Soy Milk Ice Cream

So it seemed like a relatively simple idea. We decided we would be bringing dairy-free ice cream to Matt's birthday party tomorrow. Tanya requested an Oreo variety, so I did a quick web search and found a recipe which called for soy milk, soy creamer, sugar, and arrowroot powder. Simple, right? But for some reason, the ice cream just doesn't seem to be freezing. It might be the arrowroot, it might be that I didn't let the mixture cool enough yet. Either way, it's more of a milkshake consistency right now. Hopefully it freezes more in the fridge



The other problem is that as we're waiting for the ice cream to finish freezing, the oreos seem to be disappearing at a frightening pace. But Tanya says we don't need a lot of oreos in the ice cream, so I guess it's okay to eat most of the package while we wait.

Weekend Plans

So here we are with another busy weekend. Yesterday was Matt's birthday, but unfortunately I was manager on duty which means I worked until 9. AND he had to completely move and clean his apartment pretty much alone. Luckily Hippert was able to help him move some big stuff and Mike lent his truck so he didn't have to make 80 thousand trips in his little Hyundai, but by the time I got home he was exhausted and his back was sore. Not much of a birthday. We got Chinese and watched most of Father of the Bride and snuggled on the couch.

So we're going to do it better today. We're meeting up with my sister in Nashua to pick out her bride's maid dress, and then lunch. But then I'm taking him out to dinner and a movie tonight (wow, an actual Date!) and tomorrow we will be at the Vigneau compound for a birthday party. Somewhere between today and tomorrow we're going to make a milk-free oreo cookie ice cream and pay a visit to Lenscrafters to see about getting him contact lenses.

Not too busy. Just busy enough.

Nuff Said

Captivating Ch 1: The Heart of a Woman

This week, Matt and I met with our Foccus couple for the first time. It was an interesting discussion, especially because it seems so long since we took the inventory. Some of the questions I had to think about why I answered the way I did.

Our couple is the Mullens (Having them as our couple is interesting because they are the parents of some of our friends) and they were really great last night. Aside from going over some of our answers they also had us do some brain-storming exercises where we wrote out the way we see the role of the husband and wife, and what we see as our own and each other's strengths. It was both weird and interesting to write out and share that I do see my role as the wife in part as the household manager and primary care-giver for the children, and that Matt will be the primary bread-winner and spiritual head of the household. I am positive I heard a part of myself yelling at me "Oh great, you drank the freakin' Kool Aid. Now we're screwed."

I never thought I would want to be a stay at home mom. I look at my mom, and the amazing things she has done in her career, and I am really proud of her for those things. I also am very proud of myself for the accomplishments I've had - getting licensed and being successful as a broker, growing as a singer and leader in the music ministry. But I also just want to be able to have the luxury of time to spend with my children when they are small, to teach them well and develop good habits in them, to really get to know them and understand their personalities. I want to be able to have time to get household chores done during the day instead of getting them done in the evenings when I get home from work or cramming everything into the weekend. And I don't want to apologize for it, even to myself.

That's one of the things that was affirmed for me straight off in Captivating. The first chapter is about the heart of a woman, how God made us feminine creatures and what that means, who that makes us. It also talks about how both religion and feminism have gotten womenhood wrong. It's not about being as good (or better) than a man, and it's not about being weak and stupid and defining yourself only as a wife and mother, even if being a woman means being those things at various times.

I know that I felt so much of what Staci wrote resonated so deeply with me the first time, and I was glad to see that it still does now. When I was reading about how every woman wants to be pursued and every woman has a beauty to unveil, I immediately thought of how Matt first told me he loved me. We had been volunteering for a conference and had an awful day, both of us frustrated with each other, at one point snapping at each as we discussed our plans for after the conference. We were sitting in my car at the end of the night and after a long conversation, he burst out with the words, "You are my best friend in the entire world, the most beautiful woman I have ever known, and I love you so much. I cannot imagine a day in my life without you."

I had always longed to be told I was that beautiful. When I was a child and played pretend, I would imagine I was a princess, and picture my prince telling me I was the most beautiful woman he's ever know. As I grew older, I began to believe that that was too much to hope for. There are so many amazingly beautiful women in this world, not just in Hollywood and on TV but even simply in our church. No man would be able to honestly tell me I was the MOST beautiful. I could hope that he would say I was beautiful, but certainly not the most.

