The Wedding Party and Flowers

Oops. Here I am again with two posts in one day. I forgot about Show Us Your Life. This week Kelly's Show Us Your Life theme is Wedding Party and Flowers.

We got married on August 12, 2006 at a little farm close to my parent's home. We both really wanted an outdoor wedding but were having trouble securing a location. In October 2005, one of my dad's employees told him about this place. My mom and dad went down there to check it out (I lived 2 hours away at the time) and found out that there was only one opening left for the summer of 06... August 12th. My parents went out on a limb and booked the venue without me even seeing it. They knew we'd love it and they were right. The first time I saw it, there was 3 feet of snow on the ground but it was just as beautiful.

The day was just perfect. We were married on the front porch of a 100+ year old church, with our friend's and family sitting on the front lawn. My cousin, who is a minister, did us the great honour of officiating the ceremony.

We both had five attendants and two flower girls and one ring bearer (again I'm limited with the pics I can show because I can't show professional ones).

Our flower girls were our two nieces and the ring bearer was the best man's oldest son

My girls were (from left to right):

My Sister-in-law, FD's cousin, my BFF (MOH), FD's sister and my sister (Matron of Honour)

The guys were:

FD's brother-in-law, FD's friend (my childhood friend who I thought I was going to marry at age 8, remember?), FD's Best friend and mentor (best man - standing behind him), my brother and another close friend.

We carried orange calla lilies and they were perfect. I was slightly nervous about my flowers because the florist couldn't show me them ahead of time. They were coming in on special order and so I just had to trust that they would be beautiful, and beautiful they were. I carried a large bouquet, the girls carried a miniature bouquet and the guys wore one on their lapels. Our mother's carried small bouquets of white calla lilies and our grandparents wore white rose boutonnieres and corsages.

The florist also arranged the Urns that were positioned at the front of the church, in front the rail fences that FD and his dad built.

My BFF arranged the aisle decor by removing the citronella from mosquito lanterns and placing a tall glass vase filled with river rocks in them. They were strung together with tulle and bows tied out of the same ribbon that was used on our invitations. The lanterns were then disassembled and arranged around the tent where we had our reception with the citronella back in them to ward off the bugs for the evening.


The existing flowers and greenery on the property added wonderfully to the atmosphere of our wedding.

I'll see you all back here next week with the reception and the honeymoon!

the one where my world was shattered....

(source)

Last night, the FD's cousin (who is more my friend than his cousin) came over for some din din and to go for a run ... which turned into a brisk walk when we realized how full we were. After our walk, we headed back to her house because the FD needed to do some work on her dryer.

While he was busting his butt trying to fix the thing, she and I decided to play cards, because, you know, it's fun to play a game right beside your husband who's working really hard.

At some point during the game, FD's cousin (who is more my friend than his cousin), pointed out that her boyfriend is colour blind. You see, she's just started dating a guy and is still in that phase where you tell your friends random tidbits of useless information about your boo and they act like they care (...even though they don't).

Anyway, I guess the fact that we were playing with blue and red cards was what struck this memory.

So, she says, "A's colour blind, just like all the [our last name] men. [Fabulous dude], your dad is colour blind, too, right?"

"Yeah," he says.

"What?" I gasp. "Your dad is colour blind?"

"All the [our last name] men are. It runs in the family." States FD's cousin (who is more my friend than his cousin).

"So, are you colour blind?" I ask FD.

"No, it skips a generation."

"Oh, yeah, that's right."

Now that I've got this sorted out, all is right with the world, and we return to our respective tasks - him working, me playing, such is life - until an awful realization enters my mind.

"Wait a second ...." I say, as I'm processing this new information, "does this mean", gulp, "that our sons will be colour blind?"

"Most likely. In fact, I think it's almost guaranteed that they will be", answers FD's cousin (who is more my friend than his cousin).

Immediately, my world is shattered. "This is a piece of information that would have been useful before I said I do!"

"Why?" He asks.

"Would it have changed your decision?" Laughs his cousin.

"Well, I'm not sure. I can't really say. I just can't believe I never knew this. Now all my dreams of our sons being world class painters are gone...dead. If I had known this, maybe I would have spent my days dreaming about having 5 little girls instead of 5 little boys. How could you have lied to me for so many years?"

After this unexpected discovery, we spent the remainder of the evening continuing our dryer fixing and card playing. However, the night just wasn't the same after learning that my son's futures might look like this...

(source)

*Special thanks to Kei for supporting me through this discovery, allowing me to totally kick her butt at speed and helping me craft this clever post.

The Part-ay!

This weekend was spent celebrating my nephew's first birthday. He slept through most of his party but he managed to make an appearance just in time for the best part - cake and presents!

My mom made a cute truck cake for him (and, yes, she also made black forest cake for her favourite child the rest of us). Growing up, choosing what cake Mom would make for my birthday was always a highlight. Now that she's a grandma she's looking forward to getting back into the caking making groove. Next time I go home, I plan on sorting through some photos so I can show off some of the cakes she made me as a child. She claims she is out of practice and as a result, her truck had a flat tire. I think it looked just great!

