The Best Way To Spread Christmas Cheer Is Singing Loud For All To Hear!

Christmas always starts the first week of December for me. However, this year was a little different. Instead of planning and orchestrating the usual 9-13 Holiday parties for my clients, I just had to attend all 9-13 of them. Which, if you are in marketing or sales, means you are still working. So by the time Christmas rolls around, I am beyond exhausted. But there is nothing like spending quality time with family to re-energize you and remind us of what Christmas is all about.

Josh and I spent Dec. 23rd with his family at Morton's steakhouse. The next night, Christmas Eve, is traditionally spent at the Lang household where about 30 people gather.
We all spent the night so we could wake up Christmas morning and open presents. Josh and I then quickly went to our new place to open up our gifts to one another. (At this time I would like to give mad props to my husband-to-be for being the best present giver ever. This man picked me out clothes that I LOVED. And if you know me, that is no small feat. I'd like to give him a virtual high five since he was already handsomely rewarded with a kiss). Then it was off to Papa Dick and Grandma Charlotte Allen's house to spend some time Christmas day with the grandparents.


Brooklyn, Kendall, Maryn

Kendall and Josh
Josh, Em, Maryn, Luke

The day after Christmas was spent at the Van Woudenberg house where we crammed in 16 people (including 7 nieces and nephews-Ashley, Katelyn, Luke, Kendall, Maryn, Brooklyn, and Austin), a ton of presents, a ginormous amount of food, a LONG game of Settlers of Catan, even more food, and a Lakers game. By the next day we were all spent, but couldn't be happier than to have been able to spend time with those we truly love and who truly make us happy and blessed.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Years...we are off to Mammoth to celebrate!

Home Sweet Home

Here is a sneak peak of the improvements Josh and I have made to our home so far!

Downstairs Staircase After

Entrance After

Entrance/Bottom of Staircase Before

Bottom of Staircase After

View from the Top of the Staircase towards the Entrance Before

View Downstairs after

Stairs Before

Stairs After

Hallway Before

Hallway After

Master Closet Before

Master Closet After

(Part of) Master Bedroom Before

(Part of) Master Bedroom After

Hallway towards spare bedrooms before

Hallway towards spare bedrooms after

Whitney's bedroom Before

Whitney's Bedroom After
...now if we can only get her to come visit

Extra Bed #2 Before

Extra Bed #2 After

Extra Bed #3 Before

Extra Bed #3 After

We are so grateful we were able to purchase a house and look forward to all the other improvements we are about to make!

I'm Full...of Thanksgiving

Even in 2009, the toughest economic and emotional trying year for our world, there's much to appreciate on this day of Thanksgiving. We appreciate the company of family and friends and the fact that Joshua and I's immediate family was given the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving together. I am thankful that we have the capacity to think optimistically that in a year that our nation was faced with many trials, uncertainty and misfortunes that we know that things will get better. I am thankful that all of our new challenges we are given daily are met and resolved with nothing less than help from our Lord. Joshua and I are thankful for the love and support we receive from our family, friends and one another. We are thankful for answered prayers and that we were given each other...we CANNOT WAIT to be married! We are thankful we get to start an awesome journey together.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we get to embark on my favorite time of the year...Christmas! I can't wait for Christmas decorations to throw up all over my house! Josh and I are having our date night tomorrow night at Roger's Gardens in Corona Del Mar for their Christmas displays!

1 Year

Today is Josh and I's technical, 'would you be my girlfriend,' one year anniversary. It was today that he met my parents for the first time and then took a note from high school and officially asked me to be his girlfriend. In a society where relationships are so nonchalant and selfish, I considered this act of asking me to be exclusive very important, very sweet, and very endearing.

We really consider our second first date our year anniversary since we pretty much knew from that moment on we'd end up being married...I am crazy about Joshua and think that he has the greatest soul, the noblest nature, the sweetest, most loving heart I have ever known, and my love and admiration for him has increased so much since we’ve known each other that it still amazes me. Happy Anniversary to us!!

She Said Yes!...

