Happy Jennie's Birthday!!!!! ***picture heavy***

Today, one of my older sisters turns 27. I shared a room with her for a very long time, and many days were spent with me cleaning while she sat on the bed reading. Thankfully she grew out of that, but not until after we weren't room mates anymore. She is also the only blonde in our entire immediate family, and she's also very tall. Well, tall for our family at 5'6" while the rest of us are 5'1", 5'2" and 5'4" respectively. Anywho, last night was the night we celebrated, and we did so by meeting up in Columbus at the Easton Town Center to have dinner at the Mongolian Barbecue!

Birthday girl looking slightly manic with her barbecued pineapple stir fry stuff.

We had a blasty blast watching other people be given balloons and made tinfoil hats. Other than all of the grill men singing a tuneless Happy Birthday to Jennie, nothing else happened. No special dessert, no hat, no balloon. But not for lack of trying! Our friends Laura and Nicole did their darnedest to make sure every waiter and waitress and busboy and grill man in the building knew it was Jennie's birthday.

Basically it was a really great, fun night. Lots of birthday people came in, though considering it was April Fool's Day I have to wonder how many of those birthdays were real...

Random change of subject, but when my mom was still with us, but was fading slowly, we decided we would get these charms called Thumbies. Basically they send you information that includes a card for a fingerprint and a plastic pull-off sheet with black packed powder inside. Aunt Lauri and I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to get a good fingerprint from my mom's limp hand (she was fast asleep and had no idea we were doing anything to her). It was actually kind of hilarious because we discovered we were really bad at it. However, what they do is you send in the print and they create a charm using the fingerprint. You can get plain round ones, or you can get a heart shape, or a double heart. My dad got a double heart with Mom's fingerprint on one and his own on the other. I got a single heart. My sister got the basic round. My aunt got the basic round also, but with a jewel at the loop. We ordered them the week or so after the funeral and they finally came in. Jennie brought mine to me yesterday and I took a picture of it.

The back is engraved with "Mom 1958-2011", just in case you can't read it. And that little squiggle thing I think is their trademark. But anyway, I'm wearing it now and will most likely wear it often and someday will bequeath it to my currently hypothetical daughter.

Here's a few more photos of the night, just to wrap it all up!

Why yes, that IS a Mini hanging on the side of the parking garage...

Have a great weekend, everyone!

My Workday in Photos

Bridal Showers and Babies

I have decided I should never eat again. Because when I do eat, I eat far too much and then I feel fat and then I don't have time to work out and shower before bed so then I sit and be a lazy bum and it's too cold to go outside and run and basically it needs to be warm so I can buy a pass to the park and go do stuff.

I'm going to talk about bridal showers. My younger sister is getting married on May 28th and I am the maid of honor (huge shock when I found out, let me tell you) and we had her shower on Sunday. She is getting married exactly two months from today, which is insane, to the guy she has been dating since they were in the 7th grade, which is even insaner. She is the only one of the four girls to manage that, and I have no idea how she did. But all that aside, she's getting married, she's annoyingly tan for a family of German/Swedish/Irish white-ness, and we are all very happy for her.

We had a blast getting the family together at my aunt's up in Wooster, OH. All the ladies stayed at the house to watch Anne open presents and to play with the babies (a nine week old girl!! Cutest thing ever!) and take pictures while all the older children and the men went bowling. I had brought my camera, but the memory card was still in my computer three and a half hours away so I am basically an epic fail, but her future sister in-law took a bunch of photos so once she Facebooks them Ima stealin'. It was a good thing anyway because I had to document every gift she got and keep track of cards so picture taking wouldn't have worked out anyway.

But I did take two phone photos of the baby with my sister...

This is Jerusha. She is half Indian (as in from India indian) and half blue eyed blonde haired American. SO cute, and a very happy little girl!

