Wedding Weather Update

This is the new forecast as of 11:00... let's keep this one :)

A Positive and a Negative- Part 2

Positive- The wedding is finally close enough that our date appears on the 10 day forecast!

Negative- This is what the forecast is showing~

So sad....

Here are some excerpts from an article about premarital sex in America~

"NEW YORK - More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

"According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.
Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found."

The part that gets me is when Finer says that premarital sex is "normal behavior" for Americans. I disagree, it may be common, it may be typical, but it is not normal and it is not ok. Later in the article he argues about how pointless abstinence education is. I was overcome with an intense sadness as I read this article and saw the way that men have distorted something given to us by God as a way to worship him. I know it sounds weird to say that sex is a form of worship, but it is. As God intended it, between a married couple, it is most definitely a form of worship.

American society is teaching us that it is ok to seek pleasure in whatever way suits you and in doing so it has distorted God's gift to married couples. I won't continue to ramble, I'll just say that this is just another area of my life where I see God's goodness in keeping me pure and spotless for my future husband, (who I now have a name for :) Nate.

The Rediscovery of Mat Kearney

From "Girl America"

"Faith like a child from your first birth
You left it in the dirt on your worst hurt
And I see each tear and every scar
The hands that have held you where you are
And I can see we've strayed so far
A king born under that morning star
As a crown of thorns was placed to erase
Each tear that's touched your face
And his palms and sides were pierced with spears
He hung in love just to draw you near
My girl, out of this whole world
Can't you see this is where we started?"

Here we go again

I am tapped out of original topics right now... just out completely. Yet I feel as though I need to post, like it is something I owe to my friends who are also in the bored, pre-Holiday phase of work and are searching blogs desperately looking for some entertainment, however inane :) So here are some insights into my life.

~Yesterday a guy drove up beside me and just waved at me for no reason, but he did it like I should know him, which I don't. I waved back, locked my doors and drove away :)

~I am officially to the point in packing where I have run out of obvious stuff to pack and am now down to weird shaped things, random assortments of items, and hanging clothes (which are a pain in the booty to move. It is going to be interesting to have it done by Friday night.

~Last night I ate the world's biggest fruit salad for dinner....it was fabulous :)

~There are no words to describe how thankful I am that I finished my Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving.... If I had to do it now, everyone would be getting something from Kroger :)

A Positive and a Negative

Positive~ I won for Most Creative and Public Favorite in our office decorating contest yesterday! I got $100 in AMEX gift cards for my efforts and it was a lot of fun! My brother's response was as follows:

You are the deco queen, young and sweet, only twenty-three
Deco queen, feel the creative juices flow (oh,ohhh)
You can build, you can wrap, even make a fake window
OOH, See that girl, watch that scene, dig it the deco queen

haha, ladies and gentlemen...behold my family!

Negative- I am exhausted. I don't want to be at work today. I'd have given my right arm to sleep in and spend the rest of the day getting ahead on the twenty billion things I have to do that aren't work related...aka, moving, cleaning, making programs, calling vendors, running errands (including that weird grocery store place where you go to buy food...it's been so long), and hunting down all the people that think that an RSVP is an optional thing and just assume I know they're coming. ARG!! I can't wait til next friday when I will finish work and head into 3 weeks off. Every time I pause at work, I realize how much I COULD be getting done at home. I need sleep...soon. I think I will actually get it maybe next Friday. If not we're looking at Christmas Eve... oh joy.

A cornucopia...

Things I ate at the Holiday Graze (see post below)

~ Creme Brulee
~ Biscuits with sausage and gravy
~ Pigs in a blanket
~ Ginger cookies
~ Homemade oreo cookies
~ baklava
~ Chips and homemade salsa
~ Meatballs in sauce
~ Homemade Pad Thai
~ Queso, queso and more queso
~ Tortilla roll-ups
~ Ritz crackers with peanut butter coated in white chocolate
~ Chocolate covered pretzels
~ Crackers with sausage and cheese
~ "Cinnamon Roll-ups"

Ok, so maybe I deserve the "you're not going to fit into your dress" comments :)

Out to Pasture

Today is what is fondly known at my office as the holiday graze. It is a fantastic day filled with food, food and well, food :) Everybody brings something and leaves it on their desk and you walk around throughout the day and just eat continually. So far this morning I have had creme brulee fresh torched by our HR lady in the kitchen right in front of me... so good! I am waiting for Rob's gravy to heat up and then I'll have sausage, gravy and biscuits. After that I plan to hit up Noel's desk for pigs in a blanket and just see where the wind takes me from there. What a fabulous day!

