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!