Two years and counting...

I can't believe tomorrow is going to mark the two year anniversary of when I married Dhrumil. If feels like I just met him and then again it feels like I have always known him. I could get on my soapbox right now and preach on marriage, but I won't. All I will say is that it is definitely a journey with valleys, mountains and rivers to cross and though the terrain may be extremely difficult at times, it is beautiful and you learn more about each other each step you take. Below are some pictures that my brother-in-law took the day of our wedding. I just recently saw them and love the candidness that he caught.

What a few Bobby Pins can do

This is a random post. Did you ever try to make curls in your hair using bobby pins? I remember beings so excited doing this when I was little. My sister and I would be so excited with our wet heads and box of bobby pins. We'd help each other pin our heads so we would look like porcupines and then sleep a painful sleep. In the morning we'd run to the bathroom ready to see what beautiful curls were produced in our night of pain. Usually we ended up with curls so bouncy and sticking everywhere that we'd have to wear a frizzy ponytail. What a disappointment! Anyways Willoughby is in major need of a hair cut and since he has been sick (he's much better now) I haven't taken him to the groomers. He's finally going tomorrow, but I thought it would be funny to show you a picture of before the pins and after. :)

BEFORE

AFTER!

Housing Saga

I decided I wanted to try to document my life as a renter. I thought it best to write this in a light-hearted funny way. .. although it sometimes makes me sick I always end up laughing... usually.


** Read at your own risk**

When I found out my parents were moving to Indiana I was not only sad that they were leaving but also because I would no longer have an almost free place to live, free cooked meals and my dad around to do my tax/401-k/insurance type stuff (yes I was spoiled). I had just gotten engaged at the time and had to either find an apartment Dhrumil could move into once we got married 7 months later, or something month to month. The rental markets of Fairfield County are beyond ridiculous and I soon found out that finding an apartment was not going to be as easy as I had originally thought. After seeing places I even felt sorry mice had to live in, places extremely small and extremely expensive and also one place with very strange girl roommates, I came upon an elderly woman who was renting out a room in her house. It was perfect (or so I thought)… right down the street from the train station (I was commuting into NYC at the time) month-to-month, furnished, and not horribly expensive. That was it… I moved in with the woman and my parents took my dog to Indiana until I found a place he could live in. All in all this dwelling place was ok… I was so swept up in wedding planning that time flew by. Let’s fast forward to the day before my wedding… it’s the morning, I’m frantically trying to finish packing my room, my sister and College roommate were helping me clean and then “WAIT where are my keys?” I had lost my car keys and keys to the house… my landlord went INSANE and didn’t want me to leave without giving her the keys back… sobs from me, yelling from my landlord, panic from my sister, yelling from my roommate, my landlord saying she’ll call the police. Whew… I left that place with a bang and had nightmares my whole honeymoon. Oh and I found my keys at the bottom of my suitcase while in Jamaica.
I lived there a total of 7 months.

On to my first apartment with my husband. Dhrumil moved in two months before our wedding. This apartment had an awesome location, right in the little town of Darien and a few steps away from Starbucks. Sure this apartment was only 600 square feet, but as my mom said “we were newlyweds and wouldn’t care.” The size wasn’t the problem. LITTLE did we know that the apartment wasn’t wired correctly for electricity, we didn’t have our own thermostat for a few months and had the windows open in the middle of winter, we had mice under the sink and a little mouse in our stove fan, but best of all… we heard every word our neighbor said. When Dhrumil first moved in we noticed one of the walls dividing our apartment with our neighbors was so thin we saw the light from the other apartment and smelled her food. When we got back from the honeymoon the wall was re-built, but we still heard every word. We also had a landlord who took a month to respond to problems… or to never respond at all. Needless to say we decided to move on to bigger and better.
I lived there a total of 9 months.

