Leap Day

Did anyone else have an awesome leap day yesterday?! Whit came up with the most amazing idea - leap day should be a holiday! Umm...why didn't anyone think of that sooner?? It's only once every four years, and it's not even accounted for since it's a completely extra day! It wouldn't cost anyone that much because it's not even supposed to be a day! So I vote for leap day holiday. President 2013, please??

Things that made my leap day awesome:

Being in Blacksburg - walking around downtown and on campus

PHISH announcing summer tour!!! It's like Christmas for Phish fans - oh the anticipation. They would wait til leap day to announce it. I brought my Phish shirt just in case, and was so happy to wear it today! :) 

A great appointment speaking at my cousin's church - we got so much encouragement from the people who attended!

85%!!! Answer. to. prayer. Seriously- we had been praying to get to 85 by the end of February. And it happened just in time! Thank You Lord!!

Watching Troll 2 with the Bethanys - it's the best worst movie. No really, it was rated as THE worst movie on IMDB at some point a few years ago, but now has a huge cult following (I know this because the previous night we watched a documentary on it hahah). It's still like #83 from the bottom. It was pretty bad.

And for emphasis....we are going to Atlantic City this summer!!!! WOOOOHOOOO! Isn't this perfect - Phish is playing a three-night run in Atlantic City on a Friday-Sunday this summer - in an outdoor festival venue nonetheless!! (AC is only 2 hours from our new place, and I've always wanted to go to Vegas so this is like second best haha - rock on!) You will be hearing more about this. :) :)

Valentine's Day Recap

We such a great day celebrating yesterday!

Right after I woke up Whit gave me a super sweet card and two bags of Sweetarts Hearts - my absolute favorite!! I was worried that he wasn't going to be able to get them because they sell out before Valentine's Day, so he gets major points for scoring two bags.

At night we got all fancied up and went out to dinner at the Tobacco Company. We had our rehearsal dinner there, so for our anniversary back in November Whit's parents gave us money to go out to eat there. We already had plans for our anniversary, so we decided to save the date for Valentine's Day. It was perfect!

Everyone that was there had reservations, which made the restaurant pretty calm and quiet. There were tons of people there but it was a lovely atmosphere, not loud at all. We both ordered steaks and drinks and had such a good meal together! If you're looking for a nice place to get dinner in Richmond, I highly recommend the Tobacco Company. We hope to find a place in Philly with as cool an atmosphere.

After dinner Whit got to open his card, which had four scratch-off choices for V-day gifts. I was supposed to only let him pick one, but I caved and he got to scratch two off. I wanted to let him get all four, he would have liked them all so much! (A post is coming soon on how to make your own scratch-off card.) Lastly, I got a huge box of Whitman's chocolates! It was a Valentine's Day that will be hard to beat in the future!

Happy Valentine's Day! 5 Year Anniversary & Our Story

I can't believe that Whit and I have been together for five years!! Actually, I think I can...it definitely feels like we've been together awhile, and five years is a long time! I don't think I've ever shared our story on here, so now seems like a good time.

Whit and I grew up in the same town so we went to church and high school together. He was a year older than me and hung out with the cool kids at church and school. Of course I thought he was great. I especially loved his involvement in church - he was at EVERYTHING (literally - the only major church function he missed was a homeless ministry trip to DC that he forgot to ask off work for). The first time I remember ever seeing him was in a little skit in front of youth group where he was playing God. I remember Dwight, our youth pastor, joked about how Whit always got that role.

Once we got older and Whit's church friends started dwindling down, our groups merged and we hung out a lot and became good friends. We talked online a lot of course, since we were in high school during the main AIM years. I kind of liked him on and off, but he started taking more serious interest in me when he went off to college at Tech. He realized that he wanted to start taking dating more seriously, and only date a girl who was really great. So through all my journey of trying to figure out where to go to college, Whit tried to sway me to come to Tech. (It almost didn't work out!! I started sending in my money to JMU and while my mom was trying to pay I decided I wanted to go to Tech instead! She almost didn't let me out of it, because of how much of hassle I had made the whole process, but when JMU didn't accept VISA credit cards - weird, right?? - we took it as a sign!)

On a college visit road trip we stopped by to see Whit and Jerry (their freshman year at VT)

I was on vacation in the Bahamas for my graduation present when I got a message from one of my bffs that Whit liked me!! She told me he was going to ask me out when I got back and I was sooooooo nervous! I had never been on a date before! He was such a gentleman - I was impressed when he opened the car door for me. (Hey, he's never stopped doing that!) We went to Ruby Tuesday at the mall; I only ate like half my burger and remember telling him about the scar I got from the water slide and how I flipped a jet ski. It was the beginning of the summer and Whit wanted to start seriously dating, but I told him I had to think about it. I went overseas two more times that summer, moved to Maryland, and got ready to go to college! I had a lot going on - too much to start dating someone at the time.

