Memorial day weekend

Kevin, Joy, and I ventured over to Spokane for the holiday weekend to "get 'er done!" The traffic wasn't the best, but it was so worth it. Let me tell you, we did work.

• Figured out what the groomsmen will be wearing. This was honestly the hardest thing we have done so far. Kevin was our mannequin and he hates trying on clothes. Thanks for being a good sport honey! 
• Normally at weddings the groomsmen are fairly easy to dress because they just wear tuxes. However, since we are having an outdoor rustic wedding, tuxes are way too formal. Not to mention the boys would probably pass out from the hot August heat, and we don't want that. Here is a little preview of what Kevin's guys will be wearing...

He's so darn cute!

Paired with what my ladies will be wearing, it will look great!

The pic above is from the website. 

They won't be wearing pumps because: 

1.) too formal and 

2.) The heels will probably get stuck in the ground haha ;) No bueno!

Here's a pic of the shoes the girls will wear with the dress:

Kevin will be wearing pretty much the same thing as the groomsmen, but with a vest over it...

• Next my mom and Kathy (Kevin's mom) got to work on the potted plants that will be leading the way to the ceremony and down the aisle. Joy and I watered and sprinkled them with miracle grow so they will be big and beautiful for the wedding :)

Yay, team work!

• On the last night, my good friend and bridesmaid Kristin came over to help me and Joy finish the invitations. We had a great little train going and it surprisingly went pretty fast. They are being sent out today, so keep an eye out for your invite ;)

I wanted to give everyone a small peak to where the ceremony will be. I've always wanted to get married on my parent's property and I'm so excited that my dream is becoming a reality :)

Below is a bad picture of where the reception will be.

There will be tents, dance floor, music, yummy food & drinks, and great people!

A special thank you to Kevin's parents, my parents, Joy, and Kristin for all of your help this weekend! We are so blessed to have all of you in our lives and that you are so happy and willing to help us with everything.

A little over 2 months...

Time is flying! I don't know how to keep up with it, it's crazy.

A lot has happened since the last post. We got our registry figured out, thanks to the help of my Mother and Sister-in-law. (Honestly, I have no idea what I'd do without them. Much love!) We decided to just register at Target (versus Target & Macy's) to make things easier :)

We are spending the holiday weekend over in Spokane with both of our families. Doing what you ask? More wedding preparations of course! ;)

Enjoy the 3 day weekend everyone!

God bless!
The future Mrs. Hart

Crazy!

Let me just start off by saying that Kevin and I will not be getting a puppy (let a lone two of them at once) anytime soon. Last weekend was nuts! They are so much work! Props to my brother and sister-in-law for handling them so well everyday ;)


As I said in the last post, Kevin and I went to register this past Saturday. It was a pretty funny experience to say the least. We had no idea what we were doing. To say it was the blind leading the blind would be an understatement. We don't really have a vision for our kitchen, so we couldn't even decide what plates or appliances we wanted. Thankfully my sister-in-law Stephanie (a.k.a the master decorator extraordinaire) is going to help me find what would look good.

Speaking of Stephanie....have you seen her blog? If not, please go to http://domesticallydobson.blogspot.com - It's amazing! You won't regret it :)

We managed to find a few things that we wanted including a Harry Potter Wii game ;) So in conclusion, we apologize for the randomness of our registry. Hopefully it will be completed this weekend, thanks to the help of my Mom and Steph :)

I'm so thankful for all the help that we have received in the wedding planning process. We are truly blessed!

God bless!
The future Mrs. Hart

House/Pup Sitting

My brother and sister-in-law are spending the weekend in Sin City, so I offered to hang out at their house and watch their dogs (or my nephews, as I like to call them ;))

Here's a pic:

They are so funny and have so much energy! They want to be by you at all times and give you lots of kisses, it's super sweet. 

I've been looking forward to house/puppy sitting for awhile. It may sound silly, but it's almost like a mini-vacation :)  Since I pretty much have to stay here the whole weekend, I have lots of things that I plan to get done! I have already gotten all of the "save the dates" addressed and they just need to be popped in the mail. Boy does my hand hurt from writing all those bad boys out...

Kevin and Joy are meeting me down here tonight. We are looking forward to a fun and relaxing friday night filled with food, drinks, laughter, and uno!

Kevin and I are going to go register for gifts tomorrow at Target and Macy's. I can't wait to use that little gun thing, haha. Looks like so much fun :)

That's all for now!
God bless,
The future Mrs. Hart

"Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." - Oscar Wilde

Love this quote. Embrace who you are!

