House Purchasing

We are a few steps closer to owning our own place. The seller accepted our offer on Friday along with some 'extras'.

Since then we have driven by the place and through the neighborhood oh at least 5x to make sure we're lovin the neighborhood and there are no crazy neighbors. So far so good. We even took Max on walk through the neighborhood and he gave quite a few yards/mailbox posts/trees his seal of approval.

This morning we had the home inspection and septic tank pumped and inspected. Nothing too crazy here. A few minor fixes such as some rotting siding, one of the sinks in the master bath not working and one of the ovens not heating up properly. Oh and some minor termite damage. We'll get it all worked out/fixed up in no time.

We'll close on the house June 25 if everything else goes smoothly.

Here are some of the highlights of the house: Downstairs has all hardwood floors- kitchen, breakfast area, family room, front office, foyer, dining room, butlers pantry, half bath, mudroom, laundry room. Basement is finished with the exception of one room. Upstairs has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths with a roomy roomy master closet. Still not sure where Justin's clothes will go, haha.

My favorite parts of the house: 1 acre of nicely landscaped, mature-treed lawn, super open and air-y downstairs and lots of nice windows symmetrically placed (equalling lots and lots of sunshine!). Please note that at this point both Justin and I claim to love mowing. We'll see how this changes over the next few summers.

Mostly though we're really looking forward to having the space in and out to have friends and family over.

We'll keep you posted- oh yeah and only 6 weeks until the wedding!

House Shopping

Today we put an offer on a beautiful 2-story in Overland Park, KS. Keep us in your prayers that everything will go through! It's just the perfect house.

How's the wedding planning coming, you ask?

1. Wedding Hair Consult (Curly Hair Specialist)- Check.
2. Flower Consultation (make decisions with soon-to-be spouse)- Check.
3. Get Groomsmen shoes- Check.
4. Order Bachelorette Party dress, Rehearsal Dinner Dress, Wedding clutch- Check.

Still to do:
1. PLAN HONEYMOON (and book!)
2. Buy shoes for bachelorette party and rehearsal dinner
3. Pick out songs for reception
4. Buy Justin's wedding ring

New Job

I start a new job in 2 weeks! Will be sales rep for an LA-based clothing company- working from home with lots of travel. Looking forward to it!! They say the three of the biggest life stressors are 1. wedding 2. moving 3. starting a new job. Sounds like I'm in for a doozy of a year:)

Pre-Marital Counseling #3

And we're done. Wedding ceremony is decided, vows have been chosen. Can't believe it's less than 2.5 months away!

This weekend

Justin and I are flying out to California this weekend to visit some friends. Can't wait to soak up some Cali sun!!

Hello there

So I am either registering for a camera as a wedding gift or just outright buying one here very soon. Then you can have some lovely pictures to look at as well. Quick update- invitations are going out in the mail next week, just as soon as Justin and I finish up lovingly assembling and addressing them. Yes, lovingly, as we've been through a few exacto knife blades and about 10 rolls of double stick tape - taking us about 2 weeks total. (Justin 75%, me 25% - thank you Justin!!)

Wedding week highlight: After a few caterer scares, we've locked one down. You can rest easy now, the food will be excellent.

Mild wedding panic of the week: My hairstylist cancelled on me for the day of. Wtf. I have went to her (and tipped her quite well!) for nearly 2 years now. She blocked her day out for me almost a year ago and this week I get a call that she's doing another wedding instead of mine. Yes, she'll probably make more money doing an entire wedding party instead of just my measley head of hair... but where's the professionalism, decency, loyalty, professionalism of that??!! We could have worked something out! Needless to say she will never have the opportunity to work with my hair again and I will be letting her know just as soon as I find a new stylist. Now please please please let me find someone else who knows how to tame curly frizzy dry not-very-thick red hair:)

Fun weekend ahead- Mom is out for the next three days!! Will be fun to finally do some girly wedding things w/ the M.O.B.

Long time no write

Wedding planning is getting much further under way and is a little more intense than I had imagined. We're in the process of finalizing our bridal party's attire. Justin is doing custom made black suits, no color accents. I am working on green strapless dresses with gold strappy heels. Bright and summery for our hot July wedding. Fingers crossed that BM dresses and shoes get ordered smoothly without running out of stock or getting on some crazy back order list!

We're lucky to have 3 other good friends planning weddings in the next 14 months as well. Makes it even more fun when you can bounce ideas off of each other and see what everyone is doing. Can't wait for your weddings Mindy, Tammy and Candace!

