Big stuff, CHECK. Bunt cake, MONEY

It's been awhile party people.  My bad.  We have been busy.

Life is just in the midst of craziness right now for both Em and myself.  Emmy is in the middle of TACS testing with her little kiddos in Hillsboro.  I am covered neck deep in the preparing for K-Life's biggest fundraiser of the  year, DODGEBALL (insert my pitch to donate money to Waco K-Life)!  We have a huge tournament where over 200 people come play in it.  This tournament builds about 2/3 of our budget for the entire YEAR!  So, yeah...it's a pretty big deal.

Emmy went home to CO a couple weeks ago to nail down some big things with her Momma (shout out to Cakes for killing it on the wedding planning, we love you and couldn't do this without you!).  I got to come for the tail end and do the hardest stuff: TASTE TESTING.  I got to taste a stupid amount of incredible bunt cake and dinner dishes for the wedding.  It was awesome.  I'm a pro at this wedding planning stuff.

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM THE ENGAGED GUY:
And now ALL you single people out there, here me out because this is important.  Follow these directions and you will not disappointed:
1. Find a friend of the opposite, sex.
2. Call a plethora(good word) of different dessert places and bakeries around town.
3. Explain to them your engaged and set up tasting appointment for you and your "fiancee"
4. Enjoy a large amount of free food and conveniently e-mail them a week later expressing your gratitude but that you're going with somewhere else...
*or be dramatic and make up a dramatic story of why the wedding is off (do it in person to make it more believable in the shop).

Now of  course, this would be lying so I by my moral values can ENCOURAGE you do it.  But I feel like I just need to put it in your ear.  The choice is yours.

All in all, things are coming along.  All the big stuff is good to go.  Also we just booked our HONEYMOON, WHOOP WHOOP!!! We are going to the Dominican Republic and staying at the Dreams Resort in Punta Cana.  We will live like royalty for 10 days and tell everyone we are royalty, then come back to reality and be poor! We can't wait.  Thanks for all your prayers in this process.

Until next time,
GP, out.

getting closer...

Garrett here, well it's almost March!  Where did the time go?  We are just flying through this semester of school and before we know it we are going to be in to the summer.  We can't wait!

Last weekend, Emmy and I took our engagements pictures with a friend of ours Erin Woosley.  We drove up to Ft. Worth and worked on our serious faces for the camera!  It was a lot of fun.  I think you guys are really going to like how the pictures came out.  Had three different wardrobe changes and we literally just drove around until Erin would tell us to pull over.  We ended up lying down in the middle of the brush, climbing on some boat hanger, and even standing on the side of Long John Silvers....yes I said it, we took our ENGAGEMENT pictures on the side of Long John Silvers!  Spoiler alert, we looked REAL GOOD!

Next weekend is Spring Break for us here in Waco.  I am taking a group of high school students from Waco to LA for a mission trip.  The sad part is Emmy leaves for CO the day we get back from LA.  So these next two weeks we are going to be doing that whole phone thing.... (insert booing crowd).

I will be flying out to CO Springs for the weekend in two weeks to meet Em.  We will be picking out the food for the reception and doing a lot of taste testing.  Needless to say, I'll be REAL good at that!

Other than that, things are progressing.  We are about to book our entire honeymoon.  We are just waiting for our new credit card to come in.  We are just paying for it on an American credit card so we can get a free flight out of it.... ya I know we are brilliant.  But here are the details of our honeymoon:

We are staying at the Dreams Resort at Palms Peach Punta Cana Dominican Republic.  I have been to the DR before and am in love with it!  It is beautiful and also not overly touristy, and they speak spanish there which is ALL emmy cares about haha!  http://www.dreamsresorts.com

Thats it for now.  That's the updates. Hope you are enjoying walking through this process with us.  Stay tuned for our engagement pics coming up in the next week or two!

Just another day...

(G)

I was talking to a good friend the other night on the phone.  It was really exciting to talk to this person because she had been trying to get a hold of me for about a week.  I told her a long time ago that whenever she gets a boyfriend that I better not find out from Facebook, twitter or something else.  I want to hear it from her!  So naturally, the day has come and she let me know.

At first thought, I was listening to her tell me the story all gitty and smiling from ear to ear, I just kind of shook my head on the other end of the phone.  But then something hit me.  What a fun time for my friend and her new boyfriend.  They are starting in the honeymoon stage of a relationship!  I got to tell her how this is one of the best times of a relationship.  I still remember the first month of my and Em's relationship, and let's be real it was the jam!  Ours was a little different then most, because the first month of us intentionally being interested in one another--we were half way across the US from each other.  So this was all over the phone.  Nonetheless, it was euphoric (haha what a great word, totally wrong word but come on, if I was writing an SAT essay, I'd for sure get a 12)

Here are some memories from that first month or two of us:

1. I was flying out of OKC at the end of school in May.  I met Em about a month prior to me leaving, and I didn't want to leave.  I was suppose to leave for OKC in the morning.  But I ended up climbing in my car at like 9pm to leave Waco for OKC.  Guess why I left so late?...yeah I was a little distracted.  Home girl caught my eye and my attention.

2. On my drive to OKC, I got calls every hour on the hour from Em and her best friend Katy.  They were calling from Katy's phone to "check in".  Funny that it was only Em who did the "checking in"!

3. I got a package from her in the mail over the summer with a little note in it from her...hand written of course.

4. We went to see the "crookedest street" (self proclaimed name by Em and Katy) in SF.--That would be Lomard St.

5.  Our first kiss, probably a little early, happening at 2am in the hallway of my house in California.  What can I say? I'm trigger happy!
_______

All in all, it's cool to come full circle and feel like I am back in the honeymoon stage again with Em.  No joke, for someone reason this whole engagement process has been nothing short of just another spark in our relationship.
All I know is I'm excited to make all kinds of memories with Em just like these listed for the rest of our lives.