so long 2011, hello 2012!

2011 was by far dominated by ups and downs. i started off the new years with andy's family out in northwestern PA, while my parents packed up the home they had lived in for my whole life and moved to texas. andy and i had started looking at houses in late 2010, and we spent all of 2011 continuing to live in our rented 1890s farmhouse. 

we had some adventures:

Texas (San Antonio & Houston)

Promised Land State Park (PA)

lots of kayaking

river safety patrol

Madison, Wisconsin

Siesta Key, Florida

 We reached some milestones:

100,000 miles on the Echo.

and a car with 7 miles on it.

 We had some setbacks:

my poor echo

a basement full of water

We spent some time with family and lost some family.

I took up a new form of exercise (hot yoga!!).


I had some major work projects come together, ones that i put together all on my own and saw them through to completion. [hey, maybe a promotion in 2012?]


and of course, the most exciting news of all- we got engaged!

maybe you can't tell it from my face, but at this point, i'm still in disbelief.

the last two months of 2011 flew past as we set a wedding date, picked a place for the ceremony/reception, booked a band, ceremony musicians, a photographer, and i bought the dress! 


we spent thanksgiving with andy's family, and christmas with my family (almost all of them!)

just the grandkids (mom's side)

dad's side (minus 3)

earthquake, hurricanes, snowstorms in october... all in all, i'd have to say 2012 was good, even with the pretty rough patch in the middle there. hopefully 2012 will be good all around. i have a feeling that august 18, 2012 will be an especially good day! :)

happy new years!

quick holiday recap and rant

i hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! i was able to spend time with andy and my family this year for christmas. we bounced around from place to place over three days, stayed at a hotel with my parents (even though this was just over an hour from where we live, but all the driving back and forth for 3 days would have been a little crazy and exhausting). it was good to be with family, but it was a sad christmas too. this was our first christmas without poppa, but they still wanted to have it at the house, and as somebody pointed out, that's the only place we've all known for christmas morning for our whole lives (aside from the one year we had it elsewhere when grandma was diagnosed with lung cancer). and this would be the last year we would have it there. so it was a bittersweet day. i do have to realize that i'm pretty lucky and that each christmas that i spend with my family, i do (usually) get to see every single one of my aunts and uncles and first cousins. not a lot of people can say that, so its nice that we can usually catch up at least once a year.

andy started with a cold on the eve of christmas eve. i managed to try to avoid him until he gave me an adorable card for christmas and i had to give him just one kiss on the lips. and then of course, the following evening, i started feeling sick. i can't blame it all on him, because my mom was sick too, and then my dad got it, so it was just a matter of time.

our last holiday event was monday, and then when we got home it was really starting to hit me. i woke up and felt awful on tuesday morning and called out of work. i had a meeting on wednesday that was related to probably the most important project of my career so far. i told my boss i would meet him for the meeting and that's probably all i would work on wednesday. i did make the meeting, even though i felt worse on wednesday than i did on tuesday. i've been going to bed at around 8:30pm every night i've been sick, and just spending all day in bed. aside from our appointment to look at two townhouses on tuesday and to take my mom to visit my dress today.

[here's the rant part] but i have to head in to work tomorrow because if i call out sick tomorrow (the last work day before a holiday), i won't get paid for the holiday on monday. regardless of the fact that i've been sick for three days, with an obviously contagious head cold. so, i'll drag my sorry, sneezy butt out of bed tomorrow morning, and potentially contaminate my officemates. sorry, co-workers, but i'm not going to not get paid. i at least only have to work 6 hours because i've pushed off my two hours left of vacation that i have to use this year until tomorrow (i was going to use it this week for some of the other errands, but now i've been sick). ugh, such a stupid rule. i totally understand that people will take advantage and try to extend their long weekend by being "sick" but obviously that's not the case here. so just sucks for me.

anyway, hope you all have a wonderful new year's celebration--i have a feeling that it will be pretty low-key for us sickly folk. hope you all have a wonderful 2012!

life update--including that i found THE DRESS!

