Xapa to the World

Tag: Cincinnati

  • Getting Married: 17 Weeks – Prep Work

    This post will be a bunch of random items. So, here we go!

    week17 sailor

    I found this on Pinterest and it is so true. I have no aspirations to be a sailor, or have any skill on the sea itself, but you know, it’s not literal, just representative.

    week17 keys

    It seems as though people have decided I should be the keeper of their spare keys. As such, I have a hard time remembering which key belongs to which person (maybe they should rethink their strategy! lol). After seeing this Pinterest project, I decided it was high time to work it out myself. I really enjoy the colors and the polish seems to be staying on without much issue. For those keys that are unknown, maybe I should just start going around to everyone’s house and start trying out keys. Hmm…I think the middle of the night would be the best time, especially if they have dogs. 🙂

    week17 jars

    We have all these baby food jars. Well, this isn’t even all of them and we have more promised to come! They have all this wonderful sticky gunk on them too. This was a great Sat avo project.

    week17 cleaning

    The tools. I will say right now that the acetone worked above and beyond the best. I don’t like vinegar because I’m allergic to it, but you know, it’s said to have amazing abilities at, oh, everything. So I gave it a try. It was a fail. Nail polish remover was the best. Our hands were a little sticky following, but that washed off. Fumes weren’t too bad either.

    week17 bottle

    We also have a whole bunch of glass jars and bottles. A WHOLE bunch. We’re repurposing them for the wedding. I’m excited. We tried spray painting this one months ago to see what it would look like and discovered the issue with the glue AND the little factory printing on them. That stuff bled right through the spray paint. Let me point out that the nail polish remover took that stuff right off too! I was so excited!

    week17 bulbs

    Remember this post when I said I planted bulbs in the garden in the spring and summer? With southwest Ohio’s goofy weather, they have begun pushing up early. Eeek! But hey, at least that means I planted them the right side up!

    week 17 finds

    Matt and I ran over to the antique mall and found 4 of these sunflower plates for $10! Yeah! We also found a glass jar in the shape of a bear and that super-sweet cranberry tin. I love them all.

    ??????????????????????week17 Maggie

    This was my last week tutoring. I’ve been working with these kids since I came home from Japan. When I first started with David, he really couldn’t stand reading at all. He still stumbles over words and skips lines when we read out loud together, but what kid doesn’t? What inspires and encourages me the most is that this kid loves to read! We started with The Chronicles of Narnia, moved on to Moby Dick, The Hunger Games, and the Redwall series, plus a few others. He has learned how to identify the stories that will interest and challenge him and he “theater reads.” That is my description of when someone is able to read with inflection and in the character’s personality. He does it really well and I would often have to tell him to keep it down since we mostly read together at the family restaurant. I am so going to miss this kid and his 104 million stories and questions. He is a dear little Brother.

    His sister, Maggie, hasn’t been with me as long. She is the epitome of the cute little girl who gets all the attention from patrons of the family restaurant. She has sass and personality galore. She and I have had a fun time getting to know each other and some dear characters in the books we’ve read. We like series books, most especially the Ivy and Bean collection and the Ramona books. She is goofy and can throw out one-lined zingers out with the best of them, but I will miss our spunky time together each week. I have such precious memories to keep with these two kids. I can’t wait to see what happens in their lives over the next years and onward. I pray for them and their family constantly. They have been a sweet chapter in my life.

    —————————–

    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: 18 Weeks – Visits

    Over Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend, Matt and I hopped in the car and headed down to visit his grandma in Kentucky. I’ve been to Lexington before, but I’ve always just carried on through on I-75 or stopped in the city itself. Matt’s grandma lives in a small town just southeast of the city and you have to drive through Red River Gorge to get there. I love driving through and stopping at this kind of country. It is so beautiful! It reminded me a lot of my drive through West Virginia on my way to Virginia Beach last April for some friends’ wedding. Lovely! I’m reminded how great of an artist God is. The way the late afternoon sun fingers its way through the leafless tree branches, and is hidden from the cliff walls by other cliffs.

    One absolutely beautiful effect was that, in the cold temperatures, there were streams of water coming off the tops of the cliffs, running down the sides and then, once it met the forever-shadowed bottom of the cliff face, it would freeze again. Freeze, but not before it would drip to the forest floor and roadsides, making curly, twisty piles of ice. I wanted to take a picture of some of them so bad, but we both agreed that it would be too risky on the sides of those twisty, hidden park roads. I wish I could transfer the memory onto this for you though. Have you ever seen it before?