We reconvened at West End the first week of classes. I had thought and prayed a lot about dating him, but just really didn't think it was the right time, especially with JUST starting college. While we were sipping our smoothies I remember telling him that I didn't want to start dating him then, but inside I liked him SOOO much! I told him that MAAAAYBE in the future (like, senior year!) we could date if it was in God's will.

Over the next few months we still hung out some at Cru. I loved the conversations I had with him! He was such a good friend. We ended up riding to our youth group's fall retreat together, which was 3 hours away. We got majorly lost and it took us 3 extra hours to get there!! We had such a good time riding together (in the Twilight Zone, as we called it since it was dark and foggy, and Brad Bradley kept telling us we were on the right road but we could never find the entrance.) I even put in my Phish CD for Whit. :) We decided to make the most of our lost-ness and get out of the car for a few adventures. I loved how fun he was!! 

After that trip, I started realizing how much I talked about Whit all. the. time. He was just so interesting! My friends started a Whit for Boyfriend campaign. I realized that I still really liked him!! The problem was that I had told him I didn't want to date...and being the girl, I didn't want to bring that up. He should be the one. At that point, he knew he liked me too, but wasn't QUITE sure if the feeling was mutual. 

some Whit for Boyfriend campaigners

Over winter break we both went to Radiate with Cru and then Passion with our youth group. We rode together from Christmas conference to our church at 2am to make it in time to catch the van to Atlanta! Another great road trip together. :) We hung out endlessly at Passion and it was obvious that we both liked each other. Once we got back to Richmond we started hanging out more and both knew it was headed somewhere.

horrible picture, but you can tell that we were sitting together

We planned Valentine's Day to be our first official date as boyfriend and girlfriend. Whit met me for lunch at Hokie Grill with a dozen white roses. After our classes were over that afternoon he picked me up, wearing the Jake Hollister cologne he knew my friends and I had an obsession with, and we ate dinner at Outback. However, that was just the beginning of the night! I had to go to a jazz concert for one of my classes, which was the perfect romantic date setting! I loved leaning back in Whit's arms listening to Cyrus Pace. We made an appearance at Froshmore prayer, and then probably made a poor decision by going caving at 11:00 at night. We had been caving a few times before (with a group) and thought it would be really fun to go just the two of us. Looking back I would probably not do that again, cause that was just a dumb idea! It was really fun though, to be the only ones in the cave (I hope!).

one of our caving trips with other people

Throughout that first year of figuring out if we should be together or not, it ended up being so clear that that was what the Lord wanted. We prayed for our relationship all the time and really took our time in making the right decision. I love how adventurous our first few dates together were; we have continued to be (almost) just as adventurous! I am SO blessed and thankful that the first guy I ever dated I ended up marrying! That had been my prayer in high school when I didn't think I would EVER get asked out. I love Whit so much and can't wait to celebrate 5 years of being in a relationship with him tonight! Praise the Lord! :) (Also, a million thanks to all my girls who helped me along the way!!)

one of our first pictures together

about a month after we had started dating

my favorite early picture of us

1st Day of Christmas: Top 5 Christmas Albums

To start off the 25 Days of Christmas, what better way to get in the Christmas spirit than listening to Christmas music?! These are my top five favorite Christmas CDs. I highly recommend all of them! (Each one has a link directly to Amazon or iTunes, so you can listen and download one or two songs if you like them, or of course, the whole album.)

1. All Time Favorite

A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi Trio

Vince Guaraldi is one of the best jazz pianists ever (in my opinion)! If you love this CD, do yourself a huge favor and check out his other stuff, like Alma Ville.

2. Instrumental

Christmas Songs, Eddie Higgins

This is a new favorite, that I discovered last year. Reminiscent of Vince Guaraldi's Christmas music.

3. Traditional

Christmas, Michael Buble

Brand new this year!! Michael's voice is Christmas perfection. He's young but has a deep voice that brings Bing Crosby back, only this time with a Norah Jones feel, and you can actually sing along. 

4. Classic

Home Alone, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Somehow this movie produced an assortment of songs that without them, Christmas just doesn't feel the same.

5. Non-Traditional

Jingle All the Way, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones

This bluegrass jam band is one of Whit's favorites, but I actually heard it for the first time at my cousin's house. They take a really different spin on the classic Christmas tunes, but in a way that makes it really fun and enjoyable. If you're curious, let me say one more thing: Tibetan Throat Singing.

Christmas Card Sneak Peek!

Twice As Merry Christmas Card

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Classical Woodland Christmas Tree Theme

I was browsing Target today on my day off, just taking in all the things they recently put out for Christmas. I saw this lovely rattan star and got a great idea for a Christmas tree!