But Matt defied all of that. In one moment, he met that desire in my heart, to be "the beauty" in my own story. Every voice in my head which had been telling me that I would never be good enough, desirable enough, suddenly had to sit down and shut up because he had proved them all liars. Any wonder why I fell for him?

FOCA

I am typing this with a 12 pound cat insistently curled up on my lap and around one arm. That's the problem with having a laptop and a lap cat. It's not the easiest typing situation but I'll try to get it done.

So this post is a call to action to prevent FOCA from passing. FOCA - the freedom of choice act - is a radical piece of legislation designed to allow access to abortion in any form and at any point in the pregnancy, to require government funding of abortion with taxes, remove all state-level rulings on things like parental consent and partial birth abortions as well as many regulations which protect women and children. Pro-choice advocates are campaigning heavily to get this bill passed, and Obama has said he will sign it into law if it comes to his desk.

Here's what you can do:

1. Send a postcard to your representative, your senator, and President Obama tellin them that you are pro-life and you do not want them supporting FOCA
2. Write a letter-to-the-editor to your local paper.
3. Call the US Capitol Switchboard and speak with the offices of your representative and senators
4. Send an email to Capitol Hill and the White House
5. Make a donation to your local pro-life group to defray the postage costs involved in the postcard campaigns they are running right now.
6. Post this information in your blog and encourage your readers to do all of the above as well.

For contact information for your senators and representatives go to the email action page at www.nchla.org, and for more information on FOCA go to www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/FOCA.

And, this is my favorite pro-life commercial right now:

Captivating

The women's biblical ministry of Ste Marie's held a book study on the book Captivating by John and Staci Eldredge yesterday morning. I attended along with some of the girls from the young adult group, and it was wonderful to sit and talk about the different aspects of the book with women of all ages.

If you haven't read the book yet, then you need to shut down your computer, go to Barnes and Noble, and purchase it. Immediately. Then you should go home, make yourself a cup of tea or coffee or hot chocolate, call in sick to work tomorrow, and curl up on a couch with a blanket and this book and read until you are finished. Maybe you should have your cell phone or your best friend handy so you can stop to read them passages which strike you significantly. If you are in a relationship, you will want your husband or boyfriend to read it as well - Matt refers to this book as "Cheating at life" because it gave him so much insight into how a woman's mind and heart works.

I first read the book about two or three years ago, when I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me and why no man was interested in me. I read several other christian woman's books at that time - "Lady in Waiting," "What to do until Love Finds You" - and while some of them made some good points and sort of prompted some thoughts about God and my life, none of them really resonated for me. It just seemed like their image of a good Christian desirable woman didn't fit with who I was and wanted to be. There was a lot of Proverbs 31.

Captivating was different. It didn't portray God's plan for women as limp, washed out creatures with little power and and a lot of labor. In Captivating, John and Staci talk about women as amazingly beautiful, strong creatures who have been wounded by the fall and have questions that need to be answered by the people in their lives but more importantly by God. When I came to the chapter on the wounded heart, and they said that women walk around with that voice in their heads saying "You are too much... and not enough" I put the book down and cried. I cried for two reasons.

The first was because that was the voice and the exact sentence I had been hearing at least since my college day. I know it was at least since then because I have a poem I wrote in college with the lines "I am tired of the men who say/ I am too much/or not enough/ or not exactly what is wanted right now." I don't know when I wrote it, but that refrain's been sounding in my head for at least 10 years.

The second reason: I had thought that even the fact that this thought was repeating in my head proved I was unlovely and desirable. What man would want someone so insecure and needy? To read that most women have the same thoughts was a strange relief for me. I wasn't crazy, I wasn't needy. Those question in my head and heart - am I lovely? am I desirable? am I good? - came from the fall and the separation from God we all experience as a result of the fall. The good news is that God is always seducing us, filling our lives with romance to draw us back to Him.

I was thinking that I would like to read the book again. I think I might see things differently now. The first time I read it, I was searching for a reason why I was so alone. I wanted someone to tell me what was wrong with me (almost as if I imagined that it was like a hygiene issue I had that my friend were too polite to mention) so I could fix it. Now I am in a relationship, I would like to read it again and see where the book takes me this time. I will post my comments on each chapter here as I finish them. We'll see where that takes us.

Pray for my friend

Last weekend, my friend's brother died very suddenly. I had met him a few times, and he was an upbeat, charming guy. Jenn and her family are devastated, and I cannot imagine the pain they are going through right now. The memorial service is this weekend. Please keep them in your prayers!

