Happy Holidays!

Scott and I had a wonderful holiday season this year! We spent Christmas Eve opening presents with both families, Christmas Day celebrating with Scott's extended family and Julie's family friends, and the day after with my extended family in Stanwood. It was wonderful to see everyone and catch up...we have such amazing families!

Christmas Eve with my family.

Christmas morning with my soon to be sisters-in-law and our yummy Starbucks!

Rod family Christmas!

Flower Girls and Ring Bearer

Over Thanksgiving, my whole family got together to celebrate and catch-up. Scott and I decided this would be the perfect time to ask my little cousins to be a part of our wedding since it's not often that we are all together.

So, after asking their mommies for permission, I asked Lauren and Holly to be our flower girls and Craig to be our ring bearer. I'm not sure if they all understood what flower girl and ring bearer meant, but they sure were excited to eat the cookies I had baked them!
After a little explaining, Craig agreed to be our ring bearer, Lauren was very excited to be a flower girl, and Holly thought it would be fun, but wasn't sure "if they were coming or not". I love these kids...they crack me up. :)

I'm so excited to have Lauren, Holly, and Craig as a special part of our wedding!

Dress shopping

The time has come to start wedding dress shopping! While some people seem to find their dream dress right away, I continue to search for my dream dress. I have now been to 6 stores and tried on at least 50 dresses.


I'm finding that I like one part of one dress and another part of a different dress. There is one dress that I've tired on 4 times and seem to compare with every other dress I try on. I continually think about it...I think it may be the one. The only reservation I have about the dress is that I can't actually try it on in my size. So I have to trust that it will look good - something I am having a hard time doing. We'll see how it goes...I need to make my decision before the new year. :)

Thanksgiving Fun!

Scott and I were lucky enough to participate in 2 Thanksgiving dinners this year! The weekend before Thanksgiving we were invited to a Thanksgiving dinner with Friends. We used Scott's family recipe for yummy potato dumplings - they turned out amazing!

It was quiet a process. First, we boiled and peeled the potatoes.

Then we riced the potatoes before forming them into little balls. They were so yummy! :)


We spent Thanksgiving Day with my family on the family farm. I am thankful for such an amazing and wonderful family and the memories we make together.

Scott and I were also able to spend some quality time with my adorable, little cousin, Brett.

Pumpkin Patch

With all the work we've been doing to the house we haven't had a lot of free time to do other fun fall things. However, this past weekend we couldn't go into the house because of the fumes from the new finish on our hardwood floors. So we thought it would be a perfect weekend for the pumpkin patch! The rain almost ruined our adventure, but it was sunny out on Sunday so we headed to the pumpkin patch with Megan and Josh and their family!

We had a great time exploring the farm - looking in the barn, checking out the tractors, and of course, looking at all the animals! We searched the field for a perfect pumpkin...
and while this pumpkin was funny, it wasn't the perfect pumpkin for us.

In the end, we found a cute little pumpkin and brought it home to sit on our new front porch! (Let's hope our new neighbors won't smash it to pieces!).

Our New House!

We officially have a new house! It took awhile (there were some issues with the bank since the house was an estate), but it's finally ours!
We closed at the end of September and since then we've spent our weekends cleaning, painting, and getting ready to move in! Since the whole top floor has hardwoods we decided to get them refinished before we moved in. We're so glad we did before moving in because it was a big process and we weren't able to go into the house for a week! When we finally stopped by the smell kept us out for a few extra days...it was so strong it burnt our eyes and made us gag!

This weekend will finally be move in weekend! Scott's apartment lease ends at the end of the month, so we have to get him out of there. :) I'll post more pictures as I take them! We can't wait to get everything situated so we can have visitors! :)

More news on our house!

Scott went along for the home inspection last Wednesday. After about 4 hours of inspecting, we got a good report about the house. Everything is in really good shape, just a few minor things to fix or replace. The inspector said it was one of the best houses he had seen in awhile...so that's good considering the house is 45 years old! We asked the sellers to take care of a couple of the larger repairs, and we found out today that they'll take care of 2 of our 3 wishes and give us some money toward the third, since that one is just normal wear and tear on the fireplace. So we'll get that all taken care of and then hopefully we'll be good to close! :)

End of Summer...

Since summer is coming to an end, Scott and I decided to take a last minute weekday trip to the beach! We settled on Westport since Scott had never been there, and it had been a long time since I had last been there. We wandered the town a bit, ate a yummy seafood lunch, and climbed to the top of the lighthouse!

