Another semester down!!! :)

Woohoo!! As of right now I am home sick with a ridiculous cold BUT I just finished everything for grad school this semester!!! This semester has been pretty rough but I made it. I am SOOOOO incredibly excited to have 3 weeks off grad school so that I can think about other things for a while like wedding stuff probably. I will need to enjoy every second of that time off because I'm going to take 3 more classes next semester. Yikes. That semester has potential to be worse just because the classes are pretty intense that I'm taking, I will be planning a wedding, selling this house, moving in with my parents, remodeling my future house, and coaching. It could be a long semester....hopefully it goes fast. :)

Excitement!! :)

So wedding planning is coming along beautifully!!! We have the following reserved....

Church
Reception Hall
Photographer
Wedding Coordinator
Cake
DJ
Florist (meeting with her tonight!)
Appointments set to wedding dress shop!
Appointment to put my house on the market--this part is wayyy stressful.
Currently working on the guest list---who knew that part could be sooo stressful. And then sending out save the dates.

But....the best part!! Our honeymoon is booked and better yet it was a gift to us! We will be traveling to Hawaii for a week!!!! http://www.turtlebayresort.com/ We are sooooooo incredibly excited!!!

New Chapter in Life....

I still feel like my head is spinning and that I'm in a dream. As of Tuesday, December 1st Pat and I are engaged to be married on July 10, 2010. We are sooooo incredibly excited to start planning for our next chapter of life together. I still feel like I am in shock though! I knew that this was coming but I didn't know exactly when and I still can't believe it's true. He asked me Tuesday evening after going to my parents to ask for permission. Our families are sooo incredibly excited about this, which makes me even more excited. My ring is absolutely beautiful and I can't stop looking at it in fact!! :) We are planning to marry at Warsaw Community Church followed by a reception at The Feast www.feastbanquetsandcatering.com in Lakeville. This is to accommodate both our families. We already have those venues booked, which is a huge reflief. Since we are having a relatively short engagement we feel pressed to start getting everything else taken care of as well....I won't lie it's overwhelming. But I'm blessed because Pat is awesome at taking care of things and thinking ahead. He has done so much already. And both our families are incredible. We are currently trying to figure out the photographer/dj/cake/florist. We are trying to shop around a bit on that stuff to save money...I'm learning the hard way that it's incredibly difficult to save money on a wedding--wow. Another end to this is the fact that we will be selling my home in Warsaw--this comes with all sorts of mixed emotions. I don't think it's really hit me yet. Since the tax credits have been extended to April 30th we need to sell fast. Unfortunately, this will make me homeless.....but I plan to move in with either mom/dad or Heather until July. We will then both live in his home in Walkerton. This decision was hard. We pretty much are forced to live there because he bought his house this year so you have to remain for three years due to the tax credit and he's a high school coach so that commits us even more to that area. I will not quit my job in Warsaw but I will commute. It is 45 miles each way but I will make it work. We plan to do a lot of work to his house before I move in like finish the basement/paint/new floors/etc. Needless to say, we're going to be way busy but we are so excited!!!! :)

What an eventful week!

What an eventful/action packed week! Here are some of the highlights. There are pictures to come but my USB cord is at work...

**On Tuesday my wonderful boyfriend sent me roses to work. During my prep I was walking up to the office to check my mail and as I walked through the hallway some teachers were making weird comments to me about how they were so jealous of me...I had no idea what they were talking about. Finally, someone said, "Your flowers are beautiful!" Apparently, they had been up there for a while because everyone seemed to know about them. I had a dozen red roses waiting for me in the office for absolutely no reason. Love it. :)
**I bought a new car! I had bought my previous car, Cali the Cavalier, when I was a sophomore at Purdue so I had her for a long time. I absolutely loved that car but it was time to part ways. There were a lot of reasons why I finally decided to get rid of it but the main reason is since there is 45 miles between my boyfriend and I and 45 miles between my sister and me...I was putting more miles on this poor car than ever. It might have lasted a while longer but I would have needed to start putting money into it and it's not worth it. An amazing opportunity came up to buy a 2008 Jetta that had less than 3,000 miles on it. So it was pretty much like buying a new car for a used car price...even better! I teared up a little bit trading in Cali but was super excited to get the Jetta. This car is so nice.....love it. I'm ridiculously blessed. I even bought a Purdue license plate for the Jetta because I had made myself a deal that my next car would have a Purdue plate so I went ahead and did it. That for sure added to the excitement/craziness of the week as there were multiple trips to South Bend over this....this all happened really fast as most things in my life seem to these days.
**My boyfriend and I had put together Halloween baskets for our friends who have kids and delivered them one night. It was so fun to watch them get excited over the smallest things.
**On Friday I had my carpets shampood while I was at work. They look great.
**On Saturday Dad and I had a fall work day at my house. We hung up this really cool sign that my boyfriend bought me (have I mentioned that he's really great.), collected leaves, weedeated, trimmed shrubs, mowed, fertilized the yard, pressure washed the house, and changed the furnace filter. Dad is a huge help to me on those things because he likes doing that stuff. I don't mind but it's nice to have him help me. That was for sure an all day event.
**Started going back to spinning classes. After a long hiatus from spinning I started going back. I did miss it. I still like running better but since it gets dark at 6:00 p.m. now that could become complicated.
**Had Halloween shenanigans to attend.
**My boyfriend's father, who resides in VA, came on Friday night and is staying with Pat till Thursday. We have been trying to spend as much time with him as possible since that time is limited. We watched the ND game last night because that's what he loves to do and caught up on all life's events. Today we went to brunch at Bob Evan's and went shopping for house stuff for Pat. They are now at ND for a basketball game. My boyfriend comes from a ND loving family!
**Now I'm working on grad school like crazy....that will be the theme of this week. Yuck.

