Save the Date!!

We set a date for our wedding--- 4/10/10! Get excited...I know I am because I have heard that is the hardest part and since that's out of the way, I'm thinking it's all easy from here. Haha...I am sure that attitude will quickly change!

We're getting married @ 2PM at St. Joe Catholic church on Johnson Drive in Shawnee, which is the church that Jimmy and his family attend, which also houses the grade school that he and all his brothers went to and his mom is currently the prinicpal of! It's great to get married somewhere with some much history and meaning!

Our reception will be in the Commons area at St. Thomas Aquinas...where Jimmy went to High School, my mom works as an academic counselor, and where Jimmy and I first locked eyes across the gym in 2003. Again- we're very excited to celebrate this exciting day there!!!!

Check out our website on the knot for future updates...there are still LOTS of details to be determined (including the wedding party!!! can't wait to ask them!!!) and we'll make sure to keep that website updated as it gets closer to the big day. According to the knot....only 343 more days!

http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/BrittanyBruns&JimmyCarter

He really likes to eat

The evidence in the garage....

Willy after the incident...

Willy is my chunky little dog whom I love no matter what...except for the fact that when he gets really fat, it puts a strain on his back and then he has problems walking because of his back :( If we don't continue to monitor his weight and what/when we feed him, his back could go out which means we would be faced with the decision of a $4000 surgery to correct it or the most horrible thing ever..I can't even type it. So you can see why I'm so crazy about making sure he doesn't overeat and gets exercise!!!

Since my condo is no longer mine and we won't close on our new house (yes- we FINALLY got it) until May 22, my dogs and I have moved in with Barb and Roger!! So now I have 4 weiner dogs to greet me every time I walk in the door! My mom and I were sitting in the family room watching 90210 a few weeks ago and we had 3 of the dogs sitting with us, but Willy was no where to be found. I thought I heard some whining, so we looked for him in the basement, the laundry room, upstairs, the library, and my parents bedroom but he was no where to be found!! I just figured I was hearing things. I sit back on the couch and hear the whining again---and am like "MOM--where the heck is Willy!??". So I open the door that goes out to the garage and see him sitting there. I tell him sorry and have him come lay with me. We go to bed, with Milly of course, after the show and I forget about the whole thing.

The next morning I wake up to my alarm and see Willy laying on his back next to my pillow. His stomach looks HUGE but I he's pretty fat, so I figured I was just looking at it differently. He starts acting weird and doesn't run outside immediately to go to the bathroom....but what really set me off is when I got the dog food out to feed him. Ususally he is jumping up and down, running around in circles in excitement for that moment when that 1/2 cup of dog food goes into his bowl and he consumes it in like 15 seconds...only to be waiting until 4:30PM rolls around (his 2nd and final meal of the day). This morning...I put the food in the bowl and he doesn't even react. He sniffs the food and doesn't even eat it. At this point, I FREAK out because if you have ever seen this dog eat...you would be too. I lay him on the floor in the family room and feel his huge stomach and it's just ridiculously large and Willy's demeanor is very lethargic. I get my dad to take a look and he says it looks weirdly big.

Then a light bulb goes off in my head as I was running through what he might have gotten into. BAM- The garage last night!! When I moved back home I had 1/4 of a bag of dog food left and it was left on the floor of the garage....so I run out there and see it on the ground, half open (but remarkably, there is still food remaining). That was it. Willy's dream came true! He got the chance to eat as much dog food as he wanted too....and now he was so stuffed he was completely miserable. Jimmy and I have had many discussions about "what if" this ever happened...would Willy EVER stop eating? Or would he eat until he exploded? I'm happy to say that we have the answer and proof...he did stop eating..which means he might have an ounce of reason in that little dog brain of his!

I said yes....

Well Jimmy officially impressed me and surprised me and made me an incredibly happy young woman on April 11, 2009. He asked me to marry him....and I said yes. Based on my answer, he could probably guess that he did something right!! Will all the thought, planning, and effort he put into that one afternoon and the engagement after party with all our friends and family (not to mention the last 3 and a half or so years...)---there is no way I could have said no...

