Oh dear....

....I've gone far too long without blogging and now have much too much to write about! I have the urge to keep procrastinating, but I'll give it my best shot.

So in January, Chris finally made it over to the U.S. for his first ever visit! And lucky him, he got to see the Paris of America...Boise, ID. ;) He seemed to enjoy it though and is excited about the move. It was funny to see how enraptured he was by the mountains. I never really thought about the fact that they don't have any big mountains over there. I think it will be great fun in the summer when I can take him exploring in the woods, maybe even go camping for a couple of days. The trip went by far too quickly, but he was able to meet all of my family. My dad and his wife Ginger flew from New Mexico so they could meet him, and my sister and niece came from Rexburg for the weekend. What a great family I have! I think they all wanted to be able to approve of him before we make the commitment of him moving here...haha. But the good news is they all did approve! And I got lots of comments about how we seem good together, which was nice to hear. I also got my new (and permanent) engagement ring while he was here. :) It's a family heirloom, belonging to his great grandmother. It took some getting used to just because of the size difference from my first ring, but I absolutely LOVE it. We also had a late Christmas together and coincidentally bought each other some similar things, including books and penguin stuff! :) We have a little inside thing about penguins...it's from Never Been Kissed. Perhaps you remember when the girl calls David Arquette her "penguin" because penguins mate for life? Well, I told Chris about that when we started dating and since then, we've referred to each other as "my penguin." So corny you gagged a little? :) Yes, it is corny but with Chris, I absolutely love the corn.

So after Chris returned to England, I went into a funk for awhile...ignoring all cleaning responsibilities and basically being lazy and unproductive. I've snapped out of it since, and am back to my normal level of laziness! ;) I got the sweetest Valentine's gifts from him too. He sent a beautiful bouquet of purple roses and a HUGE stuffed animal puppy to my office. I later got a package from him which included lots of my favorite candies and chips that can only be acquired in England. He's the best. :)

No visa news yet. We are currently going with the theory of "a watched pot never boils." Normally we both check the USCIS website daily to see if our status has changed, but we both agreed to wait a week before looking again and are keeping our fingers crossed for a miracle! Chris probably won't be able to move out here until the beginning of August either way, but we are hoping to get things approved soon so he has plenty of time to do the interview in London before moving time arrives.

And as far as wedding news...well, it's been interesting! I'd be really curious to see if any other couple in the history of the world has rescheduled their wedding as many times as we did! :) The good news is we FINALLY got a FINAL date picked. It is going to be September 23rd. We are hoping the weather will still be nice enough then for an outdoor ceremony. I didn't want to get married in August (given my last anniversary was in that month) and we wanted to make sure we had a date far enough out (but not too far) that we wouldn't be stressed over the visa not going through by then. We've also gone through lots of changes as far as planning the event goes. For about a week, we were going extravagant. There was a beautiful building downtown that we wanted to rent, then we were going to have a catered meal, a DJ, the whole shebang! But then I had a bit of an epiphany (thanks in part to my mother) that it's kind of ridiculous to spend thousands of dollars on a reception. So, we have decided to keep things small and intimate...strictly family and very close friends. Even the family portion is being cut down to immediate family plus grandparents. Our guest list right now is 28...haha. We are going to do a ceremony at Kathryn Albertson Park in downtown Boise, followed later by a nice dinner at the Cottonwood Grille. I'm actually really looking forward to doing things this way! We save a lot of money, but we still have the most important people there with us. It will be more special and intimate this way, and something to remember. Plus, oh my goodness, it's going to save me soooo much stress!! I'm a major planner by nature so I was obsessing over little details and it wasn't healthy for me. Now I don't have that much to plan out! Oh, and we got an AWESOME photographer that I'm soooo excited to work with! We are planning to send out wedding announcements to everyone after the wedding, with those pictures.

I was going to attach some photo's of Chris' trip but I'm too lazy at the moment. They are all on Facebook so go there. ;) If you don't have Facebook and really want to see them, leave me a comment...if I get a few requests for that then I'll go through the trouble of putting them on here too.

Anyway, I guess that kind of sums it up for now. Still chugging along in the same job, living at the same apartment, doing mostly the same thing everyday. Sometimes it feels like I'm waiting for my life to start, you know? Like this is just a waiting period until Chris gets here and then life can begin. I'm trying to see it as a last opportunity to go out whenever I want to and things like that, but honestly I'd give up those kind of perks to have him here in a second. Still, gotta look on the bright side.