happy new year!

so i haven't been able to decide whether i was going to keep blogging or not...seeing as it has been forever since my last post, i had almost given up on myself. but since my husband (we will get to that part in a bit) works all day and i now have the coveted title of "housewife, (for now, at least) i have some time on my hands.

so where did we leave off? oh yes, i was in the midst of wedding planning. geez, i'm glad i never have to do that again. i do not recommend planning a wedding while in law school...and if you can't get around that, at least don't try to have a job, transfer schools, and move across the country while planning said wedding. all stress aside, my wedding was everything i wanted it to be and more. i think the best part was that all 38 wedding attendants (yes, 38. 13 bridesmaids, 13 groomsmen, 7 honorary attendants, and 5 ushers) not only got along with each other the entire weekend, but left the weekend with 38 new best friends. i have heard over and over again from not only the wedding party, but other guests at the wedding that they have never seen two groups (my friends and erik's friends) mesh so well and have so much fun together. we are already planning a wedding reunion weekend with everyone next December in Starkville! the weekend started on Thursday night, when a bunch of the out of town members of the wedding party (which was most of the wedding party) got into Starkville. We hit the ground running with BBQ at my parents' house and then out in the Cotton District. Friday was full of last minute wedding stuff for Erik and I, and the rehearsal was pure chaos. Needless to say, the cocktail hour before the Rehearsal Dinner was much appreciated. The Rehearsal Dinner was amazing- so many hilarious and tear-jerking toasts by our best friends, a beautiful atmosphere, and legit food (fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green beans. a true southern meal for the Texas guests). Everyone once again hit the town after dinner, but Erik had to get me home before midnight (so he wouldn't see me on our "wedding day!") and I learned the next day that we missed quite the afterparty. I was just glad to get some good sleep! The Wedding Day STILL feels like a blur. I can't wait to get the photos and video from the wedding so that I can actually remember what went on that day! We had a bridal brunch the morning of, given by my MOHs and their moms. It was delicious and preciously decorated...the perfect way to start the day! Then off to the church to get ready and take photos before the wedding. Still don't remember much of all that. Then the ceremony- we even forgot to say "I do"....but I am told that the marriage is still official. :) Fast forward to the Reception...my favorite part of the entire weekend. We had it at a Lodge outside of Starkville, and in my personal opinion, it was the prettiest reception I've ever seen. Very rustic romantic. I don't think I left the dancefloor all night once the band started playing. Never ate, missed talking to alot of guests (that I so wish i would have seen/spent some time with!), but man did I tear up that dancefloor. Me and Erik both LOVE to dance, so it was inevitable that it would happen. I managed to somehow spill red wine on my dress, break my bustle, and change shoes 3 times before the end of the night. The most vivid part of my wedding for me was getting in the limo as we left the reception and looking at Erik and saying, "that was the best wedding I've ever been to!" It truly was the best day/night of my life so far.

bridal brunch- most of the girls

awesome bridesmaids

The rest of the holidays included a mini-honeymoon to Memphis, TN for the week before Christmas (our big honeymoon is in March- we are going to Kaui, Hawaii!)....we stayed at the Marriot a few nights and then moved to the Peabody for our last 2 nights...it was so much fun. We slept in, watched tons of movies, ate every few hours, and explored downtown and even made a trip to Germantown, where Erik lived as a kid. We got back to Mississippi on Christmas Eve and spent Christmas with my family. Of course, Christmas now revolves around what Jack Thomas (my precious nephew) thinks about everything....and i am totally okay with that. The best part of Christmas was waking up on Christmas morning, looking out my window, and seeing SNOW pouring down! I immediately rolled over and woke up Erik so he could see it, and we both got so excited! My first Christmas with my husband- a memory I will never forget.

 jack thomas' first Christmas. how adorable is he!?

The day after Christmas, we packed up and headed home to San Anton. I have spent the past two weeks unpacking a bazillion boxes, attempting to cook for Erik, and learning my way around the city. I have quickly discovered that San Antonio has the best shopping I have ever experienced. You name a store, and SA has it, somewhere in this town. Dangerous. My mom is coming to stay with me next weekend while Erik goes to a bachelor party....I can't wait to hit the stores with her!

wedding overload

wedding planning has officially overtaken my brain. it is all i think about lately. 

for example:

i passed by a large replica of the Constitution in my law school atrium, and immediately wondered who wrote it and more importantly, if i could pay them to address my invitations with their elegant handwriting. 

every time i go to a married friend’s house now, i check the bottoms of her plates and cups to see what brand they are- so that i can go update my registries with the new items that i saw/liked.

i dream about our wedding day at least twice a week. 

my day at work consists of- emailing my mom about new wedding ideas, emailing erik about shower dates and tux options, googling all things “bridal” and “wedding”, shopping online for bathing suits for our honeymoon, and g-chatting my maid of honor about upcoming bachelorette party plans. tough job.

whenever a slow song comes on my ipod or radio, i intently listen to the words to decide if it could possibly be used during the ceremony or as our first dance. 