Fall Break '09

Ohhh.....I look at the clock and fall break 2009 is almost over. :( Typically, I travel over fall break but this year I decided to stay around here to save money, stay away from the flu, and spend quality time with my boyfriend. It has been quite wonderful. Thursday I spent the majority of the day catching up on things at my house, running errands, spent some time with my dad, and then had dinner with Pat's family. Friday Pat took a personal day and we spent the day together. We had aspirations of doing lots of 'fallish' things. Like going to a pumpkin patch, getting apple cider, etc. Friday the weather was horrible and it poured the whole day. So that got scratched and we spent the day in South Bend doing lots of random things like going to Lowe's and such. :) Friday night I hung out with my sister in South Bend. Saturday Pat surprised me and we went to the Notre Dame game vs. Boston College. It was COLD and RAINY but we still had a great time. Today my family and Pat's family all had a huge lunch together. It was really fun getting the two families together. Then tonight a bunch of Pat's friends children came over to his house and we made cookies together while their dad's all watched football. It was my goal to spend as little time as possible working on school stuff and grad school over break so that I could spend quality time with Pat. That was accomplished! The next few weeks grad school is going to get really intense again because I have to start working on final projects and the basketball season starts for Pat and he is a head coach for high school so I really cherished our time this weekend. Since we live kind of far apart and both lead very busy lives I have to really value the time that we have together and make the most of every moment. On another weekend note, I bought a new car! I bought a 2008 Jetta....it's beautiful. My car, Cali, has been very special to me and has been a great car but it's time to pass her onto someone who doesn't drive as much. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with my car but if I was going to keep it I would have had to start putting extreme money into it and it's not worth doing that because it's starting to get old. So an amazing opportunity came up to buy this Jetta and it only has 2,500 miles on it so I'm doing it. Everything has just kind of worked out with it! I will probably have it in a week or so once everything goes through with the bank. I'm excited for a new car but am sad to see my car go...:(

Time to breathe again....at least for a few minutes. :)

This past week was absolutely crazy. As many of you know, I have a huge midterm project for one of my classes due at midnight tomorrow night. I had to do a huge data and financial audit of our corporation plus tomorrow I have due 4 quizzes, two case studies, and a paper. Of course, last week did not go as planned at all and all sorts of unexpected events came up out of no where that I had to attend. And then after a full weekend of throwing my boyfriend a housewarming party for 60+ people, attending a birthday party for a precious one year old, and attending a smoker fundraiser I still got it all done. I'm glad to say that this week I just might get some sleep unlike last week. :) Good....just in time to do report cards. :)

Driving time...

Does anyone have any good recommendations of good quality things to listen to while driving besides music? Good podcasts that they have enjoyed? CD's? Books on tape? I'm really open to lots of suggestions...

I find myself driving a lot these days for a lot of reasons. One is because my boyfriend lives an hour away, I've been going to see my family a lot too which all require a great amount of driving. I find myself driving at weird times of night and feel like it's easy for me to 'waste' that time. I would love to find something worthwhile for my mind to feed on during that time because that time my thoughts usually get the best of me and cause me to worry about all sorts of things. I will be driving a lot more here in the nearest future as my boyfriend coaches high school basketball and I will be driving to lots of high school basketball games in northern Indiana.

Thoughts/suggestions? Because I'm just about sick of the radio........