Matthew R Hampton

Why are our weekends always so busy?

I don't know, maybe it's unrealistic to hope that after we're married we'll be less busy. It seems like every weekend we have things to do from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. It's all stuff we want to do, but there are just so many things...

Take this weekend, for example. Beginning at 9 on Saturday, I have a memorial service to go to, then there is a talk on the book Captivating at church. I have a wedding to sing for at 1pm. Then Mom has invited us to go down to her house to celebrate Rain's birthday (Jan 19th) and Matt's birthday (Jan 30th). I am hoping that we'll have a few hours that's just us toward the end of the night. Then Sunday is filled up with church and a special sort of mini-conference on St Paul and Youth group.

And it's not like there's any particular thing I was hoping to do that we're not doing; I had been thinking it might be nice to go see the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but that wasn't high on my list of priorities. I just wish that our weekends had more breathing room in them. But it makes me realize that all of the things that I willingly committed to now have to be sorted and prioritized against Matt's stuff too. My family's plans and his family's plans and time spent with each other all get bumped ahead of going shopping with friends from online forums and goofing around with different crafts or watching badly written TV shows.

I wonder if I'm naive; part of me is expecting to be able to do some of that stuff again once we're married and living in the same house. Right now when I'm at home in the evening, I don't want to start any crafts because I know that soon he'll get out of work and I will be going to his place. And between his family's stuff and mine, we haven't had a free Saturday to go shopping in months. I hope that once we're married and before we have kids, we can have a little time to just do stupid things like that.

Yeah, I'm probably dumb.

Radio Commentators Suck Sometimes...

Okay, I get that with the inauguration that we now have entered into a "new era of responsibility." I also get that many many people feel that Obama is a good man who will do a lot of good things for our country. In all honesty, I do agree with some of his policies; things like the environment, education, healthcare, etc. Many of the things he is proposing fall right in line with Catholic teachings on social justice. And while we do not agree on some of the ways he is proposing we solve the economic crisis, gay mariage, and more importantly on life issues, I will give the man his due. He is a charismatic, well-spoken man whom I believe does have good intentions and the ability to persuade people to work with him to accomplish goals.

But I am tired of the irrational exuberance I have been hearing on the radio over the past few days. And I'm not talking about the interviewed attendees of the inauguration. I'm talked about the interviewers and commentators who cannot stop gushing for one objective moment of discussion about the significantly difficult problems Obama will need to solve quickly if he is to maintain his momentum. Because seriously, a lot of the reason people follow him and are persuaded by him is because they expect him to succeed. If he doesn't get a big win in the first 100 days, I think the shine will be off this apple pretty quickly. But I digress. I was complaining about radio commentators.

I hit my limit this evening driving home. On All Things Considered, a reporter for NPR was giving an overview of the presidential prayer service which took place in the National Cathedral this morning. In the background, you could hear a choir singing "He's got the whole world in His hands," and the reporter spoke over them, saying that this was a song that people have heard over and over again, but the words now took on a deeper and more significant meaning when you looked at Mr. Obama in the front row.

Seriously? I wanted to grab my phone to call NPR and ask if the reporter knew who the "He" was in the song. Did the reporter really not understand that the song is about God holding the whole world in his hands, or was he intentionally inserting the new president in His place? Yes, I get that Obama is now the leader of the most powerful country in the free world, but he's still a man. Enough of the messiah complex already.

And don't even get me started on considering Obama as the "he" in the verse that begins "He's got the itty bitty babies in his hands."

snow pictures, 100 calorie packs

Going through the cabinets Monday looking for something sweet, I came across half a bag of mini marshmallows. I noticed that the calorie count on them was 100 for 2/3 of a cup and thought to myself "Self, you spend a lot of money on 100-calorie packs of hostess cupcakes and mini rice cakes drizzled with chocolate." "Me," I said,"you're right." And for me, it's not necessarily the chocolate cravings as much as the sweet cravings which have me scrounging for change in my purse and browsing the candy machines at work. Candy from the machine each day gets hard on the wallet and the waist, though, and so I've tried to do thinks like bring sweet snacks and leave all cash at home.

Throwing mini-marshmallows in a baggie was simple, and when the sugar cravings hit at work yesterday they were easily dispelled. All of this mindful eating should lead to a more healthy me, but it doesn't really work that way. I eat food and manage fat and calories the way some people budget money. I save up to be able to eat what I want later on. I will eat all kinds of low calorie or no calorie foods so that at the end of the day I can have homemade ice cream. Which doesn't always work out the way it should. Because I don't care how "healthy" I am all day long, in the end I'm not budgeting enough to make a bacon cheeseburger and a coffee shake okay.

