Wednesday, May 29, 2013

wedding recap: pre-wedding detail photos

Thank you for all of your kind words and prayers for Sarge. We all had a good night's sleep and he is back to the vet this morning for a check up. None of us even turned over in our sleep because we were so tired. He seems a little better today.


Here are few pre-wedding detail shots for you today. Slowly breaking them all out :)









This is my favorite arrangement in my parents house.


Dress was made by Paloma Blanca and shoes were Kate Spade.








A sweet, sweet gift from my grandmother's best friend who has been like a mother to my mom, too.


Welcome bags for our hotel guests. They were fabulous and made by a sweet, sweet family friend!






Be Thou My Vision was beautifully sung by a professor of music at SC State University.




These are some of my favorite flowers that were pew markers.


Sorry for the lack of text, but I think most of the pictures speak for themselves :)


Tuesday, May 28, 2013

pancreatic poochie

If you have been following me the past few days on social media, you have probably seen that we have a very sick pooch on our hands. The past couple of days, especially hours have been very trying and hard, but we have gotten through.

Rewind back to Friday night.... Tyler and I went out on the boat and took Sarge like we always do. He is a hunting retriever and absolutely loves retrieving his bumper in the water. He swam and swam like nothing was wrong for an hour or two. When we got home, he had an upset stomach, but we just looked at it like he drank too much salt water. When we woke up Saturday morning I stepped in a puddle of tinkle at the foot of our bed. Sarge is very housebroken and has never ever tinkled during the middle of the night before. Again, I just thought he drank too much water and needed to go!

We packed up and headed to my family's lakehouse for Saturday. Again, Sarge swam, jumping off the dock and having the time his life like nothing was wrong. He acted perfectly fine! Sunday morning at about 3 am, I heard a loud cough and knew he was throwing up. I jumped up and flipped on the light, knowing he was vomiting on the carpet in the bedroom! Yuck! Tyler got up and we cleaned it up, AGAIN, thinking he drank too much water and it finally hit him.

Sunday morning we packed up to go to Myrtle Beach to visit our friends from Illinois and Tyler's college friends that were in town for the week. We were so excited to see them and were going to leave Sarge with my parents. As we were getting ready to leave the lake, Sarge threw up two more times, this time it didn't look "normal" (I mean, does any puke really look normal?). We cleaned it up and hoped he would feel better by Monday when he got home. My parents took him and he hung out in the den with them and acted fairly normal, except my mom realized that he didn't scarf down his food like he normally does.

Around noon on Monday, my mom texted me to tell me Sarge had gotten sick. Two more times. We immediately left the beach, even though we hated saying goodbye to our friends who live so very far away now. They totally understood because they love Sarge too!

We met my mom off of the interstate to head back to Beaufort, and we noticed he wasn't hanging his head out of the window as normal. He was sitting inbetween her seats and we really started getting nervous. This was the first time we realized how lethargic and dehydrated he was. During all of this, I had texted my boss who's wife is a vet, texted our vet from Illinois, and called a high school friend who was in vet school. Everyone was saying beware of dehydration and to give him some benadryl to make him sleepy and more comfortable.






Once we got off of the interstate, we decided to call a local vet in Beaufort to see if they were open by chance. We explained the situation and they said the ER vet may be a good idea. We made a couple more calls and decided to get back on I-95 to Savannah to go to the emergency vet. Sarge was very lethargic and sad and we knew he felt horrible!

We finally got to the vet at about 7pm. They ran some tests and while we waited for them to come back, Sarge got sick again. We knew something had to be wrong if he was still vomiting but hadn't eaten in a day. The vet came back with the results and said his pancreatic enzymes were extremely high; higher than she had ever seen them. I immediately started crying because my grandmother passed away from pancreatic cancer and that P word just really upset me. As they were describing pancreatitis, I was crying and Tyler was extremely confused because the vet wasn't making very much sense.



Pancreatitis can be caused by random things in dogs. He could have eaten something like scraps out of the trash or a piece of plastic or something toxic. We really had no idea. We made more phone calls to every vet we knew to get other opinions, but everyone agreed it would be best to leave him overnight. As horrible as it was to leave him, we knew he felt awful and needed medicine. They gave him antibiotics for a UTI that he also had, pain medicine since his pancreas was so inflamed, and anti-nausea medicine. After we paid our bill (O.M.G. that place wasn't cheap), we got a hotel nearby because we had to pick him up the next morning at 7.