Random Corner

Ok, I just have some little snippits into my life to share today... nothing profound or anything, just me :)

~ I find it REALLY annoying that every time I eat anything at work, someone feels a need to joke with me that I better be careful or I won't fit into my dress. How is that funny? These people are very lucky of two things, I have no tendency whatsoever towards an eating disorder whereas some people might think these comments indicate they are fat and they'd stop eating and number two, I am a Christian and God is currently teaching me the power of my words and the importance of watching them. :P

~ Nate and I bought a stove last weekend and it's being delivered on Saturday! On one hand I felt like a grown up and it was kinda cool. On the other I realized that money I used to be able to spend on fun stuff as a teenager is now being spent on doctor's appointments and appliances.

~ I begin the process of slowly moving my stuff over to Nate's place tonight and tomorrow. I'm somewhat afraid to plumb the depths of what I own now. I was always amazed when I moved in college by how much I could acquire in a year. I don't feel like I've gotten that much, but this could be scary.

~ Laney can now stand up on her own without holding on to something. On one hand we are hoping she'll be walking by Christmas, on the other this will require us to be a lot more quick on our feet.

~ Nate has really cool friends. Well, they would be cool if they stopped moving to Pearland :P

Going Down?

Yesterday I got stuck in the elevator at work as I was leaving to come home. Frankly with the way the ride down was going, I'm just glad it didn't plummet :P Anyhoo, I got to use the energency phone and wait for the guard to come rescue me from my suspended cage... it was just like being in a sitcom! Well, except that if it was a sitcom then I'd have been pregnant, going into labor, and in there with someone who is just about to learn how much they can accomplish when stuck in a difficult situation. It was heartwarming really :)

Budding Maturity

So I would consider myself a grown up in many ways.... financially independent, steady job, have started referring to 10pm as "staying up late", but up until recently I had the taste buds of an approximate 8 yr old. About a year ago I started branching out and trying things I wasn't sure about, but it was still in moderation.... we're talking going from plain and dry sandwiches to ones with lettuce, oooooooo :)

In the last month or two, however, I have been making a real effort to be a grown up. I've been ordering things off of menus that contain things like "corn relish" and "red peppers", things that would have been an automatic no in the past are more like a challenge now. November was the first month I had EVER eaten broccoli, green beans, snap peas, the assorted Japanese food at Nate's family Thanksgiving, all sorts of stuff. It isn't a struggle anymore, I just stick it in my mouth and I usually find that I at least like it enough to swallow, usually enough to go back for more. There is some stuff I still don't like, but I have an open mind and I'm looking forward to trying the world of food all over again :)

A Special Christmas Moment

Some background first.... We just got a new office leader for Houston and she's been cracking down on cleaning up the office. Her latest thing was requiring us to organize the bookshelves by the layout tables. She wants them as empty as possible, but all of PMs already have crowded desks and they don't want to take their plan sets back and clutter things further. Ok, fast forward to 5 minutes ago.

So my old supervisor just spent who knows how long clearing off one of the shelves and then he took a picture of it. He printed up a lifesize plot on our huge roll plotter (these are 8 ft bookshelves) and he taped it to the front of the shelves so that they look empty. He is currently in the process of printing 3 more to cover the rest of the shelves.... they are surprisingly realistic and a nice bit of humor for a boring day :)

Gingerbread, gingerbread, gingerbread rocks :)

Pics of my cube after Nate and I turned it into a gingerbread house for an office decorating contest :)

Evite- The Wave of the Present

Soooo, people don't RSVP. I have always been an RSVP person but apparently a lot of people aren't. I was getting frustrated with the low numbers of people RSVPing (1-2 a day) for the wedding because I knew that we have to get a final number to the caterer in two weeks and we have to pay more per person if we go over the number we give them.

I know alot of people mean to RSVP and would have eventually, but we are working on a schedule and I would hate to get down to the day before and realize I had to contact 50 people to find out if they are coming. I put my mom in charge of family friends who haven't emailed, Nate's mom is in charge of his home town and relatives, we each took our work friends and I took on HFBC and friends from college. I decided to send out an evite to the last group to try to make it easier on both parties involved. Well, I heard back from 20 out of 39 people in the first day alone! Evite is now this girl's best friend. :)

To give ya'll (Jen Cates) a little update on wedding plans, we meet with the caterer today to choose the final menu (I had no idea that this happened so late in the game) and if we get done early enough then we are going to go to the County Clerk's office and get our marriage license on the way back in town. We chose our vows and message and order or service last night with Don and got to hear stories of things I'd rather not have happen at our wedding, but I wouldn't freak out if they did :) We are about halfway done making the programs and halfway done making the little bundles to throw as we exit. The favors have been done for awhile (praise the Lord!) and I feel like after we finish the programs and bundles we should be somewhat home free on wedding stuff. Although I am taking on a craft project for the rehearsal dinner too... Somebody stop me!

** Side note- you know that just-turned-on-the-heater-for-the-first-time-this-year smell? Well I turned it on last night (28 degrees outside, don't cha know) and the smell set off the smoke detector almost instantaneously..... a nice, heart stopping moment for me :)