Engaged. To Be Married.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeh! I'm so excited! (Okay, just had to get that little school girl shriek out. You didn't see the jumping up and down. Luke and I are engaged. Today, we had some down time before he had to fly out. We were sitting on the couch, facebooking it up, and he suggested looking at rings. I figured we were in fact just going to look, since I knew he had concerns regarding my Etsy ring requests. I was voting for a band, he was voting for something more sparkly. Anyway, we went to the jewelry store, and just sort of browsed. The poor saleslady was so confused because I kept asking for smaller! I take rings off in my sleep and other places, and well the idea of losing something huge and sentimental is scary! Finally I wound my way over to the promise ring section and I showed Luke this pretty little white gold ring with three diamonds. Luke basically said, "We'll take this one." and that was that. It was going to be sized, and we would pick it up in a hour. We went back and she asked if I wanted to wear it out. I said yes. When we got to the car Luke said: "I'm going to need that back." I gave him a look! What!? He said "I haven't proposed yet." I gave him back the ring. Maybe a little bit grudgingly.

As we were sitting outside on the swing, I began to think, uhhh we have to get him to the airport in about an hour. He cant take the ring with him too! (As Cindy says, ONE of them has to stay, they can't both leave!) Hows this gonna work? Just as these thoughts began to go through my head he pulled me over to a shady area. He got down on one knee, and took the ring out. Okay, so I knew it was coming, what compelled the tears to well up in my eyes? I don't know. OF COURSE I said yes, and he put the ring on my finger. Then the excitement set in! Luke says its a good thing he waited because the high pitchedness is "a bit much."
We reenacted the whole thing in photos for the benefit of people who weren't there. (All of you.)

The first of many compromises to come! I like it. A lot.

Basic Low Down Before the Big Stuff

All track of time has been lost so I will do my best to catch up. Life has been moving pretty quick! We're talking Lightning McQueen fast people. The weekend before finals I was given the gift of Luke, in that his parents very kindly helped arrange for him to come down to visit as soon as he was out of his apartment. Which meant that he finished finals, wrapped up the internship hunt, moved out of his apartment, and then drove up to Spokane by 4:30 Sunday morning where Emma my cousin dropped him off at the airport. Luke then flew from Spokane to Sacramento where my Aunt Cindy and cousin Katie picked him up and brought him down to Fresno where we were having a family gathering! (At this point Luke said he was on 60 hours and only 4 of them included sleep.) When he finally arrived at our house, he was out. For at least 16 hours. I tried to wake him up once, and he said something about Colorado? I snuck a picture of him burrowing in my pillows. Hiding from the heat I think!

I had finals and work all week that overlapped with the credential program at Fresno Pacific, so if was a bit stressful but when I went out to take my mom to the bank I found this friendly surprise wishing me congratulations on graduation! Yay! I graduated from Fresno State!

Once Luke was here my mom immediately created a "honey do" list for him. Haha. She kept it on the fridge and included things like buying and planting zinnias in the front yard, planting her rosemary bush, making the washer stop thumping when it spins, cutting down our palm trees, changing a light bulb in the garage, etc.
Through an unfortunate lack of awareness on both of our parts, we failed to realise that Luke's plane was scheduled to leave Sacramento at 10:45 on THURSDAY not Friday like we had thought. Sooo on Thursday morning that sort of hit us like a ton of bricks.
HOWEVER, it DID give us more time together and for that I was grateful. We were able to spend Saturday up at Lakeview Cottages and I was able to show him around the mountains I grew up "wandering"!

We hiked up to Inspiration Point. (just about 7,000 ft elevation)

It was exciting for me to see all the growth along the trail. Since the wildfire all I can really remember is little shrubs. It was sort of a surprise for me to be noticing young trees that were taller than me!

After our hike we had barbecued asparagus, trout (caught that day in the lake) and country style potatoes! Yum! On Sunday we had intended to go check out some of the golf courses near the beach. Instead, I called Luke who has been staying at Mark and Cindy's house and suggested sleeping in. It wasn't a hard battle to win. We spent the rest of our "lazy day" cutting out pieces for a quilt (me) and working on PGM (professional golf management) binders (Luke). We finished it off with Sal's Mexican food to-go and a movie from the 4 for $20 rack at Blockbuster's. Life is good.