After the lighthouse, we made our way to the beach. Even though it was misting heavily, we still enjoyed relaxing on a log and walking along the beach collecting cool rocks and shells!
Even though it was a bit of a cold, dreary day, we still had a blast enjoying our last days of summer!

My Bridesmaids!

After all the busy-ness of wedding season, I finally sat down and thought about who I would like to be by my side as I plan my wedding and start my new life with Scott. I made my decision and searched around for some cute ways to ask. After going through a few different ideas, I settled on this cute little card:
I typed each girl's name on the front and stamped this cute dress stamp from Michaels.

On the inside, I found a cute poem for each girl that fit our relationship and included a picture of us! All the girls were excited to be part of my wedding and I'm so excited to have them by my side! :)

You can learn more about my bridal party and other wedding related things at our new wedding website.

Wedding Season!

This year I was honored to be a part of two weddings - my best friends Megan and Sarah! It was so much fun helping them plan, run last minute errands, etc. Here are some pictures of the celebrations!

Sarah and Nick's wedding took place on the beautiful Bellingham Bay at Hotel Belweather.
An amazing group of elementary education friends!

Scott and I in our matching blues...it wasn't purposely planned! :)



Megan and Josh's wedding was on the Olympic Peninsula at the amazing Port Hadlock Inn in Port Hadlock!

Us girls getting our dance on! :)
After the rehearsal dinner, Scott and I took a little stroll though Port Townsend!

We had an amazing time at both weddings! We wish you the best of luck as you start your new lifes together Sarah and Nick and Megan and Josh! :)

Our New House!

After 3 months of waiting for some news on the offer on our house, we began looking around at our other options. We decided to go out with our agent last Saturday. Friday night a new house came on the market and we were the first to see it on Saturday. We went back Sunday with my mom and friends from the area and we all fell in love with the house! We put an offer on it early Monday and they accepted it today! We do our inspection tomorrow...so we'll see how it goes! Scott and I are so excited to be homeowners! :)
You can see more pictures and learn more about the house here!

Our Wedding Location!

Scott and I have finally decided on the location for our wedding reception! We absolutely love Langdon Farms Golf Club and have reserved it for our celebration! It's an easy 30 minute drive from the church. We're hoping the drive won't deter any of our friends or family.

This is the Red Shed where the reception will take place. Half of the walls are permanent, the other half has tent like closures in case it rains.
The big, beautiful red barn that houses a restaurant and the golf shop. It sits adjacent to the Red Shed.

Next up...find a photographer! :)

Wedding Adventures

Scott and I met with the priest at St. James a week ago and figured out our date - July 24, 2010!

Since we finally had a date and time set with the church, I started casually looking for reception places. I knew I would need to book something soon, but when 3 out of the 4 places I e-mailed told me they were booked, I FREAKED! I ended up e-mailing 18 locations and talked Scott into taking an impromptu trip to the Vancouver area to look at some places. We spent about 10 hours driving around and looked at 5 different places, but we think we found our perfect location! It's called Langdon Farm Golf Club. I'm meeting with them next week and hopefully I'll have more information then!

We spent A LOT of time in the car (don't worry, we're parked here), but we had a ton of fun and surprisingly, never got frustrated with each other! :)

Sporting Events!

\One of the best parts of summer is all the fun sporting events to attend in the beautiful weather! Last week Scott and I went to two events with our friend, Dan.

We went to a Seattle Sounder's Soccer game on Tuesday! This was probably one of the most fun games I've ever watched. The Sounders even have their own fan club chanting and cheering the entire game.


Then, on Friday, we went to a Mariner's game! Dan and his sister met us there and we had a great time! Sadly they lost, but we still had a lot of fun!

Our House!

As many of you already know, Scott and I are currently in the process of buying a house! The house is in short sale, which means the homeowners are no longer able to make the full payment on the house and the bank has accepted to receive less than the homeowners owe the bank. This means buying this house will be a long process. We put our offer in over a month ago and the bank has finally acknowledge they received it and put in a request for an appraisal. Our agent told us the bank would have to accept our offer by today, July 2 for us to close by the end of July. Once the bank has an appraisal, it will take 13 business days for them to accept our offer. Which means we won't be able to close until the end of August. We're having a hard time waiting that long - we're already making plans for every room of the house and outside! The house currently has no front yard, so we'll have a blank slate! We can't wait to own our first house and start our new life together here!