….i need a break! luckily, i am home for the week and have been able to get some stuff done- with some free time left this trip so that i can spend some time with my two pregnant friends and *hopefully* get to see my nephew in person!?

registering

i always thought that registering would be one of the highlights of being engaged. picking out all new dishes, bedding, accessories, utensils…a girl’s dream, right? not so much for me…for several reasons. 

a) i am terribly indecisive, and the fact that there are about a million salad plate options alone makes my head want to explode.

b) the long distance factor-since we are having to do tons of wedding stuff the few weekends we are actually together, we’ve barely have time to go pick stuff out. 

c) i do NOT have a knack for decorating (or even knowing what colors go together) so the stuff that i have picked out probably is going to look horrendous next to each other- at least that’s my fear.

last week, i had to register at one last store and E couldn’t go, so mom volunteered to come along with me. It was both a brilliant idea and a disaster all at once. brilliant, because she DOES have the gift of decorating, and told me- very frankly- that the items i had chosen to go together were just not going to work. a disaster (at the time) because she wouldn’t let me register for over half the items that i was convinced that i really needed (that i probably would have chosen had i gone with E). although, i am fairly certain i will thank her for that when i actually get the things i really wanted, instead of that random air purifier that E randomly scanned behind my back a few weeks ago. i will never understand the infatuation between boys and those scanners. but anyway, i ended up picking alot of things that i really really want, which means i now have to go and fix my registries at the other stores that have completely different color schemes. whoopie. 

oh, and one piece of wisdom to other soon-to-be brides out there….Bed, Bath, and Beyond no longer gives you cash back for your returns. i found that out after we had spent at least half our day in there registering for every item in the store in hopes that we would get it and could later return it, thus becoming millionaires. oh well. 

a summer hodgepodge

Remember the days when I had time to blog about any and everything that crossed my mind? I want those days back sometimes. I'm pretty sure that someone pushed the fast-forward button on my life since I last blogged (in may!), and I feel like I have been frantically trying to find the stop button ever since. Let me just tell you a few things that have been going on in my summer so far:

i moved to texas for the summer.
i got engaged (obviously...see previous post).
i worked more hours than i ever thought possible, suing what seemed like every insurance company in america. (for good reasons, don't worry).
i went on family vacation to arizona with my new in-laws.
my little brother got married.
one of my life-long friends had her second little boy, who i got to see the day he was born.
i drove from texas back to virginia in two days.
i spent the fourth of july with erik on the beach.
i went to summer camp with my younglife girls in new york.
i ordered my wedding dress, and booked my: photographer, videographer, church, venue, caterer, florist, and musicians, and sent out our save the dates. whew.
i created/finished our wedding website. (that deserved a sentence of its own because it took forever!)
two of my best friends informed me that they are pregnant!
i began (and am still in) an online non-profit law class.

I really feel like each sentence listed above could have been a post/story of its own...but with so much happening all at once, time has just gotten away from me....so you will just have to take my word for it when i say that each of my summer experiences was just that....an experience. I wouldn't trade the memories from this summer for anything...but I would be lying if I said that I have enjoyed living life in the super-fast lane the past few months. I leave this weekend for yet another event, my friend Katie's bachelorette party...and then next week onto Mississippi to do some more wedding planning, and finishing off that week with Stuart's wedding. Hopefully one of these months, I will get a chance to breathe. highly doubtful. But hey, life is good...change is coming at a rapid pace...and I am determined to be ready to embrace it!

the best day of my life

i have never been more excited to tell a story than i am about telling this one. i have dreamed about the man that would ask to marry me my entire life, and i am telling you what....the man i got, and the story that comes with it, is so much more than i could have ever imagined! Now for "the story"...

