A photo update

I have sadly been absent for the last few weeks, and there is too much to catch up on!  Instead, I will post a few photos!

Family Time:  Cousin Christina (forth from left) is having a baby girl!  So we had a little baby shower, and a sort of a family reunion since we all live in different places (Texas, New Orleans, Starkville).  Back row is Chris, Mom, cousin Genevieve, cousin Christina, Angela, Aunt Jane, Little cousin Christopher, Landon, Me, Siena, and Dad.

That weekend, we also visited with Landon's parents and Landon's doggy, Dante!  Isn't he cute?

The next weekend, my wonderful friends Beverly, Amy Grace, Jessi, and Mary hosted a couple's shower for us on a rooftop in Fondren!  It was a grilling themed shower, and not only did we get some really cool gifts, we more importantly got to hang out with our friends that we don't get to see very much!  It was really fun, and the weather was beautiful.  Thank you, girls!!

This is the boys uncomfortable pose photo. Chris Jones and Neil were also there.

Her are the girls!  The lovely hostesses are the four ladies to my right in the photo.  I also did the trial for my wedding hair-do that weekend, but I can't post photos, because I don't want Landon to see!  Amy Grace and my mom came with me, too!

Mom and Dad came to visit this weekend to celebrate Dad's birthday!  It was really fun to see them and eat lots of good food!  And of course they brought Cait, our border collie genius.

Cait loves to rip paper, and unwrap presents so here she is helping Landon unwrap a wedding gift from my parents.  She also loves Landon.  

Wanna see one of the kids that I nanny for?  And the elephant ears that I made for Meri Laci's school play?

Life had been busy, but exciting!  Thanks y'all for helping us with wedding plans and festivities!

We're like, so engaged.

Here are a few of our engagement photos taken by Jessica Lovelady just a couple of weekends ago.  Doesn't Landon have the best faces?  He's a face man for sure!

I bought this white dress from J.Crew and it was so pretty, and springy...and I was determined to wear it anyway, so my sweet roommate, Beverly let me borrow her vintage coat.  I think it went nicely with Landon's blue shirt.

There's your sneak peek at the photos.  You can also find us making our debut in the Clinton newspaper in the upcoming months in the engaged section.  We know....we are SUPER popular.

This weekend we are in Jackson/Clinton for my cousin's baby shower, to exchange some gifts and scope out Belk again, and to basically live it up...I will post again soon with hopefully some fun weekend update time, and specifics about our pre-marital counseling chats with Scott.  

Stay tuned!  

All kinds of showers! (well, just snow and wedding)

Another weekend has come and gone, but this one was filled with my first wedding shower and SNOW!  What a happy combo!  

It was a long week leading up to it, with a busy week at the Archer's, the family I nanny for.  My favorite story from this week was when Fleming (age 4) came home from school one day and decided to lie repeatedly about washing his hands.  It started with my request that he wash his hands before snack time..."I already did!!"  He hadn't, because he had just walked in the door.  So, I sent him back...and a good indicator is sniffing his hands to make sure he gave them a good scrub.  So, he runs off, comes back with suspiciously dry hands...this is when the freak out happened.  No, no, not from me...I actually stayed calm this time.  When I told him that he had lied and not washed his hands, this is what I got, "BUT MOMMA NEVAH EVAH MAKES US WASH OUWAH HANDS!  NEVAH EVAH!!"  This is a lie.  Meridith makes them wash their hands everyday after school.  So, Fleming was sobbing and turning purple, and I tell him to do it right, or I'm throwing away the old valentine's day sucker he was working on.  "FINE! I'MMONNA WASH EM, BUT MOMMA NEVEAH EVAH MAKES US!  NEVAH EVAH!" I watch as he comes back into the kitchen with one arm raised up to grab his sucker from me.  It's wet, but the other hand is tucked into his pocket..."let me smell your other hand," I say.  One look, and it's still dry, with caked on dirt from the playground still on it.  I give him one more chance, and finally, FINALLY he marched off and then back, sobbing the entire way. THIS time, he has both arms up, with soap suds and water running from his fingers to his elbows.  The kid is stubborn.  But pretty cute, too*** see above photo.

Friday we had another round of pre-marital counseling.  We talking this week about how everyday for the rest of our lives we must constantly have DTRs.  If you don't know what DTR means, it's "Defining the relationship."  The phrase kind of reminds me of being in high school, but it was cool how even as married people we will always be changing and defining our relationship.  We also talked about roles, and how we can be better servants, prayers, worshippers, etc. as partners than we ever could be alone.  We talked about divorce, and responsibilities, and being about to give up things for the other one.  Overall, the counseling has been super helpful, and I am not looking forward to the day when we won't have this one-on-one time with Scott to talk about our marriage!  

Sunday, Landon's church hosted a wedding shower for Landon and I!  It was very, very exciting!  Here is a photo of me and all 18 of my hostesses!  We received a Kitchen Aid mixer (!!!), the coolest toaster and coffee maker, lots of pewter and copper platters, among other pretty things!  It was weird having attention on me when it wasn't 1. my birthday 2. Christmas 3. some other occasion when someone should receive gifts!  But I think I could get used to it!  :)  My lovely mother and grandmother also came with me and gave us our duvet/shams from Pottery Barn!  Super excited about these!

Oh, and I have to show the cute bird house Jamie and Michael Ford gave us.  I'm so obsessed with it, but.  I love it.  I heard Michael was skeptical about the gift at first, but be skeptical no more!  I mean, I can't stop talking about it.

Isn't it cute?!  Well, I hope everyone got a little snow and had a wonderful weekend!  And let's sit down and talk about the season finale of the Bachelor last night, please!  Shocker!

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.