Hurricane season is finally behind us, one hurricane in particular which took the South West of Houston by storm – s’cuse the pun (and probably brought a close to the season) was hurricane ‘Lol’ (for those of you unfamiliar with this abbreviation, a friend of ours calls Col and I ‘LOL’, you know, Las and Col, Lol? Anyways, I figured it was kinda cute!)

What an utterly insane month it’s been and having the wedding behind us and all our guests off home, is bittersweet.

As I sit here and write this, my husband is gently snoring beside me, I have no idea where he’s drawn the strength he’s needed to get through the last month of chaos (I’ve not made it quite so gracefully as he!) but he’s been admirable – and certainly needs as much sleep as he can get!  It’s nice, the only noise I can hear in the house is his ‘heavy breathing’, my typing and the fan in my laptop cause it’s starting to get warm from all this typing – which, has been a scarce activity as of late.

I have no idea where to start! So much has happened in recent weeks, I didn’t have time to take notes or document it as I’ve gone along on this rollercoaster and I fear that I won’t be able to quite convey just how much fun we’ve had.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not been without its challenges, for example, the airport runs have been chaotic (sometimes back to back runs up to IAH after having been stuck in rush hour traffic to get both there and back the first time!), Col was stuck in traffic on roads for the guts of 3 weeks (although in spite of the road rage and exhaustion, we’re both very glad that we personalised trips for as many people as we could) and one of the rental vans were returned with something crazy like 1400 miles done in 5 days or so!

Like I said, it’s been crazy, but it was definitely the kind of personal touch that we know our guests appreciated!

Another thing people seemed to appreciate was our ‘out of town’ bags, for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, they are little tote bags filled with things like water, snacks, pain killers etc that you are supposed to get when you check in to your hotel and go to your room – our hotel tried to charge us for this, after having agreed to do it for free at first, so we had to deliver them to people as we picked them up from the airport…which, as I’m sure you imagine went wrong more often than not as we were so busy the bags sometimes didn’t even make it to the guests at all!

But it’s the thought that counts, right? 

Either way, those who did get their out of town bag enjoyed it and appreciated it, I was surprised at how well they were received!

The week of the wedding itself included multiple airport runs in the same day, keys being locked in the rental car (which apparently happens so much that the automated phone message on our insurance coverage even has it as an option!), me driving on roads I’d never have imagined me driving here in Houston (or at least for a while yet), tears, tantrums, not seeing much of anyone (while ironically being in the same place at the same time as everyone),  alcohol, dancing, beautifying, more alcohol… 

The following week included sight-seeing, more driving, more airport runs, saying goodbye, more tears, trying to put our house back together again after the invasion which left it somewhat upside down and Col returning to work (also turned upside down!).

It was an unforgettable few weeks and will definitely be remembered as being one of the best experiences of our lives.  We got to show our friends and family back home a snippet of our new home here in Houston and got to introduce our new friends here in Houston to our friends and family from home.  It was a unique experience!

It was most definitely a whirlwind and I’m gonna start with my bachelorette party and do a series of at least my ‘high lights’ from everyone’s time here visiting us…you’ll be bored of hearing about it before long!

So, let the stories commence…