Thank goodness we got some sleep at the sketchy La Quinta down the road from the vet because the rest of the morning was exhausting too. The vet on duty wasn't very positive and said his enzymes hadn't gone down in that 12 hours that they tested them. WTF we were thinking and kept asking how fatal this could be. Thank goodness they said it isn't fatal in dogs if they can get the enzymes under control.

We picked him up at 7:30 and he was so lethargic. I kept checking his pulse in the car because his breathing was really weak and were really scared. Sarge is our baby! We had paperwork faxed to what I thought was my boss's wife's vet back in Beaufort. We got there, checked in and thought everything was fine until I mentioned that I worked with the vet's husband and the vet who saw us was very confused. I knew she didn't work on Tuesdays, but when she had no idea who I was talking about, we realized I had called the wrong vet!!!! The vet and assistant laughed at us and said it would be fine to leave, they just wanted Sarge to get medical care asap because he was in a lot of pain and was growling and whining.

Once we finally got to the correct vet (am I an idiot or what!?!?!!), we were immediately taken back to see the other vet in the practice. He reassured us this wasn't fatal, but wanted to put him back on pain meds, antibiotic, and fluids. Poor thing had been poked and prodded for hours. He also had a catheter inserted into his leg. We left Sarge at the vet for the day and picked him back up after work. I worried all afternoon about our poor boy because I know he felt so awful and we didn't know all weekend he was sick!

We brought him home and have him hooked up to his IV now and he is happily sleeping in his kennel. We'll keep him on fluids until 11 pm and will take him back to the vet in the morning and they'll retest his blood again. I pray his enzymes and white blood cells have gone down and hope he will be in less pain overnight. We really hate seeing him like this.  His x-rays showed only air bubbles from gas and thank goodness he hadn't swallowed anything which could cause all of this. We're assuming it is some funky bacteria since he is a hunting dog- no clue what he could have picked up from ducks or the nasty water from the creek or lake.




If you are still reading, thank you. We really appreciate the love and prayers we have gotten, especially from my blog friends and readers. We've had some really supportive people!

I also want all of you dog moms to know that you need to stop giving your dog table scraps!!! Sarge never gets people food which could have caused this, but this is one of the reasons why people food is bad for dogs. They cannot break down things that we can! There is a reason they make dog food. It is horrible watching a pup you love be in so much pain, especially when he has never had any health problems. He is five and very active, we would have never expected anything. Just a word of caution, because I don't want y'all to ever go through this- or your pup!!!!

Also, if you are weary of the emergency vet, don't be! Thank heavens it was a reasonable price just to walk in the door because money was a reason we didn't want to take him. Tyler's parents vet near Philly is super expensive and we just could not afford a hefty bill. By no means had we budgeted for anything like this, BUT Sarge is so worth it and we will totally rearrange spending to accommodate our boy. I can easily give up extra froyo or treats for his treatment. I will do whatever I can for my boy. Tyler too!

We are praying we all have a good night sleep and he feels better in the morning. I am so thankful for veterinarians and the assistants at the vet that helped us. I used to make fun of people who do things like this, but until you go through something with a sick animal, you don't understand it. We love our Sarge so much and want him to get better. Hopefully he will bounce back tomorrow and we can slowly reintroduce food and water to him.

In the mean time, we'd appreciate your prayers!


Friday, May 24, 2013

JoJo Loves You Memorial Day Sale!

A few weeks ago, the lovely ladies at JoJo Loves You contacted me about telling all of my readers about their Bling Memorial Day sale this weekend! 

I started looking at their website and they have THE cutest jewelry! 

I was sent a pair of the pearl mini party bling earrings and they are SO precious! I have worn them everyday since I received them! They are fun, but very classy!

You can go to their online store HERE!


I opened up this very fun package on Monday!


They have great packaging with lots of pink!


Love how the earrings come on a heart. 




They sort of resemble a smaller version of the David Yurman earrings that I have been drooling over forever. BUT you cannot go wrong on the price of these beauties!

And it's your lucky day! JoJo Loves You is having a Bling Sale this weekend over Memorial Day!






Here are some of my other favorite blings!

Violet Mini Party Bling

Sapphire Frost Blings


Flamingo Pink Oval Bling


Now go get to shopping!!!!


 like them on Facebook
follow them on Twitter
Shop JoJo Loves You online store,
 and check out their Pinterest!


** I was given a pair of earrings of my choice from JoJo Loves You in exchange for a post about their sale this weekend ** 

Thursday, May 23, 2013

wedding recap: favorite shots + 2 months

Today is our TWO month anniversary!!!!!! So, I am celebrating by showing you a few of my favorite wedding photos! I cannot believe it has been two months already. Times flies!

