Xapa to the World

Tag: Relationship

  • Getting Married: 16 Weeks – More Random

    Ok, ok. I know I’m behind. I totally had a great post in mind for 16 Weeks, but then time just went crazy and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to write it how I wanted, so it’s on hold. Here’s what we’ve got going on though.

    I am so not a cook. I can bake up a storm, but cooking…eesh. I think it’s because there are no real set rules. There are loosely put together guidelines. I like rules. I like formulas. I loved Chemistry because things had to go in a specific way in order to get the right result. Baking is Chemistry. Cooking is…well, I don’t know…not a science that’s for sure. It’s more of an art form and while I love art and being creative, food is not a medium I’m well-versed in yet.

    While we were visiting Matt’s grandma, she told me that she could barely cook anything when she first got married. She is such an incredible cook now. I told her, in my most Anne of Green Gables fashion, “You have given me hope beyond anything I could have imagined. I will always remember you as a benefactress.”

    By the way, I’m in the fourth book of that series, Anne of Windy Poplars. It’s a sweet book. I love all the chapters that are just letters she’s writing to Gilbert. And how it shows where sections were omitted because Anne had just the right pen for writing love to him.

    Back to food. I tried to make a pork chop dinner for Matt and I the other weekend. It was…alright. I think Matt liked it, but I know that it didn’t come out alright. Timing is such a hard thing. Mine and his mom encouraged me that it does take practice to get the timing of meals down. I will not lose heart. Matt says that he is looking forward to me learning how to cook. I reminded him that I will fail quite a bit, but he said he didn’t mind. We’ll see how that goes. There’s a pizza place and Subway just down the road. We might keep them in business – all by ourselves.

    We got our invitations back from the printer so now I’m working on stamping them. It’s a process. I did a bunch of stamping while listening to the State of the Union address the other night. It helped me have the right amount of pressure to get the stamps pretty well even. I get fired up sometimes. And John Boehner and Joe Biden’s exchanges of looks were quite amusing. Usually with Biden grinning widely and then catching Boehner’s eye and slowly dropping his smile and clapping slower. It was humorous. Boehner’s eyes were daggers over his glass of water at times. I can talk about him like that because he’s from around here.

    I have just 45 mins to finish Matt’s Valentine’s Day gift. Last year, I made him a cake loaf with red and pink heart sprinkles in the batter and icing. It was yummy. I’ve not had much practice with Valentine’s Day, so I’m still a little rough around the edges.

    I scheduled my dress fitting! Now, I just have to get my hair scheduled and I’ll feel a little better about my appointments.

    We had our first premarital counseling last night. It was mostly about the order of operations for the ceremony. It ended with me all jittery inside – in a good way. 🙂 I’m so looking forward to it and I’m hoping that we can fit everything in that we want to without making it too long. We’ve got some good ideas, but I will not stress about it. I.Will.Not.

    This is the book we will be using during our counseling:

    The Most Important Year in a Man's/Woman's Life
    The Most Important Year in a Man’s/Woman’s Life

    I’m pretty jazzed about it. I want to take it, and highlight, and write notes in the margins, and then keep it on my bookshelf for forever and ever and ever amen.

    That’s all I’ve got for today. Now I have 30 mins. Eek!

    Catch ya later!!

    —————————–

    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: 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

    Related articles

  • 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

    Related articles