Abi & Andy

A few weeks ago, I realized I had a few extra days off that I hadn’t already accounted for….so I decided that last weekend was a good opportunity to use them for a nice long weekend in North Carolina.  I loaded my SUV as full as I could possibly get it (got all 6 boxes of books, all my winter clothes, and all of our shower gifts somehow wedged in) and drove down after work on Thursday.  I had a good drive down there and didn’t get caught in traffic at all really – made it down there before midnight.  On Friday, Andy had decided to take a day off work too so we had a nice lazy day of wandering around the town of Southern Pines and trying to get me oriented.  He even took me to Sonic!  We drove over to Fort Bragg and I got to see where he worked at Womack Hospital and meet his co-workers that I had heard so much about.  Then we went out to dinner with his co-workers so that I could get to know them a little bit.  We had a good time.  We did a little shopping in Fayetteville that night and looked around for things like ties for Andy and the groomsmen to wear.

On Saturday we got up early and found a couple of yard sales to go to.  We were looking for a few things for the apartment and found exactly what we needed at the first yard sale we stopped at – a dining room table and chairs!  We’d both been looking online for tables and had checked a few out in various stores, but hadn’t found anything we both liked.  We were happy to find a good, well made, and still fairly new looking table at a good price.  We took it back to the apartment and then went out again and didn’t find much else yard sale-wise.  We ended up back in town and walked around a bit more to the paint your own pottery place that Andy had stopped in earlier this summer.  He talked to the owner back then about his idea of painting a platter and having guests at our wedding sign it instead of a traditional guestbook.  I thought it was a great idea and we went in and found just such a platter.  Andy let me go to town with painting it and we both had a lot of fun.  You’ll have to wait to see how it turned out when you sign it on Sept. 1!  The paint your own pottery place was a lot of fun and Andy seems to think I’ll end up going there to paint a lot……  We relaxed the rest of the day by swimming at the pool in our apartment complex, making homemade pizza for dinner, and watching a movie.

The semi-finished product…it still needs to be fired so the colors will end up looking a lot different.

On Sunday we went to the church that Andy has been attending off and on throughout the summer.  We then came home and got some work done!  We unpacked my car and tried to put away most of it.  We had bought a bookshelf that we managed to put together (just barely!) and I got most of my books put away.  Andy worked (a little) on unpacking some of the boxes and things he still hadn’t put away since he moved in back in March.  He assures me that he’ll work on unpacking and organizing more before I move down after the wedding.  We had fun starting to set up our new home and are looking forward to doing more of that in the coming months.  I’m going to try and make another trip or two down in August to get the rest of my things down and then I’ll be there for good in September!  So exciting!  I’ll miss my family and friends and everything in Maryland, but we’re looking forward to starting this new journey and settling into a new life together.

Andy putting together a bookshelf
(and yes, he does have a cast on his leg….he managed to get a stress fracture last week.  He says he should be out of it in 6 weeks by the time of the wedding, so just pray that his leg really does heal up quickly!)

Andy went back to work on Monday and I stopped at Sonic before I left town on Monday morning.  I had a pretty easy drive back up to Maryland and am now dealing with lots of wedding things up here this week.

Only 45 days!!! -abi

Over the 4th if July week, I was happy to be able to take a week-long vacation up to Rockport, MA with my family. My parents rented a house there for the week so that we could all come up and have one last big family vacation and celebrate my brother, Patrick and Jenn’s wedding on the 4th of July. Unfortunately, Andy couldn’t get either a good ticket price to fly up there or the time off work (since he’s saving his vacation time for our honeymoon!), so he wasn’t able to come up. I missed having him there. And he said he had a pretty boring 4th of July….he didn’t even go see any fireworks!  Oh well – we’ll make sure to see some together next year.

Here are a few pictures from the week:

We went on a whale watch

My brothers having fun on the boat

We saw several whales that came pretty close to our boat and even a shark!
This was one of the best shots I got of a humpback whale eating.

The wedding was really nice – Jenn, Patrick, and Jenn’s family put a lot of work into it.  Jenn and Patrick asked me to help out by being the wedding coordinator at the church – which meant helping make sure everyone knew where to be when and when to start walking down the aisle.  It was a lot of fun and good practice for our wedding in Sept.!

