So, the way overdue announcement is that I'm engaged, but I assume any of you reading this probably already know that. And actually, at this point, Nick and I have been engaged almost 3 full months, and we only have three more to go before our wedding on March 26, 2011! BUT, I meant to post the story of how Nick actually proposed on the blog here and I kept forgetting. Well, actually, clearly I forgot to post a lot of things on here since my last post was about the SUMMER. Oops.

So, without further ado, here is our engagement story:

Nick had gone home for a couple of weeks in September, and so on Monday evening, September 27, I was supposed to be joining him for a Wolverton family vacation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We were scheduled to have a day together on Tuesday before joining up with the fam that evening in the U.P., though I didn't know the "mystery"plans for the day. After hours of delayed flights on Monday evening, I finally got into Flint, MI at 2am (almost had to be delayed until the next day, which would have caused Nick GREAT problems) EARLY Tuesday morning. By 8:45am though, Nick and I were on the road to our “mystery” date that he had planned to celebrate our one year anniversary (just a little bit late). By the time I finally knew where we were going, we were buying our tickets to the Mackinac Island ferry in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We rode the 1:30pm ferry to the island and since there are no motor vehicles on the island, we promptly rented a tandem bike to ride together to explore.

After one full 8 mile loop of the island, we bought some fudge and then headed back to this certain spot that Nick really wanted to re-visit. It was some large rocks all along the shoreline of the lake in a spot that also had some beach area. Out of his rather full backpack (which I had questioned him about multiple times all day), he pulled a blanket, and spread it out on one of the flat rocks.


Once we got situated, he pulled out a present he said he had made me for our one year anniversary. I untied the ribbon from the box to find three separate pieces inside – labeled Part 1, 2, and 3.

Part 1 was for the past. It was a mostly empty mason jar of mustard seeds and in the attached note he spoke of how he had placed a mustard seed in it for every day that we had been dating (377). He also had written out two scriptures (Matt 13:31-32, Matt 17:20) about the concept of faith as big as a mustard seed.

Part 2 was for the present. It was a small hand towel. In the attached note, he spoke of sacrifice and service and the parallel of how a husband should love his wife as Christ loved the church. He then shared John 13:4-5, 14-17 and wrote that he wanted to love and serve me daily. He then pulled a bowl out of his backpack, filled it with water from the lake, added some hot water from a thermos he’d brought along, and washed my feet while talking about servanthood and how he wants to love me in that way daily.

Part 3 (a) was for the future, and the note was tied around a full jar of mustard seeds. His note talked about 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 and how love was all we needed. Then he said that since he hadn’t put the mustard seed in the jar yet for that day, he’d like us to do that together. Before we could pack everything up, he said that there was still a 3b section, and proceeded to fish in the mustard seed jar until he pulled on a little tab of paper that was tied to my RING. Then he got on one knee (kinda… we were on a rock and I was sitting) and asked me to marry him. Duh, I said yes! Then he sealed it with a kiss, which was monumental since that was the first time he had ever kissed me. Then we went to dinner at the Woods, a cute little Bavarian style wilderness lodge that had really yummy food. After dinner, we took a horse drawn carriage back to the ferry dock to catch the last ferry off the island.



When we got back to the car, I thought all surprises were over until I found in my seat a huge pile of letters from all of our closest friends and family. Because so much of Nick and I’s budding friendship had been through emails, we began to jokingly refer to each other as pen pals, so he thought letters were suited well to our relationship, and asked a lot of people to send letters to us so we could read them together. Perfect ending to a perfect day.

Even better was the fact that we then went on to spend about 4 uninteruppted days in the U.P. with NO cell phone service and barely any internet. Made it hard to fill people in on the big news, but kinda nice to be forced off the radar. That week, one of my "assignments" was to write this story down (this version and a longer version, which I've spared you from) so we would have it to keep for years to come. And to share with lovely people like you.



So that's that. We are in the thick of wedding plans, though currently, there is a bit of a lull which is nice for the holidays. I am loving it. We are getting married on March 26 in Titusville, Florida. From there, who knows... =)

This weekend was filled with Robin Hood, throwing a bridal shower for Kimberly (roomie picture to the left), two birthday parties - one for Mom/Dad and one for Jaclyn, church, introducing Ni and Zhenkai to pancakes and a few other things thrown in (a couple of good workouts, sleep, cleaning, etc). And I know that THIS weekend is over, but when a friend asked me what I did LAST weekend, her response was, "That sounds like the ultimate summer weekend!" I hadn't really thought about it, but it's kinda true!

What do you think? Here's the run-down of last weekend:

Clearwater Beach condo with 12 girlfriends Friday evening and all day Saturday (I mean, we can take out the part where I got super dehydrated and kinda blacked out and ran into a table...)
Outdoor concert/festival Saturday evening with the girls featuring Lonestar and Martina McBride in St. Pete right on the water

2 hour road trip home with lots of sing along music, Jaclyn, and Brandi Michelle

Sunday evening was the book-end, spent grilling up a FANTASTIC meal with Nick, David and Laura

And by a fantastic meal, I mean a FANTASTIC meal.
Goat cheese turkey burgers with an apricot glaze from my new favorite blog find, Iowa Girl Eats
Grilled sweet potatoes with lime and cilantro
Grilled corn on the cob with garlic butter, lime and cheese
And, for dessert, grilled fruit with nutella and marscapone topping

What a summer weekend! What about yours? Are you enjoying the summer weather?

