Details Details Details

I want to take a moment out at the beginning of this post to say Thank You to those of you who are reading this. I have no idea who most of you are, but I know that I went from hitting one hundred views after having this almost a month to having almost another one hundred in just the past week or so. Viewing is growing exponentially and that's thanks to YOU. I'm sure some of you are friends, and I love you all so much!!!

Now onto the promised details of my wedding :).

PJ and I have discussed it and we will be having a ceremony on September 13th of this upcoming year. The assistant pastor at my church, who I lovingly refer to as Miss Tracey, has already told us that she can head over that ceremony. I'm really hoping that our church that is being built will be up and running before then (it's supposed to be up around August) so that we can have our ceremony at the church. We don't know many details yet, but at least we already have a date set so we know how long we have to plan. I don't think either of us want anything super extravagant, just something small and geeky will do great for us haha. That's right, geeky! We really want to be able to put that element of ourselves into the wedding. We have a few ideas up our sleeves, but nothing on that is final since we're obviously in the very early stages of planning. We may still end up having the wedding in Jacksonville, but we really do adore Boone and this is where our home church is...so we'll see how this all ends up panning out lol. Look forward in the upcoming months for us setting up a wedding website on http://www.ewedding.com to keep everyone up to date with our plans. September seems so close, but at the same time seems so far in the distance. I'm so excited!!! I love him so much, and I'm happy we're taking this step in our relationship to have a ceremony our friends and family can share with us to celebrate that love. It's going to be epic haha.

In other news in my life, I wanted to bring up that I found my dad! For anyone who is unfamiliar with the situation...

My dad and I have been kind of off and on over the course of my life. I've lived with him a couple of times, but we always end up somehow losing contact. One time it was because I chose to not speak to him, for personal reasons I'd rather not discuss here, and then this most recent time was because he moved and I lost the only phone number I had for him. By "lost" I mean that I broke my cell phone and the number was in it. I missed him, my brother, and my step-mother dearly (technically my ex-step-mom, but I love her just the same as if they had never divorced) and I had searched for my brother on facebook multiple times. Well, somehow in that I managed to miss seeing his profile. He's had it since August, but I never saw it! I swear I looked up his name at least once every other week and just didn't find the profile. The good news is though, that I found him! In fact, I found him on Christmas Day (the day before his 18th birthday)...What an amazing Christmas I had!!! Now we're texting every day and staying in close contact. I can't wait to see him again and also to meet his lovely girlfriend. I haven't heard all that much about her, but he has been with her almost two years and they're very in love from what I can tell. I'm so happy for him :).

Whew, so I'm going to go and watch PJ play some video games and just relax. I hope you all have a great day!!!

Getting Married/Getting Back on Track/Silence

First things first:
Guess who's getting MARRIED?! *jumps up and down* ME ME ME! PJ proposed to me on Christmas!! More to come on that subject, but I have something on my heart I want to share...

Things have been kind of here and there for the past few weeks. I haven't been doing my devotionals, and because of either snow or being out of town I also haven't been at church. The first thing that made me realize I need to get my behind back on track was a couple of weeks or so ago when PJ and I were eating lunch. I don't know what sparked it, but out of nowhere he looked at me and asked, "Have you been doing your devotionals?" I did a kind of timid looking face and admitted that no, I hadn't. "Well...you need to get on that." Since he doesn't do devotionals I wasn't sure why it seemed like such a big deal until I asked why. "Doing them made you happy, and I want you to be happy." He was right, as he almost always is. So that's what I'm starting with as soon as we can get back to the house (we were having electrical issues so we stayed at a friend's house tonight). Back to devotionals and *thank God* back to church. I've missed church, I haven't been skipping it because of wanting to. I've been skipping it because I've not been anywhere I could go. For two Sundays we were snowed into our house, and then we were with his family in Jacksonville and I was just so engrossed in being with family that I didn't go. Plus I found out some unsettling things about the church we attended the last time we were there...but that's not something I need to go into right now.

Anyways so tomorrow it's back to devotionals. I've also been praying about the silence I'm feeling I need in my life. So far my plan is that January 3rd through January 8th I will be taking my silent time. That is from a Monday until a Saturday. Here will be the exceptions to the silence:

1 - I can speak while out job hunting, because I really need to find work.

2 - I can speak with my fiancée for one hour during the morning, and one hour at night, this has a condition of if something is extremely important that needs to be discussed.

3 - I will not be using the internet *or* answering the phone/text messages. The exception is if the number that is calling is one I don't recognize and therefore may be something related to getting a job. I haven't decided yet, but I may allow myself to check voicemails once at night...I'm still praying over that one.

4 - I may or may not also be choosing to not watch any TV/movies, and instead opt to read. I'm leaning towards doing this (no TV), another one I'm praying about.

I think that's about it. I'm still praying about it and will be up until the time it begins. I can't believe I'm doing this, and I've had two people say so far that basically they don't think I'm going to be able to do it. But that's half of the point, doing something that's hard and working my way through it. The other half is learning to enjoy the silence (not always feel a need to fill it), learning to enjoy time without technology, and having time with God.

Whew.

So next post, hopefully tomorrow...if I'm around a computer, will be some more details about my very recent engagement (^_^).

Later folks!!!