And now we have a wedding to plan. We know that the holidays are a busy time to say the least. If you are anything like us our calendars are booked from now until January 2nd, 2010. In anticipation of our minds and other's to be pre-occupied with the details of the holidays, we opted to send out Save the Dates so that we can keep the wedding date fresh. Five and a half months seems like a long time for us, but this way it keeps us engaged, excited, and reminds us that we are living out our dream.

The Front

The Back

The Address Label

I just wanted to send out a huge THANK YOU to Leslea Ferguson who designed our Save the Dates for us. They turned out just the way we had pictured them! I definitely will be using her for further wedding 'projects.' Check out here website!
Leslea Design

The Almost Technical One Year Anniversary

Our technical one year anniversary is less than two weeks away. I thought for those of you who do not know our 'story,' that I would preface our technical one-year anniversary with MY side of the story (don't worry, I will get Josh to post his so it's fair) so you may realize that it took three years to get to this one. Don't try to do the math...

December 2006: I was a 23 year old Newport beach resident representing about 98.9% of the single female population this age walking around with what felt like a bulls-eye for middle aged women, which mainly included my sisters, my mother, my grandmother and anybody I came into contact with at work that 'felt sorry' for my 'single situation' to set me up with their brother, husband's brother, their gardener's son, their dog-groomers, sister-in-law's cousin, or their coworkers husband's coworker. Which last time I checked my 'single situation' allowed me to eat a whole carton of ice cream and tell myself since I had nobody to answer to, the calories did not count. So I definitely did not feel sorry for myself.

January 2007: One day, at work, Joshua's Aunt Kim must have seen my bulls-eye because from that day on she wanted nothing but to set me up on a blind date with her amazing nephew. With Kim's eye on the prize and me impressed with her persistence, I finally agreed to take a swat at it. So after texting for a few weeks, I agreed to meet Josh at one of my favorite restaurants, Las Brisas, in Laguna Beach.

January 12, 2007, 8pm: Being the connoisseur of blind dates, I was not nervous and honestly was indifferent about going. Lets just say Josh felt the opposite.

10:00pm: Date over. Mistaking my ravishing beauty with Adriana Lima's, Josh was nervous, made two hand worth of dating faux pas (including his profession of disdain for USC) and in the end created the worse blind date I had ever been on...incriminating details will be left out at this time. I strategically avoided a kiss, quickly drove home, and grabbed that tub of ice cream and quickly forgot about the date from h-ee-double hockey sticks and sunk into the harmonious sugar rush and immediate coma.

But we did have a TON in common...

January –April 2008: Aunt Kim, after a year of reminding me how awesome her nephew is (which I quickly reminded her that he must have skipped those lessons in awesome the year before because he showed no sign of it on our date)…kept ranting about how I should get into contact with him because he had just moved to Newport a few months back and probably needed somebody to hang out with. Ya’ right. So defying all women rules written circa 1950, I emailed him. He did fail on our date, but he did it with flair. My interest was definitely peaked by this, and I wondered if a person could change in a year. However, he responded to my email with an obvious chip on his shoulder claiming he erased my number…way to gain some brownie points with the ladies Josh. Bad blind date + rude response=negative points. Nonetheless, we kept emailing and texting. Our conversations were always filled with an entree of commonality and served up with a side of strong chemistry which posed an obvious connection. Ignoring this bond, Josh decided to move on to less greener pastures and pass up on the Van Woudenberg charm…he was dating somebody else. So I gave up on him, only to get daily reminders from Aunt Kim that we were destined to get married (exact words).

July 2008: Shockingly, from the depths of the Earth, Josh resurfaces and sends me first an email ragging on a former Kansas Jayhawk player and a text later on cheering on USC. Yes Dad, if you are reading this, you heard that correctly. Josh was sending the men from Troy good juju. So I let the punch at my Jayhawks slide. And so the texting began…

October 12 2008: Sans girlfriend and fed up of losing money at poker tournaments with his guy friends because of distracting, witty texts and banter between the two of us, Josh realized he couldn’t resist the Dutch lure anymore and agreed to meet me to watch the Chargers v. Patriots game.