This past weekend we finalized our musical offerings, attended pre-marital counseling session #1, made up a list of things to register for and nearly completed our wedding website. The wedding website will be cool- bridal party bios, maps, hotels to stay at, things to do in KC, all that good stuff. We'll be listing the site on our invites. The pre-marital counseling session was productive. We each took 165 question standardized tests on our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and each other regarding communicating, finances, sex, religion, family of origin, families that we want to have, workloads, household chores, and more. Pray that we pass (ha:)).

We're looking forward to our next week which inludes: meeting with caterer, ordering invites, registering, and completing our wedding website. Oh yeah- and ordering bridemaid dresses and shoes, along with the flowergirl dress (hopefully!). Thanks to my girls and Justin's guys for getting us your sizes on such short notice!

All in all we are getting very, VERY excited for the wedding, and we hope you are too! It will be such a blast to have all our friends and family in one spot to celebrate with us on this special occasion. Looking forward to seeing you all in just 4 months! Yikes!!

Valentines

Justin sent BEAUTIFUL flowers to my work Friday. Loved them!! Very unique arrangement with abt 10 different flowers. And they still look and smell amazing. We spent V-Day at our Adult Bible Instruction class - LONG but informative, and rounded out the day at our favorite brew pub for drinks and dinner. Then I bored Justin with Nicholas Sparks' latest movie- which is not that great (Nights at the Rodanthe). Justin's 3rd time watching a rom-com with in our relationship:) Sunday we looked at houses for the 2nd time. Can't wait to have one!! Pending the credit crunch, we hope to have one around July- give or take a few months:)

Lately...

The past month has been pretty crazy. For work, I've traveled to Chicago, NY, LA twice, and now later this week Maryland. Whew! It's been tough to catch my breath. Justin has traveled 3x in the last 4 weeks also. But good news- I bought my wedding dress and veil over the weekend! They're beautiful. Our 'adult bible instruction' classes are going well also. Saturday was our first 6.5 hr segment of learning. Yikes:)

We'll have some pictures to post soon from recent travels. One of our trips to LA was for a MMA fight and we have some pretty funny pictures.

More Wedding Planning~

Wedding Planning has kicked up quite a few notches now that we're in 2009! Saturday was my first day trying on wedding dresses. 20 dresses and an hour and a half later and nada. Nothing I loved and had to have. So... I have 3 more appointments at other bridal salons with the plan to buy a dress by Valentine's Day. Supposedly it takes at least 6 months to order your dress, get it in time for alterations, etc. The dress above is from the trunk show that I went to on Saturday. I tried this dress on and it was amazing. But I think we would have to get married in a ginormous cathedral for me to pull that one off:)

Other wedding preparations:

Today we reserved the bridal party's transportation from the church to the reception and you all are in for a sweet surprise! It's going to be great:) And on Wednesday I meet with our caterer to try out food for the reception. Oh and- I have to take membership classes at our church. So January 31 and February 14 from 9-3 (both Saturdays!) I will be learning. I can't believe the class is on Valentine's Day! But since it is for our wedding... I guess that is somewhat fitting. Of course Justin gets to come along for his fiance-al support. (My first step toward becoming a Lutheran- today I learned what a catechism is - and it is not a fancy name for a workbook! lol)

Engagement Pics

I've been meaning to post some of our engagement pictures from November... here's the link to view them all:

http://www.paulvphotoevents.com/pickpic/gallery/splash.php?gallery_id=355

Password: park
Use the email: rsjones05@hotmail.com to login.

Too bad I wasn't smiling in all on them. Justin mixed it up w/ the smile for most of the shots, but he looks better not smiling than I do:) We were really impressed with his use of lighting and the general lack of cheesy poses. I'm looking forward to seeing how the wedding shots turn out!

Wedding Dress Shopping

I made my first appointment today to try on wedding dresses! There is a trunk show (you view dresses by a certain designer, try on the ones you like, plus a discount if you buy that designer that day) this Saturday at a bridal shop that has come highly recommended. Can't wait!! You can check out the shop at: http://www.idascustomveils.com/

The rest of the trip...

Lonnie's Western Room, on Printer's Alley in Nashville. Printer's Alley is a string of dive bars that was home to Nashville's speakeasies during Prohibition. Western Room is where Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Tonya Tucker and other country greats sang early on in their careers. The guys sang Sweet Caroline and Friends in Low Places. Sounded really great when we were there (Several buckets of beer into the evening!) But once we listened to the video clips... oh well, its karaoke!

Justin and Ross... happy to be in Nashville's dive bars... similar to the bars in their Husker homeland.

Michelle and I... lovin Printer's Alley.