Here are 10 reasons why I said yes:

10. He's really like graphic tees and he looks sexy in them

9. His hair is red

8. He loves his dog, Toby, almost as much as me

7. He loves my dogs, Milly and Willy, almost as much as Toby

6. He has a great family and friends- including WONDERFUL nieces and nephews with more to come!

5. He can always make me smile/laugh by saying something ridiculous

4. He tells me when I'm being ridiculous (quite often)

3. He really likes singing country songs and listening to me sing them (yes- this is if I sound good or not)

2. He has the greatest hugs in the whole world that can make any problem go away

1. He understands/puts up with me/loves me like no one else can or ever could :)

Only 5 reasons I contemplated saying "Eh- ask me next weeek":

5. His obsession with P90X

4. This stupid game he insists on playing everytime we are in the car where a song comes on and he says "who sings this?" to me and five milli-seconds later blurts out the answer without giving me time to think

3. He knows what I'm thinking or what I'm going to say so often that sometimes I think he is a warlock or vampire

2. He's obsessed with the Royals, Chiefs, KU, and Nascar...to the point that I'm not sure he will even talk to me when we're married during the month of March and on Saturdays during the fall

1. The first thing he does every morning is wake up and immediately check Jayhawk Slant website and new posts on his Blackberry

In the end though---who wouldn't want to be with that handsome face for the rest of their life?? I can't wait. Doesn't Brittany Carter have a nice ring to it?

Random thoughts on a Tuesday

Promise this is the last post of the day :) But I did say in the "Little things" post that I would update more often and I'm trying to really remember the things that I think would be great on a blog. So here are a few things that went through my mind today....

5:07AM Thoughts: Milly and Willy and I are up and about going outside for the morning pee. Now usually, there are no other humans outside (well a few homeless people, but they are harmless) with their dogs. Every once and a while, a pretty old woman- at least 85- and her older cocker spaniel are outside. I'm sure she is a very nice person, but she drives me crazy when I run into her in the morning. A) because it's 5:00 in the morning and what doesn't drive you crazy? and B) she always tries to "train" my dogs. Willy and Milly like to bark- they are dogs, so I mean that's what they do. Apparently, she thinks that they are going to kill her dog in a wiener dog attack...but she doesn't use the common "I live in a condo with 15 sq ft of grass and own a dog with about 100 other people" etiquette. That means that you know your dogs are territorial and if you see someone with a dog, you wait until they are inside or if you are both outside you go to the other way to pee/poop. Instead, she stands and holds the door open with her dog sitting there expecting you to be gracious that she held the door open and thinking that my angel dogs are going to just mosey on through without a peep. Of course that is not the case and they bark and bark and she always says in a mean condescending voice "DOWN BOY DOWN" to my dogs. EHHHH- that's like the equivalent of spanking another person's kids in my books, which is not ok.

After that incident I start thinking, why does she even live here?? What older person would want to live in a condo complex full of 20-30 somethings?? Then my mind wakes up and starts pumping. Jimmy and I put an offer on a house yesterday that is owned by an older woman, but she doesn't live there anymore and currently lives in Missouri. I know her name, but no other details. But my realtor did say "Maybe she just wanted to downsize and get something maintenance free". BOOM- it hits me. What are the chances that we could potentially be buying 5AM old lady dog owner that I encounter 2-3 times a week??? That would be creepy and weird, but funny. So I run upstairs and get on the forum that my condo has to try to sort through all the user names that are on the website thinking that I'll see her last name somewhere. No luck. And then I realize....she's like 85 and I'm sure that the online forum in my building is probably one of the amenities she is not taking advantage of. I'm pretty sure it's not the same person- but you never know.

10:29AM Bathroom thoughts: As I am walking to and from the bathroom at work today, I start thinking about how bad I need to do laundry and how I don't like wearing skirts to work but I had to today because I had no clean dress pants. Then my mind starts to think about the skirt I'm wearing because I feel like I've had it for a really long time. So I start thinking really hard as to the time in my life when I would buy a stretchy pencil black skirt---because for some reason I just felt like when I bought it, I did so thinking "I just have to buy this right now because I NEED it and don't care how much it costs". But I couldn't remember when that was and why!! It was driving me crazy.

So about 3 columns away from my office on my stroll back from the bathroom it hits me like a ton of bricks. I bought the skirt in 8th grade right before a choir show because we had to wear a black skirt and white shirt and I didn't have a black skirt- but of course didn't realize that until like 2 hours before the concert. I tell my mom we have to go to the store to buy a skirt. Of course she got mad at me and said "Brittany why didn't you think of this before tonight?". I didn't say this, but my answer today would be "Because I was 13 and you don't plan when you're 13...". Apparently this whole incident had a significant impact on my life because I tend to plan a little too much 10 years later....... :) Love you Barb! Anyways, so we rushed to Old Navy and bought this regular black skirt- not on sale- and I wore it to the concert. This skirt has traveled with me through high school, to Manhattan for college, to Oklahoma when I worked at ConocoPhillips, maybe to one of the cities that I worked in while I was at Deloitte (I rarely wore skirts to work though because flying in them sucks), and now at Hallmark. All I could think was a sense of nostalgia thinking that I was wearing this great skirt that had been around for 10 years and it somehow still fits! Let me emphasize again that it is incredibly stretchy and is a little tight- but no one noticed and like I said, I was desperate this morning.

