And...Re-start.

For the past several months, I've felt like I'm in a get up-work-go home-eat-sleep-repeat rut.  I tell myself that I have nothing worthwhile to blog about, and therefore I don't write.  This is bad, and in reality it's just not at all true.  The fact that life if more of a routine than it was during college does not in any way, shape, or form mean that it's less interesting.  And while it is true that much of my time is spent at a desk each day, there's a lot of life that happens outside of work.  For example, here's a list of things that I haven't blogged about and should have over the past several months (in no particular order):

1. At least four business trips to places I've never been to before.

2. The fact that Potomac, Maryland has the most enormous mansions.  And a Tesla store in the mall.

3. The gardening project on my office's windowsill (I'm now a gnat-killing ninja).

4. Downhill skiing after not skiing for over six years.

5. Buying a wedding dress.

[No picture available due to pre-wedding secrecy.]

6. Traveling to Milwaukee to see a Tolkien exhibit in two days.

7. Hiking in the rain in New Hampshire.

[The view from the top.]

8. A trip to the Grand Cayman.

9. Making new friends from work.

[Well, I guess I don't have pictures of said new friends...yet.]

10. The gloriousness of crock pot cooking.

[Yet another thing I didn't take a picture of.]

11. My new-found obsession with NPR.  (I'm the nerd with the NPR app on her phone...)

12. 2013's goal of trying several new restaurants in the area.

13. Not-so-small brother heading to college.

14. Oh, I don't know...planning a wedding.  Obviously not a big deal.

[There is no picture.  We're too busy emailing people.]

15. Getting engaged.  (BOOM.  DONE.)

[This photo is actually two years old.]

So clearly, my imperceptive view that nothing exciting happens anymore is a total and complete lie.  College does lend itself to random, exciting, blog-worthy activities, but college ended more than two years ago - and for crying out loud - my life is just as good (if not better) than it was then.  So in short, I am without excuse.  The no-internet-in-my-apartment thing is just a cover.  If I'm going to "suck the marrow out of life," as Kelle Hampton is fond of saying, then I better start recognizing the fact that everyday life is worth capturing.  I've said it before, but I think there's a good chance of succeeding this time: it's time to bring this blog back from the dead.  I might even give it a fresh coat of paint.  Here's to 2014 - the year of weddings, blogging, adventures, and the beauty of the routine.

Too Much Recognition

Confession: I end up at Target probably three or four times a week.  Sometimes more, sometimes less, but on average, it's probably three times a week.  This has never bothered me - I love Target and I will never take it for granted because I didn't have one within a 100-mile radius until college, at which time it was miraculously only 7.7 miles away.  

I like Target because it's clean and nice and it has almost everything I need for day to day life.  It's big enough that I feel comfortably anonymous and no one notices how often I'm there.

UNTIL NOW.

On one of my recent trips on my way home from work, I wandered around for about 15 minutes, picked up the two or three items that I needed, and headed to the checkout.  Following my customary routine (which is probably everyone else's customary routine also...), I picked the shortest line and prepared to pay for my stuff and head out the door.  The cashier woman started ringing me up and, following protocol (no doubt), she asked, "Would you like to save 5% on your purchase today by signing up for a Target card?"  As usual, I declined.  Expecting that to be the end of the conversation, she surprised me by saying, "Well...are you sure?  You come here all the time!"

::awkward pause::

"Uh...haha...ha...you're right...I am here a lot..."

::pays and runs away::

Folks, it's one thing to be recognized at Starbucks or Pinkberry.  It's quite another to be recognized a Target.  I have a problem.

{via google images}

2013 Wedding No. 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, it has been a big year for the apartment friends...

...which brings me to

Meghanne's wedding!

I was the maid of honor for this wedding, so I was busy for the entire event.  Certainly not a bad thing - it was an honor to be the maid of honor.  (Too much honor?)

Let me set the stage for you.  Meghanne's favorite-beyond-all-favorites color is pink.  I figured this out pretty early on during our roommate-ship.  

It went without saying that the bridesmaids dresses and basically everything involved with the wedding would therefore be pink.  Therefore, since a picture is worth a thousand words, I present you with a post that is almost entirely pictures.

Bachelorette party:

(Please forgive the photo quality - all photos are either from my phone or taken from Facebook, which is admittedly deplorable.)

The bachelorette party was great.  We went to Fire and Ice for lunch and then walked around Boston, keeping mostly to Newbury Street to go shopping.  Woo!

After it was all over, I put together a scrapbook!

And then it was time to head to Rhode Island for the festivities.  Here we go...

Rehearsal dinner:

(Confused?)

Getting ready:

(I wrote my speech on my phone...and then I scrambled to try to write it on paper that morning.  I ran out of time.  I used my phone.  Hashtagfirstworldproblems.)

On the way to the church!

Favorite picture of us...

(CLOUD OF PINK.)

Ceremony:

Flowers:

(Super pink!)

And reception:

And once again, the beloved apartment was reunited!

It's so wonderful having watched Meghanne and Jon's relationship blossom from the very beginning until this stage in their lives.  I have spectacular friends.  If you feel like reading about that, my entire maid of honor speech is below, because I think it says it all better than anything I've written here.

And this time, while I spent a lot of time running around doing stuff, this time I had the world's best date.

