Who knew "grandmother white" was even a color?

Yes friends, it's true... Check out this lovely gem I found while surfing one of my favorites sites. It is the winning video of the Kelley Blue Book video car review contest. You may wish you had your very own "Coroollaaaa" too. http://youtu.be/ALKTM7OzdMQ

Richard

Last First Date...

It's hard to believe that it has been three years since our first date.... As fun as it was, we both agreed that we are glad that we will never have to go on another awkward first date again. At least I can still pick on Richard for showing up 15 minutes early.... He sure had a lot to learn about me! ;)

"Engagementmoon" / Mission Trip to Boston

Part 2 of my "series" recapping the past year of the journey from engagement to marriage...


First people had honeymoons. More recently people have started taking "babymoons" - a fun pre-baby trip for 2. Well, we had the pleasure of taking, what I like to call, an "engagementmoon" last year...

Obviously, I didn't plan on having an engagementmoon, but I'm so glad that we had one... ;)

We went to Boston from March 28 to April 4, 2010 with a group from the singles ministry at our church. We went to serve with Redeemer Fellowship Church (a new church plant in Watertown) as they advertised for and hosted a pre-Easter block party and Easter worship service.

Here we are riding the train to Watertown from the airport.


Setting up our cots for the week.


Richard and I volunteered to serve on the food team. Here is half of the kitchen.


Here is the other half of the kitchen. Before we got there, we were told that other teams had nicknamed the giant eight burner gas stove "Hades."


Laura and Sandra... the other half of the food team. :)


I wish I had a picture of the four of us shopping at the grocery store. We felt like the Duggar family... I'm sure the four southerners with our three shopping carts full of food stuck out a little in Star Market that day. I now have a greater respect for large families and the massive amounts of food it takes to feed many hungry people. As you can see we managed to fill the trunk of our full-size rental car to the brim. Rather impressive, I think.


Free Day
So what do you do on your free day in Boston when it is raining buckets?

Take a duck tour of course! This is a WWII amphibious vehicle that has landed at the beaches of Normandy. It was a great way to see town during the rain.

Here is a view from inside the "duck."

As always, the engineer is fascinated by structures such as this:

I told Kiale she was my little pink duck on the duck tour ;)

A beautiful cathedral

Not only was it rainy that day, but windy too. Check out all the broken umbrellas in the trash can downtown.

Boston Harbor

We met up with our friend Karoline, who showed us around and took this sweet picture of us (but somehow I didn't manage to get a picture of her).

Random shot of Richard with the team hanging out in the background

Our map of Watertown after we distributed all of our door hangers for the block party in 3 days!

Glutenus Minimus... a delightful gluten-free bakery we discovered while we were out distributing our door hangers. It was fun surprising Laura with some delicious gluten-free treats!

Block Party Time!

Here we are unloading the party items from the trailer.

Putting together the inflatable obstacle course

Here is the final product!

Next, inflating the moonwalk and soon we're ready to party!

Zach and Amy getting a little crazy testing out the moonwalk

Paul has your popcorn!

Richard and Tom manned the hot dog station.

Andrea and Kiale kept the kiddos sugared up at the snow cone stand.

Laura G. helping the kids decorate cookies

Laura V. at the ever popular face painting station

While I was helping Chris with the obstacle course, I snapped the best photo of Jay EVER! Don't you agree?!

Later that night we headed over to Harvard Square for some ice cream. Here are the gents.

Happy Easter! Here is the church before the worship service.

Beautiful flowers symbolizing our new life in Christ! We had a great team and an amazing trip!

Random shot as we were getting ready to leave the airport.

This one makes Richard laugh.

Hope you enjoyed the trip to Boston as much as we did!

One Year Ago This Weekend...

...we got engaged!!! It's hard to believe that it's been a year since that special day. Here's a post I've been working on and meaning to publish for a while. I'm breaking it up into several posts.... Enjoy!

As many of you know, we were married a little more ago than 5 months ago on October 16th! We are so thankful that the Lord led us to be married - what an amazing gift! Wedding planning was a busy and stressful time for us, but it all paid off since we accomplished our goal of getting married. Here a “quick” recap of the 6.5 months leading up to our wedding... or actually the first of several posts….