Or buffalo wings and french fries. Which is what we had last night along with steamed artichokes while we watched Wall-E. Matt had never tried artichokes before, only artichoke hearts, and I don't think he was as into them as I was. That's okay. That means whenever I make them, I'll get to have them all to myself. I love artichokes, love peeling off the leaves and dipping them in lemon butter and working my way in to the really tender leaves at the center. Mmmm.

Last night we also got Matt a membership at Planet Fitness, where I have a membership but haven't gone in forever. I know that I need to work out more and with Matt's diabetes, exercise is the best thing for him too. In the summer we would take long walks but with the winter we seem to either watch movies or play video games and never get any exercise except for shovelling.

Speaking of, here are the promised snow pics:

Reception Menu, Bridesmaid's Dresses, and Alfredo Sauce

MLK Jr was a busy day.

We met with Tamra from the

Red Blazer in the morning to go over our menu choices for the reception. We really like Tamra, and we're excited to have our reception at the Blazer. We were expecting to do a food tasting, but there was some miscommunication because she clearly wasn't planning on that. We were able to make our choices without the tasting, though. We'll have artichoke dip bites, scallops wrapped in bacon, coconut crusted chicken and filet canapes for the hors d'ouevres (along with the standard cheese & crackers and veggies & dip). The buffet will have BBQ beef tips, chicken marsala, and grilled salmon. I also snagged a few pictures of the dining room before they opened for lunch:

We ate lunch and played a game until Matt had to go to work. After he left, I killed time for a bit playing around with my header (look up... the final is a result of collaboration between me and my baby) and then headed to Marry & Tux in Nashua to meet up with Chris and choose her bridesmaid dress. Mom and Rain came to help, also.

Basically I've told all the girls that they can choose any dress style they like from Alfred Angelo, and to order it in blue. We tried a bunch of different styles on Chris, and halfway through our try-ons Polly came out to help us. She's the one who helped me pick out my dress and she was very helpful. We picked out a few separate pieces that will look great on Chris and placed the order. Polly let me know that the girls need to order this week to be sure to get their dress on time without having to place a rush order and pay an extra $30. Yikes! I thought we'd have until the end of the month, but Polly said they need 16 weeks. We placed Chris's order, then we all went out to dinner at Panera to celebrate Rain's birthday. We were supposed to go to Friendly's, but they went there for lunch. I have to admit, I was bummed because I had wanted to order a sundae. Oh well.

When I got home I did the dishes and made dinner for Matt. He asked a few weeks ago if I knew how to make alfredo sauce, so I decided to try that out. I was expecting it to be very complicated, but it turns out that alfredo is crazy-easy to make. Simmer the cream and butter together until it's reduced by a third, add cheese, more cream, and dashes of nutmeg and pepper and you're done. I made it while I did the dishes. I had some trepidation about how it would taste since it was so easy, but some things in life were apparently made to be simple. It was perfect. When I served it to him I told him it actually might be too good to make just for him. This is definitely "company food." Something to make that's both easy (so you can spend time with your guests) and delicious.

Ouch My Head

Yesterday we got a TON of snow.

I'll post pictures of it later on today, because it really is very pretty, but it was a lot of shovelling. Praise God, Guy St. Germain had delivered the repaired snowblower with a newly installed electric starter, so we were able to use that the clear a good portion of the driveways and chew up the big snowbanks at the end of the driveway. It's a beast, and very tempermental. Ask it to take on a larger heavier pile of snow in the wrong gear and it will sputter and sulk and only throw the snow a foot away from where it started. With patience, though I was able to clear a path to the garbage bins on the side of the house. The last snow had frozen into an icey pile before I was able to get to it and putting the garbage out has been difficult. The snow blower threw the new snow and sort of cleared out the icy snow underneath, at least well enough to get the bins open.

By the time we were done clearing the snow it was about 3:30 and we were both starving. We made breakfast for lunch - scrambled eggs with cheese, multicolored peppers and turkey sausage - and watched cartoon network for a bit. I was starting to get a headache but I attributed it to being so hungry and working outside in the cold, so I wasn't too worried. Matt took a nap while I washed dishes and turned the laundry over, then we put in a new game (yes, we play lot of video games) and played for a few hours.