If you've made it this far, congratulations!

The Speech:

I met Meghanne during our freshman year of college at Gordon.  Through a number of connections but mostly through the music department, we became close friends and eventually roommates.  I quickly learned that Meghanne considered wedding planning to be one of her most frequent past times, which I has no problem adopting as one of my own.  This led to numerous purchases of premature bridal magazines, the most memorable of which involved a trip to the grocery store at 10 pm on a "school night" for a magazine and some Ben and Jerry's.  Not wanting to be the typical "Gordon girl" - a common stereotype that usually came in conjunction with the somewhat derogatory phrase "ring by spring" - we made a point to hide the magazine under our other purchases as soon as we saw other college students wandering the aisles.

We made it stealthily all the way to the cashier, who loudly asked, "Oh, are you getting married?"  Meghanne thought fast and answered, "No, my....sister is getting married and we're going to her bachelorette party and we want to help her come up with ideas for the wedding..."  We thought it was entirely convincing.

It's worth noting that all of this happened before Jon even entered the picture. Another common past time was making lists of what we wanted in a future spouse.  We thought these lists were so important that I actually took the time to write them down.  So, as of early sophomore year, here's a portion of what Meghanne was looking for in her future husband.

- strong Christian
- has an appreciation for music
- will dance...extensively (all kinds, minus sketchy)
- likes kids and dogs
- good conversationalist
- has an equal say in matters
- doesn't mind talking
- has red hair

Clearly, the next step was to keep an eye out for said Perfect Match.  But our good friend Amber took a look at Meghanne's list and said, "You know...I don't think your perfect match is here yet.  I think you're going to meet a tall, red-headed transfer student, and he'll be the one."

I think it's safe to say that truer words have never been spoken.  Sure enough, the following year a tall, red-headed transfer student showed up in Meghanne's life, and things have never been the same.

But while we joked around about finding the perfect combination of characteristics in our future spouses, we also talked about marriage and what it meant to have Christ-centered lives.  We sought to prepare ourselves to strive to be the wives of noble character described in Proverbs 31. Meghanne...you've been preparing your heart for both this day and the rest of your days together for so long.  You look beautiful today, but what shines through your relationship with each other is a love for God that far surpasses the beauty of today.

Jon, I can't imagine a better person to be Meghanne's husband.  The way you treasure and cherish her in all of your actions, words, and attention toward her is such an incredible witness for what a godly relationship should be.  All of the above makes me fully assured that we can confidently relinquish her to you :)

I'm so blessed to call you both my dear friends, and I feel privileged that I have watched this relationship grow from the very first email Jon sent on February 6th, 2010 all the way through to this wonderful celebration of your marriage, and I can't wait to see how it continues to blossom and grow in the years to come.  

Vegetables

Earlier this week, Jenni challenged her readers to blog every day through the month of May.

Obviously, I failed on Day 1.

However, in an effort to make up for it, I'm just going to go ahead and post more than once!  Since it's already the 5th of May, I probably won't go so far as to post five full times, but I have to start somewhere, right?

I forgot that spring in Massachusetts is gorgeous.  There are flowers everywhere and the weather just makes you happy to be alive.  I don't know how I survived 18 springs in Vermont,where "spring" is just a euphemism for Mud Season.  It snows, then it rains and the ground gets absolutely mud-soaked, and then it's summer.  So while I will exhort the virtues of Vermont for 75% of the year, Mud Season counts for the 25% during which I would caution you to avoid it at all costs unless you really enjoy having broken axels on your car.

I digress.

All that to say, spring in MA is perfect.  So perfect, in fact, that I chose this year to finally plant a garden.  For the first time in my life, I was more than excited to trek to Home Depot.  I was probably too excited, because as I went through the checkout line the cashier remarked, "Wow, someone's going to be busy for awhile..."

She was right.  I turned soil, dumped topsoil, raked, added garden soil, weeded, and finally planted for a good three hours straight.  But it paid off!  

I planted green and red peppers, lettuce, carrots, broccoli, strawberries, and cantaloupe.  Mentioning that I planted cantaloupe led a friend to exclaim, "Cantaloupe comes from the ground??"

Who knew?

Hopefully by the end of the summer, our vegetable shish-kebabs will have been homegrown! 

Christmas 2012

I've found that not having internet in my apartment seriously cramps my blogging style...as in, I tend to very rarely post anything these days.  Honestly, I find that very sad because it means that it's unusual for me to exercise my literary abilities.  When working at a software company, literary abilities are not something that I put into practice terribly often, except to write careful instructions:

"This issue is due to (error).  To fix, click (link), find (tab), change (field value), update, and refresh."

I'm getting distracted.

The point of this post is to recap our Christmas in Florida, which also meant my first Christmas not at home with my family.  Instead of Christmas looking like this:

...it looked like this instead:

Since pictures are worth a thousand words, here's a photographic recap of the trip (please pardon the phone photos).

So overall, we spent time with family, went to a lovely church on Christmas Eve, hung out on the beach, saw an alligator, viewed another fantastic church, and saw an amazing sunrise on the plane back to Boston.  It was a low-key Christmas, but the best part about it was the time.  It's so rare these days to just have some time to stop and let go the cares of every day routine, and so when an opportunity to take that time to just rest presents itself, I think it's truly invaluable.