free coffee!

My friend Jen posted about free coffee from Barnes and Noble and Dunkin' Donuts! I'm going to Barnes and Noble on Friday! Didn't want any of you to miss out! Head on over and see Jen. Her blog is great! Kelly

I'm a winner!

Thanks, Tara! So exciting!

If you took pictures at our wedding, let me know so I can include them in the book I won! Kelly

a wonderful thing for a husband to say . . .

"your passport's current, right?"

a rock

"The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer

my God is my rock in whom I take refuge.

He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."  

Psalm 18:2

Inspiration of pairing a photo with scripture from Modgirl

photo:  a beach on highway one taken on our honeymoon

chairs!

Remember this big ol' fat chair dilemma?  

Look how great they turned out!  

Didn't Adrian do a wonderful job on hanging the lanterns?  I love the way they look!  

Thanks so much for the photos, Jenni!  

Our Save the Date - after the fact

Now that the wedding is over and I am not wary of sharing the wedding date and place, I thought I'd show you guys our save the date.  

I liked the idea of save the dates but at the same time realized I didn't want to spend a lot of time and money on them once I got into the wedding planning.  So, we decided to send electronic save the dates.  We sent what you see below via e-mail.  

I had collected some craft supplies and just began laying things out and taking photos.  Then I made the whole thing in iphoto on my mac.  The top collage was from a template for a greeting card you can make to have printed.  The other images are just photos I took of things laid out on my parents' kitchen table.  The other bonus is that I didn't have to glue anything down and therefore just dismantled all my "set-ups" when I was done and I still have all of those craft supplies to use for other things.  

For those of you out there planning your weddings, this was a great, cost-effective way for us to send save the dates and we also included our website information in the e-mail.  The only thing I would caution is that we sent it from my e-mail address so some of Adrian's friends deleted it right off thinking it was spam because they didn't know me.  

Our wedding is fast approaching!  We'd like for you to be there!  

Your destination is McKinney, Texas.  

You can come by car, train or air.  

Please join us in celebrating our marriage on . . . 

Thank you so much for your friendship, love and support!  We are really looking forward to celebrating with each one of you.  Kelly and Adrian 

If you were at our wedding, I would love to hear about what you thought of McKinney, what you did that weekend, etc. when we weren't together.  For instance, on my way to my hair appointment on the wedding day, I saw two of our guests shopping on the square downtown.  They looked like they were having a great time.  So much fun!  I hope you all had just as great a weekend overall as we did!  Kelly

Sunday

Since I posted pics of last Saturday yesterday, I thought I'd post pics of last Sunday today.  

Last Sunday we flew back from California where we spent our lovely honeymoon week and came home!  Home!  What a wonderful word when we live here together.  It was so neat to know that this is now OUR home.  

My mom outdid herself for us after the wedding and had our apartment clean and all ready for a nice arrival for us.  She put up this banner that we had used at the wedding on our mantel and stacked all our wedding presents around as well as some neat things from the wedding, the San Francisco children's book that she had given us at a shower, etc.  

our wedding cards just waiting to be taken out of their birdcage home and opened

She also got out all of our new towels that she'd washed and set up our new master bath!  

Thanks for the apothecary jars, Barbie and thanks to everyone for the towels!  

my first linen closet filled with the blessing of new, matching, fluffy towels!  

honeymoon pics

Happy Saturday everyone!

I know, I know, everyone wants to see wedding pics and I'll get some on here but we're still in the process of making heads or tails out of things around here, loading photos on our computers, needing to charge our overworked cameras so they'll let us load photos, etc.  Have patience, have patience.  

But for your viewing pleasure this lovely Saturday I thought I'd show you some fun shots from last Saturday, our last full day in California

Dolphin???

nope, killer whales!

it was amazing!  Adrian took me on a whale watch out of Monterey, CA.  He knows I love whales!  We saw sooo many!  God really blessed our trip and we marveled at these creatures he has made.  So exciting.  We spent 4-5 beautiful hours aboard a ship out at sea on a beautiful, beautiful day!  

I just liked this sign for pelican pizza.  I wish the shadow of the lights wasn't in the picture but what are you gonna do? There was Italian food all over the place in northern California.  We ate in North Beach (San Fran's Little Italy) a couple of times and boy was it yummy!  

There's an old fashioned boardwalk in Santa Cruz, CA where we stayed for a couple of nights.   We went last Saturday afternoon and I LOVED it!  It was so neat, just like something out of a book.  This is the GIANT DIPPER that we road.  Our first roller coaster together!  

Finally, pumpkins!  

I have mostly been to CA in the summer and I'm not sure why but I didn't expect to see pumpkin stands all over the place.  To me "fall" and California aren't things that I equate.  I guess I just think of it as endless summer there.  Anyway, of course there is so much agriculture so they have lots of pumpkins. This is from the pumpkin/flower stand where we stopped on our way to the hotel the last night before we flew out on Sunday morning.  They had a big sign that said dozen roses - $5.  Adrian pulled right off the road and bought some for me!  We were on our honeymoon after all!  

We're Back!

from a lovely week on the West Coast!  

Adrian and Kelly are getting married!

That's right!  We are.  Right now!  

God is good and may He bless this beginning of our life together and continue to bless us, grow us and guide us always!  

Kelly

the social

The venue where we got married had a lot of different events all the time so you didn't get to book it for an entire weekend or anything. Basically we got it for the day of our wedding and that's it. I think there was a high school homecoming dance there the night before our wedding.

We didn't have attendants and since our family members who took part in our wedding doing music, readings, etc. are all polished speakers, performers, etc. and our preacher is very accomplished at doing weddings and we certainly weren't his first, we decided that a formal "rehearsal" in the space was not important to us.

We decided that we what was really important to us was actually getting to spend time with all of the wonderful friends and family who were coming to our wedding, particularly the many, many people who came from out of town and who we don't get to see just every day.

My old youth minister, Greg, once said that there are two times in your life when everyone you know and love is going to gather in one place. One of those is your wedding and the other is your funeral. Obviously, you only get to enjoy those people at one of those events. His point was to soak up that time with the people you love and who love you at your wedding rather than getting overly focused on details and things.

So . . .

we went a different route than the norm and had a big social at a park and invited everyone who was invited to the wedding to come the night before and hang out.

We made it simple by getting sandwiches, chips, soft drinks, etc., nothing fancy, and everything was just serve yourself.

That meant we got to enjoy

family

old and new friends

big hugs from people we hadn't seen in a while

beginning to be hospitable together as a couple

sweet conversations

watching our friends and family from both sides join together and pitch in to set out food, etc.

This was actually one of my favorite parts just watching all of the people that we love individually meeting each other, smiling, laughing, talking, working, eating and playing alongside each other. It was neat.

We talked and caught up on each other's lives.

People came from Alaska, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, other parts of Texas and even overseas. I may even be missing a place or two.

It was so very special to us!

We had simple decorations.

Many handmade by friends.

There was laughter,

football

hugs

and smiles!

I think it was absolutely perfect for us and I'm so glad we did it.

What a wonderful night!

Kelly