For The Journey Not just the destination…

This year, my family came to my house for the holiday – we had my parents and brother from NC, my grandmother from TX, and my great aunt and uncle who travel the country. The food and company was great. We had plenty of pie, a few games of dominoes, and the guys played with the Nintendo Wii.

Mom and I got to talk about the wedding, hosting family, the challenges of being an adult-daughter, and the challenges of being a mother of an adult-daughter. Ironically, that’s what the Sunday church service was about – my family went with us and Thomas presented his credo. He did a great job.

We also went to the aquarium, and I spent the whole time trying out my new digital SLR camera – a Nikon D50. Thomas coached me on lens choice and camera settings. Since I got a new camera, I also thought I’d try out a new online gallery. I’m using Picasa Web by Google. Below are the links to the photos I took. Let me know what you think, and feel free to leave a comment on the photos pages.

• Thanksgiving Day photos
• Nikon D50 Test photos
• Georgia Aquarium photos

I took the week off work.  My family is heading in and I wanted a couple days before they arrived to clean the house, and just to relax. The house is looking good – at least to my standards. I did consider hiring Molly Maids to do a final scrub down, but Thomas convinced me that we would do a good enough job.

As for relaxing, it was a great weekend. Catherine made me dinner, in exchange for checking up on her cats while she’s out of town this week.

Thomas and Dave waited in line for a few hours Saturday night for the Nintendo Wii. I took them hot chocolate and waited with them for a bit. I’ll admit that I made fun of them for waiting, when most of the others were middle school boys, and I fussed for buying a silly toy, but it is fun, and my arms have had a workout from playing.

Sunday, I was brave enough to present my credo – my beliefs – in front the entire church. I know I sounded very nervous, but it went well. Thomas presents his next weekend. This was an optional part of becoming a member at UUMAN, but it was really an interesting lesson to define out my beliefs clearly enough that I could state them to an audience.

Anna and I went bridesmaid dress shopping too. We got some good ideas on possibilities, but I need to check in with the other two bridesmaids. It was interesting that her top choice matched my top choice from what I had seen online – I wonder if I was influencing her.

I ordered a new camera, which should arrive tomorrow – the Nikon D50. It’s a digital SLR, which will allow me to hopefully take much nicer photos, and share lenses with Thomas. Now we have even more reason to find a good birding/wildlife site for our honeymoon.

My family should arrive this evening. I’m looking forward to having a full house and will post more later. I’ve got to get back outside and see if I can dispose of the ocean of leaves that ate my driveway.

This weekend, we went to Nancie and Tory’s wedding in Marietta, GA. It was beautiful and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I didn’t take that many photos since I didn’t want to blind everyone with my flash.

I found it really interesting to have two of my friends have weddings so close to each other, but with such different styles. Both turned out great. They were both very unique, and Jane keeps reminding me that mine will be unique too. Jane’s was more casual, and Nancie’s was more formal, and I have been able to get ideas from both.

Thomas and I have been working on some wedding plans in the background. Five more months to go. We looked into registering and mostly decided to wait until after the new year to continue on that. We’re still narrowing down the caterers, and hopefully we’ll have settled on someone by the end of the month. Thomas finally asked his groomsmen, and I’ve started talking to the bridesmaids about what they’ll wear. We designed our wedding website and Save the Date cards. And finally, we have started looking into honeymoon ideas.

Though we’d love to set foot in a new continent, I think Asia or Africa is just too big of a trip at this point in our lives. Instead, we’ve been looking to South America. Thomas has been to Peru, and I’ve been to Venezuela, so those two are ruled out. The top of our list is Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, but that still might be too expensive. We’re also looking at Belize or Costa Rica – both of which friends of ours have gone to. Unfortunately, April isn’t that warm in some parts of the world. We’d like to find a place that has wildlife and birding, some kind of sport like snorkeling or kayaking, culture like a local market or historical ruins, and somewhere to relax and spend romantic time together.