12/15/09

1 week...

I'm so excited that in 1 week we'll be leaving Florida and heading back to PA! I haven't been home in over 4 months! This is the longest I've ever been away from home. For Tom, it's no big deal. Before I came around he only ever went home for Christmas so visiting PA several times over the past year to see me and go visit his family and mine, it's been like no time at all for him to go home. I'm so used to just being a drive away from home so it's been a bit of a struggle being far away...kind of on my own. I know....I know...I have Tom, which is great. But I like to have my own friends and do my own thing and atleast 9-10 hours a day I'm by myself figuring things out down here. It is nice to come home to Tom though after a hard day and feeling like I have no one to talk to, but I don't have the friends and support system I had in PA down in Florida. I know that takes time, and part of me is nervous that as soon as I get adjusted to Florida we'll be off again and maybe even farther away. But I'm not worrying about that for now. I'm just very excited to have the chance to go home for a few days!

So very boring post...but hopefully more to write about tomorrow! Definitely more to write about after this weekend and next week!

12/14/09

Bad Blogger :(

I'm a very bad blogger lately. Things just get busy...life takes you every which direction and before you know it, it's 3 months later and the blog has been left unedited and there are some very upset readers...(sorry amy! haha)

Well life since then...wedding plans are going great! Everyone keeps asking me how the planning is going, and honestly, it's been pretty slow lately. It still feels too far away and like I have plenty of time to do things but just like the blog, I'm sure time will fly by and before I know it, I'll be 3 months til the wedding and LOTS left to do.

The biggest accomplishment of the wedding planning lately was booking some musicians for the wedding ceremony. We still need a piano player so if anyone knows of anyone in Altoona let me know! We have a dear friend who will be singing, which I'm very excited about and a few instruments playing to make the wedding oh, so beautiful!

But let's see...what have we done lately.... Halloween came and went. Tom and I didn't do much for Halloween, just carved pumpkins and watched some scary movies. My parents visited and we rode bikes and hung out on the beach for a weekend, which is great to be able to do in November!





The next weekend we went to Alabama! We visited my big sister in Birmingham then went to a University of Alabama game (which was part of Tom's birthday present). Tom loves Alabama and it was fun seeing Kelly, seeing Alabama and we had a great time.

It has been great weather so we've had lots of chances to go outside and enjoyt he nice weather. Here is a picture at a park just down the street from our house.




Thanksgiving we stayed in Florida, celebrated with some friends and just had a very relaxing weekend. We decided to decorate for our first Christmas living together so we got a tree and lots of decorations by stalking out local sales and buying cheap stuff at the BX to save money but still make our house look like Christmas and I think we did a really good job! We may have gone a little overboard on the lights, we don't even need to turn on any other lights in our living room anymore when the christmas lights are all on but it's fun and festive!  The big debate was whether or not to decorate outside. I told Tom we didn't need to, to save money on electric and buying lights...also part of me was a little embarassed of the overgrown bushes in our front yard that desperately needed trimmed so to kind of avoid the argument, I told Tom the ONLY way I'd even start to consider lights outside would be if he trimmed the bushes. Sure enough, the next day, he was outside trimming the bushes! Obviously, he really wanted to put up lights outside so my next line of defense without just telling him straight up no was that HE would be the one on the roof figuring out the lights and I would help untangle or clean up inside but the lights outside was all up to him if he wanted to do them...an hour later he was up on the roof, yelling for me to toss him up another strand and as excited as a school girl over lights haha.
Overall, I'm glad we did them. Most of our neighborhood is very festive. A few houses down the street they even have music and their lights turn on and off to the music. The guy on the next block has what looks like a carnival of wintery animals and christmasy things...including a ferris wheel, many trees, reindeer, blow up snowmen and all kinds of dancing people. I'm glad we just stopped at icicle lights but the houses with no decorations on our street just look sad so I'm glad we have something after all. Here's a view of the house from across the street!

For the past 2 weekends we've had christmas parties and more this weekend, then next week it's off to Pennsylvania for Christmas which I'm VERY excited for. We have been baking christmas cookies and pies and really trying to get in the christmas spirit and IGNORE the palm trees everywhere.

So I hope everyone (cough cough Amy!) is happy with this update. I promise to get better! I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season as much as we are!