WEDDING

So I just dropped Seth off at the airport. He had to go back halfway through Spring Break because he made it to Regionals in boxing and he is fighting this weekend. We were both sad that he had to leave but I'm so happy that he has gotten this far this year! He loves boxing and I can't wait for him to win Regionals so I can go up to New York in April to watch him fight for a National Championship!

We got SOOO much done this week. We went and visited with the Marquis on Magnolia in Fort Worth on Monday (which was our unofficial 3 year anniversary). We absolutely loved the facility there. We have our day, Friday, June 3, 2011, on their calendar (unbooked) and have dibs on it if someone else comes looking at that day. Olivia, the wedding coordinator there, was absolutely sweet and extremely helpful! I can't wait!

Then, we got in the car and started toward our next destination, Broadway Baptist Church. We started down Henderson Street, past Harris Methodist Downtown, and turned on Pennsylvania Avenue only to find the most beautiful church EVER staring at us only 3 blocks from our proposed reception facility! It is called Celebration Community Church and it is a historical marker! It has stained glass windows that are beautiful! Also, the interior of the church is made up of Austin stone and this dark brown wood. There are Gothic arches. There's a rose garden outside as well as an Angel garden to pray in. It's just absolutely perfect. The carpet is red, which created a brief set back. However, I'm going to change the colors to dark blue and rusty red. We'll see what happens. Anyways, this was such a pleasant surprise that we weren't expecting! Hopefully, my mom and I will go sometime soon and book both places and officially have a wedding to plan!


I'm so glad we found Celebration Community Church because all of the other places we saw that day were not great. We went to Broadway Baptist Church next. They had a beautiful chapel and sanctuary. However, the chapel was overpriced and plain and the sanctuary had a massive organ, which was beautiful, but overpowering. Then we went to University Christian Church which is stunning on the outside. It has a hacienda feel to it and we were very hopeful to find a beautiful interior as well. It was gorgeous inside, but neither of us were feeling a wedding vibe from it. Then we went to University Baptist Church, just down the street. It had a gorgeous chapel, but paled in comparison to the love that we had for Celebration Community Church.

I'm so excited and can't wait to get even deeper into the planning process! You have to love great days!

Chew Toys and Trolls

I just have to share these cute pictures that my roommate, Grace, sent to me in a forward. They are adorable!!!

"I don't know. Maybe it's a chew toy?"

"Call 911! I'm being attacked by a Troll!!"

I hope they make your day a little bit brighter. I know they did mine!
3 days and 13 hours until Seth's plane lands.. :)
Oh and did I mention I need this Spring Break???

I love Fridays!

So my Fridays this semester are amazing! Really, my schedule this semester is pretty amazing! I NEVER have class related things on Fridays and, with the exception of two weeks, I do not have class related things on Monday! I have lots of things due on Monday, but never anything that I have to actually do on Monday. I love this semester. I'm pretty sure next semester is 2 days of school and 3 clinical days each week, so I'm going to enjoy today and not think about August 2010...

A little excitement about me. You can skip this part if you'd like! I finally was proud of myself running yesterday. Starting last Spring Break I ran 4 miles 3-6 times a week, depending on the week. During the summer I ran 4 miles 6 days a week!! I was in crazy shape and loved the way I felt AND the way I looked. Then nursing school started and I was only able to run about 3 days a week, 4 if I was lucky. Then during finals week, something went very wrong with my foot and it brought me tears to run on it. I guess I'm just a big baby because the X-ray showed nothing and they called it a sprain but gave me some antiarthritis drugs! My foot stopped hurting as bad and, in the middle of February, I decided I was going to start running again. I've ran about a mile and a half probably 2 times a week since then and yesterday I ran 3 miles!! I was so excited! I know that none of you care about this, but I had to type it out because I'm so glad that I am capable of running again!

I went and say the Phantom of the Opera last night with the Leadership Institute! It was AMAZING! Before last night, I had never even seen a movie, play, or read the plot line of the story! My roommate Grace is a crazy fan and plays the piano/keyboard, so I had heard the music a lot, but never knew the story! I adored it! It made me laugh and even made me cry! I was scared at times and overjoyed at others. The perfect kind of story! I would highly recommend it if you get a chance to go!