At first little H wasn't quite sure what to make of this birthday cake thing but he quickly got the idea. I love how these pictures document the progression through his first birthday cake experience.

Unfortunately, there is only so much partying that a little boy can handle. I think this last picture says it all...

...And I'm spent.

Real Life Romance: Part Five

Need a refresher? Click here for parts 1-4 of the Real Life Romance series.

Lucy Got Lucky

I am very sorry, but this installment of the RLR series is very lengthy. I tried to condense it, but there is just so much to tell and our story just would not be complete without the details. If you need to take a break and rest your eyes part way through, I completely understand. But please bear with me and stick it out until the end. Trust me, it's worth it. I tried to break it up with some of my favourite photos of us while we were dating. They have no real relevance to the story - just a visual to break up the writing :)

If you are catching up you will remember that the fabulous dude had just arrived home from summer camp after leaving me hanging for a grueling 6 weeks. As soon as he returned to his parents house, however, the very first thing he did was call me and ask if he could come visit. Of course, I was ecstatic and said yes. It was a three hour drive and I had an afternoon/early evening shift at the restaurant so I knew he'd be at my house when I got finished. In the last post I said it was a Saturday but now that I think about it, I think it was a Friday and he was planning to stay until Monday or something. I asked my parents if it was okay if he came over for the weekend and everything was all set. I was a nervous wreck during my shift at work!

I got home and he was there waiting for me. It was somewhat awkward because neither of us were really sure what we were supposed to do or say. We headed down to my parents boat where we would stay for the weekend. We spent the day on Saturday enjoying the sun and the beach. We stayed up late catching up and talking. Somewhere in the midst of our convo, we talked about the bed-wetting problem he had until he was about 8 years old.

Apparently this conversation struck something in his subconscious because he woke up at about 3 am and realized he was wetting his bed (don't worry - I have his permission to share this story). Remember - we were on my parents boat. Boats don't have a lot of room. My parents were asleep in their bed, he was in the other bed and I was on the floor between them. If I stretched, I could literally touch the base of my parents bed with my fingers and the base of his bed with my toes. Apparently he woke up, rushed out of the boat and tried to think about what to do. Finally, around 5 am, he woke me up and asked me to come outside. He took me for a walk and said he had a surprise for me and that he bet me $100 I would laugh at his surprise. I took the bet and he proceeded to tell me that he had peed the bed on my parents boat. Needless to say, he won the bet. When my parents woke up and were on the dock making breakfast, I quickly stripped the sheets off the bed. Luckily, he was sleeping on top of a sleeping bag and so the pee didn't soak through onto the sheets or, worse, the mattress. I loaded all the bedding (including the stuff from my parents bed so as not to look suspicious) into my car and told my mom I'd wash it all and bring it back because they were having more company the next weekend.

So, you may be wondering why in the world, other than to embarrass my husband, would I tell this story? Well, because, as I'm sure you'd agree, if a girl agrees to sneak around her parents and clean up a guy's pee sheets on their "first date", and the guy isn't too ashamed to show his face around the girl again, there is no doubt that they are meant to be together. After that incident, he basically had no choice but to marry me. (As a funny aside, over the next couple years, most of our friends and his family found out about this story. But, miraculously, we managed to keep the incident a secret from my parents and my entire family, until he confessed it to my father at our wedding reception - the way he told him is quite funny - perhaps I shall share this story another time...)

After the weekend of holding hands and laughing together and cleaning up pee sheets (but NO kissing - not for his lack of trying), he headed back to his parents house. He stayed there for about a week, bought his first truck, and then moved back to the town where we went to high school to return full time to the farming job he had during high school. It seems as though we never really looked back. There was never a time when we "officially" started dating, it just seemed as though we both had the understanding that now was our time. We sometimes questioned why we didn't start dating during high school but both of us agreed that there was a reason and that God timed it perfectly for us to begin our relationship.

Somewhere around the beginning of our relationship, he nicknamed me Lucy. There was also a song on the radio at the time that said "Lucy got Lucky and Lucky got Lucky, too". So, we became Lucy and Lucky. To this day, I am Lucy to him and some of his family members.

In September I moved into my sister's apartment and began university (I was about 1.5 hours away from him now). Thankfully, the farm he worked at shipped out of a town about 15 minutes away so he usually was able to visit about once a week (I've got some really cool stories about these visits too - another day). We got really serious really fast and he started talking about marriage. Believe it or not, he wanted to get married at Christmas only 4 short months after we began dating!! I quickly put an end to that idea. Yet, I knew that marriage was in our (near) future and living 1.5 hours apart wasn't going to cut it. After my first semester, we decided that we were serious enough to make some drastic changes. We started weighing our options. He could quit his job, move to my city and find a new job. I wasn't enjoying my time at university and I hated living in the city (small town girl) so, instead, I applied to transfer to a university closer to him for my second year. By May, the plans were all set for me to move in with his cousin, who lived in the same town as him, the following September.

