Home From The Honeymoon!

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We made it home!

I hope to do a few recap posts soon, but I can tell you now that we had an amazing time. I really don’t understand how people do big trips on their honeymoon, Heather and I just wanted to sleep for the first two days after the wedding.

Fortunately we had an amazing place to just kick back and rest:

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That cabin is the perfect place to be if you want peace and quiet, and the surrounding forest was beautifully blanked in snow the entire time we were there. It was an amazing few days.

-Jordan

Its Midnight, Three Days Before The Wedding…

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And what are we doing!!?

(Alert readers will no doubt notice this is posted after the fact, however the pictures were taken late at night last night)

Well, we aren’t wrapping gifts! Those are done! See:

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We finished wrapping gifts but Heather is still hard at work on the centerpiece construction:

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Because I am not writing this in real time, I can go ahead and tell you that we stuck it out and finished this project. Heather was back to Blair shortly before 1:00AM, just another short night in a rather long string of short nights.

This is, I am sure, the last post I will make here before the wedding… its still a ways off, but I think the excitement of it finally being here is going to carry Heather and I the rest of the way, despite our sleep deprived state.

Hope to see you all soon! 🙂

-Jordan

P.S. Almost forgot to mention, but as you can’t really see in the pictures, the apartment is very clean. Practically every goal we had for Wednesday night got completed!

The Final Week

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Well, less than a week left! Really we have less than two days left to prepare, and then scheduled events begin.

I haven’t had time, to post for a few days… and somehow I feel terribly guilty about that 😦

anyway, what have we been up to?

  • Attended a first birthday party for our favorite baby sitting charge
  • Visited friends in the hospital who just had their first child ( perhaps a future contender for the title listed in #1?)
  • Ordered pictures for the table centerpiece decorations
  • Received and sorted six boxes of kitchen supplies from Pampered Chef
  • Prepared detailed itinerary for the wedding and preceding events
  • Coordinated with the majority of our wedding party
  • Met with our pastor to plan the wedding
  • Picked verses to be read at the wedding
  • Glued pictures to backing for centerpieces, started cutting them out
  • Finished shopping for gifts for wedding helpers
  • Confirmed with picture location for post wedding pictures
  • Finalized our joint auto insurance policy to start the day after we are married.

Whats left to do?

  • Finish the table centerpieces
  • Finish the pre-wedding slide show
  • wrap all the wedding gifts
  • clean the apartment

probably more, but I think I am repressing it 🙂

All that being said, I think we are doing ok as far as being ready for the wedding. Heather, and to a lesser extent myself are felling a lot of stress, probably more than we should, but its hard to not feel like the entire day depends on you.

-Jordan

Nine Days Left

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And here is what we have managed to knock out as of late:

  • Marriage license 100% ready
  • We know when all our wedding party are getting into town
  • Have a tentative plan for the time leading up to the wedding, although we haven’t written it down and shared it with anyone yet
  • Rehearsal dinner is squared away, every one’s orders are in and the place is ready for us
  • The final contact with the bakery is done, meaning we shouldn’t need to worry about the cake

Heather and I were suppose to meet with our pastor to go over the final plans for the rehearsal tonight. That got canceled last minute, when he became a grandfather! I don’t know many details beyond that, and its really not my news to publish, but it’s still exciting. It does set us back a little in getting our ducks lined up, but in this case Heather and I were happy to be bumped to a different day.

-Jordan

Less Than Two Weeks Left!

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The wedding is really getting close now, and I feel like my head is spinning. People ask “are you ready” meaning both personally and planning-wise, and I always say yes. I am ready personally, and I always think we are on top of the planning.

However, personally, I don’t really know if I have grasped the changes that are coming… I am pretty sure some of the best parts of being married I don’t even understand well enough to look forward to them. I am also sure the biggest adjustments are going to be much harder than I imagine, and center around issues I didn’t even know it was possible to consider issues. All that said, I can’t wait.

From a planning details perspective, we are ready… Except that there is a never-ending stream of little things that keep popping up. I can’t even begin to enumerate, or quantify everything. All I can say is that it feels like time is screaming by every time I try and sit down and take care of a few of these “quick” last-minute details. As best as I can tell, Heather and I are still managing to stay fairly normal, although we are both running on about half as much sleep as we should be getting. I can tell you we still love each other, although we may find each other much more lovable in about 3 weeks.

I feel compelled to try and write out some of the details I keep eluding too, but I really want to go lay down instead, and writing about them just makes them seem that much more of a big deal. They don’t need to be made into any more of a big deal 🙂

-Jordan

Another Week Down

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… Leaving only two weeks remaining until the wedding!

This weekend, Heather will attend the fourth and final shower before the wedding. Also this weekend its looking like we will get questionable weather, again. I still hold out hope that we are getting all this out of the way before the wedding, but bad weather keeps consistently hitting on weekends as of late, it seems.

Driving conditons permitting, I plan to stop buy the church to see how it has been decorated by some other even, as a hot tip said they did a really good job. Hopefully I can get a few ideas for Heather and I to use. Not to say we don’t have any, but seeing something tried is a lot better than guessing how things might look. Sadly the weather is going to prevent Heather from getting a chance to see it, but maybe I can take some pictures 🙂

-Jordan

Christmas Day Five

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The final day of our Christmas trip / vacation time was probably the least Christmas like for Heather and I, but still an enjoyable day.

