Xapa to the World

Author: xapatotheworld

  • Getting Married: 23 Weeks – End of the World…Psh, I Got This

    Lots of things coming up in the next week. Busy busy busy! We have three separate family gatherings between today and Christmas to go to, and then the Christmas Day festivities. I am happy to report that we made it through the first day of Winter, also known as the Mayan D-Day. We had our first real snow on the ground yesterday, but it didn’t stick around much. So much for Winter Storm Draco (The Weather Channel has decided to name winter storms, much to the chagrin of the meteorological community) although I know that this particular storm dropped a lot more snow in other parts of the country. We just got a lot of high winds, ice and cold temps.

    Have I mentioned how much I love my church? We have mailboxes set up in the hallway at church for each family and people use it all year long, but the original intent was for Christmas cards! How handy? I love getting Christmas cards and I love giving them, but I haven’t done so in the last few years. Bad Sarah. I hope to make up for this in the future. Anyway, this year has been sweet because there have been quite a few well-wishes for the wedding included with the notes and some were even labeled to “Sarah and Matt.” 🙂 So many dear friends who have been praying for me and my future husband for so many years. It is a blessing.

    This Wednesday we had a church-wide potluck dinner and then the kids acted out the Nativity. My flower girl was one of the sheep and they were so adorable! She’s got quite the personality and would pop up around different sides of the manger. Her big cousin was playing the part of Mary who tried desperately to quiet down the sheep for the pantomime. Joseph sat there looking a bit stunned (he was played by another friend’s son; he and I rag on each other about the Bengals and the Steelers and yes, he’s only about 5.) When that part of the Nativity had to come off the stage, Camille let us know that she wasn’t ready to come down yet and her momma had to carry her off.

    kidsnativity

    Our ring bearer was also in the play with his parents. They were Mary, Joseph and Jesus when he was about 2 years old and the wise men arrived with their gifts. As they walked up to him and put down their packages, his eyes would get wide and he’d point, exclaiming and “oo-ing” about what might be inside. It was so cute. That reminds me that I need to get a pic up of him on the wedding page.

    Facebook has put together a Top 20 recap of the year this time around. I thought it fitting given that we were facing the end of the world. Here were my top moments, according to Facebook:

    1. Jan 13 – In a relationship with Matt Martin.  2. Jan 28-29 – Visit Latrobe, PA.  3. Feb 11 – Added 81 photos to my Winter ’11/’12 album. 4. Feb 18-20 – Pappy’s Visitation and Funeral in Latrobe, PA. 5. Feb 24 – Tagged in 4 photos by Matt. 6. Mar 19 – Flubs with Matt! 7. Apr 11 – Last day with Community Development Professionals 8. Apr 16 – First day back with Union Savings Bank. 9. Apr 28-29 – Mehring Wedding in Virginia Beach! 10. Apr 30 – Added 130 photos to Spring ’12 album. 11. Jun 14 – 28th Birthday!!!!! 12. Jun 26 – Engaged to Matt Martin in Gulf Shores, AL! 13. Jun 26 – I guess it was a big enough deal that they listed the engagement twice. lol 14. Jun 24-29 – Gulf Shores, AL trip with the Martin family. 15. Aug 28 – Got the Davis’s a Tetris pillow. 16. Sept 7 – Painted Van Gogh’s Starry Night at Paint By the Glass. 17. Added 82 friends. 18. Liked 132 pages.

    Well, I only counted 18 items, even with the double listing of the engagement. False advertisement, Facebook. You sit on a throne of lies…but we all know this and have just come to accept it as the norm of our life. So, I am going to come up with my own 19 and 20. Number 19 would have to be getting to see a sundog! They’re so cool and I’ve been wanting to see one for the last 5-7 years. And then a couple of weeks later, I saw another one! Yeah! And Number 20 is getting to see The Hobbit! 😀 I know it’s dorky, but I’ve been waiting for a while for this movie and I was even more excited to know that Thorin, the dwarf prince, was played by Richard Armitage, one of my favorite actors! He was so good in the BBC mini-series “North and South.”

    I hope you all have an absolutely wonderful Christmas! I will be back to join you and catch up next weekend. Much love to you all!

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

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  • Getting Married: 24 Weeks – Christmas Baking

    My family loves to bake. We traditionally have had a family-wide baking day soon after Thanksgiving to make goodies for friends and others. Without getting into the dietary spiel, there’s something about putting a sweet, warm cookie in your mouth that makes you feel good. C’mon, you know exactly what I’m talking about. We go all out too.

    This year, my sisters and their kids were unable to join us, and with my work schedule and tutoring, I wasn’t much help either. Mom, however, started early, working on the chocolates and such. The chocolate Mom gets is so yummy and doesn’t have any of the wax fillers that is common in most store-bought chocolates. We do everything from chocolate molds to chocolate covered pretzels to turtles to buckeyes to chocolate mice. Yes, these:

    mice

    They are a blast to make and always make an impression. I was telling the girls at work that we usually hear one of two things:

    Oh, these are way too cute to eat!

    and

    I want two! One to eat and one to show [insert name].

