engagement announcement

i know the three of you that read the blog already know that i am getting married (for real, how could you not be aware that i'm getting married in 35 days!! yippee!!) but i thought i would post the link to the engagement announcement that was in the paper.

we're not excited or anything ;).

yay for fall!

fall is my absolute favorite time of year (except for christmas time but that is coming soon....and this year with a wedding...yay!) and i love all things fall. i love the mountains, the leaves, pumpkins, fall decorations, pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin muffins, chilly days, daylight savings, fall festivals, etc. get the picture? i love, love, love it.


so, i talked joel into having a little fall celebration...just the two of us (he's such a sweet man). last night we made caramel apples...yummm. they're not very pretty but they're very tasty.

AND...

painting pumpkins. yes, we...2 adults....painted pumpkins last night and we had a lot of fun. i know it's not exactly how a grown man plans to spend his tuesday evening but we had so much fun being together and making some fun fall memories :).

i must say, i give hubs-to-be major creative points ;0). (obviously, my pumpkin has the pink stem!)

in 42 days...

-i will most likely be awake at 5 am not because of some random reason (like this morning) but because i'm anxious and excited about what that particular day will hold.

-i will change my last name and take on a new name...a new monogram, new initials... (we all voted for elizabeth alley, right ;).

-i will officially have my "own" family but will also gain another family.

-i won't have to worry near as much about my skin (am i breaking out? yikes! is this new makeup going to work or cause problems?!), my hair color (are those dreadful gray hairs covered up, is my color too dark, are my roots from past high lights showing? ugh), and my nails. now, while i am a girly girl and do care about all of these things, i've been a little more concerned than normal with the upcoming nuptials.

-i will be a wife and sometimes thinking about that overwhelms me because i've never been a wife before. hopefully, i'll learn and be pretty good at it ;). i have LOTS of great examples to learn from, though.

-my to-do list will shrink dramatically...YAY!

and

-in 43 days, i will board a plane to nyc as amy alley (yay) enjoy our time there and then hop on down to hawaii. i am SUPER excited about the honeymoon...i'm way excited about where we're going but i'm also excited about the vacation because after the next 42 days, i think we're going to need it!!


i know that most of you who are married have been where i am right now and so this is nothing new to you but i have to say that this time in my life seems so surreal. i didn't set out to blog about the wedding and such just because it seems like that's all i talk about but the reality is that right now, the wedding and the upcoming marriage is pretty much all consuming (and in a good way). yes, my to-do list is long and my calendar is WAY full but i'm working so hard to enjoy ALL that i have going on so that it doesn't seem like a blur. some days, i feel like i do a great job with that but others....i feel like my life is on fast forward and i don't know how to slow it down (and then i feel a little panicked that i'm not really getting to "soak in" everything. geez). either way, it is an amazing time that i wouldn't trade for anything in the world. it truly is a little crazy to watch your life changing before your eyes and it's also exciting.

hope you have a beautiful saturday! i don't know why i'm up at 5 am this morning and i'm going to try to solve that by going back to bed. hope you got to sleep in!


ps--and soon after the 42 days have passed, the blog address will change....so keep your eyes open!

a month, what?

i seriously cannot believe that it has been a month since i last posted anything. all i have to say is that life is busy. planning a wedding takes time, people and at the end of the day, i'd rather sleep than blog :).

life has been rather full over the last month with wedding planning, day trips to the mountains, a trip to orlando for a conference and the wedding shower season has officially begun. whew.

today is my first "official" wedding shower in greenville, sc, with joel's family. i'm so excited but i'm also nervous...i've never been the "center of attention" (for lack of a better term) at a shower before and it makes me nervous. i don't know why, it just does. but i know we will have a great time and am so thankful that i am going to have some time to get to know better and build relationships with the ladies on this side of joel's family.

i wish i had a funny story or something to share from the last month while i have been absent from the blog but i can't think of anything...it's not because nothing funny has happened but it's because my brain still isn't back to 100% after the whirlwind trip to orlando. i can promise, though, that many pictures from the blog hiatus will appear on the blog sometime soon (soon is a relative term on this blog...maybe within the next month ;).

oh, and one last thing...for those of you who have the countdown already going....there are 24 more days until my birthday.

until next month (kidding, i'm kidding :)

have a happy weekend!