Updates.. what a boring title!

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So I've gotten quite a bit done in regards to the wedding in the last week (or at least I like to think so). Here's an update of the past week, as well as a preview of what's going on the next week and a half!

Friday 3/14: Michael and I did engagement pictures at JC Penney. I am thrilled with how they turned out and cannot wait until they come in next Thursday. We are surprisingly photogenic when someone is being paid to take our picture. I, of course, loving them, ordered more than I'd planned, but I can stick them in various wedding invitations and give people a nice present.

Saturday 3/15: We picked out tuxes for the guys to wear for the wedding. We have enough people wearing them that Michael's will be free. Nice. They're $78 without the shoes, which is a fair price for a nice tux (or so I think). Chantel and I also went shopping for shower supplies. If you're coming to my shower, try to win a game, because there are sweet prizes. I also started working on the hand-painted aisle runner that I wanted to have. I didn't finish it until Monday, but I have to say, it looks amazing. Michael's friend came over while it was still out and was like, 'wow, did you make this?' I knew there was a reason I liked his friend. :0)

Sunday 3/16: Ugggh... Sunday. Penelope was sick on Sunday. Not cool. I ended up renting a Rug Doctor and shampooed the carpet in our living room. This meant moving all of the furniture. We also decided to rearrange the living room. I like the way it looks now. It seems bigger. Anyway, we also started going through things and packing up stuff that we don't use right now.

Monday 3/17: I finished up the aisle runner. Here's a picture of my awesome work.

Here are the plans for spring break (which starts at 12:50PM TODAY!), some wedding-related, some not:

Friday 3/21: First of all, only three months until the wedding!!! After all this time, I can't believe it's finally almost here. Anyway. Happy Good Friday to all. Michael, the poopy-dogs, and myself are heading back home this afternoon. I'm going to Good Friday services this evening at the church (I feel that I should go at least once before the wedding since we aren't having to actually pay for the use of the sanctuary). Oh, and I'm so having DQ at some point today. I've been told it opened the other day.

Saturday 3/22: Easter parade in W-town! I've finally gotten over my hate for parades and can enjoy them now (for those of you who don't know, I was in marching band grades 8-9. I've seen the Homecoming parade once since 1998). Chantel, Sarah, Becky, Shayna, and I are all going to watch the parade and then we're headed to Bob's for lunch. Oh, Bob's, how I miss thee. Anyway, after that we're going bowling at the local bowling alley, which is under new ownership. It's apparently a hip and happening place now, but we're going during the day like old people, so there may not be so many people there.

Sunday 3/23: Happy Easter! We're planning to go to Michael's Aunt Debbie's house for Easter. I feel the need to apologize to his Aunt Beverly to her face. Oh, what happened? I accidentally forgot to invite her to my bridal shower. I feel horrible. I've only met that side of his family a couple of times and don't know everyone. I personally called her, but I want to apologize in person and give her the shower info.

Fast-forward...

Thursday 3/27: Pick up pictures!!! Scan pictures!!! Print extra pictures!!!

Friday 3/28: Hopefully I'll be hanging out with cute Isabella. She's our flower girl. I bought her a dress, but it's too big, so I need to fit it for her. It was marked down at Dillard's from $50 to $12.50. As long as it wasn't too small for her, I was buying it.

Saturday 3/29: Marriage counseling with Bro. Bill! I'm a little nervous about this, just because I don't know what kinds of things he's going to ask us and what we're going to talk about. Bro. Bill is cool, though, I've known him since I was in the 7th grade. It'll probably be pretty laid-back and casual. We'll see, though. I'm also helping my mom finish cleaning up the house that day. Because. . .

Sunday 3/30: . . .Bridal shower!!!!! Potentially 40 ladies will descend upon my parents' house to play games, eat cake, and watch me try not to break all of the ribbon. :0)

Speaking of my shower.... I have registered for awesome dishes at Dillard's. I fell in love with Fiesta dishes from Homer Laughlin in 2006 when I lived with Katie. She had every color under the sun (it looked like skittles threw up in our cabinets). Anyway, Michael and I registered for scarlet and cobalt blue (8 place settings of each). Yesterday I checked our registry and someone had bought us one of each color!!! This deserved a dance, which I did all the way into the other room to tell Michael, who had the typical man 'eh... cool' reaction. Later, I was talking to my grandma (who had been in Como for an MRI) and she tells me that she talked my grandpa into taking her over to Dillard's while she was in town. ((this is when it occurred to me that she was the one who had purchased the dishes)) She then told me straight out that she had bought us one of each color. I told her I knew. She told the woman who helped her that I'd probably know soon enough because I kept snooping online. I wouldn't have known who bought it, except she blabbed. I think she's just really proud of the fact that she got me something she knew I really wanted and wanted to tell someone. She then told me she needed someone to wrap them. I told her I would since she'd already ruined the surprise! :0)

There's something else I need to update about. . . hmm. . . what. . . was. . . it? Oh, the suit.