This really great band played at another bar (Fiddler's Steel Guitar?) on Printer's Alley. I thought they were great. Bought them 2 rounds of drinks Whoops!:) Total was under $40... tips included! Nothing beats cheap drinks, great entertainment, and great company. The servers and the rest of the bar were super friendly and down home also. Best thing was a guy serving hot dogs, nachos, and frito pies out of a little window that catered to the inside and outside of the bar, so under 21 could eat too. You ordered from the guy, then told the waitress your total ($9 for 2 hotdogs and a frito pie) and had her add it to your bill. Total honor system... so unheard of these days.

The night of the game... Mr. HuskerFan came out to drink too! This was at a big circle surrounded by entertainment venues pretty close to the stadium. One very, very tipsy girl tried to hit on Justin. He said thanks but no thanks, he had a fiance. She asked him if she (me) was there. Um yeah!! So I was only a teensy bit glad when she fell down a little bit later that night in front of tons of people. (No she wasn't hurt, probably didn't even remember it the next day!)

Ross celebrating the Husker win... (Un)fortunately, it was Michelle and I that drank the entire bottle! Ouch!!

Cheers to Huskers!! One glass down, the rest of the bottle to go!!

The Game: Nebraska vs. Clemson. Nebraska Wins!

The game was definitely the best game I've ever seen! Reasons include: nail-biting action, I was predominantly sober/awake, and the seats were comfortable!!

Justin and Ross... happy to be here, happy his fiance/wife is sober/awake, and looking forward to a win!

A great shot of the packed Nebraska side. We go all out! 24 hr drive what?!

Justin and I... so happy we won!! Now it's time to celebrate!!

The marching band... pride of Nebraska? Note all of the blue in the stands. Those are empty seats on the Clemson side! And they only had a 10 hour drive?

Our section, 438... row V was lucky enough to have 3 cheerleaders. This guy was one of them. He was great!! Mr. HuskerFan, you helped make the game great!! So did you, drunk white sunglass guy that I didn't get a picture of!

Myself and Michelle... note the token camo-wearing Husker fan in the back. We would have also had a lot of Carhart-wearing fans... but the weather was a pleasant 50 degrees. Windchill was lower... thats whats with the scarf!

A little pre-game tailgate action!

Alligator Farm. They don't call it the Gator Bowl for nothing.

We had extra time to stop by an "Alligator Farm", and to my surprise, they don't harvest purses and shoes here! This was actually way better than a zoo, with lots of close up access to the animals. We could even touch and get our picture taken w/ a 12 footer for $75. No thanks!! I like all my arms and legs just the way they are! This reserve is the only place in the world to exhibit all 23 species of crocodilians, plus they have the largest? alligator in captivity. All in all, over 300 alligators, plus birds and monkeys. Definitely worth the admission fee!
So you could feed the alligators with little pellets... and this is only a fraction of them!

I thought these little guys were prehistoric! Guess not!

This guy was waiting for me to fall in!

Castillo de ???? - St Augustine, FL

The fort had 3 sentry posts... but Justin didn't see any enemy ships coming into port. (Is it just me or is Justin missing some teeth in this picture?)

The dead grass was a moat back in the day!

Inside the fort...

The fort still had any original cannons... dating back to the 1600s. Crazy that they made these killing machines so pretty. We actually saw a guy stuff his little 3 month old baby in one for a picture. So Justin thought I should stick my head in one. I still have my head.

St. Augustine happens to be the oldest city in North America... founded by Ponce de Leon when he thought he found the Fountain of Youth. We happened upon Castillo de Something, the oldest fort in North America. It has been occupied in all major wars. Pretty cool to see. The jail was particularly creepy, with the stalest air you could ever imagine.

Yes we did!! 19 hours in the car and we made it to Jacksonville, Florida. Well, St Augustine for 2 nights, Jacksonville for 1 night, and then Nashville on the way back. Fun, fun trip. Our friends Ross & Michelle came up with the idea, and it was a good one!! Special thanks to our helpful dogsitters... you know who you are:)

Christmas 2008

Dad- super happy all of his kids came home for Christmas. And that he gets to feed 8 mouths again instead of just 1. :)

We went to the Indy Auto Show for all of the latest & greatest that Detroit has to offer... We thought it was hilarious for Scott & Matt to sit in the bug since they're 6'8 and 6'4. You should have seen them in the smartcar!!

For some reason I only have a few pics from Christmas... I think the rest are on Facebook? I'll have to track them down later. Scott got all the guys hats for Christmas- Nebraska for Justin and Illinois for Scott, Jeff and Matt. Don't they look tough...lol.