    The buckeyes are my babies. I love making them. I found the recipe on AllRecipes.com and they are delectable. You can find them, too, here.

    And then we get into the cookies. Mom really goes all out with the cookies. She made several kinds of bar cookies this year and they were yummy. I’m really only good for our standard World-Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies. Yes, they are world-famous because I made them in Japan and shared them with the international students at Shidai, the city university. The word has gone out to the world that these chocolate chip cookies are the best. I can say that and it’s not bragging because everyone else will agree with me. No joke. Just ask them. If they don’t, then they haven’t had them. 😀 (I may or may not be kidding. Ha!)

    One of my favorite parts is the delivery. We were able to deliver a couple of boxes of goodies to friends and neighbors Saturday night. We even got some yummy, supa-hot, salsa in exchange.

    On a funny note, my mom and I love to sing. My whole family does, but when we deliver goodies to people’s’ homes, we especially like to sing. We chose We Wish You a Merry Christmas this year.

    This reminds me of a great story from when I was in junior high. We drove over to my friend Rebecca’s house to deliver some Christmas goodies. It had been snowing and so all the houses were blanketed in a lovely white fluff and mom and I were bundled up in our coats with hoods. We went up to the door, knocked, and started singing our song. It took a while for them to get to the door and open it, but once they did, we saw a man blocking his wife and kids with his arm looking out at us like we were serial killers. We quickly realized our mistake and tried to gracefully bow out and head next door, but we have this problem where our gut reaction is to start laughing. So, here we are giggling and trying to make good with this freaked out man and family. They wouldn’t even take any treats as an apology. It was really quite funny. We walked over to the next house and began the routine all over again, pleased to find that it was indeed Rebecca’s house. We all had a great laugh that night.

    What are your favorite treats to make at Christmas? Have anything that you cannot wait to bake, or something that you love to get from a friend or relative?

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 25 Weeks – Anniversary

    We got to celebrate our 1 year dating anniversary! Well, it was the anniversary of our 2nd first date. Why second, you ask? In my first entry in this series, I mentioned that Matt and I had gone out on a blind date about 6 years ago, by our reckoning. We can’t really remember much about it, except that it was at Red Lobster and it went alright, but neither of us really felt like going out again. We were young, I was silly (still am…but that’s another story), and we both had very different priorities. With 5 additional years, we had learned a lot. I got to travel abroad and meet all sorts of people, learn some valuable lessons, and came home again.

    So, we had been friends on Facebook for all that time, observing each other from afar, and started talking again last November. We decided to have a second go and went out again on December 2nd, 2011 to the Middletown First Friday arts festival. It was really fun and we had a pretty good time together. Enough to decide we’d keep seeing each other.

    Cheesecake FactoryOk, so I guess our REAL dating anniversary won’t be until January 13th, but I personally have never had an anniversary, besides my birthday (which I’m a big fan of…have I mentioned that?) to celebrate. And Matt and I both had two $25 gift cards to The Cheesecake Factory to burn. It’s been a few years since I’ve gone, but I love cheesecake…so much. So much so that I’ve told my family, close friends, and coworkers…even random strangers…for years that if they ever found out who was going to propose to me, to make sure he knew to include cheesecake. The ring didn’t have to be in the cheesecake, it just had to be there. Thanks to all my family, close friends and coworkers who failed me by not telling him about that important detail. You will be recompensed  accordingly. (giggles….potentially, devious giggle) Once he found out about that, he made sure we got some cheesecake before we came back from Alabama. It helps that Matt likes cheesecake too.

    Anyway, on Saturday, we planned to head up to The Cheesecake Factory in The Greene in Beavercreek. That place is so beautiful this time of year. Also, have you ever noticed that the way The Cheesecake Factory looks in real life is totally different from its portrayal in Big Bang Theory? They are totally off. Our waiter’s name was Jeff and he was pretty fun. Very informative on the menu. I think he must have been working there for a very long time because he even knew when they carried my favorite cheesecake, the Toblerone. That was pretty amazing. They don’t have it anymore so I had to settle for the Dulce de Leche cheesecake, which was pretty fab. Matt had Adam’s Peanut Butter something or other. He really enjoyed that. That guy is a sucker for chocolate and peanut butter. Waiter Jeff popped over quite a few times and whenever Matt asked him something, he would answer pretty quick, followed by the sound, “Maaa-.” We couldn’t tell if he was saying “Man” or “Ma’am” so we decided he just omits the last consonant so that he could say the same thing to men and women.

    Cover of "Prancer"
    Cover of Prancer

    We spent the rest of the evening watching the movie Prancer. Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? Prancer is at the top of my list. In fact, I bought that copy just so we could have it at The House. I’m hoping that Santa will bring me some more this year. Can’t wait! Matt was laughing at the movie because the little girl in Prancer is just about completely me. Except I wouldn’t be as much use cleaning that big room as she was. Maybe, if I had to do it to raise money for reindeer food.  My other favorite Christmas movies are Scrooge, with Albert Finney, The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas…among others.

    So, besides favorite Christmas movies, do you have a favorite order for The Cheesecake Factory?

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles