Engagement Pictures, Wedding Plans, and.....well, Stuff.

So,  I have some time during lunch....I think i will post a blog.

Before Melissa left when she was visiting, we got Emily Alianello to take some engagement pictures of us.  We kinda just went around Ellicottville and pretty much just let Emily take the reigns and take pictures of us wherever she wanted.  They turned out very nice.  We have many many pictures of us now. :)  Not only many, but many GOOD ones...if I do say so myself.  Here's a couple that i especially like:

I feel like the luckies man in the world to have Melissa as my fiance.  I'm super excited about getting to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her.  She is quite an amazing woman.  She has been doing so much as far as the planning goes...I have been here in NY working away at my job, and she has been doing so good with all of the planning.  She is also good about checking in with me when she want's my opinion about something.  Her mom has been such a big help too.  She is good at thinking about everything that needs to happen and making sure it gets on the calendar or schedule so it's not forgotten.

I've been breaking in a new pair of cowboy boots...my first pair.  They are doing quite nicely.  I think I like them and will keep them.

In other news, my car turned over 100,000 miles today.  I thought i would try to see when it happened and remember where i was and such, but i was driving...thinking about something else....my fiance...and before i knew it, the odometer read 100,002.  I missed it. Oh well.  I guess it wasn't really that important. lol  My apartment is so cozy these days.  The little gas heater in the corner does a good job of keeping everything warm.  I raised my shower curtain rod about 4 inches....the curtain was dragging on the inside of the tub and getting nastier than it needed to get...plus we might be getting a curtain liner soon and i wanted to have everything arranged so it would stay nice.  After looking at walmart for some drywall anchors, i found some that would work.  it went very smoothly and now it hangs quite solidly and higher too.  I always appreciate a job that goes as well as or better than was expected.

I woke up earlier than normal today because I had a dentist appointment at 6:30AM.  Yes.  I was in the waiting room of a dentist's office at 6:30...eagerly waiting to get two cavities drilled out and kindly filled with that white stuff that they cure with the purple UV light...  But not before I got a lovely injection of novacaine.  Well, it went better than expected.  No pain..although they are a little sore this afternoon.

Well, i will close for now i guess.  I definitely am counting the days to when i will be a happily married man. (52. days.)  In a lot of ways, March 19th is so far away, but in others, it is right around the corner....I was reminded early this week about the Bible passage, "be still and know that I am God"....I'm being still.  It's hard to be patient sometimes, but it's good for me.

Until Next Time....

Christmas Musings

Christmas has come and gone and January has set in good and proper.  I spent Christmas and New Years up in Maine with Melissa's family.  We did lots of wedding planning stuff.  Invitations, made decisions regarding decoration stuff, looked at the reception hall, checked out music, arranged musicians, registered at stores....etc.

Everything went pretty smoothly.  Melissa has lots of friends and family that are super willing to help out and stuff.  That makes it nice and less stressful in general.  We took a day to register at Sears and Bed Bath and Beyond.  We went to Sears first and were pretty disappointed with the service and selection available to us.  After feeling like we got almost nothing registered for, we went to Bed Bath and Beyond and were greeted and basically had a personal store guide the whole 3 hours or so that we were there registering for stuff.  She even offered us something to eat toward the end of our adventure.  SO, at 8:30 PM or so, we headed back home entirely exhausted.  It was after we got home that we decided we should register at Target since the selection was so poor at Sears.  We started a registry online and have yet to complete it.

Joel, Melissa's next younger brother, offered to help us get all of her stuff to NY and we decided that this last weekend was the time to do it.  We loaded up his Tacoma and single axle trailer with her stuff and headed for NY on New Years Day.  We laid over at Brad and Michelle's friday night and finished the drive the next day.  It went very well.  Nothing got wet, so i would say that our tarping job was a success.  Also, the tarp did not start flapping or anything like that so it was a success in that sense as well.  Joel headed back that Saturday evening and Melissa stayed at the Rabers house.

Sunday was nice.  We went to sunday school and church.  Pastor Doug, the senior pastor, said hi to Melissa and actually mentioned to the whole adult sunday school class that Melissa was visiting NY.  Not that I'm an attention hog, but it was cool.

Melissa and Laura spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the next week painting the apartment.  Jake and I helped them move furniture back into place...or to different places depending on whether the girls wanted to rearrange something or not.....we mostly moved stuff to different places. lol.  The apartment looks great.  new paint, some new furniture, nice things to put on the walls, and a new arrangement of furniture makes a big difference.

Melissa stayed at the Alianello's house most of the time she was here which was nice.  She and Laura basically spent the whole week together.  which was also nice.  they got to hang out and also since Melissa didn't have a car really, it ment that she could still go places...as long as Laura wanted to go that is. :)

I took Melissa to the airport Tuesday morning at 5:15AM.  she is now in Maine doing wedding stuff and being far away from me...  We will probably get to see each other the last week of January.  We are doing marriage counseling at her sister's church near Owego, NY.  We have attended that church numerous times since we started dating and we feel like we know the pastor there pretty well.  Also, it is kind of an in-between place for us.  And he agreed to do it for us. :)

Well,  that's the last month in a nutshell...err...blog i guess.

Until next time...