After just seeing the MAXI ladies for a weekend at Lake Oconee in early April (picture to the left - oops, never blogged about that), I got to visit Texas for Memorial Day weekend and see a couple of them again! I wanted to take Nick and introduce him not only to the great friends I have in Longview, but also to the great state that I love so much. The weekend was full of tours of LeTourneau, cruising Longview, cuddling with Emily, back scratches with Lolly, playing games, eating at my favorite restaurants, enjoying the backroads of Texas, LAUGHTER, spending time on the lake, and more. Clearly, it was a GREAT weekend.

We started out by spending some time with Crystal and Kenny around Dallas. We went to Central Market (YUM! Free samples!) and Half Price Books. I've decided that Florida should get those stores.

Emily and Lauren got there to pick us up and we joined Benny, Andy, and Tim at Campania Pizza, which was delicious. Topped it off with a *free* cupcake from Dimples - yum yum. Plus, who doesn't love free?? What was not so pleasant was the 2 hour drive back to Longview that became a 3.5 hour drive because of a wreck, and caused us to get home at 2:30am.



Saturday morning was not the time for slowing down though, so by 8:45, Nick and I were at Chad and Sherene's to spend time with that sweet sweet family that I love so much. Then we went STRAIGHT to cook out with Brenda, Robert, Ryan and Samantha. I love the back woods of Texas, and Robert lives a BIT out of town. Good to reunite with my bookstore family, too.

We might have been exhausted, but then we went to spend time with Em, Ben, Lolly and Kyle (and Boo stopped by too) for the rest of the afternoon/evening. Longview Bingo Hall was probably a bit annoyed by how loud we were, but we had a great time laughing at the things that go on at the Bingo Hall on Saturday night. Oh the fun to be had in Longview...endless possibilities.



Sunday morning, we headed to Macedonia Baptist for my first visit since graduating college, I think! It was good to walk in and still feel at home and as if I know so many people still there. Then, lunch at Papacita's (of course) before heading out to Caddo Lake for kayaking/canoeing and grilling out with Lolly, Em, Ben, Chase, Jason, Natalie and Jamin. So relaxing and beautiful outside. We took it easy that evening, playing games at the apartment.

Benny cooked breakfast on Monday morning, and then we just hung around until time to meet with Lolly and her parents for lunch at Bodacious before heading to Dallas to catch our flight.

It was sooo good to see everyone again, athough it is always a little hard to leave them all behind everytime I have to fly back to Florida. I know that was a season of life, and I'm totally happy in my current season too, but sometimes I just wish the two could coincide more often. I guess I just have to learn to enjoy what times that I do get to make the two intersect, and Memorial Day weekend was a perfect little getaway.










Until next time, Longview!

I made time to do some ethnic cooking this weekend, and was NOT disappointed. My lovely roommate, Kimberly, got me a pressure cooker for my birthday in March. I have used it to make some delicious parmesan risotto a few weeks back, and decided to bust it out again Sunday afternoon to cook lunch for Nick, Bekah, Nick and I. I chose to cook up some Chicken Adobo, a Filipino dish that is also popular in Spain, Latin America and other Asian Pacific places. Accompanied by simple jasmine rice and broccoli, this dish was delish! We all cleaned our plates.

Here's the recipe:

8 or 9 chicken thighs (I used skinless bone-in thighs, simply because I couldn’t find any without the bone, but we de-boned them before cooking. I would HIGHLY recommend boneless thighs if you can find them, but I wouldn’t substitute chicken breasts because the dark meat of the thighs works with the dish much better)
2 cups water
2 cups low sodium soy sauce (WOW, you MUST use the low sodium or you might experience salt overload)
1 large onion (cut into rings)
8 garlic cloves (chopped up)
3 bay leaves
2 tablespoons cooking sherry
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
3 tablespoons molasses
1 tablespoon olive oil

In pressure cooker, combine water, soy sauce, onion, garlic, bay leaves, sherry wine, black pepper and molasses. Place cooker over medium high heat with lid off so the liquid can start to heat up.

In a separate pan, heat olive oil over medium to medium high heat. Brown the chicken thighs on both sides. Once browned, add directly to the liquid in the pressure cooker. Stir a bit to get the chicken thighs down into the liquid.

Place lid on pressure cooker and bring heat up to high. Once the pressure cooker valve starts whistling and rocking around, drop the heat to medium high and set the timer for 25 minutes.

Use this time to cook some jasmine rice. Make as much as you like and simply follow the directions on the bag. When the rice is done, remove it from the burner so the bottom doesn't burn and get hard.

Once the 25 minutes are up, remove the pressure cooker from the heat and run cold water over it to release the pressure and open the cooker. Remove the bay leaves. Serve chicken and sauce over jasmine rice.

Yum-o!

Mother's Day was a little bit ago, I know. BUT, I am consistent in being an inconsistent blogger. That's just how it is, I suppose.

Anyways, I decided to cook my mom lunch for mother's day, and must say that the recipes turned out to be a GREAT mix together.

I tried a new chicken dish, which I also did for a wedding shower I helped host Saturday night of this past weekend, though it was slightly adjusted for the wedding shower. Basically, I took this recipe and adjusted it a bit. Instead of goat cheese, I used cream cheese - partially because I couldn't find the goat cheese at the grocery store where I was and I refused to go to another, but also because in planning to use the recipe again to feed 25+ people at a shower, I thought a trial run with the *cheaper* cream cheese wouldn't be a bad idea. Also, for the shower, I used basil pesto because I didn't have the sun dried tomato pesto on Saturday. And it turned out fine, though the red color of the sun dried tomato looked a little better than the bright green basil pesto in the chicken. =)