I also called my mom during lunch to ask her if she remembered the incident. At first she claimed she didn't, but then she said she did. Not sure if she really did, but I think it's hilarious and had a great rest of the day remembering the good old days in Mrs. Goodin's choir class and all the years in between then and now. Now the big question is, do I do my best thinking on my walks to and from the bathroom????

Dancing styles...

One thing Erica and Heather made sure Emily and I experienced this weekend was trying to learn how to dance. We did get a good mix of dancing styles that we could mimic after in the future weddings and clubs in KC (because we frequently go clubbing):

1. "I'M GONNA PUNCH YOU"

• This dance style was shown to us by Erica's wonderful friend and co-worker Taren
• She gets in your face and doesn't care what style you have, she's rockin it
• These moves are direct and to the beat and do nothing but make you smile
• Side note: I was truly inspired by this dance style and will be practicing it myself- thank you Taren for your innovation!

2. "I'm freaking cute, look at me, dance with me, but I make weird faces"

• I have to admit, this is my normal and old dance style (before my recent inspiration)
• It's the typical girl (most likely drunk) who's trying to be super sexy but innovative at the same time
• Unfortunately, this mix doesn't always work because guys that are sober enough to watch you and interpret what you are actually doing....often look at you with weird faces

3. "I'm sexy, I'm hot"

• I don't think this needs any other description other than the one word "grinding"
• Two word description: Gross and unneccesary

4. "Let me do the weirdest dance moves in the world, everyone will laugh"

• This is often done by guys...really drunk guys or metro guys (from my experience)
• While some girls might think it's funny- good thing for Jimmy, I'm not a fan

I'm looking forward to this Friday night when Erica will be in KC and I can show her my moves that I have been practicing. Blonde here we come..............

You brought what on a plane!??

So the journey to Dallas, TX began after work on Friday afternoon. Emily Mc met at my parents house around 5:30, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and we were off to the airport. As the former traveling pro per my consultant life style, I do not even think twice about traveling and carrying on my luggage because I have all the little bottles, bags, etc set to carry on. I am always more concerned about my less experienced travel buddies when we go through security.

We get to the airport and make it over to the gate and load all of our bags on the thing to go through security. I loaded my items as follows: shoes/coat, suitcase, purse...then Emily's suitcase was right after my purse. After I got to the other side and was patiently awaiting to pick up my bags....Emily gets next to me and we see the conveyor belt come to a halt, an additional TSA security guard is called over and yells "OH SHIT- who brought a butter knife??" Emily and I hear this and look at each other and she thinks "that's weird- neither of us would have a..." as my words interrupt her thought. I say, "Oh yeah, that's mine. I must have forgot that was in my purse" and laugh. Obviously the TSA man did not think it was too amusing because he calls over another lady to rummage through my purse and I sit there and explain to her how my co-worker was out of town for 4 days and I was just so excited that she was coming back because she could take some of the work off of my shoulders, so I made brownies on Thursday to welcome her back and brought a butter knife to cut them.......I'm not really sure if she wanted all those details, but I wanted to make sure she knew I was telling the truth :)

While the angry man watches over her shoulder, she rummages through my purse. Sunglasses, tampons, nail clippers, nail glue, chap stick, a plastic bag of Tums, Big Red, my wallet, my planner....and FINALLY she gets to the brownie dirtied butter knife. She pulls it out and rubs her finger over the "blade" explaining to him that it's not sharp and she's going to run my bag back through but I'm fine. He on the other hand is not too satisfied, nor does he think it's amusing at all. "You know ma'am this is SERIOUS stuff and if it did have a 4 inch blade, we would have to call the LEW". Obviously I do not know what "lew" means, so I go "Call the WHO?" with a smile on my face. As his face gets red, he yells "THE POLICE". I quickly get the picture and grab my stuff and walk towards our gate. Then as we are about 3 steps away, another TSA guy yells "Who's butter knife is this??!!" while holding up the entire plastic container with the brownie dirty butter knife in it. After 3/4 of the people in the terminal turns to stare, I say "um that's mine but I didn't think I could take it on the plane." TSA guy: "Oh no, you can. I'm sure you'll want it with your set." Um....OK whatever. So then I proceed to stick the butter knife back in my purse in a hurry and grab a seat.