    We had a lovely time while we were down there. Matt was enlisted to install a floodlight for her backyard and that makes things so much brighter out there. But other than that, we just had a sweet time together. A nice time getting to know her a bit and her to get to know me a bit more. She kept saying she’d like to keep me and send Matt back home, so I guess I did alright. 🙂

    Matt had to take this bed because while it only comes up to his hips when he stands next to it, it came to my waist and I wouldn't have been able to climb up. But it was fun, nonetheless. :)
    Matt had to take this bed because while it only comes up to his hips when he stands next to it, it came to my waist and I wouldn’t have been able to climb up. But it was fun, nonetheless. 🙂

    One fun thing was that she had just got some new mattresses in her guest rooms. They were considerably tall, and I felt a bit like the Princess and the Pea, but I slept so soundly while I was there. Also, she keeps the house very warm…very warm. And I love warm, so I was very nearly in heaven. Speaking of, we picked up some postcards after Sunday lunch at The Lodge in the Red River Park and one said, “I wasn’t born in Kentucky, but I came as soon as I could!” Haha.

    We had church on Sunday and then treated her to lunch at the aforementioned Lodge. It’s kind of up and around on a ledge looking over part of the rivers. So beautiful, the one side of the restaurant/hotel is window and you can watch the birds and squirrels play/fight for seed from the feeders.

    week18 squirrel

    I successfully identified a titmouse. I was so pleased with myself. I thought she was a stout, pregnant blue jay at first, but her tail and body just weren’t the right length. I thought she might be a titmouse and so I looked it up on Wikipedia and it was like someone had snapped a picture of the very bird in front of me. I don’t know all that many birds by sight, but I want to get better at recognizing birds and plants. I feel like it might someday be important and regardless, it’s like making new friends. 🙂

    On our way back, we decided to stop by Matt’s grandpa’s grave. He hadn’t seen it with the new headstone. It was very lovely.

    week18 grave 03

    The graveyard is relatively new so there weren’t that many stones yet. It was nice to see, but when it got too much for us, we headed back to the house to relax until evening service. I have been working on a piece quilt since a bit before the holidays and so I took my needles and yarn down with me to get some more squares done while sitting and chatting. Grandma shared how she and Grandpa met. I love hearing those kinds of stories, they’re always bound to be interesting.

    We left Monday afternoon to come back home and avoided all the crazy accidents on the highways around Cincy. Wow! We kept getting a bunch of texts and phone calls about them from friends/family. I monitored the news on the drive back and everything was pretty well cleared out of the way by the time we go to I-75. Unreal to see some of the pictures of the accidents and a coworker later told us that she was driving by as they were giving someone CPR – she thinks the little girl who died.

    On other news, Tues morning, I had my very first ever gynecologist appointment. I have some friends who highly recommended The Bowen Center in Cincinnati and I scheduled the appointment with Dr. Wall, an associate there. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it has raved about the personal attention and sensitivity they offer there. We just had a consult about birth control methods, though. He offered several ideas, but shot a few down himself. The one option he wanted me to consider was an IUD called Paragard. An IUD was one thing I was certain I didn’t want to get because I’ve heard terrible things about them going through the muscle wall and such. Mom also told me that if you do end up getting pregnant while it’s installed, you have to abort the pregnancy to have it removed. That sounds crazy! He still gave me a DVD to watch and consider. I’m still pretty sure it’s off my list of possibilities. Plus, I don’t think my insurance covers it.

    He gave me a sample pack and a year’s prescription of Lo Loestrin Fe. I didn’t know much about it but I took to the pack and script and decided I’d check into it later. Seems to be a toss up on people loving or hating it. Has a low amount of estrogen and other hormones. When I got the script filled, it didn’t cost me a penny, which is amazing since it’s reported to be one of the more expensive kinds. I figure that I have a few months to try it out before the wedding so I can see what MY side effects will be. I’ve never been on birth control before or any other kind of medicine I’m supposed to take every single day.

    I guess we’ll see how it goes. I plan to start it tomorrow.

    Here’s hoping I don’t turn into a hormonal mess, but if I do, you’ve been warned. Haha.

    —————————–

    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: 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