It started out Tetris style, trying to pack everything we had accumulated up to that point into the Escape. Everything fit, but the entire cargo area, as well as the back seat were filled. Not filled to the roof, but the majority of the gifts we had been given did not lend themselves to stacking all that well. Throw in suitcases, and we barely had room for us to sit for the drive up to Curtis for church.

Church was somewhat entertaining as we got a mix of reactions, some people super excited to meet Heather, and other people not even knowing who we were. Its kind of easy to forget how long I have been away from Curtis sometimes, things like that will sort of remind you.

After church we headed out to the farm to eat. We had yet another really good meal, and again heavier food and larger portions than maybe Heather or I typically eat, but amazingly good. We also had time to sneak in quick naps before Heading into town for another shower.

The last shower of the loooong weekend was hosted by the mother of one of my groomsmen, Zach. Thanks to the Christmas holiday, Zach and his wife were able to be there, which was really nice. The rest of the attendees were people who were a big part of my life growing up, and I was really excited for Heather to finally meet them. It was a couples shower, I guess I should mention that… probably a good format for meeting 100% people I know and Heather doesn’t. I can’t say as I am really sold on going to showers, but getting to see everyone was pretty awesome. We also got some very thoughtful gifts, but by far the highlight was getting to spend a few minutes talking to various people that afternoon.

Somehow the shower ate up time a lot faster than we expected, and we missed our departure time goal by an hour or so, not leaving Curtis until close to 5:00. Adding that to one required stop in Kearney, and a rather long drive, made for kind of a rough end to the day. I shouldn’t say end to the day, the day ended with Heather and I making about six trips up three flights of stairs to get the escape fully unloaded. It left the apartment full of gift bags, ensuring that there would be something to do for the next two weeks :). I think the worst part is after all that, Heather still had to drive another 40 minutes to get home.

All in all it was a great trip, but definitely ended up being one of those where you wish you had more time to recover after you get done with the trip. I shouldn’t complain too much though, we got a nice break from work, and Heather and I have another planed break coming up in just a few more days.

-Jordan

Wedding News! (We Should be Legal)

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With sixteen days until the wedding I made it to the county clerk’s office to get started on a marriage license. Normally you can just walk in the day before the wedding and take care of that. With the vacation days remaining crisis Heather is facing, and the fact that they close at 5:00pm, we really can’t use the normal option.

The wording on their website is less than clear, and I thought initially that if both of us couldn’t be there, we only had the option of mailing the form in, and then involving a notary. After a phone call a week or so back however, I found out that I can get the form half done, in person, just by walking in.

They are located very much downtown, meaning I spent more time trying to find a place to park than I did in their office. Ether my luck with government offices is holding up, or Wednesday mornings aren’t a real busy time for issuing marriage licensees, so I was able to just walk up to the desk and talk to someone. The young woman was very friendly, and I really didn’t have to do anything other than raise my right hand and solemnly swear that the information on the sheet was accurate. Kind of odd, I only sort of managed to not have the worlds dumbest grin on my face while attesting to the birthplace of my parents.

Heather still has to sign the form in front of a notary, and then I have to return with the form so they can issue some other form, but at least we wont ever have the form somewhere in the mail.

-Jordan

Christmas Day Four

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Day four of Christmas with my family was our first down day. Probably a good thing, because Heather and I were both starting to feel a little over-stimulated.

It started out almost like a normal Saturday, with everyone sleeping in, and getting to lounge around in their PJs. The only difference was, Bethany, Heather, and I were in McCook, also that we did another round of gift opening late that morning.

The downside to it taking me so long to get through writing up the Christmas posts is that I can’t remember some of the details anymore, but I don’t think anything else of note happened that day. It was wonderful to just slow down for a while though! The days leading up to Christmas had been fairly hectic, and then the first few days of “vacation” were even more so. I really enjoyed everything we did this year, but having a day to rest was really nice.

-Jordan

Wedding Update

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The wedding is now less than twenty days away.

Over the weekend, Heather discovered that the person who was set to arrange the flowers for the wedding isn’t going to be able to do them. The whole point of using silk flowers to begin with was to save money, and save headache because they would be done far in advance of the wedding.

Goal one remains intact, but goal two wasn’t going too well back in November when the flower lady said she didn’t want the flowers dropped off for her to work on until after the new year. Apparently she was low on storage and expecting to be busy with other things over Christmas. Sometime between then and now she apparently decided we had canceled with her, and moved on to other things. Unfortunately Heather didn’t discover this until Saturday.

On the bright side, she found out we needed a plan ‘B’ for flowers while she was in Kansas City, and while a number of her bridesmaids were in town. They put together a group of people with some experience doing flower arrangements and completely finished the flowers in one session Sunday! It created a frantic weekend for Heather in the midst of a shower, but in some ways its less stress than hoping the flowers would be done in time if we had gone with the lady that didn’t want to start until now.

My only wedding related progress was to book a hotel room for the two nights before the wedding. Heather seems to think she needs a place to stay before the wedding, and kicked me out for those days. It was kind of odd, I don’t think I had ever booked a room over the phone before. I am sure I could have figured out some way to do that online, but I wasn’t sure I would get linked with the wedding properly.

Sunday night, Heather returned from the KC shower/girlsNight/flowerArranging with her Civic packed to the gills with boxes. Again, I am overwhelmed by the generosity people have shown us, and amazed at the cool things we were given. I also don’t quite know how we are going to fit it all into the apartment, but Heather and I managed to find homes for nearly everything she brought back. We only had to stay up way later than ether of us wanted to, but at leas the “new stuff” factor provides enough excitement that it doesn’t feel too much like we are just forever putting dishes away. 🙂

-Jordan