Love,
The future Mrs. Hart

My side of the story

okay so here is my side of the story...

After a while of being single I realized two things that one in my field of work i don't really meet women and the few that I do aren't of the sort that I was looking for and two that even if I had met the right type I have about as much game as a pile of dirt..... I realized that like all great achievers in America I needed to outsource!

so that's exactly what I did. I scoured the Internet for ways to weasel my way into the paid dating sites for free or for discounted coupon prices but alas I couldn't find anything. 40 bucks a month was a ridiculous price! there was no way i could afford all that - but after consulting with my Dad, i knew i needed some experience dating so that my brain wouldn't make me so nervous around women after being deprived of them for 4 years. So I shopped around for a while and eventually stumbled onto plenty of fish. a free dating website that didn't seem to have much promise. 

After a few days of people surfing and getting messages from people I had an entire rule set for how to determine the quality of a candidate just by looking at a series of 7 or so pictures which I still use to help my friends with to this day. 

Red Flag #1 ABSOLUTELY NO MYSPACE ANGLES!!!!!! .........bad. They are very commonly used by personality types I don't like...  whit didn't have any :D

Red Flag #2 NO DUCK FACE!!! you know that thing girls do ( and some guys ) where they scrunch up there face in front of a camera that makes them look like a duck? no? well look here and you can see for yourself. This behavior is also a signal of a specific type of personality I don't like but only when its in high numbers and even more so when combined with a skimpy dress in a club.....BAD! 
http://www.antiduckface.com/
Whit didnt have any! :D

Red Flag #3 DIFFERENT POSSES & SMILES PLEASE!!!  if a gal had made the exact same smile and pose for each picture that means she is probably one of those girls that has to practice looking happy because she normally isn't. this is something I notice to be more common in Seattle.
whits smile is really pretty and un rehearsed! :D

Red Flag #4 SHE'S THE ONLY ONE!! pictures that have other people in them mean you have friends which gives you a much better chance of being likable. If there the only one that's a big red flag.
Whitney had lots of friends in her pictures! :D

there were a few others but those were the big ones. Whit passed all of my rules and more! I especially enjoyed all the love i saw in her life being expressed to her and by her with her family.  but even all that only meant she might be a good match. I thought Whitney was so cute and I sent her profile to my best man Andrew to make sure my eyes weren't fooling me. She was the first girl I sent a message to and boy was it direct. I pretty much told her my life's plan and asked her to sign the dotted line at the bottom...not really but i was very forward in what i was looking for long term not that she had to be that but i figured that was the best way to make sure neither of us were really waisting our time. But yea she read it and then waited 5 days to reply who does that :'( by day 2 i thought for sure i had been rejected but she surprised me.

we spent the next week or so messaging back and forth and calling on the phone. i was so nervous about talking to her on the phone. online i have all the time I need to think of the exact right words to describe what I want to in the way I want to but talking on the phone i get nervous and my voice shakes and i run out of breath. it was nice though because when we finally went on our date i felt like we had things to talk about.

we decided a movie and then a jamba juice was the best first date because Whitney was too nervous to eat on first dates and the movie would give us something to talk about while we enjoy a smoothie afterwards. truth be told smoothie was my awkward silence band aid. Every time I couldn't think of anything to say I just stuck the straw in my mouth. Instant non awkward reason for there to be silence. 

anyways i met up with her and to my delight she was even prettierr than in her pictures. I gave her a big hug to break the invisible wall. we went into the movie theater and sat down. I immediatly noticed she had really closed off body language ( did i ever mention i studied endless documents on body language for about 2 weeks for this moment?) but she was very engaging verbally so i was really confused up until she touched my hair. I almost melted into a puddle right then and there. she then explained that her mom called my hair style a mofo lol. As soon as she touched my hair i knew she was just being conservative with her body language and it wasn't because she wasn't interested.

after the movie we progressed to Jamba juice and it was raining so we didn't get to drink by the fire. bad mistake. try and talk over 5 industrial blenders violently chewing up frozen fruit and you will see why. I kept apologizing because i ran out of stuff to say but she always re assured me that she was having a great time. after we left all i really remember was walking and laughing and whit doubling over and purposefully bumping into me on "accident" being a little flirty.

