness of the apparatus.

Double oh, I didn't get over my fear of the above mentioned fears and didn't slip or slide. But, this morning when no one was here I gave it a whirl after much coaxing from my husband. It turned out to be aight.

xoxo,
Alison