I don't know if it was the game play or if it was coming and would have come anyway, but by 7:30 or so I was dealing with a migraine so bad that it was turning my stomach and making the roots of my hair hurt. That may sound like an exaggeration, but I promise I'm not being dramatic. I get migraines at least once a month, and they come in two types. The more common ones are "complicated migraines" and I definitely prefer getting those. Half the time, they don't even hurt, they just make my head or extremities tingle and go numb. The other type, cluster headaches, are from the devil. They come on in a wave and just when I begin to think that it might be better to just cut off that side of my head they start to recede and I think that it might be over. That's the part I hate the most about them. They might come on in one wave and then be over. They might come in wave after wave for an entire day. There's no way to predict when they'll come, how intense they'll be, or how long they'll stay. Yesterday was pretty bad. .

Matt was so sweet, so wonderful in this. I don't think he's ever seen me with it this bad before. He rubbed my neck and shoulders, gave me a scalp massage, and held me while I took a nap to try to sleep it off. The headache didn't go away but it was so comforting to be held and taken care of in the middle of it. I kept apologizing to him because it was a good two hours of simply laying there, no TV, no stereo, nothing to do to occupy him and I am guessing it was pretty boring, but he told me to stop apologizing. "It's not about me, it's about you. I want to be here to help you feel better." Then around 11:10 we realized that we had taken my car after church and because of the snow emergency and there being no parking on the street, I would have to drive him home instead of just letting him take my car. >,< .

He did a lot of shovelling yesterday, and I know his back was hurting and he probably would have preferred for me not to have a headache, for us to snuggle up and watch a movie or talk and joke and laugh. That he was more than okay with not doing any of those things, with just sitting there and holding me, reminds me what a good man it is that I am marrying. I am so grateful to God that he brought us together, that I will have my whole life to show him love in that way, to hold each other when we're sick or sad or tired. .

110 more days until he doesn't have to go home.

Birthday Girl

Saturday we went to my sister's house for my niece Emma's birthday party.

Julie lives in Taunton, so it's an hour an a half to drive down there, but we detoured in Salem to pick up Luke and Rain since Chris was working and they wouldn't have been able to come otherwise. So it was 4 1/2 hours on the road all told. I love my sister, my brother-in-law, and the kids, but man oh man I wish they didn't live so far away. Once we finished with lunch and opening presents, we headed downstairs to play Rockband II with the kids; very fun, and pretty funny to play with little kids,especially ones who can read quickly enough to read the lyics when they're singing. Hannah was on a "pick me up" kick, and all the girls have a crush on Matt and won't leave him alone for a minute, so by the time we finally got home at 7:30 we were exhausted. We took a nap, had dinner, and finally beat the PS2 game we've been playing.

Why isn't this MattandMK.blogspot.com?

When Allison got home the other night, I told her I had started a blog. She seemed confused at first about the name and what I am going to be posting about. So I guess I should explain what’s been percolating in my mind and nudging me to start posting.

I’m 35. I left home for college in Texas when I was 17, and I have moved back home at times because of various situations, but on the outside most people would say that I'm very independent. The thing is, though, that in my mind I wasn't that way. In my mind, I was useless if I wasn't married.

In my early 20’s, I had thought that I would definitely meet Mr. Right any day soon. That was pretty much my whole plan in life: we would meet, get married, have children, and own a house. In any daydreams about this, my ideas about what I might do for work or in my day to day life was fluid. Kind of like day-to-night Barbie. When I imagined the future, I could see myself in any number of careers but instead of this making me confident, modern and independent, it only made my view of myself even more fuzzy and inconstant. No matter what, in the end it always came down to being with "the guy." I made decisions or held off making decisions because I didn’t want to have obligations or ties to things that might prove inconvenient when I got married. And so I waited… And waited…

And he still didn’t show up.

So I hit 29. And he still hadn’t shown up. Right around when I hit 30, I began to change my way of thinking mainly out of fear. If I was alone for the rest of my life, then how would I live? How would I keep a roof over my head and the bill collectors off the phone? What would I do every night when I got home from work? I changed careers to one which would support me financially on my own. I was always active in ministries at church, but I now viewed them differently, not as a way to meet "him" but as a way to meet Him. My prayer life became something that was not just a "hi" and "bye" and "do me a favor." Now I started the day every day in prayer. I realized that I used to have lots of male friends and I didn't any more, and I missed that brotherly companionship. I began to develop friendships with men in my life who were good Christian men, and I had no agenda or ulterior motive to find "the one."