Megan's Bridal Shower

I have two amazing friends getting married this summer and I am so lucky to be a part of their days as a bridesmaid! The day after Sarah's bachelorette party, we had Megan's bridal shower. It was a gorgeous day and many lovely ladies attended to celebrate Megan with us! I meant to take more pictures, but got caught up doing other things.

One of the games we played was about how well Megan knows Josh (her fiance). For every question she missed, she was required to put a piece of gum in her mouth. After a few silly questions about animals and school mascots, Megan had a mouth full!
Another game we played was a cute scrapbook game I made! The scrapbook gives directions for it to be passed around the group. I got the idea from this website: Wedding Cram. Everyone enjoyed it and it was great to get to know some of the other ladies better.

Sarah's Bachelorette Party

Sarah's Maid of Honor, Casey, and I planned a wonderful bachelorette party for my amazing friend Sarah! We started out at Chopstix: A Dueling Piano Bar. There were 7 other bachelorette parties there and we had a ton of fun with all the girls! I love these girls so much and we always have an amazing time together!

Birthday Cake!

I had been planning on making a cake with fondant frosting for my friend Sarah's bachelorette party. It turned out that the place we were going would get us a cake as part of our party package. I was still really excited to try out fondant frosting, so I decided to make a birthday cake for myself! :)

My friend, Trudi, makes a lot of cakes with fondant frosting and provided me with this recipe. She suggested NOT making it the night before like they suggest on the website and it worked perfectly. She also suggested buying rubber gloves and coating them in Crisco, which was VERY helpful in keeping things slightly less messy. The cake turned out super cute...I will definitely be making another cake with fondant soon!

We're engaged!

Over Memorial Day weekend, Scott and I went to the beach with some friends. As we were leaving on Monday we stopped by the beach for one last time on the way out of town. It was a beautiful day (the nicest of the weekend), so we took a little walk down the beach. After walking for awhile, Scott turns to me and says "This would be such a romantic spot..." and I reply with "Shut up!" as this was the 3rd time he had said this in the past couple months. He then whips around holding the ring in front of me and asks me to marry him! :)

The funniest part of this story is that the night before I was doing some laundry at the beach house we stayed at and Scott asked me to wash a shirt he had gotten dirty at the beach. I got into his bag to get it out and to my shock, I saw a box! :) I knew what was inside, but with all my willpower, I restrained myself from looking inside. I expected it to come the next day, but Scott never got into his bag before we headed to the beach, so I figured he'd gotten nervous and had chickened out...little did I know he had the ring in his pocket all day! :)

Snow days!

Scott and I had a great time playing in the snow. The first night it fell we were with our friends Megan and Josh and we immediately headed outside to take it all in. A few weeks later we weren't so excited that the snow was still sticking around.

Megan and I playing in the new snow!

Scott and I a few weeks later taking a walk in the snow.

Halloween

Scott and I dressed up for Halloween as Mario and Princess Peach! :) We had a great time celebrating this holiday with friends!

October Adventures

Scott and I did so many fun things in October!

We took a day trip to Leavenworth with some friends to check out Oktober Fest! The town is beautiful in the fall. We had such a great time with our wonderful friends, Megan and Josh.
I really want to go to a pumpkin patch (Scott had never been to one), so we talked our friends Sarah and Nick into going with and we had a great time! We spent forever searching for the perfect pumpkins...Sarah and I set them down for a moment to take this cheesy photo and someone took mine from under Scott's feet! It was a traumatic pumpkin patch experience. :)

Our perfect pumpkins....before mine was stolen. :)
Scott and I in the corn maze!

Whistler Long Weekend

I had a Tuesday off from school in November for Veteran's Day, so I took the Monday off and Scott and I took a long weekend in Whistler. Whistler was hosting Cornucopia: A Food and Wine Festival that weekend. When we arrived at our hotel on Friday night at 1am, we found that our hotel was hosting a black tie event. We looked VERY out of place in our jeans and t-shirts and got plenty of odd looks...a memorable way to start our adventure.
As it turns out, November is not a good month to go to Whistler...there is nothing to do. The lifts are closed, the gondola is closed...the summer activities are over and the winter activities haven't begun yet. So it was a forced relaxing weekend. We walked around the town, checked out the cute little stores, and relaxed, a lot!

On our drive home we stopped at the most amazing waterfall, Shannon Falls.