Erik had been assuring me that we would get engaged at some point this summer while I was living in Texas (i am here until the end of June) since we both knew we wanted a Christmas wedding and I had been reminding him- daily- that weddings take a long time to plan. (sounds like me, doesn't it?) Of course, I was constantly asking everyone I knew who may have known something about when he was going to do it, but I couldn't get anything out of anyone...no one seemed to have any ideas. So the first weekend after I got to Texas, I headed to Austin for the weekend to see Erik (i am living in Houston and he lives in San Antonio, so we decided to meet every weekend in Austin to be able to see each other). My brother had pretty much convinced me earlier in the week that there was no way that Erik would do it the first weekend I was there because that would be way too obvious, and he also said he hadn't heard anything about any plans of my parents coming to Texas (which I kinda assumed that they would come whenever he did it) and that he was going to be so mad if they came all the way to Texas and he didn't know anything about it. I totally believed him. So off to Austin I went....semi-pouting the whole way, and with no cute clothes packed- i didn't want to waste any of my cute outfits on a non-eventful weekend! The first night I got there, we went to eat at one of my favorite restaurants in Austin, but it was my idea to go there so I knew he wouldn't do it somewhere that he hadn't planned himself..so no surprise there, obviously. It had been raining all day and was supposed to keep raining all weekend, so we didn't really have any plans for the rest of the weekend....just chilling at his parents house and watching movies in the rain and then going to eat that night for one of his friend's birthday. I had known about that party for a while, because the last time I was in Austin I had met that friend for the first time and he brought up going to do something for his birthday that particular weekend. so no surprise there either. We slept in really late the next day, and while we were eating breakfast, the sun started coming out. We ended up going for a walk in his parent's neighborhood and down to the horse stables...I kept commenting on what a beautiful day it was turning out to be, and Erik seemed to be really surprised too but said he was kinda bummed because he had wanted to stay in and watch movies in the rain all day. After our walk, I wanted him to lay out with me by his parents pool so I could get some sun, and he told me we could, as long as we could leave the house by 4:30 that afternoon since he wasn't really sure how to get to the restaurant where we were supposed to be meeting everyone for Kevin's party. (He had been texting and talking to his friends on the phone throughout the previous week and all weekend trying to figure out where Kevin wanted to go for his birthday, and he supposedly just found out that afternoon what the plan was going to be) So i got myself ready, truly believing we were headed to Ski Shores for dinner. As we were driving, the thought crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, he was actually taking me somewhere else and was going to propose. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind, I saw a sign that said "Ski Shores ahead"...the restuarant where we were meeting everyone. My heart kind of sank, but I was determined not to get disappointed, because after all, I knew it wasn't coming this weekend anyway, right?!

We were about 30 minutes early for dinner (because Erik "thought it took longer than it actually did") so we had some time to kill before the party started. There was a park nearby that I had heard about last summer when living in Austin that was right on the lake, so he told me he would just run us down there and let me see it. Again, I started to get suspicious, and my heart skipped a few beats at that point. As we pulled up in the park, however, I felt let down- again. It wasn't a very "pretty" kind of park...more like a party park, with people all camping out everywhere and loud parties going on all around the place. Knowing the romantic that Erik is, I just knew he wouldn't propose there, with all those people all around and no place to really be by ourselves. But we parked anyway, and got out to walk around a little bit and go see the boats go by on the lake (and you know how I am about lakes- just seeing a wakeboard boat will make me happy!) We managed to find one picnic table that wasn't occupied, so he wanted to go and sit down for a second since we were still "killing time"and he had paid $8 just to get in there anyway- wanted to get our money's worth. So we sat down on the bench (well, I sat...he wouldn't sit down but just kept looking down the lake alot) and then I started getting suspicious again. He was acting weird and checking his phone alot, and Erik NEVER gets nervous (or checks his phone!!) so I knew at that point that something was going on. He sat down on the bench and smiled really big at me, and started telling me that he had been reading a verse alot lately and that he was really excited about getting to live it out soon...so of course, I asked him what verse that was (we both were smiling really big at this point) and he told me that it was Ephesians 5:25 ("husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her") and that he knew God had blessed and ordained our relationship-from the moment we met up until that very day. He talked for a while about alot of other sweet things (i was crying at this point) and then just smiled at me. I finally asked, "are you going to ask me or not!?" he told me I had to wait though, because he had a surprise for me first. So we just sat there for a while, and he kept looking down the lake - which made me turn around and look down the lake to see what he was looking for, but there was nothing ever down there! After about 15 minutes, he finally took my hand and told me to come out by the lake and stand there with him. So I did, and when we were almost to the water, he stopped, got down on one knee, pulled out the ring, and finally asked me if I would marry him! I immediately screamed "YES!", grabbed the ring from the box, and gave him a huge hug.  As soon as I put the ring on, he told me to look out at the water....there was a HUGE party barge going by right then that started honking, with tons of people on the boat cheering and waiving....our friends and family had seen the entire thing!!! We walked down to the dock at the park and the boat came back to pick us up to join the party. (Erik kept saying over and over, "I did SO good!!") We spent the rest of the evening riding down Lake Austin on the boat, listening to music, eating BBQ, and hanging out with all of our friends. Of course, the weather was GORGEOUS the entire time- sunny and breezy....my favorite kind of day! My parents' flight had gotten cancelled that morning to get to Austin for the party, so the next one they could get on arrived right as the boat was docking....we went straight to the hotel to meet them and show them my new ring! We ended the night by going out downtown on 6th street with all of our friends, and the next morning Erik's parents hosted a brunch at their house for both of our families. My parents' first (cancelled flight) was supposed to leave really early on Sunday morning, but their new flight didn't leave until Sunday evening so we got to spend the whole day hanging out with both of our parents after brunch. Erik also surprised me by getting a flight back to Austin from Houston late Sunday night so that he could drive with me back to Houston on Sunday afternoon. It was the perfect ending to a perfect weekend. :)

right when i saw the boat- so surprised!

some of my favorite people in the whole world.

the first meeting of the in-laws. a GREAT success! 

the ring. obviously.