Now on to wedding updates... We're having a lot of difficulty finding a church/chapel to have the wedding in. We keep running into brick walls. We're going to go look at University Baptist Church for sure next Monday when we go look at the Marquis on Magnolia. UBC has a chapel that seats 250 and seems pretty perfect because you have to get on McPherson Avenue to get to the Marquis on Magnolia (I always look for signs that something is right). However, they won't put our names on their calendar until 6 months before. Members and family of members can put their names on the calendar 12 months before. We're planning a wedding for the first weekend of June, which is usually a high volume wedding time. AND the church will only book one wedding a weekend. SO I'm afraid to go look at it and love it and then someone take our weekend.

However, I think we should go ahead and look and have it as our first choice if we love it and default to something else if the worst happens. Broadway Baptist church has a pretty sanctuary that seats 800 that we might go and look at, just to see and I think we need to go look at the Robert Carr Chapel, too. I'm pretty sure we could get all of that done in one Monday.... Right?

I just wish all of this would just fold together perfectly. I guess if I didn't have to work for it, it wouldn't be as rewarding.

Now I have to go do school work.. JOY. Big test next week and a 10 page paper before Spring Break can actually start! I'm so ready to be out of college!!!!!

New Hunt....

So for the 2nd time in our wedding planning, we think we've found a reception place! It's in downtown Fort Worth (basically) and it's called The Marquis on Magnolia. It's beautiful, I'm pretty sure. I haven't gone and looked at it yet, but my sister has attended a wedding and reception there and she said it's gorgeous. I think it just might be for us! So, the big task at hand now is finding a church around this area. The problem in Fort Worth is that all of the churches are made to fit thousands of people. Our wedding will only have about 200 guests (which I thought was a lot) and I don't want it to look swallowed in comparison to the church. I fell in love with the Leonard Memorial Chapel at the First United Methodist Church of Fort Worth only to be stepped on when the super sweet wedding coordinator said it only seats 140. I could cut 60 people for this..... On second thought, as beautiful as this church is, I don't think it's worth cutting 60 people that we love from our guest list.

We're trying to not just give in to Robert Carr Chapel on TCU's campus. It's gorgeous, but everything about TCU just seems........... overpriced to me. I guess, in the end, it's a fall back. As for now, the task at hand is finding a church in Fort Worth near this place that is gorgeous and isn't threatening to the size of our wedding. Wish me luck!!

A Blue Wedding

So, I should be studying for my first Women's Health exam that is on Wednesday or writing my capstone literature review/outline/notes that are due next Monday. However, I am far too excited.

My roommate Grace and I sat down and determined that we were going to plan the colors for my wedding (It's Seth's wedding, too. I just didn't know how to make it grammatically correct with his name included.). Boy did we deliver. Originally, the intent was to use champagne (like a year ago). Well, I saw a wedding with champagne bridesmaid dresses and decided that they were too close in color to the white of the wedding dress. Next, I decided to play off of Seth's officer uniform that he is going to be wearing and use royal blue and spice it up with orange/peach roses. This would be gorgeous, but it's still not me. The problem that I keep running into is red carpet. I don't know why, but red carpet grows rampant in churches. It's like weeds in a garden. Therefore, I had to find a fix to being able to settle with the red carpet before it settles with me.

The fix was simple once we thought it through clearly. It actually came when we found a picture of a very, very plain and classic reception hall. White linens on the table with white china and white napkins. Perfectly simple. We realized there was an obvious flame when 5 minutes had passed and I was still staring. I guess this brought me back to my original plans for a wedding: classically simple. We then realized that there was no real need for orange roses to be in the wedding. When we stripped the fetal wedding of it's orange roses, we were left with royal blue and white. Or, as I like to refer to it, royal blue and pearl. Perfectly simple. The flowers will be either carnations or gardenias, something white and cheap. The bridesmaid dresses: royal blue. The table linens: white. The napkins: white linen. The china (if I can find it cheap): white. The centerpiece: a blue glass vase with the cheap white flowers. There are a lot of blue/white details that go into it. I'm absolutely in love with it. I could not imagine a better fit for our wedding. Blue has never been my favorite color. It has, however, fallen in my top 3 for a while. Seth's uniform will be blue and so the blue wedding will keep my strange color rules from suffocating me alive. The flowers can be easily done by me and my bridal party. Nothing fancy, only simple.

I didn't realize how much easier it would be to breathe when this detail was decided. Well, Seth is boxing at Navy right now, so I guess it's not officially decided. But I'm pretty sure he doesn't care about the colors. I have the style of bridesmaid dresses that I have in mind. Hopefully all of my lovely ladies will look stunning in them and it can all work out. I'm not really particular about that detail, so I'm sure it will be easy.

The next big task to tackle is location, location, location. The beautiful detail about this problem is that Texas is definitely not short of churches and we will search until we find the one that is right for us. If anyone comes up with something in the Fort Worth area, let me know!!