At this point, we started seriously saving some money so that we would be able to afford to get married. His father was skeptical of us talking about marriage when we were so young because of financial constraints, so we wanted to show him that we could do it. And we certainly did show him, I might add. I was almost certain that the proposal would come at some point over the summer, before I moved back to GL town.

The summer came and went, and I did not have a ring. We had started looking at rings and had picked out a few that we really liked. I was starting to get impatient although now I have no idea why I was in such a hurry. I became almost obsessed with talking about getting engaged. If you know me at all, you know that I am a planner, an organizer and perhaps a control freak. The idea of not knowing what was going on and having no control over it drove me bonkers. The FD started to get really fed up with my constant bugging.

Just before Thanksgiving, he took me for a walk and told me that he thought we were moving too quickly. I was so angry with him. Wasn't he the one who had wanted to get married right when we started dating? Wasn't he the one who suggested we move closer to each other? He apologized and told me that he just wasn't ready to think about marriage. He said he wasn't doubting that he wanted to marry me. He was simply doubting when he wanted to do so. He said all the pressure was making him uncomfortable. I was sure he was having second thoughts about our relationship. I was scared, confused and insecure. However, he stilled invited me to come home with him for Thanksgiving. I agreed and so as we headed up north to his parents house to celebrate Thanksgiving, I had no idea what was going to happen to us.

To be continued...

The Real Life Romance series is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife

Money Talk

I had a different post in mind today but then something happened that I wanted to share. I had a Dr's appointment today and when I arrived I was informed that my appointment had been canceled and they tried to reschedule but didn't have a phone number on file for me (odd since I've been a patient for three years). With the canceled appointment, I had some spare time on my hands before I was due at a friend's house to watch her kiddos. I decided to hit the gas station and run a few errands I had been planning to do this evening.

I pulled into the gas station and flipped open the compartment under the CD player (which is where the in-car lighter is) to get my bonus points card out. And much to my surprise, I found a $20 bill in there!

Ain't nothin' better than finding money when and where you least expect it ... even though it was in my car, meaning that it was likely originally my (lost) money. Meh, who cares where it came from ... I felt as though Christmas came early this year!

But then, after leaving the grocery store and pondering the mystery money, I realized that Christmas had not come early this year, but that there was a little more to this story. Money management/stress is one of my biggest struggles. I am a worry wort, a planner and a control freak and have often let financial issues get the best of me.

Today I am reminded of the need to have more faith in God's provision in my life. I am such an organizer and planner that I feel the need to control every ounce of our spending. And while I do strongly believe that budgeting is important and necessary, there does come a point when my budgeting gets the best of me and I begin to question God. Will there be enough for groceries this month? Are we saving enough to achieve our goals? How will we afford the car repair?

Admist those questions, I know that in any and every financial situation we've faced, God has provided for us. In fact, daily, He provides more than enough. As an example, I've recently been trying out a cash budgeting system. I'm doing a trial run to see how it goes. Earlier this week when we went grocery shopping, I was carrying with me the very last of our July grocery money. I am usually pretty good at keeping a running cart total in my head but at some point during our trip, I lost track. When we got to the check out, I put my items on the conveyor belt in the order of importance so I could watch the total and put a few things back if necessary. When the cashier was finished ringing through all of my items, I was literally left with ONE penny to spare. Coincidence? I think not.

I believe that this $20 bill and exactly perfect grocery store total can be seen as reminders of whose money it really is and who is in control.

Summer's Fave Things Giveaway

If you haven't been there before, you should drop what you're doing right now and head on over to Summer B's and check out her amazing giveaway. There are so many fun goodies included.

Not a crazy dog person?

Before we got Nika, I was a dog hater through and through. I did not like to look at them, touch them, smell them, be around them, talk about them, or even think about them. So, when the fabulous dude dragged me to his boss's neighbour's farm to check out the new puppies, I was not overly excited.

But then I saw her, with her tiny, sweet face huddled behind her mumma, looking up at me, practically begging to come home with me and my whole world changed. I could not resist her. Without an ounce of thought, I said, "I want that one". Two weeks later we were on our way back to pick her up and bring her home.

Then and there, at that very moment, I made a vow to myself. No matter what, I would not allow myself to become one of those crazy dog people. Even though we were getting a dog did not mean I had to be that kind of person. She will never wear clothes, will not be in our family photos, no way is she going to be allowed to get on our furniture or, heaven forbid, sleep in our bed. And when she's old enough, she will become an entirely outdoor dog.

I would like to share with you some photos that demonstrate just how well I have upheld that goal and retained my I'm-not-a-crazy-dog-person-mentality over the past two and a half years.

See, I told you that I've maintained my goal.