The only damper on the day was the one woman not present from the merry gathering, and she was very much missed. We shed tears, we shared memories. My aunt, who organized the event, doesn't do games so there wasn't Toilet Paper Wedding Dresses or What's in Your Purse or anything like that, but what we did do was give advice. Some of this advice was recycled, as four of the younger generation of women were all married within the last decade. In fact, my cousin Corrie shared what Mom wrote on a little card to her at her shower years ago, something about holding hands every day with my father and it was much sweeter when Corrie told it with tears glistening in her eyes. I know how much my mom would have loved to have been at Anne's shower, and to eventually have gone to mine. And I can't even tell you how many times I have wished I asked my mom for advice on how to be a good wife to my Johnny before she was gone. But since she isn't there Anne and I rely on our aunts and cousins and grandmother to be our helpers and guides, a task they are all ready and willing to fulfill. It's amazing to be part of such a close, loving and giving family, I can't imagine a better one.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, Anne really liked her Pampered Chef present from me. :-) Since I can tell you now, I gave her a cutting board that has measuring cups that fit into it, a collapsible strainer that also fits into it, and a "hold n' slice", which is basically a big pick you can use to hold the fruit/veggies/whatever that you're cutting without sliding or slicing your hand open by accident. And my card was extremely sentimental. I wrote, "Enjoy. With love from your maid of honor, Emily."     ......... ;-)

Playing Catch Up... *long post, be prepared!*

To start, you should know that I really need a shower. Like, whoa. Because I did over an hour of aerobics, not because I'm a skuzzball.

Anywho, the past week has been slight insanity! My poor car, Penny, has suffered a minor injury known as a bad wheel bearing. This is the THIRD wheel bearing that has been replaced on my car since I bought it in December 2009. Something tells me there is a bigger issue here... But in any case, I drove the car all week only to work and back for fear that the wheel would just stop working or pop right off or something and I would die a horrible death when an 18-wheeler ran over my poor broken body on the interstate. Thankfully, this did not happen on the way to or from work, nor did it happen on the two and a half hour drive back to my dad's on Friday. However, I was on the verge of a panic attack for the entire trip. I was also very sleepy, which is NOT a good combination. I left my car there on Sunday and Dad lent me his for the week. Not that I don't like Dad's car, but I'm looking forward to having my Penny back. :) She's all better with a fresh oil change and I will have her back the day after tomorrow.

In other news, the reason I went home last weekend was because my older sister, Jennie, is in a band called Affix, and that band played a concert in my hometown at the middle school cafetorium on Saturday the 19th (which also happened to be my oldest sister, Erin's, 29th birthday!). I spent the morning before running errands, one of which included putting a hold on a queen sized sleigh bed from Big Lots! Johnny and I will have a bed in about three months. It will not have mattresses until I put a hold on those as well. But we have a bed! So stoked!

Back on topic, it was a lovely day so once I dropped off the associate pastor's son at the school and helped out a little with the set up I walked back to the house. I love love walking, and I really miss it living where I do. But the little town in which I grew up is safe and everything is in walking distance from the house. So I walked back to find our good friend Susan in the kitchen wearing an apron making pasta sauce to go over the meatballs Jennie made to eat with noodles, salad, bread, and the best banana cake in the universe. If you didn't guess, yes. We fed the band, and their girlfriends/wives/children. Full house, lemme tell you. However, it was also a total blast because all of these guys are great people and I got to enjoy a healthy debate of ATT vs. VZW... the bass player is CSR for ATT. I was CSR for VZW. As I haven't been in that job for over a year now I'm a little rusty, but it was fun to discuss which is better... and now that I have Sprint I feel no need to be loyal, lol.

Immediately after dinner, which included crazy conversations about "man food", Angry Birds, the iPhone's superiority over every other phone (I have the HTC EVO and like it just fine, thankyouverymuch. In fact, I much prefer it over my iPod touch, So there!), and the awesomeness of Mom's meatball recipe, everyone very suddenly left, including my dad, and left me there without a car....

However, our friend Nicole stayed to help Susan and me clean up and she gave us a ride. God bless our friends!

I also brought a giant container of spaghetti (the meatballs were GONE) to Johnny, who raced to the concert directly from work having not eaten. We had a splendid time. The band was great, as was their opener, Anthony, who is absolutely hilarious and whom I sat across from during dinner.

This is Anthony and Jennie singing one of his songs. I don't remember what it was called, but I very much enjoy his voice and his style of music.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the actual band's concert. However, Rich, the lead guitarist, told about how the band came to sing to my mom when she was still with us and just how amazing and moving that was, and that anyone who donated to the Sarcoma Foundation in Mom's name that night would get a free poster, and half of the proceeds from their shirts/cds/paraphernalia would also be donated. Around $500 was given that night. It was phenomenal.

However, it wasn't over! They also led worship on Sunday morning, so here is a few pictures of that...

