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...