October 13 2008: He’s hooked

October 21 2008: I’m hooked. The rest is history...

The Small Things

Remember the episode of friends where Rachel mentions in conversation that she likes a man in uniform and Ross shows up at Central Perk dressed in a rented sailor suit? It's those small things that make us feel special. I think it is so important to take notice of the small things in a relationship...even if it is a small gesture, like when Josh gets off his comfy couch, pauses his favorite show, and goes and picks me up frozen yogurt (I wish I could eat ice cream, but we can thank my genes for that). It's the small things. My frozen yogurt is Rachel's uniform and I love my fiance for taking notice of the small things and making me feel like the most important person in the world. Just thought he should know. :)

The In-Laws

Have you ever walked into a room and felt like a polar bear in Africa...doesn't make sense and you would like to go back where you came from. In my life, I have been put in a lot of situations where I didn't feel like I belonged. My relationship with Josh and his family is not one of those. We are both incredibly blessed with strong relationships with our own family and also in the other's. If we even needed more confirmation that we are with who God wants us to be with, then the love we feel from one another's families is just that confirmation. This is one of the many benefits I am reaping from marrying Josh. I get to gain a whole new family. And in most cases 'in laws' has a negative connotation. But for us, it's about as positive as positive can get. Just recently, we were able to combine our families for an engagement party at Josh's parent's house in Upland. It was a great time filled with a lot of good food, a lot of good family and a lot of crazy kids (11 in total). We appreciate my family for making the 4 hour drive down after a long day of sports and Josh's family for taking the time to come and support us!

Wedding Inspirations

Below is an inspiration board that helped us decide what type of 'feel' we wanted for our wedding. The colors are more subdued...and we definitely want to keep everything a surprise, but here is a little sneak peek of elements you may see in our wedding.

Engagement BBQ

Our first engagement/birthday/family reunion was held in June by my sister and sister-in-law up in Tulare, Ca. For those of you who have big families, especially of the dutch heritage, understand that anytime your entire family can get together, it's an excuse to celebrate everything. So not only did Josh and I get to celebrate our engagement with our entire family, we got to celebrate family being together for the 1st time in 3 years and also birthdays of some of my nieces. I'll post more pictures of the actual event, but above is a picture of my nieces and nephews who are going to be apart of our wedding.

Villa/Davis Wedding

Everyone anticipates, or runs in terror, for their class reunion. If you went to Azusa Pacific University, you know that you don't have to wait 10 years for this event...all you need is fellow Cougar's wedding. One's wedded bliss is another's alumni reunion. This past weekend, we had the opportunity to see Sean Davis and Stephanie Villa, both APU alums, tie the knot and also see friends that have been seperated by miles, children, and time ("HI LIZZY!")...and Joshua had the opportunity to really see how APUers 'do' weddings. We felt so special being able to share in a piece of Sean and Steph's history and seeing them enter into their new lives together, and being so sublimely happy doing so. We also got to see our photographers, Jeff and Erin Youngren (http://www.theyoungrens.com/) in action. Joshua and I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER with our decision to have them capture our special day!

Some of APU's finest

Canary Hotel

After much blood, sweat and tears (for those of you who have planned your own wedding-you know this is not my feeble attempt to be dramatic, but to be true) we have picked a venue for our wedding. Our love of boutique hotels-small, quaint, full of personality and not to mention the locale of being across the street from Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom (which I took to be a direct sign from God) all helped us in picking the Canary Hotel as the place for us to get hitched. I don't think the six championship golf courses alongside several other 9-hole and private courses swayed Joshua's decision at all...

View from the Altar

The Lobby

Outside Courtyard

The Rooftop

To Blog or Not To Blog...

There has been a lot of discussion, mainly to myself, actually all to myself, whether or not to blog. No, this isn't another attempt by me to prove just how nerdy I am, but to make buying us presents for our wedding that much easier. I kid, I kid. Joshua and I now have a way to let everyone know about our life together, how awesome we really are and all that is wedding. And also because I stopped learning anything new a couple years ago and it’s about time I started again. So here we go....