My proud parents

All the siblings of the bride and groom

The happy newly married couple

Fireworks for their 4th of July wedding!

The night before I left to drive up to MA with my mom, my bridesmaids and another good friend came over and helped me address and stuff all of our wedding invitations! They are awesome friends and it was a huge help. We were able to get them done quickly and I was happy to be able to get them out before I left for vacation.

Yay! They’re all done!

Dropping the invitations off at the post office before we left town

One family wedding down, ours is next!  Only 50 more days and counting…..abi

Last weekend we had a really good, yet busy weekend in Baltimore. Andy came up for the weekend so that we could attend a marriage counseling workshop together. We both have known since we got engaged that we wanted to do some type of marriage preparation/counseling. Unfortunately, since Andy moved very shortly after we got engaged, the distance has made marriage counseling a little more challenging. Andy had found out about a counseling group called PCSM (Pastoral Counseling Services of Maryland) when he was working as a minister in Maryland – he liked and thought highly of the services they offered and was planning to recommend them to any of his parishioners who needed counseling services. He never ended up needing to refer anyone to them, instead, we ended up trying them out ourselves when we found out about their marriage preparation program called “Marriage for a Lifetime.”

The “Marriage for a Lifetime” workshop was a one day event that we attended on Saturday. It was a good experience for both of us, as we learned more about each other and ourselves. It was a smaller group (5 other couples) and there was a good mix of group time vs. just the two of us time to talk and discuss things. We did Myers-Briggs personality tests – which was fun. We found out that we have similar personalities, but with a few good differences. I am an

ENFP

For ENFPs the dominant quality in their lives is their attention to the outer world of possibilities; they are excited by continuous involvement in anything new, whether it be new ideas, new people, or new activities. Though ENFPs thrive on what is possible and what is new, they also experience a deep concern for people as well. Thus, they are especially interested in possibilities for people. ENFPs are typically energetic, enthusiastic people who lead spontaneous and adaptable lives.

This has always been what I have tested as and I feel like it is a really accurate description of what makes me tick. I am a people person who always has big ideas like trying new things. Which is great since I have a lot of new things coming up (being married, moving to a new state, getting a new job….), and we will most likely be moving around and doing a lot of new things for the next few years of our life!

Andy ended up being an:

ESTP

For ESTPs the dominant quality in their lives is their enthusiastic attention to the outer world of hands-on and real-life experiences. ESTPs are excited by continuous involvement in new activities and in the pursuit of new challenges. ESTPs tend to be logical and analytical in their approach to life, and they have an acute sense of how objects, events, and people in the world work. ESTPs are typically energetic and adaptable realists, who prefer to experience and accept life rather than to judge or organize it.

He is also definitely a people person (he had absolutely no introvert answers on his test – all extravert!), but will hopefully balance me out with a little more analytical side. He said that he thinks his current job with the Red Cross has made him more adaptable than he maybe once was.

Other things we did/talked about at the marriage workshop were marital expectations, communication, how to handle conflict, and how our past and our family backgrounds affect us. There wasn’t really much that either of us were surprised by or felt like we needed to work a lot we needed to work on right now – we had previously discussed a lot of the big topics and how we plan to handle them. We both know that marriage takes a lot of work, but we both think it’s worth it! We did learn/were reminded of some good tools and strategies for the future and were glad that we completed the workshop – mostly for the reassurance that we are really ready to be married!

Perhaps the bigger thing we did last weekend was the binding (well somewhat binding) commitment of starting a new cell phone contract together with a family plan! We joined up with Verizon because we both have heard good things about their nationwide coverage and also because we both know so many people IN the Verizon network. Free IN network calling is a great feature – especially for me! And we’re excited to be on the same calling plan so that we can more easily get in contact with each other throughout the day without worrying about using too many minutes or anything. Andy has already had fun calling me in the morning as he’s driving to work….I’m barely awake, sluggishly getting ready for work, so we don’t have much of a conversation – but it’s still fun to hear from him at the beginning of the day. And thanks to Andy’s discount by being an employee of the American Red Cross, we are going to be getting a percentage of our bill taken off each month and we got a great deal on two brand new phones! I got the purple one and Andy got the black one with a bluetooth headset. All in all, a great and productive weekend!

only 80 more days until we get married! …abi