February and Texas Snow

The past couple of days have been very busy! We had our first test of the second semester of nursing school and I'm very happy with how that went, I had my first day back at taking care of patients, and we built a snowman! It has made me realize just how blessed I am to be where I am and to have the people in my life that I do.

This snow has absolutely surprised me. Record snow fall for Texas-- 12.5 inches at DFW airport. WOW... I just really hope this doesn't delay Seth's flight coming in at 11 o'clock tonight. My mom reminded me to pray for God's will, as it could be unsafe for him to fly in. She's so much smarter than I am!



Sunday, Valentine's Day, will mark the one-year anniversary of Granny passing away. It really doesn't seem like she's been gone for a year. I still tear up thinking about her and just got to where I could talk about her and smile. Granny meant so very much to me. She was my best friend and taught me more than I will ever know. It's amazing to think of how much one person can influence your life. We miss her so much and I'm sure that I always will.






Sunday will also be the very first Valentine's Day Seth and I get to spend together. That's so weird to think about. We're getting married next year (it feels so great to say that), have been together for almost 3 years, and yet have never spent a Valentine's Day together. Hopefully, it will be a great day!!!

Above is our very first picture together from Summer 2005.

Also, Seth's 21st birthday is next week on February 18th. This also is the 3rd anniversary of our very first actual date. He has no idea what he is getting for his birthday but he's so nosy. He can't just enjoy a surprise. He has to ask me at least 5 times a day what the surprise is. I hope he doesn't get his hopes up because it's really nothing big. Poor guy.

Well, the homework never seems to cease so I guess the blogging must, for now. I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's weekend! Be careful and share the love!

Nursing School and Being Methodist

Studying for tests never seems to be as fun as I hope it is going to be. I've finally convinced myself to start studying before the day before a test, though. So I guess I can say that I've made improvements. Seth can't seem to understand why I have to study so much for tests. I'm glad I can finally tell him it's to guarantee that no one dies on my watch. Saying that seems so Grey's Anatomy. Scarily enough, that's what it has actually come to. I now can make that much of a difference on someone's life. If the right situation presents itself (or the wrong one, perhaps), me knowing these things could save someone's life or allow it to end. SCARY!! I hope that I'm not put in that situation for a very long time. However, I'll review my CPR information before my clinical on Thursday just to be on the safe side.

Nursing school is tough. People ask me all the time if it's really hard. I don't know how to answer that question, usually. I can't compare it to any other major at this level, so I don't know what to tell them. Usually, I include that entire explanation and take up a good portion of that person's day just to make sure they don't think that I think that my major is tougher than theirs. I don't think it is. I know it's hard for me. But that doesn't mean that it's any less hard than all of the other majors. I always finish it up by telling them that I absolutely love it and that's all that matters. I think I'm a bit of a martyr when it comes to how much we have to do for school. My biggest pet peeve about myself currently is how much I complain. I think that getting a blog is detrimental to my trying to fix this situation. Hopefully this will serve as a bit of a journal for me to work my thoughts out and to come up on the other side with a new perspective on the situation. One that says "stop complaining and do something about it." I wonder how much it would hurt to get that tattooed on the back of my hand.

Seth is coming this weekend! I can't wait! I'm starting to actually be ok with West Point. We now get to see each other every month, which is simply amazing! I'm excited because this will be the last break that we have together before I get to start bothering him about wedding details all the time. I told him today that he has to choose things when I give him options; even if his decision serves the sheer purpose of making me realize that I actually want the other option. I'm ok with that being the case seeing as I know that his decision will center around what he thinks I actually want him to choose. I wish he had more of a vision for our wedding, but I guess I can't complain that he cares more about being married to me than he cares about the actual act of marrying me.

I emailed the church that we think might be for us. It's St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Cleburne, TX. Neither of us are actually Methodist, but we both think that's what we are at heart. I believe that it's a good place for us to get married seeing as I found my faith in a Baptist church, was baptized in a Church of Christ, and currently attend Catholic Mass with my roommate every now and then. Seth has been baptized in 3 or 4 different denominations, to date. One of these baptisms actually was into a Methodist church, so I guess I speak for myself when I say that we're not Methodist.

Anyways, Cleburne is also building a new Conference Center that will be done sometime this Spring. Hopefully this option will work out and our venue will be solidified and we won't have to worry anymore. In a perfect world, this would be the case. I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens and pray that our Methodist-Church of Christ-Baptist-Presbyterian forces work out for us!