It was crazy fun.

Things felt a little weird for me this past weekend. I was around all kinds of people I didn't really know, at the concert Johnny and I were greeted very enthusiastically by our college aged friends (I'm so used to being ignored or given a half-hearted "good morning"!), the wall has been knocked out in the sanctuary to make room for more seating, and 3/4 of the people at church were people I have never seen before. On top of this, Dad's preaching style has changed.

My dad is the pastor of our church, and I have always loved his preaching. It's hard for me to go other places because I'm so spoiled. He is a phenomenal speaker. However, ever since Mom died things are a little different. He still has passion, but there's almost a tone of anger in his passion, and all of his sermons stem back to Mom's death. None of the sermons I have heard since then were lacking in mention of it. And I understand that, I completely do. But where they were usually peppered with humorous anecdotes and stories, now it's tragedy and a realization that life is too short to waste. However, his love for Jesus and for his congregation and his family, and the faith that he has had for the past 31 years, none of that has changed. And he was definitely the Proud Dad last weekend. :)

But all was better when Johnny and I drove up the driveway to find...

FLOWERS!! Purple ones, no less! First day of spring, y'all! It's finally here!

Now it's the middle of the work week and I'm really looking forward to the weekend. Friday I get my car back and then head up to stay with Johnny, Saturday is more cleaning-Johnny's-room-fun followed by hanging with some friends, and Sunday is my younger sister, Anne's, bridal shower! Whoop whoop!

Sorry for the long post, I promise I won't wait so long next time! Have a great day, everyone!

Whoops!

I haven't posted in, like, more than a week!! So sorry, folks, I've been crazy busy and have a million pictures I want to share or I would write a post now. But sadly I have to leave for work in about ten minutes so I will do my best to fill y'all in this evening. Photos and everything! It'll be a long post, just to warn you now. :)

Have a great day!

P.S. Soy milk on cereal isn't quite the same, mostly because it turns the cereal into total mush really quickly, unlike regular milk. Sadness.

Oh, if every weekend were like this one...

I absolutely meant to write a post last night. I really did! But that book over there, boy oh boy did I need to finish it before I had to go to bed. I NEEDED to! I swear!

Anyway, it was a glorious weekend. :D I actually went up to see Johnny on Friday instead of waiting till Saturday like I normally do. He works evenings on Saturdays and there's usually just no point, but we decided Friday would be okay and so that's what I did! I was in a roaring bad mood when I got there, since now that I drive so much I've really come to hate it (mostly because of the idiots driving around me). But the anger evaporated fairly quickly. We spent the evening watching Step Up, which I bought at Half Price Books and is only good for the dancing. I had been watching Dear John on Netflix earlier in the week (both of those films star Channing Tatum, in case you're wondering why I switched movies all of a sudden) and when I saw Channing in Step Up he looked SO tiny! You know how big that guy is, and it wasn't that he isn't muscular in Step Up, he just looks super young. It totally cracked me up.

To get back to the main subject, on Saturday morning we went out to eat and just kind of hung out until Johnny left for work and his mom and I took off for his cousin's house to try cakes! Johnny's cousin has been in contests for the Food Network and does cakes often and enjoys baking so we enlisted her to make our wedding cake! I wanted cupcakes, and she was making some for a birthday anyway, so she made red velvet with cream cheese frosting (yum!), white cake with peanut butter frosting (SO good!!!) and funfetti, which was actually a major letdown. I didn't eat any lunch in preparation for this moment. So I chose the red velvet and the peanut butter and we're going to have a cupcake tower with a giant cupcake on top as the cake topper. That cake will be white cake with buttercream frosting. And she's doing it for... Free!!! Yup, she sure is! I love having connections. :D

The rest of my afternoon and evening until Johnny came back was spent cleaning his room. We figured that if he was going to be moving out in six months or less that he needed to be a bit more organized. Okay, a lot more organized, his room is a mess. But because I am merciless when it comes to cleaning and because he wasn't in my way, I got quite a bit done. I expect a couple more weekends like that and it'll be better than new and then I'll vacuum and dust and scrub and his room will look like a brand new place! It was fun for me, and made the evening go fast. He helped me out a bit after we came back from getting dinner at Pizza Hut (where I really enjoyed their wings but not their pizza as much) and the reason it's so much faster when I'm at it alone is that when I pick up a paper or a greeting card, I check to make sure it's not important or that it doesn't have money in it and then toss it. He looks at it carefully, remembers where it was from, reminisces a bit, and therefore it takes twice as long. His Mom had come up at one point to check on my progress and when I told her I'd found the graduation cards she said "Did you save them?" and I said "Nope." He'll never look at them again, neither will she, and it's just unnecessary clutter. So I really didn't feel any remorse whatsoever.