Looking for our next apartment we felt like we were a little more savvy… um yeah. We ended up in an 800 square feet “condo” in a small complex in Stamford. Our landlord made sure all the t’s were crossed and i’s dotted (aka she was a bit anal) We thought that a good quality because if we had a problem she would respond! We moved into this apartment with hope in our hearts… until we took a closer look. The carpet (which was white) was so dirty with so many spots you couldn’t quite tell it was white anymore. Ok fine… let’s just use throw rugs and forget about it. What a wonderful apartment… I was only 5 minutes from work! And then one night we come home and hear our neighbor with music was so loud we couldn't sleep. Well I guess that’s just apartment living. Overall this apartment treated us well except for the rat and policeman I saw in our “backyard.” Policeman you say? Yes someone had stolen a car on our street and hidden all of the stuff they didn’t want in my backyard. Then the clincher… our landlord, who had previously been trying to sell our place, found someone interested. I again had to make the place spotless for viewers and then low and behold… the place sold! We had the option of getting out of our lease early and we jumped on it.
I lived there a total of 8 ½ months.

Now here we are… this time around I was extremely picky and found exactly what I wanted. A 1200 square foot, beautiful old farm house. We have upstairs and down, we never hear our neighbors and we have a waterfall across the street. My dreams ran wild... maybe we can spend two Christmases here… maybe we can live here for a whole year! Nothing threw us for a loop except our temperamental washer as well as our astronomically high electric bill. Being the now savvy renters we investigated the high bill… but wait before I share that news “ring ring” it was our landlord… wait a second… they have decided to sell our place. HA! So long to my dreams... Back to the electric bill… to make a long story short we were asked by our landlord to consider moving out. (if u want the whole story email me) double HA! For now we have our home… though it is being looked at next week for potential buyers. I’m chanting 1 year, 1 year, just 1 year! So far
I have lived here at total of 5 ½ months!

On to BIGGER AND BETTER! i hope

Uggs - Ugly BUT useful!

For Christmas this year Dhrumil bought me a pair of Uggs. I know they are popular all over the States, but if you live in Fairfield County every single little girl starting at the age of 2 seems to have a pair. That was the one reason I didn’t want them and the one reason I feel like a clone walking amongst the women of Connecticut.

Clone I may be, but seeing as this is one of the snowiest winters in a long time they have become my life saver! My feet are always warm, my pants are dry, I can enjoy the times I take Willoughby out and not feel coldness seeping into my veins. If I don’t know what shoes to wear I just throw them on cause… hey they’re trendy so who cares if I look funny… I’m finally cool!

Babies, Best Friends and ICE!

Over the weekend I was able to visit my roommate from college, Becky and her sweet new baby Landen (and of course her husband Aaron was there :) ) . Besides the awful delays, cancellations, ICE and so on and so forth I made it to and from Tulsa in one piece.

This was the first time I stayed with a baby for a few days and it was an eye opening experience. Obviously it's a huge life altering change to have a child, but I don't think you think of how helpless little babies are. The just lay there curled up and need you to do everything for them. Ok, maybe you do think of that, but I hadn't before. Anyways I had such a great time watching Becky as a mother and being able to help out a little. A few of the highlights were Landen spitting up on me, the dog, Daisy, taking me on a walk (she's a little bigger than Willoughby) and my many talks with Becky. :)

You're Never too Old!

Every now and then Dhrumil and I find ourselves talking about how excited we are going to be when we have kids and how we're going to get to do fun kid things with them. Since Dhrumil came over from India when he was 7 he hasn't seen half the Disney movies I've seen, and he doesn't know any famous kids stories. He can't wait to read to his kids and learn those stories that most of us have known from birth. I can't wait to go back to the Children's Museums and paint with finger paints. :) That got me thinking though... why wait to have kids to once again experience things that we loves so much as children?


Today I decided to take charge of being like a kid... Dhrumil and I bundled up and headed outside into our huge yard. We then proceeded to make a snow man... or maybe more like a snow boy since he was kinda small. We threw snow at each other, made snow angels and just enjoyed the beauty that God has created. Yes we're excited to do this with our kids, but for now we'll have fun doing things like this together. :)

Slumdog Millionaire

If you haven't... you have to check out Slumdog Millionaire. It's an amazing movie and I'm not just saying that because of all the awards it has been winning. I'm staring at the screen while listening to the soundtrack trying to figure out how to explain it. I liked it for a lot of reasons... it was artistically done, I liked the mixture of Hindi and English and I liked how they showed the subtitiles. The acting was awesome and the premise was heart wrenching. I also liked it because Dhrumil is from Mumbai and it was eye opening for me to see some of the city. Anyways I hope you check it out!