Last year we just had all my old childhood ornaments. I love them, but I think our family needs a tree that doesn't have plastic Sesame Street characters! Sadly, this year we won't get our own Christmas tree, but it is kind of nice that I'm not obligated to buy any ornaments before Christmas, and after the holidays I can buy everything I want on sale!

I'm the kind of person who likes to buy one of every random thing I see that I like, and it's fun that way, but doesn't look very coordinated. I'm trying to get better about that! Whit would love a beautifully decorated tree, so I wanted to come up with someone that he will think looks good! 

I call the theme Classical Woodland (it's fun to name it). It will have rattan ornaments, solid red decorations (like a garland), and sparkly silver ball ornaments. This way it will have all the classic Christmas colors, with not much distraction. Of course, the green will be the tree itself! I was just going to call it the classic woodland tree, because I think this idea will last for a long time without getting old (the woodland comes from the homey feeling it will remind you of). However, there are two other ideas I want to incorporate! One from Pottery Barn, and one from Pinterest. They both involve Christmas sheet music! Thus, the Classical Woodland tree.

Here's the inspiration board! Come quickly, next year!

Post-Halloween Finds

We were out running errands yesterday and realized that it was two days after Halloween! Which meant...we needed to run to Target to see if we could get some Halloween candy on sale! We didn't find any candy, but we got a few others things I'm pretty excited about. 

The first is this awesome lighted pumpkin. I always saw these in the fall and similar trees at Christmastime and loved them! Last year I really wanted to buy one but they were so expensive. I tried so hard not to buy any, and fortunately maintained self-control. My reward was finding a great medium pumpkin on sale when the season was over! It wasn't lighted but it was just as cute. Later randomly I found a small pumpkin at the Y for ONE dollar!! I love having self-control. :) 

So when I saw this one which had lights (!!) and was half off, and was a different size than my other ones, I knew it was meant to be! Next year when the other ones are out of storage I can set them all up together. I'm trying to get better about spending more money on things that go together instead of just buying one small thing here and there that I like but nothing ends up matching.

Isn't it cozy? Whit keeps telling me how much he likes it! ;) 

Okay, the other thing is...

this incredibly fantastic squirrel costume!!!! It's for a pet. Probably meant for a dog, but we fully intend to try to make our cat wear it. As soon as I saw it I absolutely knew I had to buy it. All the pet costumes were 50% off. I wanted to buy some other ones that were really funny, too, like a headless horseman rider (a cape with a little person that sits on top of the dog to make it look like it's riding him!) and a banana. I love Target. 

It's holding an acorn

and has a big fluffy tail!

Buying this made our day so much brighter when the lady checking us out kept calling other employees to find the item number since the tag was missing on ours. They couldn't find it, so she kept having to say over and over again, "It's a squirrel costume. For a dog. It's holding a nut." Once we told her we wanted to put it on our cat she was like seriously, please take a picture of that and come find me, here are my work hours. If we already had our cat I would definitely try to go back and show her pictures of the experience hahah. (Unfortunately, she wasn't very focused and rang up two boxes of oreos instead of one, so it didn't really matter that we got them on sale. She also rang up 11 little bucket things when we actually only bought 10. Come on now. Well at least we got good deals on the other stuff we bought.)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! How are you celebrating? As you've seen, we already carved pumpkins to decorate our porch. We're making chili and having our friends over tonight to eat and watch a creepy-themed movie (but not a scary one!). Our choices are Clue, Young Frankenstein, Harry Potter, Pan's Labyrinth, and the Wizard of Oz (plus maybe others).

Halloween is not as much fun now as it was when I was younger and got to dress up and get candy, but it is still fun to celebrate. I can't wait until next year when we'll have our own place to decorate and hopefully host trick-or-treaters!! My favorite thing about this holiday is that when it's over I can start getting ready for Christmas!! Christmas playlist...get ready.

Mummy Candy Bars I made for our party :)

(Yes, I got the idea from Pinterest)

Yummy Mummies! Haha

It's Christmastime in the City

So my mom asked my family if we wanted to go give out a few gifts to the homeless on Christmas day. Of course we said yes. None of us had any idea that we would be standing on the streets of Baltimore for two and a half hours, but it was a great experience! The pastor leading the worship service holds a church service every Sunday morning for the homeless. They can come there to get jackets and gloves and also just warm up for the few hours they're there. We heard some people's stories, sang Christmas carols, and gave out a meal, warm gear, and boxes of presents. It was a great reminder of what Christmas is all about - Jesus! We don't really need anything besides Him, and we depend on Him to meet our basic needs. It was awesome to get to worship alongside people so different from us yet have the same savior. It definitely helped us appreciate our warm car driving home too.

