Just Something I Want to Remember . . .

Stella Madeline and Caleb Samuel.

(*Honeymoon's going great! Pictures of the ceremony to come when Nick and I are home from Oregon on Thursday.)

Tomorrow . . .

We're getting married! I'm going to be Mrs. Nicholas Pritchett!

Wow!

Well, we are less than 5 days away from being husband and wife! We had our final meeting with Father Jim to tie up all the loose ends, and we asked Joel to be Nick's best man and Cheryl to be my matron of honor. We are meeting at the church at 12:30 and the wedding will start at one. Our total number of guests will be between 13-15, depending on whether or not Nick's cousin Riley and his wife Brooke can come. My cousin is doing the photography and we're all going to dinner at Mama Stortini's afterward. 

Nick and I are staying at the Salish Lodge that night and then we're going on some kind of honeymoon. It looks like we might go to the San Juan Islands or down to Hood River or the Oregon coast. However, I just spent the last two days researching a vacation to Hawaii or the Florida Keys. That is also a possibility, but it's going to be a last-minute thing. We won't know how many days Nick will have off until this weekend, which could mean anywhere from 6 to 10 days. If he has 10 days off, we're definitely flying somewhere. I'm just happy that the end is in sight (at least for this wedding . . . we will still have the big one to deal with).

Bottom line: I'm so happy and blessed to be Nick's wife!

Haha!

So, unlike my parents, Nick and I are not big on having animals in the room (or bed) with us when we sleep. We keep the French doors to the hallway and our bedroom door shut at night to keep the cat, Budda, out. However, Budda has taken to sleeping in our room during the day and the last few nights has refused to leave the room and has slept at the foot of the bed almost all night. Anyone who knows the situation with Budda knows that he is my baby and my shadow when I'm at home, so I'm fine with him sleeping in the room. Nick feels differently about this and, although he's given up now, tried very hard to kick Budda out the first night. 

Now, I know this story is not that funny (or interesting to some of you) but I have an accompanying hilarious photo that I have to share. This is Nick standing in our hallway wrapped in his Steelers blanket trying to get Budda out of the room. Budda, to his credit, did walk to the door and looked out (the moment I snapped the photo). However, he then turned back around, curled up on the floor, and fell asleep. Nick didn't give up and attacked him with a sock, but you could almost see Budda's smirk when I told Nick to leave him alone. All this is hilarious to me (2am and completely exhausted-I couldn't stop giggling). So here's the photo:

Guests! (And a soapbox rant)

We got 3 response cards today! It was very exciting, partly because I just love to open mail that isn't a bank statement, credit card bill, or other junk. So our number as of now is: 20! And that's including Nick's family and mine. We're 20% there! 

Other news: We went to the Pierce County Annex building today and got our marriage license. It took about 10 minutes including the time it took to fill out the paperwork, so it was much easier than we expected it to be! 

Our interesting story from the Pierce County Annex: The room we were in is also for vehicle stuff and it was packed. Only one woman was doing the marriage licenses, but it wasn't like there were a lot of people there for that, so as soon as we took a number, it was called. And thank goodness. There was a woman there with 3 children and one of them was screaming at the top of his lungs (not just yelling, but talking and laughing as loud as he could) and she was doing nothing about it. In the lull when he took a breath, we heard her loudly explaining to the woman next to her that no one liked it when she brought her son with her anywhere because he yells all the time. But, as she explained, there was nothing she could do about it. She'd tried putting her hand over his mouth, but that just made him scream louder. She felt like it wasn't fair that no one liked her son, as he really was a bright and sweet child. She said this as everyone in the small, echo-y room was having their eardrums shattered. I did take a good look at this little boy and watched his interactions with the other children when he wasn't screaming and saw him very clearly enjoying making a scene. He wasn't having a tantrum, he was just yelling because he could. Can you say spanking?

As someone who taught 15 and 16-year olds, I just have to say that that is where it starts. If you don't discipline your children at a young age, how are they going to be successful in life? And how are people like teachers and bosses supposed to deal with these kids as they grow up and become surly teens and lazy adults? If you don't discipline and follow through, you are setting your children up for failure. Making them happy and giving them what they want isn't good parenting, it's lazy parenting. Avoiding arguments and tantrums makes it easy on the parent, but it's selling the child short. In all fairness, I have no children and so shouldn't really be saying anything, but knowing the way Nick and I were raised, I have faith in us being good disciplinarians. We want our children to be successful, therefore, Nick and I will be imposing and enforcing boundaries. And everyone around us better hold us to that.

