Grab Bag

I just realized how long it's been since I've posted, but I'm sure you can imagine how busy things have gotten for us! My official mac dashboard countdown says the wedding is in 36 days, 20 hours, 13 minutes and 39 seconds.

I've been settling into the new house in the past few weeks. It came through the Nashville flooding with just a little water damage in the kitchen, and compared to the other the other folks in town who are ripping their houses down to the studs and have all their worldly possessions in a muddy heap by the curb, we made it just fine. I'm actually supremely pleased in our little house - if it survived nearly 20 inches of rain, I think it will hold up perfectly for us! (If you want to read some horrific survivor stories, check out our staff blog at work, Get the NAC.)

I did such a great job packing and moving, that I'm having a little trouble motivating myself to unpack. And it seems like every time I get some boxes emptied, somebody else wants to throw me a party and give me tons and tons of wonderful, awesome, incredible gifts. One of the seriouds hazards of getting married is all the packing materials - boxes, tissue, and those pesky peanuts that get statically charged and want to cling to everything.

I had a wonderful shower thrown by my coworkers on Nancy's even more wonderful new deck. That was the night before the flood and we talked about how it was going to rain the next day and be such a drag. Little did we know! Then I headed to Owensboro for a shower thrown by all the sweet ladies at my church, St. John United Methodist. Four generations of the Hawkins/Hundley/Hast family have gone to that church, and all these ladies have watched me grow up and been so kind and loving over the years. It was great to go home and spend time with them.

Then last weekend, I got to meet all the great women in the Hill and Curry families that I'm marrying into. Jake's mom had the superb idea to get together and meet all of them before the wedding, and it was a really fun afternoon. She was sneaky and quizzed me on trivia about Jake, and I'm ashamed to say I only got a 75% on the test! Here's Cindi with the incredible quilt she made for Jake and me:

I hope the blog posts will become more frequent now. I will definitely be providing some directions and things to do in the area over on the right side of the page. Jake and I also want to introduce you to our wedding party because we have truly fabulous friends and family that will be standing up there with us as we take the plunge. And if there's anything you really want to know about, make a request in the comments!

Finally, since it's that time of year, I leave you with a funny instance of symmetry I discovered while going through my photos. The first is me and Jake graduating high school, and the second is college. I've been carefully scrutinizing them to see if we actually look any older, but I'm skeptical. What do you think?