The twist was that halfway through, one of the women in charge told Whit that they needed a Santa and asked him if he'd be willing to dress up. He obliged and I helped him put on the Santa suit. He hid behind a van for like 45 minutes before they needed him, and we enjoyed the ridiculousness of the situation. At least with all his gear on he kept pretty warm!
Us pre-Santa.Whit in all his santa gloryLooks like I married Santa!Santa handing out giftsWith some kids :)
It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Whit, and although it wasn't really his "thing," he enjoyed getting a good story out of it, and my family enjoyed watching the whole ordeal!

Ornaments, finger food, and friends

On the 22nd we had our first annual Christmas party and ornament exchange. It was hosted by Danielle and Andrew, whose new house looked suuuuper cute decorated for Christmas! They had a real tree and it looked so great next to their fireplace with all our gifts on it. Danielle had really cute Christmas-y plates to put our food on that we brought. We were supposed to bring a finger food, so I brought a finger-dessert: cake balls! I had such a busy day trying to see friends at Casa Grande and return wedding gifts at Short Pump, but I made the cake balls happen! It was tough, but Nicole came to help me do the last part, which took the longest. It was great to get to see her and spend more time with her before she heads off to Australia for a year!

It was so fun to see all our friends and get to hang out. I LOVE all those people!! It is the best time when we get together - everyone knows each other so well and we are all crazy, so it makes for a fun time. I know there were some great quotes from the night but I can't remember them (let's not forget the lunch quote - can I change mine to beans??). We were mostly divided into girls and guys after the game so it was fun to get some girl chatting time in - we talked about weddings a lot because there are so many that just happened and are coming up! (And Jamie and Kevin are engaged now!!! Yaaaay congratulations to them!!)

Danielle had the great idea to do an ornament-themed white elephant gift exchange, which was great because we all got stuff we can use, even if it was weird. Jamie and I decided we're going to make this a tradition, have it at a different house every year, and get a small tree to put all our ornaments on that we get from the party. There were sooooo many weird ones!! Actually I think they were pretty much all weird. Here are some highlights: sock animals, sparkly ones (including giant lips), feathery birds, a hula cow, a couple homemade ornaments, and a bag of pipecleaners to make your own ornament. The guys used the pipe cleaners to make penguins for the girls.

We had so much fun and can't wait for next year!

A Dicken's Christmas

Last night we went to Dicken's Christmas in Roanoke. It's a really fun Christmas tradition for us! We found out about it our junior year (well technically it was my sophomore year) and went with a bunch of friends the next two years. I missed it a lot last year! The historic part of downtown Roanoke is decorated and lots of vendors are set up outside as well as regular shops being open too. You can browse lots of cool handmade items and then run inside somewhere to warm up!

Whit had really wanted to eat at a nice restaurant overlooking the decorated streets. We found the perfect place! It was so cute and right in the middle of everything. There was no wait, which we were worried about, so even though we got there a little late we didn't lose any time. I was excited to finally order gnocchi, which I tried once last year but haven't seen on a menu since, and Whit tried duck. Both were scrumptious! So the reason they call it Dicken's Christmas is because they have all these people dressed up as characters from A Christmas Carol who act out various scenes randomly throughout the night. We stopped to watch a few performers who standing right outside a shop. In the middle of this girl's lines, this lady hastily comes out of the shop and knocks over this thing containing like a million beads, which went everywhere and made a huge commotion! It was hilarious, and the poor girl could barely get through her lines without losing it. This is them picking them all up afterwards.I bought a sweet hat from Nepal! I hate how I look in hats, but Whit thinks I look really cute in this one :)Enjoying the festivities :)Then we walked over to the Hotel Roanoke to look at their decorated Christmas trees. They had about 25 trees decorated by different organizations. You walk around the whole hotel and vote on your favorites. The contest was already over, but we enjoyed looking at all the trees and wandering around the nice hotel (and getting the feeling back in our toes!)This was my favorite - the Grinch! It was by some water supplier. Another good one was from Advance Auto - they had put wheels and an engine on a cool-looking sleigh and put it in front of a backdrop with lights twinkling for stars. It was pretty awesome. The most elaborate one was by the Boy Scouts who had cut like 50 sections of a tree trunk and laid them out on the ground for you to walk on which led you into a tent. Then at the end (outside of the tent) they had a cool tree.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful for so many things today, but I will just put a few:

-God's great love for us - He always pursues us
-my new husband - his gentleness with me, work ethic, and friendship
-that I'm not living alone anymore
-all my friends - I miss you!
-our awesome honeymoon, wedding gifts, and time off that we got after our wedding
-our fun things - new games, movies, and the wii!
-delicious recipies that I can't wait to try
-Christmas is coming so soon!

Have a great Thanksgiving!