Yes, the suit. There was an update about the suit a while ago when I finally let it be known that Michael had interviewed with Caterpillar in Peoria, Illinois.

Well, HE GOT THE JOB!!!

We found out last Friday afternoon. He starts Tuesday, May 20th. The weekend before that is going to be a busy one for us:

Friday: two finals for me, his graduation at 6:30

Saturday: afternoon -- graduation party, evening -- my bachelorette party (ole!)

Sunday/Monday: moving/unpacking

Tuesday: him -- work, me -- more unpacking

Ahh. . . we're growing up! :0)

More updates -- I'm getting better!

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No, you are not hallucinating, I really am blogging two days in a row. It must be a miracle!

I have a few updates that have developed since yesterday, some I can mention, some I can't.

As far as the wedding goes, I can talk about that until the cows come home. We're finally going tomorrow evening to have engagement pictures taken. Pray that we look nice tomorrow! A few weeks after that you can look for the picture in the Windsor Review as an engagement announcement. I know, we've been engaged since February 2007. I was telling Chantel about getting pictures taken and her response was 'haven't you been talking about this since November?' Yes, yes I have. I finally called JC Penney this evening and scheduled our appointment for 6:40 tomorrow evening! I'm going to get a haircut tomorrow evening and look for a nice shirt to wear that doesn't make me look like a whale.

On Saturday, Michael and I are heading to Sedalia to choose tuxes for the guys to wear in the wedding. It's a lot easier to set up a little registry than to get all of the guys together at once. This way they can go at their own convenience. I'm really looking forward to having this done and out of my mind.

Tonight we made blankets for Project Linus. As mentioned yesterday, Eta Sigma Phi does a service project each semester, and that's what we chose for this one. I know it doesn't help as many people as our canned food drive for the food bank, but it was really fun. There were six ladies there and we made four blankets. We have initiation and Cena Deorum coming up after spring break, so expect lots of pictures from both!

All right, I definitely have to go. I have an exam in my religious studies class tomorrow that I should be studying for. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

I'm trying -- really!

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So I say I'm going to blog the day after my dress fitting and it doesn't happen. Oops. If it makes you feel any better, I've had quite a bit going on the last week.

I'll start with the wedding-related things I did over the last week. There was obviously my dress-fitting. That went fine. I managed to get away with only $60 in alterations cost (hooray for a 5-point bustle). [Christi, you'd better be at my wedding to tie my bustle!!! :)] The alterations lady made a few comments about my weight. I'll admit, I've gained about five pounds since I bought my dress (I was working out a few times a week when I bought it and haven't been as of late), but the woman didn't go about mentioning that in a polite manner. She just had this tone in her voice that seemed to be judging me.

I also finished a box of bubbles!!! YES! This is exciting news. Bubbles take such a long time, especially for something that will take up a minute of my life. I have just over three boxes to go (I think) before I'm finished. Hopefully this weekend I'll attack them head-on.

I also started working on invitations. I went after classes one day and bought stamps for our response cards. Postage goes up in mid-May and our RSVP date isn't until June, so I had to splurge and buy 100 penny stamps to go along with the 100 postcard stamps. I had a nice little assembly line set up on my ironing board in front of the la-z-boy. I also ran envelopes through the printer. I hand-wrote 40+ shower invitations, I wasn't about to hand-write 100 wedding invitations. I finished about half of them. I'm still waiting on a couple of addresses from people (mostly people who don't stay in one place very long) before I finish them up. They go out in mid-April, which will be here before I know it. I think as long as I finish them up the week after spring break, I'll be in good shape.

Now for a few non-wedding things...

Still curious about the suit? Michael needed it for an interview he had last week. He was gone Wednesday through Sunday (though, only Thursday and Friday were for the interviews) for an interview with Caterpillar in Peoria, Illinois. He stayed with his friend, Ty, for a few days as well, catching up and getting to know the city. Michael should hear back from them within the next 7-10 days.

However, we still don't know where we'll be living in nine weeks. Michael has had several other interviews and continues to have more. I'll possibly mention the various locations when we know for sure what's going on. I hope we know something soon, though, just to set my mind at ease.

I made a quilt Saturday! Yes, an entire quilt. It's not huge. Small child size. Making it has gotten me geared up for tomorrow night. Every semester for Eta Sigma Phi, we participate in some sort of service project. Last semester was a food drive for the Central Missouri Food Bank here in town. This semester we wanted to do something a little different. At the suggestion of a new member (shoutout to Jennifer who thinks Christi and I are twins!), we are donating our time to helping Project Linus. It's an organization that collects homemade blankets to children who are ill, injured, traumatized, or otherwise are in need of that sense of warmth and security. The club president and I went to Joann's on Friday and purchased fleece to make No-Sew fleece blankets. I really like our fabric selections and will try to include photographs of them in a future posting.