Emily throughout this entire process is just hyterically laughing at me, telling me how stupid I am, how weird it is that I have a butter knife in my purse, and reminding me how I was the travel "expert" and she was offended that I thought it was her. Yeah I get it. But it was hysterical...now the big question is........did I remember that it was in my purse before I tried to get back on the plane on the way home to KC on Sunday??? I don't think I coudl ever forget it with Emily telling Erica and Heather all about it the second we got home. It's new home is now at Erica's house in Dallas. I will hopefully see it again someday. Maybe we should try to test the postal system and mail it!??? Or maybe not...

So that is the story before we got on the plane. Once we got on the plane, half way through the flight and our beers, a guy behind us passes us a note. It's from these idiots behind him and it says "Are you from KC?". So we pass it back and forth- one time I tried to pass it through the flight attendant guy, but he did not think it was funny at all. Neither did we after like 3 times, so Emily wrote back to them in Spanish and they said "WTF". End of story. We are so nice :)

Our trips together will never get old......................thanks for a great travel experience girlfriend.

The little things

Now that I have become more accustomed to normal 8-5 workdays and life in Kansas City, I have started to realize that during the day, it's truly the little things that I have learned to appreciate and love. A few examples......

1) Co-workers:
There is this lady that sits on the other side of me who is hilarious and loves her dog just as much as I love Milly and Willy. She also treats her dog like a child....as I do to mine....so we get along just great and she always asks me about them and vice versa. The thing I love most about her is when we talk and I answer her usual questions (which are "how are your dogs, how is the house hunt, how is your life?")...right when I answer them she goes "BBBBRITTTTTNNNNEEEYYY...." like really long and drawn out. It's much better if I give you an impression in person, so ask me next time you see me. But it's hilarious, because she doesn't just do it once she seriously says it after like every fifth word I say. I always go back to my desk and just laugh after we talk...love her!

2) Stupid people:
However frustrated I might get with some of these people at work, the minute I take a step back realize how stupid some of the questions are that I get and that I seriously spend my time answering, all I can do is laugh. Because in reality, I may think they are stupid questions....but I know that there are several daily instances when I might ask a question or make a comment and someone thinks "Wow is Brittany really that dumb?". Gotta love perception...

3) Stupid things that happen:
Yesterday when I was coming back in from lunch after a wonderful time with an old Deloitte co-worker, I rememebered I had a 12 pack of diet dr. pepper in my trunk that I hadn't taken into my house yet and I wanted to drink one during the afternoon. So I open my trunk and in an attempt to not break a nail by puncturing the cardboard, I used my key to open on the perforated line. HAHA...two seconds later I was getting sprayed in the face with diet dr. pepper in the hallmark parking garage and I couldn't even see out of my sticky glasses. No one was there to witness it, as I quickly just grabbed another one in the 12 pack and took my glasses off, but if the crown center security folks got that on tape, I can only imagine the chuckles the old men would have gotten out of that.

4) Seeing good friends:
I'm headed to Dallas today with Emily to visit Erica, Emily Otto, Heather, and all the others included in the DFU (Dallas Family Unit...as they refer to themselves). Trips like this make me really excited because they will be filled with looking at engagement rings, trying on bridesmaid dresses, drinking beer and eating Mexican food...and probably conversing in Arabian accents like good old times. In addition, nights with good friends in KC make me smile too. Like when Vanessa pretty much proposed to Emily and I....or at least that was what it felt like...when she asked us to be her bridesmaids!! I can't wait for all the weddings and significant things that are going to happen in the next year of the lives of my friends :) YEAH for good friends, good times, and stupid jokes/stories we share!

5) Finally....Jimmy and Milly and Willy and Toby and my family:
No fail, there is not one day that goes by that old Jimmy or one of the three mutts we might soon share don't do something that make me crack up for 5 minutes straight. I know most of you probably get the pleasure of hearing these stories in person...but one example of Jimmy is just the fact that as we have been going through this whole process of buying a house....consistently from the beginning the one thing that he has been most excited about it WOOD PANELING. I don't think there needs to be any additional comments regarding this- develop your own opinions as you please. :)

Sorry also for the lack of posts- I got intimidated each time I sat down to write because I felt like it had to be long and well thought out. I'm over that now, so enjoy.