Growth

Yep in spite of all the chaos, I'm growing! Learning new things and starting new adventures. On Monday I started the Credential Program at Fresno Pacific University. In about a week I will be graduated from Fresno State. I now know how a chemo appointment goes, and Jennifer has taught me how to give mom pain med injections (not as hard as I thought it would be...but still wierd.) My laptop hard drive was failing...so we pulled the plug on it and I will be growing into a new laptop pretty quick here (thank you to the Eagle Networks crew!)
On a complete side note: Luke is coming down tomorrow! He bought his plane ticket today. Sure brightens things up!

My Oh My Multiple Myeloma

Some of you may know, and others may not know. My mother was recently diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. Her chemotherapy will begin tomorrow (Monday.) Updates on her condition/status can be found <here>. I know she'll appreciate comments (we changed the settings so that you don't have to be a member of blogspot to comment), and prayers!

Red21

Last weekend we celebrated my friend Destinie's 21st birthday! Mikey, Destinies boyfriend recruited me for help planning the event!

We were "Really Excited Destinie" was turning 21! Everyone was asked to wear Red and Black. A lot of this may look a bit similar to the Twilight Party but hey, why re-invent the wheel?

I put this swirly logo on the front of the invitation and on the envelope. Destinie uses a lot of french country sheik decor mixed with a lot of scrolling iron work and red/orange colors so this "scheme" fit her pretty well!

The whole point was to throw the party FOR Destinie so she didn't get all involved, but we had to tell her the theme so she could find an outfit, and when I arrived to help Mikey set up, there were little red and black things everywhere I KNOW she snuck in! Take for example the not so subtle re-decoration of the bathroom. I replaced all the Twilight quotes in the black frames with dramatic red and black images I found online and put them all over. Mikey's house has a two sided fireplace which meant I got TWO mantles to load with frames and red candles!I also pulled these photos of red and black sign letters off the Internet. Printed them as 5x7 images and strung them up with a red ribbon. This time around instead of having "bloody" glasses with red dripping down them I lightly rimmed the glasses with red syrup and then heavily coated that rim with red sugar crystals the night before. They dried really well which was good because it meant they didn't all come off right away!Destinie and Jess! Yay! I loved her dress! (Could be because I'm the ladybug fan in the group!)Beth and Kassy made a red velvet cake! It was really good!We managed to snag some of the guys to get a picture! They weren't so willing and definatly didn't want to take more than 1. (The girls took 3...or 4.)We loved the excuse to dress up! Yay!

Happy Birthday Destinie! XO!

Wax Job

I've been playing with wax. I know it drives my dad crazy. He sees (and remembers) all the things that can (and sometimes do) go wrong and it sort of freaks him out. For some reason I cant stand to let all those broken crayons go to waste. Theres good color left in them just waiting to be utilized! I loved to lay crayon bits on paper in the sun to get all swirly and melty! (It didn't help the case against my dad when it didnt occur to me to weight these projects down. The wind blew them over and the wax melted into our pourous pool side concrete. oops.) Any way we've got lots of broken crayons at work and once again I found myself saving them. We did the melty wax project at school with the students, but then I found ideas for making crayons around the web. Mine are sort of a mix and match of all of them but I did learn some things:
1.) When baking the wax in a slicone mold (big flowers) it really is important not to get the temp to high. If you turn the heat up to speed up the process, you'll get a clear layer that doesnt color.
2.) If you use mom's special non stick pans for acting as a double boiler, and the can the wax is in tips over, she'll find out what you used them for (even if you think you wiped it all out) when she makes mashed potatoes and the bubbles on top are blue.
3.) Use heavy duty bags to smash the crayons in, because "Dad" (substitute roomate, husband, sister) doesnt like it when there are tiny wax bits on the floor that stick to feet.

Happy crayon making! Its a lot of fun!

Fraternal Twins

My mom just finnished her 1930's quilt! So now we have two completed quilt tops, coordinating but not exactly the same! My mom took all of our primary colored blocks, and I took all of the pastel blocks, but we used the same pattern I made up for the sashing and put the same measurements on for borders. They're fraternal twins!

Just in case you forgot what mine looks like, here it is!