My First Tri!

Well, it has been quite a while since I've written--things have been rather busy with wedding planning and work, but this morning, I completed a Ramblin' Rose triathlon, and I felt it deserved a blog post!

My wonderful fiance (who got up at the crack of dawn to drive me to the race, held my stuff, cheered for me, and met me at the finish line!) asked me what exactly had made me want to do this race.  I've never been the most athletic, but since college I've had an on-and-off relationship with running/the elliptical/group exercise classes/etc.  I definitely wouldn't classify myself as a runner--though I've made several attempts to become one.  As a chid, I swam on summer swim team, and enjoyed that.  I go through phases of biking.  So when I saw the Ramblin' Rose stuff I thought--maybe that is something I could do!  Then I saw that there was a training class being offered, so I figured why not?

I finished in 1:17 today, and though there were a couple hundred women who finished faster than me, I am so excited to say that I did it!  Not only did I do it, I really enjoyed it!!!  The race was a great experience, and having trained and worked for it gave me such a sense of accomplishment when I finished it today!

engagement party

My parents threw us an engagement party a few weeekends ago, which was a blast.  It was so fun to see people we don't get to see on a regular basis, and celebrate our engagement with them.  My mom ordered these really cute napkins, in our colors...

 and got me this beautiful corsage--daisies are our flowers...

and my moms best friend and her daughter made this DELICIOUS cupcakes--half were champagne cupcakes, made with strawberry champagne--AMAZING--and the other half were chocolate.  Both were fabulous, and I ate more than I should have!

I wore this super cute Lilly dress, with navy heels, and it was the perfect outfit for our engagement party!  I had such a good time celebrating with everyone, and can't wait for the celebrations to come!

banana coconut bread

Earlier this week, I had a WHOLE LOT of extra bananas and was about to go out of town for the rest of the week, so I figured I'd try to make something out of them instead of having to throw them all way.  My original intent was to make banana muffins, but then I realized I'd left all my cupcake/muffin pans at J's last time I baked there.  However, I still had my mini-muffin pan, so I decided to give mini-muffins a shot.   And then I decided to spice them up by throwing in some chocolate chips and chocolate graham cracker crumbs I had left over from another baking adventure.  Right around the time I finished stirring in the chocolate chips--I remembered that they were MINT chocolate chips.  Surprisingly, the mint-banana combination wasn't awful, but I still had a whole lot of bananas left after that, so I decided to do a little more experimentation, and ended up with banana coconut bread which was delicious!

I used this banana muffin recipe from Cat Can Cook and did it in a 9x9 square pan.  I put down a layer of the batter, put in a layer of coconut, and then another layer of the batter, baked it for 25 or 30 minutes, and was THRILLED with the result!  This is definitely going on my "make again" list!

THE dress

Today I (or really, my dad!) purchased the most important dress I will ever buy--my wedding dress!  My maid of honor and I went dress shopping this past weekend while she was in town, and fell in love with the very first dress I tried on.  We went to two different boutiques, and had an AMAZING experience at the first store, and an okay one at the second.  The girl that helped us at the first store did such a great job of sitting down with us for 15-20 minutes when we first got there, and talking to me about my style, the wedding plans we have already made, my vision for the wedding, my likes and dislikes, and more.  She was so friendly and fun, and wonderful to work with.  All of the dresses she picked out for me to try on matched my descriptions of my likes and dislikes, and she just knocked it out of the park with the first one.  Every dress I tried on after that, I compared to the first.  The second store that we went to just didn't do as good of a job listening to me.  The girl only took a minute or two to ask about what I liked and didn't like, and then almost all the dresses she brought didn't fit in with my likes and dislikes, and once again, every single dress I put on I thought "well, this part of it is really pretty, but the dress yesterday was PERFECT."  So this afternoon I went back to the first store with my parents, and they approved, so we purchased the dress and the veil!  I am SO excited and can't wait to wear it!!!

Lent

Today is the first day of Lent, and this year I am giving up sweets.  I have QUITE the sweet tooth, and love any kind of chocolate, baked good, flavored coffee, etc.  I think the last time I tried giving up sweets was around middle school, and I don't know that I was successful then, so I'm hoping that I've developed some more will power by now.  I've been reading a lot about the evils of sugar and soda recently, and I've managed to give up soda 90% of the way, but I know sweets will be a harder one.  I'm hoping that giving it up for Lent will help me become a more reasonable consumer of it after Lent.  I'm also hoping that by giving up something REALLY hard for me, it will strengthen both my faith and my willpower.  Now if only I can find a way to hide all those delicious looking desserts I keep coming across on Pinterest...

wedding planning!

Well, the past almost two months have been crazy, with lots going on at work, and, MUCH more exciting than work, wedding planning in progress!  We are getting married in August, so we have LOTS to do before then.  We've made some good progress though--we have our venue, our photographer, and our DJ, and I've found THE dress--I just have to get approval from my parents on Thursday.  My parents hosted an engagement party for us this weekend, which was a lot of fun!  I got to see quite a few people I don't see very often, which is always a treat.  My best friend and Maid of Honor flew in for the party and so we could go wedding dress shopping, which was wonderful.  I was so glad she could go with me to look for the dress!  Wedding planning is definitely time consuming, but so far, it's been a lot of fun, and I'm really excited about all of the decisions we have made.  Now to find the florist, cake, invites, and bridesmaid dresses!

engaged!

Last night was a magical, perfect evening, and now I'm engaged!

We went to the Melting Pot for dinner, which was fabulous and delicious, and then we headed downtown to the little ice skating rink they put up outside in the winter.  We were skating around, and he started asking me about my ideal proposal... the conversation went a little something like this:
  J- So what is your ideal proposal situation.. just us?  friends?  I know the jumbotron is out...
  Me- Yeh, definitely no jumbotron, but I don't know, I'd be happy with either...
  J- so, if I got down on one knee right now...
  Me- are you serious? really?  really?
And then he got down on one knee, told me he loved me and asked me to marry him, and of course I said YES!!!  There was some misting up, some hugging and kissing, and a REALLY gigantic smile on my face.  He told me to look over and I'd see his cousin taking pictures--I'm SO excited to see those!  After that, he said he had one more surprise for me, so we jumped in the car where I alternated between saying three things:
 1. We're engaged!!!
 2.  I'm so happy!!!
 3.  Where are we going?
As we were driving to the mystery destination, we called our parents, and his mom said, "Well, maybe you can stop by later tonight so we can see the ring and everything" and he said, "you know, we are actually driving by where you work, so we can stop in real quick and see you on our way to the surprise."  We walked in, and all my best friends, and our families were there!  They all suspected, but weren't for sure, until we walked in.  It was perfect to have our friends there to celebrate with us right then, and I couldn't be happier!!!