All right, I've rambled enough. I will leave you with a picture of what I call the Puppy Quilt (how awesome would it be if people bought these?), complete with my puppies on the sides.

Countdowns:

Spring Break: 9 days!

Bridal Shower: 18 days!

Michael's graduation: 65 days!

Wedding: 101 days!!!

Is it really only Tuesday?

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So I've done it. I am officially enrolled for my last semester of college. YAY! I thought I'd feel a little more emotion, but I've done this seven times before, so it doesn't really feel special.

I only had a few remaining requirements to fulfill, so my schedule contains a couple of electives, as I need 14 credits to graduate in December. I don't know if I would call my schedule exciting or not. I'm taking one 4000-level course, one 3000-level, one 2000-level, and two 1000-level courses. Yes, I'm such an over-achiever. I'm taking one senior-level course the last semester of my senior year.

Here's a list of the courses I'm taking:

Atmospheric Science 1050 -- Introductory Meteorology

This shouldn't be too bad. It's a freshman-level course, so that means there are 400 students in the class. I'm expecting the exams to be multiple choice and pretty straight-forward. If I have any trouble, I can always call Christi's husband, Mike, for help because he graduated with a BS in Atmospheric Science!

Peace Studies 2410 -- Philosophy of War and Peace

The word 'philosophy' is code for 'lots of reading,' but it was the only humanity that I can take for credit that wouldn't be extremely horrible. It should at least be somewhat interesting (I hope!).

Classical Humanities 3250 -- Greek and Roman Epic

'Epic' is also code for 'lots of reading,' but I've read all of the texts previously, not to mention there are excellent notes for them on SparkNotes. I haven't had the professor before, but I've been told he's brimming with loads of knowledge on the subject matter. This doesn't really fulfill anything. It's just an elective that's 3000+. I needed six credits of 3000-level course and above still and I've already taken plenty of Classical Humanities courses, so what's one more?

Nutritional Science 1340 -- Introduction to Fitness and Exercise

We all know Marie-Etta could use to exercise more. Perhaps this will motivate me? Okay, so that's not why I'm taking it. It's a freshman-level course and RateMyProfessor reviews all talk about it as though it's extremely easy and straight forward. This is what I want to hear my last semester of college. Do you think I want to do any actual work? No! This is one step above the university just giving me a degree (which I would snatch up in a heartbeat!).

And last, but certainly not least....

Latin 4960 -- My Capstone!

I suppose I should really start thinking about this course so that I have some idea as to what I want to do when August rolls around.

For those of you who aren't Mizzou students, a capstone is a senior research course. You take it within your major. For Classicists, it really shows that you know your way around the library (there are so many ways around this building that it's frightening). With mine being in Latin, there will be some translation. Dr. Barnes assures me that it won't be the 'billions of lines' that I fear it to be, though some will take place. I don't know which I'm looking forward to least, the Latin I'll have to do or the 15-20 page research paper I have to write about it...

My first dress fitting is tonight! Yay! I will, of course, take pictures, but won't be posting them. I know, what a tease! I just can't take the risk of Michael seeing pictures of me in my dress before the big day. I already have several on my computer that I trust him not to look at, but if they pop up on my blog, he may accidentally see and we don't want that.

Christi is kind enough to join me this evening for my fitting. Not only does she work in a bridal salon and I trust her opinion, but she's just awesome. Plus, I won't have to go alone, which would be kind of a bummer. So thank you in advance, Christi, for being such a good friend and not only going with me, but providing me with ample feedback and taking tons of pictures (You didn't think you'd get away with not taking pictures for me, did you?).

I have my Latin class this afternoon at 2. I've come to realize that I don't really like the course. I feel like the professor teaches at a level for the graduate students rather than the undergraduate students. He also seems to think I'm awful at Latin and that my way of learning is wrong. I learn by writing things down (or, as I told Michael, I write things down in order to facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge), so when I'm translating in class, I write down notes on my translation. It seems like every time I do this, the professor says to me 'don't write things down.' I'm 22 years old, do I look like I'm getting a PhD? I'm paying enough for the class that I am going to write things down. Oh, and it's the first class since 4th grade that fills me with so much anxiety that I feel as though I might throw up. Lovely. There are still just over two months until the end of the semester. It can't get here any sooner.

All right, so I've been procrastinating long enough. I have plenty of Latin that I need to be doing right now, not to mention I need to get some lunch before class starts at 2. Look for an update about how awesome my wedding dress (that you can't see) is and maybe some pictures of my pooches in the next day or two.