Check..Check...Check!

As of today, our DJ and honeymoon are officially booked!! We are going to be going to Hilton Head Island, SC for a week of sun, sand, and fun!! I can't wait to get away with my soon to be husband for a week all to ourselves. It will be our first vacation alone as a couple and one that we have and will plan totally together on our own! I'm so excited to get there and relax and explore the fun of the island!

My feelings are full of content and productivity! I love looking at my monster check list for the wedding and putting a huge CHECK beside the ones that are officially taken care of. We still have a ways to go but we have been so productive over the last few weeks that I am totally confident that everything will get done. Now we have to work toward big checks next to the sections about colors and invitations. Fun! :)

I can't wait to start next week because it is the beginning of my last full semester of grad school. The most exciting part is that it is one more step closer to my graduation and the wedding! February 6th marks 6 months left until wedding day!! 10 months down, 6 to go!! Its going by so fast now and I am loving every minute of it!! :)

Florists, Photographers, and Cake Makers..OH MY!

William and I are in the heart of our wedding planning and it is getting crazy but so fun! My mom has been working so hard to get things done and it has really paid off. We are very close to having our wedding photographer and dj finalized and we are looking into the florist. I can't wait to get everything done and for the big day to finally be here! We are 207 days away now. It seems like just yesterday we had over 400 days left on the countdown. It will be here before we know it!

Oh and the all time best part about the wedding planning is that my dream has come true! Since I was a little girl I have loved the song "In this very room". I loved hearing an amazing woman sing it in my childhood church and I always hoped that she would be able to sing it in my wedding. And she IS!!! I cannot begin to explain how excited I am. I feel like now that she is confirmed, everything else will just fall into place. I am SO blessed!!

As for other areas of my life, I am in the middle of my wintersession class that meets every evening for two weeks. We have been off for two days because of the snow which has been amazing! However this will push us into next week and end very close to when the semester begins. It really doesn't make much difference for me because I have gotten to spend the last two days with William and Sadie and it has been SO fun! I love snow days! Once this class is over, I will begin my last full semester of grad school and probably school forever. I am SO excited to be finishing grad school so I can start working full time and finally use what I have been working towards. And I will finally be married to my love. I love my life!!! :)

It's been a while...

I began this blog almost a year ago and never got settled into updating with it. Now that it is 2011 and I have so many things going on in my life, I feel that I may be able to actually stick with blogging. I spent some time writing in a journal as a child but I never got into it enough for it to really stick.

My life has changed dramatically from January 2010 to January 2011. The beginning of the year was consumed with thoughts of possible engagement and figuring out when William and I wanted to get married. We finally decided on August 2011 and got engaged on March 31, 2010 (My last post has our engagement story). It has been about 9 months since that day and it seemed like the wedding was so far away it was almost unattainable. Looking back I cannot imagine it happening any differently. We both got to see all of our family members in the months following our engagement with my brothers graduation and summer holidays. It was an amazing time in my life and I have loved being engaged. The second half of 2010 began with the news that William and I are going to have a nephew joining our family in May 2011. His sister Kristy and her husband are going to be having a boy and we are so excited. He will be spoiled as much as possible (I have been looking at baby stuff for him since the day I found out she was pregnant!). I'm so excited that he will be at our wedding and will be a wonderful addition to an already amazing family!

Along with engagement and baby news and planning, my life has been consumed with school. I am in the middle of my internship. I'm working around 30 hours a week in three locations on top of my three regular classes. It has been a crazy semester and there is no real end in sight. I am looking forward to this semester much more than the last because I will actually have class with my friends three nights a week, rather than seeing them once a month. I have missed them dearly and I cannot wait to see all of them again on a regular basis. They have gotten me through grad school and are each blessings in my life!

That pretty much brings the update through 2010 and now I am looking toward 2011 with excitement. In May I will graduate (walk with three summer classes left to take), watch a beautiful bride become a wife, and become an aunt to a loving little boy. In August I will finish up my masters degree, be MARRIED!!, and hopefully start my first full-time counseling job. Those are only the things that I expect from 2011 but as I have experienced in the past, I know that my God has much more in store for me that I could never imagine on my own. I am loving life and cannot wait to experience all that it has to offer in 2011!!

The Proposal

I got engaged to William Thompson on March 31, 2010. People have been asking for the "details" of the proposal so here's the story:

March 31st was a Wednesday and I typically go to eat with my graduate school friends and any boyfriends that join us after our class at 5:30. I got a message from my friend Taylor before I left my house to go to class that said that she needed to move dinner back to 6:30 because she had to run some errands after class for her mom. I was slightly annoyed at the random hour I would have to do nothing but William assured me that we would find "something to do". He told me that he would come pick me up from class and we would go to do something. This was odd to me because I would typically just come home and hang out for a while. I decided to let it go and went on to class. (Oh I did have some suspicion because William had asked me the night before what my schedule was for Wednesday which was not normal and I knew the proposal was coming. I decided to not get my hopes up so I pushed the thought to the back of my mind.)

So after my class got out early around 5:15, I called William to come pick me up and we talked about what we would do. He said he had thought about going to walk around the park because it was such a pretty day but figured it would be a little difficult so he figured we could just walk around campus. I thought that was a great idea, but thought it was a little odd that he had thought the plan out so much because normally neither of us would care what we do and we would just decide on the spot. When he picked me up, we drove around to a good parking area on campus and found a spot. He got his video camera out of his car (which normally would be odd but you never know with William) and we went walking up toward the middle of campus and then turned toward the football stadium. I figured we would go more toward the grove to walk in that direction but apparently William had other plans.

We found an easy way into the stadium and began to walk toward the field. I had never been on the field or been in the stadium when it is empty so it was quite a sight. William had the camera going the entire time which was slightly annoying but fun to know I could look back and the day. We stood in the middle of the field for about 15 minutes talking about random things and it got to the point where I was thinking "If this is THE time, we should make this happen. If not, lets go eat!" but I did not want to spoil any plans that William had so I stood around for as long as he wanted. 

Finally William moved a cone that was left in the middle of the field to a position where he could set his camera down on it to film us. He took my hand, got down on his knee, and asked me to marry him. I of course said YES and he took my purity ring off and placed my BEAUTIFUL engagement ring on my finger. We took some time to just hug and kiss each other and wrap our heads around the fact that we are actually engaged. William got the camera and we said our goodbyes to the tape.

He then explained that this was the spot that he wanted to propose because Oxford, Ole Miss, and football mean so much to both of us and he wanted it to be somewhere that we would always come back to and cherish. It is an incredible story that we will be able to share with our children and we can always show them where their daddy asked their mommy to marry him. So special! Then he explained that he had been working with Taylor to make sure the plans were set, that my friends were waiting at dinner, and that we were going to have cake and ice cream at her house to celebrate. 

I felt so blessed and cared for at that moment and it could not have been any better. I love William and cannot wait to be his wife someday! :)