She had me so hooked at this point she was going to have to get the pliers.

we got in her car and she drove me to my car. My face looked like this the entire time O_O. it was scary. Next thing i knew i leaned over to her making it very clear i was only goin in for a hug to be respectful. It was awesome i think we texted one another later confirming what a great time we both had.

it's been pretty awesome since then ;)


-kevdood

Our Story

I'm not sure if we have shared the story of how we met.  We thought it might be fun for me to describe it one post, and then Kevin to post his side later to compare ;)

So here it goes!

It was the beginning of 2009 and I was living with my brother in Sumner, WA at the time. (For those of you that aren't familiar with western Washington Sumner is a cute small little town about 40 minutes south of Seattle.) I was taking a couple classes at a local community college and working anywhere between 50-60 hours a week at Alaska Airlines. Needless to say, I was one busy chica. 

Although I had lots of things going on in my life at the time, something was missing from the equation. Cheesy? Yes, but no one deserves to be lonely. Anyway!  I was talking to some of my co-workers and they mentioned how they had been on a couple of dates thanks to the website "www.plentyoffish.com". This was way out of my character but honestly, where else would I meet a guy? Walking though the grocery store? Highly unlikely since I tended to do my weekly shopping around midnight sporting flannel pajamas ;) 

Needless to say I created a profile later that week. Like I said before, this was extremely out of my character. My friends were completely shocked when I told them, but it just seemed like a good option! If it didn't work out, I could just delete my profile and move on. What did I have to lose? After my profile was set up, I was shocked at all the messages I received. (I'm not trying to toot my own horn, most of them were nothing to write home about. Actually some of them were just down right disturbing. But that's another story...)  I ended up going on a date with one guy before Kevin that I met on the website. He was nice, but it wasn't going to go anywhere. 

About a week after that date, I was at work and my phone went off saying that I had a message from someone on the site. I logged in on my break to check it out, only to find it was from a very handsome young man telling me that he loved the Lord, wanted to be a great husband and father one day, and that he thought I was cute. I kept reading it over and over. Was he for real? If so, where do I sign because that sounds amazing! It was a really busy week for me between work and school, so I wasn't able to reply until about 5 days later. (Later he told me that he could see that I read the message, and was surprised when I replied. He thought I wasn't interested, but I was....a lot!)

We messaged back and forth for a couple days and then Kevin asked me for my phone number . I still remember our first conversation over the phone. We were playing the question game and Kevin sounded like he was out of breath. Apparently, he was pretty nervous. After about a week of getting to know each other via phone, Kevin asked me out on a date. Nothing fancy, just a casual movie (Coraline) and maybe enjoy a beverage together at the end of the evening (Jamba Juice) at Kent Station.

Before the date, I told one of my friends where we were meeting just in case he was a total creeper. Luckily, that wasn't the case ;) Not wanting them to worry about my safety, I decided not to tell my family simply because I believe that it's difficult for older generations to understand this new way of dating. I parked my car and called Kevin to see where he was at. I was jittery and asked him to stay on the phone with me until we saw one another. I can still picture him standing there, looking even more handsome than I remembered in his pictures. He greeted me with a warm smile and a big hug. (I'm a big hugger! It was a great way to break the ice and ease the tension, go Kev!) 

We walked into the movie theatre and chatted it up before it started. I felt really comfortable around him right off the bat. Since we had been talking for about a week or so before this, we already had a lot of stuff to talk about. Kevin always talks about how I had closed off body language at the movies. Which is true, I won't deny it. I was sitting in my chair legs crossed, leaning away from him. Although, I positioned myself that way I was still extremely involved in the conversation and happy to be there. I know that some guys get the wrong impression when you are too touchy, and I didn't want that to be the case.

After the movie was over, we originally planned to get something to drink and hang out outside near a really pretty fireplace. But! Alas, it was raining. We decided to get a smoothie and just chill (literally ;) pun intended) in there. It was pretty entertaining trying to talk over the loud blender in the background, but I still had the best time. We talked for hours, literally until closing. He was so kind and fun to be around. 

At the end of the night I offered to drive him to his car since he parked on the opposite side of the complex. When we got in the car, I urged him to buckle up and fear for his life. My driving was not the greatest, but it has gotten much better! After we arrived at his car, we gave me a hug and told me that he had a great time. If I could take a moment and be cliche, I would like to say that I was on Cloud9 driving home that night. I knew it was the beginning of something great, and I guess I was right :)

-The Future Mrs. Hart