We sprang forward an hour, which always sucks, and got up for church and - dum dum dummmmm - our first ever session of premarital counseling. Church was good, as it usually is, and afterward the pastor and his wife (old friends of Johnny's) took us out to eat at an Italian place called Angie's before we all went back to the church for counseling. If you want to call it that. The Pastor is of the opinion that what matters is communication and I must say I completely agree. That has been the main problem for Johnny and me and the reason for any fight we have. There's a lot we can learn from a couple that has been successfully married for nearly 30 years. We were also given a book (it was from my mom, at the recommendation of my aunt, around Christmas) that we intend to really dive into now that we're less than six months from the day and in the throes of planning. I sincerely hope that by the time we get to the altar that we both understand one another better and have a much happier marriage because of it.

Holy crap. I'm getting married.

Anywho, the remainder of the day was spent at Walmart buying organizational things for his room, we went to Big Lots and found a gorgeous bed frame for only $300 (on sale!!) and we decided to buy it. So we will have a bed, one that will not be used for many months, lol. Went back to his house, cleaned up his room a bit more, and then I had to leave.

I know when you take out all of my ramblings it doesn't seem like much of a weekend, but it really was. Somehow, now that the whole I'm marrying him thing has hit me, I'm really excited to marry him and even more excited to be around him. I won't gush or anything, but it just made the weekend really spectacular.

It's a nasty rainy day, so I just ate waffles and will now play a video game. Laters!

It's LGN time!

As my wedding is only in 185 days (six months exactly from tomorrow!) I have begun the arduous task of getting into shape.

Last summer running, The Firm, and yoga got me good and toned all the way up until my knee surgery. Then I once again became a lazy bum. Now it is time to reverse that effect!

Because of the degenerative cartilage in my knees I'm not supposed to run more than 2 or 3 miles at MOST three times per week. No worries about that, there's nowhere to run around here except a church parking lot and I can't run for longer than three minutes in the chilly weather before I'm totally winded. So to create interest and give me something more interesting and effective than yoga (in terms of fat burning) I bought another video from The Firm yesterday. Technically I'm not supposed to do anything high impact to save my sad knees, but this particular video advertises itself as being low impact and will therefore be better on my knees.

Sort of related side note: when I was kid I would watch my mom huff and puff and sweat away while doing aerobics in front of the television and I would think to myself, "I'll never do that". Eating my words now. Hopefully they're no fat low cal words.

So that video should get here within the next week or so. I figure I can do that video two or three times per week, do yoga one day to stretch myself out, and then every other week on Tuesdays at 7:15pm go to...

There is a Zumba class at the local rec center. I discovered this last night based on suggestions from Facebook friends. Each class is only $5 and after I talked myself into going (I'm not very good with the whole all alone in a group of strangers thing) I really enjoyed myself! The normal teacher is very sick right now so we had a substitute. She

Kicked.
My.
Butt.

It was crazy! So fast paced and intense, I didn't even realize how much I was sweating till I came home and peeled off my clothing. It was kind of a bear on my knees so I can't do it often, probably a bi-weekly thing, but boy was it fun! She had us moving and lunging and cha-cha-ing for over an hour. I'm amazed I can still move today.

This was my first time doing group aerobics, and also my first time doing any kind of aerobics or dancing in front of a mirror so I could see my every move. I'm often terrified that I look like a total idiot when I dance or work out, but watching myself last night I can tell you that I'm actually not bad. Pretty good, actually, if I'm going to be honest with you. I was one of maybe five new people and the room was packed and as I looked around a lot of them seemed as though they hadn't been there before either. But I was also told that the normal teacher doesn't kick butts like that either so perhaps that's why.

I still have half an hour before I have to go to work! I'll probably leave a little early and stop to get myself some orange juice. I used the last of it yesterday and that makes me sad.

In either case, I am determined to look hot hot hot on my wedding day, and I'm excited to really get started!

Ciao!