Engagement
We got engaged on Saturday, March 27, 2010 at the Beaver Dam Recreation Area at Falls Lake in Raleigh. It all started out as a normal Saturday. Richard and I decided that we wanted to go canoeing that day to get some fresh air and spend some time together before we left for a weeklong mission trip to Boston. It was finally “warm enough” to be the first day of the year to go canoeing. As usual, I was running a bit behind schedule in preparing to leave for the lake. Richard mentioned he wanted to “swing by” REI on the way to the lake (which was not on the way to the lake) to buy the Gorillapod (bendy camera tripod) he had been wanting for quite some time. “Maybe it will come in handy on our trip next week.” So, we “swung by” REI and picked up the Gorillapod. We had previously talked about having a romantic little picnic at the lake before we hopped in the canoe, but since we were running behind, we picked up some Chinese takeout at 888 (we call it Ba Ba Ba, or 888 in Chinese) – romantic, I know! We got to Beaver Dam and enjoyed our lunch. Richard was totally itching to use the Gorillapod, so we snapped a few pics during and after lunch. He was especially amused by me “holding his place” while he set up the camera and tripod. Finally, we drove over to the boat launch and put the canoe in the water. We were feeling pretty good after our big lunch and before I knew it we were at the bridge at Old Weaver Trail. I couldn’t believe it, I always seemed to get too tired before we got that far.

We paddled under the bridge and I suggested that we rest for a few minutes. Richard suggested that we paddle a bit longer before resting. So we paddled a little ways longer to a little wooded cove and stopped along the shore. There were two fallen trees laying in a V-shape that looked like a perfect spot to rest, so we hopped out of the canoe and sat down on the logs. [This is where my memory starts to get all jumbled up…]

We chatted for a bit. I’m not going to lie... it was kind of awkward, which was strange because after almost 2 years of dating, the awkward stage was long gone. Next thing I know, Richard says something about it being a perfect day. I think he used that phrase more than once. Before I knew it, he had me stand up, and then he got down on one knee, pulled out and opened a box with a diamond ring in it, and asked, “Will you marry me?” I was in such shock – I’m not even quite sure how I reacted at that very moment. I think I freaked out a bit and said “YES!” in there somewhere as he slipped the big sparkling diamond ring on my finger. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking something like, “Oh my goodness, this is happening! Like NOW! The only time this will every happen! Aaaahhhhhh!” It was all very surreal.

As you can see, Richard was quite successful in surprising me. You can also see why he was so persistent in us going to buy the lovely Gorillapod. After we snapped a few photos using the new toy, we hopped back in the canoe and paddled back to the boat ramp. I couldn’t stop smiling. I was also quite worried that the ring was going to slip off my finger and sink to the bottom of the lake, so I made sure to clinch my paddle with a death grip. I’m proud to report that I did not lose the ring on the way back to the boat ramp.

Once we loaded up the canoe and were leaving, we started calling our families. It was a great afternoon. I love it when Richard can completely surprise me, because I typically think of myself as the kind of person that is difficult to surprise. This was definitely the best one yet!

And to put a little icing on the cake… we left the next morning for an amazing mission trip to Boston with a big group of friends from the Singles Ministry. We had the opportunity to serve Redeemer Fellowship Church (a fairly new church plant of ~60 members) by helping them distribute flyers for and host a block party the day before Easter.

It was a fun and challenging trip. We had over 200 people attend the block party at the church and lots of new faces at the worship service on Easter morning. Richard and I enjoyed getting to spend our first week of engagement together serving the Lord there.

Stay tuned for more...

Meeting Mason

Here we are on Christmas Eve

in the big city of Charlotte

the sun is setting

and here we are waiting at the NICU to meet Mason

the hospital is decorated beautifully, but

this is what we came here for. Here he is with his mom. So sweet.
Aunt Julie tried to hop in the photo but couldn't hold the camera still.

Sweet little boy. He is so tiny but doing so well. Mason opened his eyes a little for me and held my finger. Richard barely got to meet Mason before the visiting hours were over at 6:30. We were amazed at how big the NICU was - so many tiny babies, all little miracles from God. We're glad we finally got to meet you Mason and we can't wait to visit you again soon!

One last skyline view before heading back to Mom and Dad's for dinner.

A few cute pics from Mason's parents ( I couldn't resist posting them)...

Tiny Hand

Snuggling with Daddy

Family pic on Christmas Eve