Wedding Cards, thoughts

I've spent a good portion of my day so far cleaning up around the apartment. This place has managed to make a disaster of itself while I was busy with my last couple weeks of school. There's been two boxes of wedding cards in our living room under our coffee table. I decided that since I have since finished writing my thank you notes, I decided to make the two boxes, one. I decided to read through the cards again because it's just a lot of fun. I was reminded how blessed Sam and  I are to have such wonderful and loving family and friends. There were also two cards that jumped out at me. One, being a fun card that I thought was just really unique.

 

See? Completely adorable!

The second card is filled with beautiful words. Something that every husband and wife should live by. Here's what it says:

How to Make A Beautiful Life Together

Reflections on Marriage For the Bride and Groom

Let love be your shelter.

The world is noisy and confusing at times,

so make a home that is a haven, 

a peaceful place where you can listen to your hearts and savor

the comfortable closeness you share.

No matter how busy your days may be,

make time for yourselves.

Hold hands. Unwind. Surprise each other.

Find little chances every day

to show you're grateful to be partners,

to be friends, to be married.

Life is not perfect.

You will make mistakes, 

but each time you meet life's challenges together, 

you will grow wiser, stronger,

and surer of your love.

Cherish your yesterdays.

They are irreplaceable souvenirs

of your journey through life.

Make memories

that will bring smiles and sighs

whenever you look back.

(Look back often!)

Look forward, too.

Dream together. Plan together. 

Make promises to keep.

Believe in your tomorrows,

because tomorrows are what forever is made of.

To make love last, 

put each other first.

That is the way to make a beautiful life together,

and the kind of life you deserve so much.

These are truly encouraging and beautiful words. I don't know much about marriage, but I know that this is how I want ours to be.

The coming year

I never usually make resolutions. I always view them as promises you make, but end up breaking. Just never really understood them. There's the classics: lose weight, read my Bible more, less sweets, learn something new, spend more time with my family, or just read more in general. Those would be great things, if people actually stuck to them.

This year, I'm going to actually make some. I'm no longer in school so I would like to make some goals for myself, even if they aren't super significant. And in a year, I'm going to come back to this post and see how well I stuck to them. Here's my resolution list as it stands right now:

1. A friend of mine posted a link to the 365 project website. I thought this would be something really fun to do, especially since I already love taking pictures. I plan to take a picture a day, of anything really, whether it's with a camera or just with my phone. I'll probably post it on my blog and write a little something about the picture, probably why I took it and explain what it is. If you're interested, you should join me.

2. Now that I'm not in school anymore, I want to read more. I won't have any studying or mandatory readings for any of my classes, so reading for pleasure will be fun. I'll probably just start with the goal of reading one book a month and see where it goes. If I read more, then great, but by the end of the year I want to have read 12 books. I know some of the books I would like to read: All the Dexter books, the rest of my Nicholas Sparks collection, Almost Moon by Alice Sebold and Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. Adding these books all together, it's more than 12, but if you have any suggestions then please let me know! I'd love to hear them.

3. I follow this blog, The Generous Wife. Sometimes it has really useful information, and sometimes not. But she posted something a few days ago that I thought was a wonderful idea. Have you seen these?

What you do is every time you think of a blessing, or something good happens, or maybe even something bad that happens to you, but you see it as a blessing write it down then put it in the jar. At the end of the year, open the jar up and read all of them inside. I think would be a lot of fun and remind you of all the great things that happened to you throughout the year. This is something that I plan to do (hopefully Sam will join me!). I encourage you to do it also.

And on a side note, I plan to write in my blog more often. Not a resolution because I know it'll happen because it's already started and I've only been out of school for one day.

Share your resolutions!
Have a blessed weekend!

My adverturous weekend before Finals week!

It started Friday night, and we were off to Porterville for the night. We stayed there, visited a little with the families, then we were off to Palmdale.

Goal: Christopher Bradney and Corinne Martinez' wedding!

An army of windmills in the Mojave.

Desert!

We saw snnooowwww!! Well, on the mountain tops, but still.

We get to Palmdale around 1pm or so. We hangout at the biggest Wal*Mart I have ever seen and stop by Pier 1. Then we go to my grandma and aunt's house. We were spending the night there then we would go to Redlands. Anyway, we get there and leave right away for a Music of Christmas show at my aunt's old church. It was fun. There was a ton of good music and pretty lights. We then went to meet my Aunt Shannon and Uncle Ran for dinner at Johnny Carinos. Amazing italian food! If you haven't eat there, you should. And get the nachos as an appetizer. Trust me, I know what you're thinking.. Nachos? Italian? But really, they're amazing. It was so wonderful to hang out with and see family.