so, i know. i haven't been writing very often. and that's because things have been crazy. between vacation and holidays and wedding planning and that other thing--oh yeah, work, i just haven't gotten around to it. or cleaning my house (which is a whole other story).

after we got back from florida, we went back to work for a couple of days, and then we headed off to visit andy's family for the thanksgiving holiday. we went out for a whole week, because andy really misses hunting. well, and he sure got to go hunting a lot. he shot a turkey on thanksgiving morning, and he got an 8-point buck. he got to spend a lot of time with his dad, which made him really happy. i spent my time doing wedding planning online, spending a lot of time on pinterest, and even getting some time in at the local Y out there (yay for the Y AWAY program!)

when we got back, we decorated the house, and then a few days later, my mom, my sister and i met up with some old family friends and resurrected our formerly annual holiday cookie baking extravaganza. we used to eat raw cookie dough bake cookies from noon until 9pm. and i mean sugar, spritzer, choc chip, gingerbread, snickerdoodles, fudge, and everything. dozens of dozens of cookies. we didn't make nearly that many this year, now that we're older (i think the last time we did this was maybe 10 years ago?). but it was fun.

in wedding news, i have done a lot of dress shopping (which resulted in a lot of crying--mostly from stressing out), but i'm so glad that on the first day i was able to go with my mom (who lives in TX), my sister (who lives in PA), and my best friend/twin (who lives in SC).  mostly the morning after i thought i liked a dress, i woke up at 3am, panicked because i found a bazillion things wrong with the dress. i did find the right color/fabric dresses for my bmaids on the first day, although i didn't find my dress. on the same day of my first dress shopping adventure, we met with an invitations person, and got to check out another band. it was a good day, so i'm glad i've been able to get a lot done. and we LOVED the band! (we being: andy and i, my sister and her hubby, my mom, and twin--so happy i could have almost everybody there, just missing my dad). I'm so glad we were able to get that figured out and we're all set with the band. And the invitations I think will come along nicely!

after my first dress attempt, i had to head out to more stores. i made three appointments the next weekend, and twin was able to come with me and spend the night. i really liked this organza with fern design dress at david's bridal and i thought it fit my personality perfectly, it was just a little too much dress and train than i was looking for. although i didn't get a dress, i'm so happy twin was able to spend the night, and spend time with andy and i. andy even made waffles and mini omelets the next morning!

organza and fern dress by vera wang
this was not the dress i chose,
but still beautiful!

on sunday i had two more appointments scheduled with my sister. i liked the first place (some things were a bit too expensive), but i found a dress that made me look AMAZING. i liked some details of another dress, and they said since each dress is made to order, they can make it how i want it to be. i didn't want to commit to anything since i was thinking about the fern dress, and i knew we had another appointment. we went to lunch first, and i realized that the fern dress was really not what i wanted and that the amazing dress was what i had been looking for all along. the 2nd store was a DISASTER. both places said "bridal couture"--which i scoffed at, and my sister told me it didn't mean couture like i thought it did. but for this place, it did. nothing looked good, most dresses actually made me look like a house.

i had been so overwhelmed with how awesome i looked in the dress at the first place, that i forgot to picture myself walking down the aisle. we called them and asked if we could come back before they closed. i knew when i put it on that it felt so right. i was hesitant because i hadn't slept on it and it was more than i anticipated spending on a dress. but i was going to be so comfortable in it, and i wouldn't have been in any other dress. and it was going to be made custom for me. so we placed the order! and the more i sleep on it and think about it, i'm so glad that's the dress i chose.

so, we got our save the date proof--it looks ADORABLE. i still have a little shopping to do, although most of my shopping was done and wrapped before thanksgiving. which is a good thing since i really haven't had any weekends free since then. this weekend won't help: we're going to a wedding! [since i'm surely not wedding-ed out] the bride, andy and i were 3 out of the 4 interns the first summer at PEEC. it is crazy where life takes us in just a few years.

hopefully i can blog a little more frequently than once a month! just in case, happy holidays and a happy 2012!

(i have a feeling that 2012 is going to be a wonderful year! i can't believe this time next year i will be MARRIED.)