Stress Much?

I'm at the point where I'm getting stressed out. I have a lot coming up and I'm not quite sure how to deal with it all. You know what the biggest stress-er is though? I'm concerned about losing some of my friends. We're all getting to the point that we're getting married, some having kids, some getting divorced. We're settling down. No more random (or planned) road trips. Now there's so much more that we have to do then just worry about ourselves and call our mom's on our way to nowhere. Is that a silly concern? I just can't imagine my life without some of my friends, and I'm worried that our common interests will disappear once we're settled in our own lives. Sigh. I sure hope not.

Home Again...

Such a bittersweet thing. Who knew that I could miss John so much? Well, I do. But 62 degrees F was wonderful today!

Meh...

That's how things feel right now. Just meh. This is probably a rant that is really me just preaching to the choir, but I'm not happy right now. Bills are piling up higher than our ceilings. People can't seem to figure out how to pay rent on time, which just throws us WAY off our budget. Also, the people that ordered MK stuff haven't paid either! I'm supposed to go home on Monday to see my seester before she gets deployed to Afghanistan. Now it's not looking like I'm going to be there near as long as I had thought because we'll hopefully be getting some more money in this week so we may be able to afford me going home. Plus, this wedding is getting to be SO expensive. With Mom and Dad paying for M to get all of her stuff done so that she can be deployed, they can't afford to help us out as much as they had planned. So now any and all of our extra money is going to the wedding, leaving us way broke. We have to go pay a photographer today so that we actually get one. Ugh. I'm just not very happy about all of this. John's working as hard as he can and trying to get things together for us, but poor guy, isn't 60 hours a week enough?!?!?!? Praying that God brings us through this, and that I can get home to my family soon.

Christmas Traditions...

As I sit here on the 19th of December, I feel quite weird. I'm in Kansas. Just a few days from Christmas. The thing that seems odd about this is that I've never been away from home this close to Christmas. As John and I prepare for marriage we begin forming our own Christmas traditions. Some of them are silly, such as cutting out snowflakes, not using things that have santa on them, putting up Christmas lights. Others are more serious, decorate and choose the tree together, purchase gifts that mean something to other people, not just more useless junk, buy the minimum amount of gifts needed. Making peppermint bark together, having dinner together, attend midnight mass, go Christmas light looking. Right now it's just the two of us, so a lot of these things are together things. Things for the two of us. Then there are things that are for everyone, visit some of the older people from church, be assisting ministers during the holiday season, call our family more. I'm lucky I got him. Even on the days when I wonder how this is going to work, I'm thankful for a wonderful, gracious God, and a fiance that's the same. The unconditional love that is exhibited towards me is amazing.

Any Christmas traditions anyone cares to share?





Jesus is the Reason for the Season!

"...and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
Matthew 23:1

Busy Bees...

Things have been quite busy lately! It's nuts. Since the last time that I posted a lot has happened. I got sick and it was difficult to do anything. Work was especially painful. It turned out that I could not work due to the pain and sickness. After days of bloodwork and scans, I found out that I had an inflammed small intestine and my small intestine doesn't take anything that my stomach puts into it. I don't like it at all. We prayed and looked at everything, and in the end it turned out to be a better plan for us if I didn't work. I'm now looking for a part time job, something that I can do while also going to school 15 hours a week.

I got the opportunity to go home over Halloween weekend. It was so nice to see my family! I miss them a lot being up here. We got some time to just hang out and do family stuff. Dad took us out to dinner one night and it was wonderful! Dad and I also got a changce to talk about some wedding stuff, and to hang out with just us, I really enjoyed that.

Coming home was nice as well. I miss John and Miss Bee when I'm gone. The animals around John's house are getting cabin fever, I fear. Stubby went outside yesterday for the first time and he was quite excited, I think. He was a bit fearful at first. As he was walking down the back steps he would take a step and meow, take a step, meow. He's a good cat. Here are some pictures of the animals, Bee is the dog, Stubby is the cat.

Bee waiting patiently for a treat. I snuck a picture in instead!

Stubby looking out the window in the kitchen

Stubby outside for the first time!

Hope that you enjoyed the pictures of the animals. More pictures and posts soon. Have a great week!

Wedding Dresses

Today and yesterday we went shopping for Kels' wedding gown! It's tough. I'm quite thankful that I lived in Houston and could go shopping here. There is just not a lot here, and we have to find the perfect one, so not a clue what we're going to do about it. Oh well. keep hoping and praying...

An Engagment Ring

As I look around at my friends and family that are engaged, married, and whatever's in between we talk about things that we are excited about. We discuss things that people talk to us about, and it seems that everyone always asks the girls the same question, "Can I see the ring?!?!?". As us girls sit around and talk about our proposals and our rings nobody is ever disappointed in their ring. We talk about how neat it is that somebody picked out a ring, and spent the time and money on it just for us. We are amazed that there is a man that loves us so much that he went to these stores, shopped around and for some of them planned for the first time ever, just with the hope that we would say yes, and agree to spend the rest of our lives with them. Then, as our engagments progress, we wear our rings to show everyone that we are committed to someone. We have an outward sign that there is only one man in our life. One man that loves us so much that he is willing to do near anything to keep us safe and keep us his. I've been thinking on this a lot lately. I never cease to be amazed that John loves me that much. As I kept dwelling on this love that he has for me my thoughts shifted to that of God. I got to thinking that I've had somebody that loved me that much my entire life. God has always had those strong feelings of love for us. What if all that excitement that we have for our engagments and weddings was channellled into praising Him? What if instead of asking our girlfriends how their wedding plans were going we asked how their faith was going? If we focused our energy of keeping up with wedding plans into keeping up our faith. Think about how our relationships with our friends would change. Do we have the guts to do that though? Do we have the guts to ask challenge our friends to be accountable for their faith? As we finish our engagment process I pray that we would hold each other accountable for our faith as well as our engagments. Staying accountable to our fiances and to God.