I could not have imagined a more perfect engagement....on a lake/boat, on a beautiful day, with so many people I love, in TEXAS! I haven't stopped looking at my ring since I got it, and I think I am still in shock that it's really happening! I'M GETTING MARRIED!!! AHHH!!!!! I must say, that God is truly amazing...I have prayed for my husband and this moment my entire life, and I have never seen the goodness and faithfulness of God in such great measure as in my relationship with Erik. People always say, "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is." I say, however, that if it seems too good to be true, it's probably GOD! I could not tell this story without giving the Lord all the credit for the wonderful man I get to marry in 7 short months! 

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is GOOD!"- psalm 107:1

easter and a fool

let me just say...i have been in desperate need of some warmer weather lately. i am convinced that cold/wet weather drastically dampens my mood, and last week was especially cold and wet in VB...no bueno for lori. however, the weather was AWESOME by Friday...just in time for a fun easter weekend! 

my parents and erik both came to virginia beach to visit for the weekend...mom and dad came in friday morning, giving us the whole day to hang out (and SHOP) since i didn't have school or work. i loved having them in town...they took me and some of my friends out to eat friday night (before erik got in) and then spent the rest of the weekend hanging with just me and E. Erik had to study a little while on Saturday for a big test he has this upcoming week, so we went and shopped some more to "kill some time" while he diligently studied. As most of you know, i am a hardcore shopper, and even more so when my mom is around...we can go to a mall and stay from 8 am until they kick us out at night and STILL not have gone everywhere we wanted to go that day. That being said, this is how i know i am in love-- as soon as Erik texted me telling me he was done studying and that we could come get him whenever we finished, i booked it for the check-out counter with only ONE shirt in-hand (in forever 21, my favorite store!!)...all i cared about at that point was getting back to him as soon as possible. Don't worry, we spent the rest of the weekend attached at the hip....the way i prefer it. :) We took mom and dad to Sunrise (our favorite breakfast joint in VA- also where we had our first "date")  before church this morning, and then hit up the early service at Wave. awesome service, as always. I am going to miss that church next year! After my parents left town (they were planning on driving all the way back to MS today....gross), we met up with all of our friends and went to brunch (yes, we like to eat. don't judge) at Doc Taylor's on the beach. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, so we sat outside in the sun and drank mimosas for a couple of hours...definitely got a few new freckles after that. 

the cutest boy in the world. 

the gang.

in other news, my parents pulled a GOOD April Fools on me this year. So on their drive to Virginia, they were planning on stopping along the way and looking at some jet skis (because they are also planning on getting a LAKE HOUSE soon, woo hoo!). Well, i am sitting in class (trying to create a fake ad on Craig's List for free puppies with my mom's contact information for April Fools--didn't work though, ugh) and she texts me and says, "Dad just bought you two brand new jet skis"...so of course i am thinking HA HA, you got me....NOT...and so I texted back, "very funny, this an April Fools joke isn't it" because if you know my dad at all, you may know that he is very frugal...he has never bought a BRAND NEW anything as far as i know! So my mom continues with the "joke" and swears that she is serious and that they are being put together at the moment and that they will be able to pick them up in a couple of weeks. My mom has never, ever played an April Fools on me before, so I am more amused than anything about this conversation we were having. So then, my dad calls (i can't answer because i am in class still) and leaves a voicemail that I later listened to assuring me it WAS, in fact, a joke and that he would never buy two brand new jet skis (just as i had suspected). SO...the next morning we were at lunch and I was commending mom on her good April Fools joke, and she told me they had a "confession"....they REALLY HAD gotten the jet skis after all! The April Fools was the "April Fools" part of the story after all! At least I got two new rides out of it....me and erik are already planning trips home so that we can hit up the river this summer/fall and try them out! 

reunited

i am so excited about my weekend....i am heading to DC after class today to spend the weekend with one of my all time BEST friends, Natalie! It's her birthday this weekend, and our other bff, Baleigh, is flying up for the festivities. I cant wait to see the girls and catch up on life. Some of my favorite college memories were made with these two girls, and my life has definitely been changed-for the better-by having them in my life. Happy Bday, Nat! Can't wait to see you!