Distance running and crossfitting have been awesome activities that have helped build both my stamina and endurance.  I’ve noticed simple every day things in life like tackling flights of stairs, walking from one end of the mall to the other (while weaving through too many holiday shoppers) in the shortest amount of time possible, moving boxes around at work, lugging around my 3 year old godson when we get to a store and I realize he’s not wearing shoes (yes this happens a lot), and pretty much all other daily life physical actives have gotten progressively easier for the years.  While I am by no means setting any athletic records out there, I generally consider myself in decent shape and feel like I can tackle most tasks with the endurance and stamina necessary.

In the past three weeks I have tackled a brand new endurance event altogether.  I call this event wedding planning.  The endurance required here is about similar to what I have come to learn about other endurance actives.  Marathons have taught me that sometimes you have to start slow in order to stay strong toward the end.  You want to keep a nice steady effort throughout, because we all know that regardless of who the rest of the race as gone, those last miles are going to hurt (its just a matter of much bad).  Crossfit has been a bit different.   It is another sport of strategy.  Some workouts you may need to ease yourself in to power through the finish.  Other workout are like pure sprints, start to finish.  Sometimes you look at the WOD and realize you really need to power throughout the tougher exercises front loaded in the workout.  Wedding planning seems to fall somewhere in the middle.  Need a strong start.  A lot of front loaded stuff.  Then I think things will settle down for a bit, keeping the pace consistent and steady, but no need to plow through.  But I just know the end will be like those last miles of a marathon and those last burpees in a WOD.  No matter what, its gunna hurt but leading to an pretty sweet “high”.

We don’t do anything slow in my family.  We get things done.  I got engaged the night of 11/17.  By the time I got home that night my mom had a rough guest list typed up on the “Notes” of her iPad.  Since the past 3 weeks we have:

• Set a date (11.16.13!)
• Picked our colors
• Booked the ceremony space: deposit paid
• Booked the reception space: deposit paid
• Decided on a rough menu/entree offering (pretty much all food and drinks except the cake will come from the reception venue)
• Taken engagement photos (wanted to do it before it got to cold and in enough time to get them back and order Save the Dates)
• Ordered Save the Dates
• Booked the photographer (we loved the photog from our engagement shoot so I went ahead and booked her before someone else snatches her up)
• Created a pretty good guest list (will need some tweaking here and there but the outline is pretty set)
• “Hired” an officiant (okay we cheated a bit on this one as Jared’s dad will be doing the service)
• Chosen my half of the bridal party (most of his is down as well, just a couple things to figure out there)
• Created a wedding website
• Picked out three styles of bridesmaids dresses, located a salon that carries them, booked an appointment with my girls to go try them on
• Started house hunting (already saw two houses and looked through numerous listings from the agent)

Yep…pretty front loaded.  I like things done so I don’t have to worry about them.  The one thing I haven’t really seriously considered yet if my dress.  I’ve always kind of known, in a general sense, what I want but actually booking an appointment to go try things on seems so scary to me.  I realize I need to get over that as the dress search, ordering, and alternations can take a lot of time.  But at the moment, I still running on the adrenaline…and using it to my fullest advantage.

It Flies By Photography

And now, just because I can, here are just a few of my favorites from our shoot with Amanda of It Flies By Photography (check out her Facebook page HERE).  She was SO much fun I can’t rave enough about her.  She totally meshed with out personalities and got that we weren’t exactly the “formal pose” type couple.  Before we knew it she was coming up with some super creative ideas and was just encouraging us to “do our thing” while she snapped away.  And you can tell she just loves what she does.  And she has one heck of an artistic eye.  If you are around the MD, DC, VA area I highly suggest you check her out!  She’s great with kids as well.  

She met us at our old school.  I went to school here from kindergarten-senior year.  J start here in 9th grade.  It’s where we met, found friendship, and fell in love.  And in a little less than a year we will be getting married in the same chapel we graduated in (well I also graduated elementary and middle school here ; )  Oh, and if we are Facebook friends, you’ve already been bombarded with these.  But oh well what can I say, I’m still on that adrenaline high.  

So many memories here.  He played QB.  I was a cheerleader.  He all but ignored me our freshman year, but then sophomore year a homecoming game win led to a high five on these steps which led to a homecoming dance which led to something pretty darn awesome…

And finally some decent ring shots.

And as I was looking back over the pictures I realized one in particular looked awfully familiar…

The one on the left was taken 5 years ago.  The one on the right was taken a week ago.  

And I’ll leave you with this.

When I mentioned the whole “Cullen Family”esque photo to one of my best friends and how I wished I knew photoshop cuz I’d totally vampire it out.  And she’s brilliant and sent me this and I kinda wish I hadn’t ordered Save The Dates yet ; )  Seriously, my friends are the coolest dorks I know.