(Nick's addition: He calls these children "baby dirtbags and job security." People who had no discipline as children keep him in a job when they grow up. And he's knows he's being offensive, but that's Nick's conservative Republican ideals.)

And soapbox over. I hope we didn't actually offend anyone! We love you all!

Weddings Rings!

We went and picked up our wedding bands today and I'm so happy with how they turned out! Nick's ring is titanium with a Byzantine cross etched into it, something that was very important to him in signifying his faith. My wedding band sits flush with the engagement ring and has a matching double row of Pave set stones flanking three larger diamonds (the past, present, future concept). All in all, these rings are more beautiful and meaningful than I ever thought any object could be. We are so excited to be husband and wife in less than 2 weeks! 

We're going to get our marriage license tomorrow morning and then I'm sure it's going to feel even more real. I wrote my vows and part in the prayer of the couple for the ceremony two days ago, which made me realize that this is really happening. I'm so happy, but it's also a little anti-climatic. We've been together for 2 and a half years and we've lived together for over a year of that time, so it really feels like we've been married for a long time already. This is just the formal, legal, and religious aspect of it. We also asked our friend Dave (the guy who introduced us) to perform the marriage ceremony. He agreed and now the running joke is that a Lutheran and a Catholic are being married by a Mormon. Hardy-har. 

Other stuff: We finished our registry (I can't remember if I already talked about this). Target was fun, but Macy's was a pain in the butt. The registry lady was very helpful, but way too talkative. She's also repeatedly checked our online registry, which I've added to, and keeps sending me emails about it. I think she has too much time on her hands. Add that to the fact that Macy's was like a sauna and you have a not-as-fun-as-you-want situation.

One more thing: If I sent you an invitation, please RSVP so I don't have to hunt you down! I was (probably stupidly) hoping to have more responses by now. I think I was a little delusional. I mean, who gets an invitation and sends the RSVP out in the mail the next day? I know I don't. It would sit on our table until I remembered it, probably a day or two before the requested deadline. This is my payback. I won't know until October 15th what my number will actually be. However, on that day, I'm going to start calling everyone I haven't heard from and I'm going to force them to make a decision. (I probably won't actually do this, seeing as I'm relatively non-confrontational, but long ramble short: please send back the RSVP card!)

So, for anyone interested, here are the rings:

Finally!

The wedding invitations are in the mail and I am so glad to be rid of them! We invited over 100 people, but we know a few won't be able to come, so hopefully our number stays at about 100. If not, we'll find room. These are the people we love!

In other wedding news, I dropped off my shoes with a vendor to be dyed. That was an experience. For a while this afternoon I was under the impression that we would have to drive them to Ballard or Canyon Park or send them to Michigan to the company to get them dyed. Ha! I called a shoe repair place here on the hill and he is going to dye them for me. He's also going to re-sole Nick's Danners (his crazy expensive work boots) and two pairs of my heeled boots. 

We didn't get much done on this 2-day Nick had, but we did go kayaking on Clear Lake this afternoon, which was really beautiful. I'm so glad we bought the kayaks!

Our House!

Nick and I went to Pike Place Market yesterday for our engagement photos. It was really fun, we love our wedding photographer. Ryan just made us feel at ease and since he does a lot of commercial shoots, he has an amazing eye. I can't wait to get the proofs back! 

Toward the end of our shoot we decided to get a beer at a little Irish pub down one of the alleys at the market. As we were sitting there I decided to check my phone and found out I had a missed call from our realtor. I listened to the message and heard Mike say that they accepted the offer and we got the house! Ryan happened to have the camera on the table and he got the moment we found out on film, which I think is just amazing! There are a few legal details to work out, Mike will be working on that today. There is a lien on the house that we'll have to pay out of pocket, but that will actually bring down the overall price of the house and so our monthly payments a little bit. 

Now the house: It's a 2100 square foot 2-story house on .28 acres. The lot is fenced in the back on a level lot with a greenbelt on the left side of the house. It's also a block away from Lake Tapps, which we can see from the house. We have a country front porch, formal living and dining room, open kitchen and family room, gas fireplace, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and a 3-car garage. We already have big plans for some of our extra space. The formal living room downstairs we are going to turn into a library (yay!) and one of the extra rooms upstairs will be Nick's war room where he can have his man posters and war game table. This house is everything we wanted and we're both so excited! So here's a photo:

Thanks to everyone for the congrats too! We love you all and will be inviting people over as soon as the house closes, we move in and get settled. Haha, so it will be a while! Maybe December sometime . . .