King Cake

Hey friends!  Friday brought round two of pre-marital counseling with Scott Pierce, our minister for the wedding.  He was my youth minister for 7th-12th grade, and always felt more like my second father.  It's been fun watching Landon get to know him, and it's just been nice to get to talk about things that may not have been brought up otherwise...well, not for a while anyway.

This week we talked about our family patterns, including things like personality and sin patterns, to health and addictions.  It was interesting to see patterns on each side, and how they may affect us later on.  We also talked about leadership, and follow-ship!  Something both of us need to work on. Yay!  

When we got back to Starkville Friday night, we went to Jessica Lovelady's house to make King Cake!  Seriously good king cake.  I was glad Jessica was up for it, because I had been craving king cake for weeks, and I would have been intimidated when I saw that it called for yeast...kinda freaks me out and it also signals a serious recipe...which I also steer clear of. 

I also am intimidated by dough...I blame this on my mother, because she was always  calling me down to the kitchen to feel the dough she was rolling out. Not only did this not interest me, whenever I tried to help her roll some dough out for pizza or cookies, she always had to fix it afterwards.  It's a skill for sure. But don't worry, Landon!  I am going to work on this!  And the king cake was the little bit of confidence that I needed....although Jessica did most of the messy work!

This was the final product.  And now it is almost allllll gone.  For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We also took engagement photos this weekend.  I can't wait to post a few for you to see!  Jessica Lovelady did a terrific job, and made it very fun for us.  We took lots outside in the Funderberk's yard, and in the Lee Hall auditorium.  Can't wait to see the final products!  It's also great to have very talented friends.  Lovelady is a great cook AND a great photographer...AND we watched the Changeling this weekend.  It was a good weekend!  Hope yours was too!

xoxo

Hello! Valentine's Weekend

Hello out there!  This is the blog of Julia and Landon...my bearded fiance!  We are getting married on May 9, 2009!  It is just a short time away, and we are so excited!  

For now we live in Starkville where Landon is finishing school and I am a nanny for four kids, a dog and a fish!  I will make several references to the Archer kids...and have many stories about them!  I also work at Aspen Bay Candles...shout out to Amy Grace Warren whose blog is the inspiration for mine!

This past weekend was Valentine's Day as well as our first premarital counseling session the day before.  It also happened to be on Friday the 13th...good thing I'm not superstitious.  We needed counseling by the time we made it to the meeting.  I was stressed out because I thought we were running late, and I hadn't read my homework...three chapters from the Bible.  Landon was supposed to read it to me in the car, but because I was so stressed out, he refused to read until I calmed down!  This did not help me calm down.  Long story short, the counseling went great and Landon showed a lot of patience with me. He especially had patience with me at the end of counseling when we went to get in the car and he realized that I had left the car unlocked with the keys inside. 

On Saturday, I made Landon heart-shaped chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.  I was really pleased with myself, as I do not cook as much as I should and they turned out pretty cute!  And tasty!  I did have to double the recipe early on, since I had already added twice the amount of milk on accident. Like I said, I'm not the best cook, so I had lots of batter for trial and error heart shapes.

Landon surprised me with the coolest wooden light/photo thing.  Not sure what to call it yet, but it hangs on the wall, and has lots of tiny wooden boxes protruding from it, each with photos of us on the boxes...and it's lit from the back.  It's one of the coolest things I have ever been given.  He spent something like 20 hours making it, and I'm still amazed at how he comes up with stuff like this to make!  Here's a photo of it....Isn't he cute?

The rest of the night was spent at Anthony's in West Point where I had a HUGE steak, potato, salad, spinach and artichoke dip.  I felt like an old man with that plate full of meat.  And Landy had chicken tenders!  The rest of the night was spent with our fat kitty, Avey, who claimed he was 

taking a siamese out on the town, but he never actually left the apartment.  He's a liar sometimes.  

Avey is our cat we adopted from Landon's old roommate, William.  We recently discovered that we were feeding Avey over twice the amount of food a day that he needs.  That is why he is fat.  We are bad parents, but now he is on a diet!  Which he hates. He gets very bite-y on fingers when he gets hungry, which is all the time now.  

Doesn't he just look like a little kitty genius?!

Hugs and kisses from us and Avey.