We went back to the house and just hung out and talked. My grandma showed me old pictures. I love old pictures! There was one of me and my dad that I wish I would have borrowed to make a copy of. I was asleep on him while he was asleep. I love it! :)

The next morning we woke up to a wonderful breakfast of coffee, bacon and Cinnabon cinnamon rolls! So yummy. We actually left pretty late, but made it to the wedding early!

Eureka!Burger. Remember this post?

Well, the wedding was at the Chapel in University of Redlands. It was beautiful. Here are some of the highlights:

She surprised him with a song! It was beautiful.

"Yay! We're married." -- You know that's what they were thinking.

Their wedding was beautiful! I loved that it was Christmas-themed! Perfect. Once the wedding was over, we had some time before we headed over to The Mitten Building for the reception. In the meantime, Sam helped me go over some stuff in Watchmen for my final on Monday. It was a great help to me!

So we eventually moseyed on over to the reception where we were seated at a table alone. Well, we were seated with two friends who were unfortunately unable to attend because of car issues and the photographers. The photographers were so nice and I wish we got to talk to them more. Some highlights from the reception:

Groom's cake!

The wedding canole, of course.

I love Corinne's face in this picture! Gettin' her dance on!

It was so much fun to go and also just to see Chris and Corinne! So glad we got to talk with them for a bit. It's the first wedding that I've been to since I got married. Didn't participate in the bouquet toss.. kinda sad though because I've never caught the bouquet before. See! You can still get married without catching it. And Sam was thrilled not to have to participate in the garter toss! Haha.

After the wedding, we headed back home to Fresno. It was a long drive. I studied for my geography and popular fiction finals that I had the next day. We got home around 12:30am. It was an overall wonderful trip. Hope to do it again sometime!!!

My Christmas Listenin' List

I love this time of year. The changing colors in the trees with beautiful combinations of greens, reds, oranges and yellows. I love the change from hot to cold. Here in California, we unfortunately don't get much of a Autumn, but I definitely love what comes with the cold weather like blankets and scarves. I love time with my family and friends over dinner, board games or coffee. I enjoy setting up decorations around the house. But every Christmas season, one of the things I look forward to the most is wonderfully fun Christmas music. I'm not sure what it is, but I just love it.

With that said, here are my top 5 Christmas albums:

Number 5: If On A Winter's Night- Sting
This album isn't necessarily a "Christmas" album, but I'm classifying it as one anyway. The reason I say this is because Sting's lyrics are mostly about the season, Winter and not Christmas. The cd has a large variety of songs that you've never heard of; it's all new stuff. It's refreshing to hear something different.
Must Listens: Soul Cake (it's super catchy, but not in a bad way)

Number 4: Christmas Eve and Other Stories - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
First of all, I love orchestrated music. It's absolutely beautiful.  Second, I love rock. Put them together and you get this wonderful music. And for the most part with Trans-Siberian's cds, they tend to tell a story. I picked this song mainly because one of my favorite Christmas songs ever is on it. The song Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 is a wonderful, timeless song. The music video for it adds so much more to the song which makes me love this song even more.
Must Listens: Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24

Number 3: Let it Snow - Michael Buble
In my completely biased opinion, this album is terrific. Michael Buble really has a way of capturing the classic songs and turning them modern without ruining them. He continues to do this with Christmas music. It's certainly enjoyable, then again, he can do no wrong.
Must Listens: Home for Christmas

Number 2: Have Yourself a Very KT Christmas - KT Tunstall
This is definitely the most fun Christmas cd I own. The only part I don't like about it is that it's just so short. She adds rock to some classics and in some songs she even uses a xylophone and kazoo. Her rendition of the Hawaiian Christmas tune, Mele Kalikimaka (Christmas in Hawaii) is phenomenal. This album is definitely unconventional.
Must Listens: Mele Kalikimaka (Christmas in Hawaii) and Fairytale of New York

Number 1: Charlie Brown Christmas - Vince Guaraldi
Every since I was a kid, I've been a Charlie Brown fan. And I absolutely love Vince Guaraldi. While listening to the radio, it's always so easy to pick out his music from the others. It's so wonderful! This album is just filled with so many classics.
Must Listens: Linus & Lucy

Now here's your job: Go out and buy all these albums then thank me for introducing you to some great stuff. Enjoy these tunes for the next few weeks! Merry Christmas!

P.S. I totally wrote this blog backwards with exception to the introduction.