I am going to go through these in segments starting with my favorite shots. I'll apologize that the horizontal pictures are outside of the borders of my blog... I wanted them to be large so you can see all of the details!

I just want to relive this day and I feel like I can do so by looking at our pictures. Our photographer, Sara Parker was amazing. She captured some perfect shots and had so much fun with us! If you are getting married in South Carolina, I HIGHLY recommend Sara and her husband Wes. 


It was so surreal getting dressed in my wedding dress in front of my nine best friends. The joy and emotion in the room was unbelievable! Everyone was just so happy!!



I couldn't have been more pleased with all of the bouquets. I wasn't thrilled with my bouquet for my bridal portraits, but my wedding day bouquet was flawless. Our florist did a fabulous job! The bridesmaid's bouquets were also perfect! You know I love both hydrangeas AND tulips and these bouquets were exactly what I imagined. I wish I had a vase of them in my house all of the time!


This is one of my favorite pictures! Between Leah and Virginia (the two with their mouths open), I just beam looking at this picture!  Again, we were all SO happy!!



This is absolutely my all-time favorite shot... EVER. I know it doesn't have Tyler in it, but these colors are amazing. Our photographer did awesome with this shot. I have this photo as my background photo on my computer and I cannot stop looking at it. She really captured the beauty of the flowers!


I love this picture with my girls! They were such troopers because it was FREEZING outside! Absolutely freezing!! My cousin Stacey was blowdrowing her body when we got back into the Sunday school rooms because she was so cold. 


Rebecca was the best matron of honor ever. She was so attentive and throughout my wedding planning process, she was amazing. Always giving me advice, telling me it will be OK, and giving me suggestions on what to do! She was always a great shoulder to lean on. You'd never know she was pregnant in this picture! 5ish months to be exact!! 



These guys are so funny! They all have so much personality and I think this picture shows that! They are great friends (and family) to both Tyler and me!


Cotton boll boutonnieres- would you expect anything less?


Love this family photo shot with just the four of us... Now we are five!


 I love all of the balcony shots from the church! We had fun picking out our friends and family in the crowd. I remember being so overwhelmed with faces and colors when my dad and I walked in. I'm so happy I can look back and see who was in the church.



Another favorite shot of my bouquet, but I also LOVE this one of Ty and me! Pure happiness.


One of my must-have shots that I wanted was a ZTA picture. ZTA was a huge part of my life in college and I loved having my sorority sisters celebrate such a special time with me. 



Tyler WOWed me with our first dance. We tried to practice a few times, but it always ended up badly. We danced to "This Will Be" by Natalie Cole... Now it is the song in the background of the eharmony.com commericals, but I loved it on the Parent Trap! We had sooo much fun dancing, but dang it I was SO tired afterwards!


Miss Hyiat deserves a whole post of her own, so for now I'll just say that she had more fun than anyone at the wedding. She was with my family and me from the day I came home from the hospital and holds a VERY special place in my heart. She danced her booty off!



Ok, so maybe my sister-in-law's dad had more fun than Miss Hyiat... It's a toss up! He is SO fun to dance with!


I wanted to be on stage all night and that I was! There are some hilarious shots, but I love this one with my favorite men- Tyler, my dad, and Tyler's dad!


I laugh out loud every time I see this picture. My dad is THE MAN. I know he is so happy the wedding is over and he worked so hard making sure all of the details and logistics were how my mom and I wanted them to be! This picture is hysterical and everyone in our community loves him. He is too humble to admit that, but he is a very loved and respected father, husband, and farmer!


The confetti in this picture is so fun!!! I originally was just going to do the streamers, but decided to order some biodegradable confetti to go along with the colors. By the end of the night I was feeling prettyyyyyyy good, so I think that is why I look a little bit crazy in this picture! I did NOT want to leave the reception and was a little peeved at our planner that she told me it was time to go!


This is my uncle's Jeepster. He has recently gotten into old cars and I'm really glad we were able to leave in it. He drove us and made circles around the parking lot! We giggled and laughed and didn't want it to be over. I love everyone's emotions in this picture- my aunt in the purple, our friend Tom from Illinois in the yellow tie, our minister's wife in the silver, my cousin and brother on the right, my MOH's dad closest to me... so fun!


I'll be posting a few more when I can get organized to get them all together. Hope you enjoyed!


Here's to many more anniversaries, nothing wrong with celebrating monthly!