I began to think that I would never get married. That maybe I had misunderstood where I had thought that God was guiding me before. In the vacuum that left, when there was nothing at the end of the day but me and God, I could not not see who I thought I was, but I saw who He said I was instead. And the horror, the absolute terror of being alone even when I was an old woman, it blew away like vapor and I was filled with hope and anticipation. I said to myself "If God wants me to be alone, it must be because He plans on me doing something He thinks is pretty important." And that wasn't just a consolation prize, it was consolation.

Then last year, everything changed again. I know I wasn't mistaken. God is calling me to His plan. This isn't something that makes me special or holier-than-thou. We all are each called to his special purpose and plan, and there is no one else who can do what He is calling each of us to do. But now I have to figure out the mechanics of how all that fits into fitting my life around someone else, and fitting his life around mine. That means changing how I view big things like my career path, and I anticipated that, but it also also means considering little things like dinner plans in the light of how they impact both of us. There have been a few stumbles along the way, times when I have thought "I didn't know we had to discuss that."

So, that's hopefully what I'll talk about more. There will be a lot of stuff about God. Even though I didn't really plan on talking about my faith and my relationship with Christ directly, even in just writing this I find that I cannot honestly leave that out, so there will hopefully be a lot of God in here along the way. I'll also try to lighten it up at times with pictures of pets or small children, and I am sure that you'll hear lots about the wedding plans, too.

Hope that sounds good to you.

My Weird Cat

Sammy really is a strange cat. He will sleep anywhere, and I have the evidence.

I came into the dining room last night to find him curled up on top of a cookie sheet , which was covered with silk flower petals and beach glass.

As soon as I started taking pictures, he decided that this was maybe not the best napping spot.

Actually, he was less than happy with me for disrupting his nap.

And here's what he was sleeping on:

I had been running a trial of the centerpieces for the reception, and it involves filling a vase with this stuff and water, then floating candles at the top. Once I had seen what it would look like in real life, Allison was kind enough to lay this stuff out on a cookie sheet to dry before I put it away.
Anyway, I get the sleeping on flower petals, but broken glass? He's crazy!

I Was Remiss

Somebody was a little hurt that I didn't mention him last night...

He's right. I should have mentioned the (soon-to-be) Mr. to my (soon-to-be) Mrs. So here he is:

Picture stolen from Tanya's Blog. Hope she doesn't mind!

Yep, I'm pretty crazy about him.

Seven things that probably you may not know about me

I got tagged by my godson, Matthew Crouch which is part of what inspired this blog in the first place.

Well, sort of. See, I had been thinking about doing this anyway. I have been reading a lot of cool blogs lately (list to be posted at a later date) and I thought with the new year it might be cool to blog about all the craziness leading up to and coming after the wedding. Getting tagged by Crouch just gave me the boot in the a** I needed to actually do it.

The rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter

So...

1. I used to write poetry. Someday I hope to do it again, but for now it seems that it's just not in me.
2. I grew up in NH and live in NH, but in between I've lived in Texas and Nebraska.
3. I actually like my passport photo.
4. I have a black cat, a bombay mix named Sam, who is currently complaining very loudly about something and I cannot for the life of me figured out what his problem is.
5. I love my church, Ste Marie Parish, and whenever I have considered moving away, the fact that I wouldn't be able to go to Ste. Marie's has played a major role in my choosing to stay.
6. I love photography and wish I had the time, money and space to have an old-school darkroom.
7. I'm making shepherd's pie for dinner tonight. Lame? Yes, but random? Yes again. Win!

Speaking of, I need to get that started. So, I'm tagging Tanya, Ian and maybe some other people, but I need to make more friends with random websites.

First Post

So here we go. Its finally 2009 and there is only 116 more days until the wedding.

I'm at a weird place, because it still seems so far away, but at the same time it seems like we just passed the 300 day mark. I know that the time left will move even more quickly and that pretty soon I'll wake up and it'll be a month after the wedding.

I don't plan on only blogging until the wedding, though. I imagine that really becoming a wife takes more than a day and so I am hoping that I'll have interesting things to post as we figure out how to be married and what exactly that means. And if I don't have anything interesting to post about that, I can always turn this into a cooking and recipe blog, right?



Photo by Amy Malinowski, amazing teacher, computer hacker, and photographer extraordinaire