Wining, Dining and Proposing: An Engagement Story

If you are reading this then I am sure you have already heard, Joe and I are engaged! Amid all of the texts and calls we experienced that day I noticed a few common themes throughout the day:

"It's about freakin' time!"

Yes, yes, we know. After dating for 3.5 years I knew those jokes would be inevitable. And to be honest, the timing was perfect. Our first dating anniversary we were both seniors in college, on our second I was student teaching in Buffalo and he was in pilot training, and for our third anniversary Joe was still in training while I was still searching for a teaching job. So it made sense that after he got home from deployment that the "big question" would come up. I had a feeling it was coming. I should be a ninja spy or something.

Anywho, I have also been asked many times to recant the story of how it happened so grab a chair, a fizzy drink and relax because here goes:

The day of August 26 was beautiful, sunny and well, kind of perfect. Weather-wise I mean. It was the gorgeous California weather I had expected to see when we moved her nearly a year ago. (For reference look to my last entry here to see how my California dream was totally wrong.)

It was a strange start to the day because it had not yet reached 100 degrees by lunchtime. Usually when I take Bjorn out for his morning jaunt it is stifling already. I believe the high that day was supposed to be about 78 degrees. Joe had told me earlier that he wanted to go to a winery to have lunch because, he said, why not? It was at that moment I wondered if something "special" was going to happen.

We made it to V. Sattui Winery in Napa at high noon. We had never been to that particular winery but our friends and Yelp came to our aid. The place came strongly recommended so who were we to question good food?

The winery sits atop a lush landscape complete with flowers and green grass. And as Northern Californians know, green grass is hard to come by in the summer. We entered the deli section and got basic sandwiches,  cheese, meat and crackers. We snuck in our own wine even though  we are not supposed to. Shh! Actually I don't think they really cared.

After paying for our goodies Joe and I scouted out a nice area to eat. We spotted an empty picnic table and benches in one of the side gardens. It was actually pretty secluded so it made for a peaceful lunch. Plus the sound of the leaking pipe to our left created a nice ambiance. And it also made me miss thunderstorms but such is the life of a weather nerd.

So there we were: eating our picnic lunch, drinking wine from our redneck wine glasses (courtesy of Joe's mom), chatting about random things and remarking on the oddities of the birds that were trying to get close to our food. Right before we were about to leave Joe says he wants to ask me something. "Well," I think, "this could be really good or really bad." This is the same introduction he used when he told me he loved me so I figured it was something pretty darn good.

Redneck wine glasses: great for storing wine!

He reached into his pocket, got down on one knee (which is hard to do when you are sitting next to someone on a bench and the table is very close to you) and asked me if I would do him the honor of spending the rest of my life with him. I smiled and said "Of course I will!"

Joe had originally intended to use this to propose but decided against it. But still it makes a nice keepsake!

So, about the wedding plans. Yes, I have already got those questions! It's crazy to think about because there is literally so much to process. I think I have already checked out 30-some-odd books just about wedding planning. Back to the plans: we are thinking of getting married sometime in August of next year. As for location we are not quite sure.

So here's where I turn to you, dear readers. We would prefer to get married in the Southeast somewhere because that's where most of our friends and families live. So what do you think? Vote in the poll down below and share your opinion!

Until next time! :)

--Amanda

Oh, the places we go!

Well hello there! Quite some time has passed since my last entry. Let me catch up: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Mardi Gras, Happy Valentine's Day, Happy St. Patrick's Day and Happy Easter!

Phew. What a run-on sentence.

Spring is here and NorCal is, well...cold. That doesn't sound right, does it? For most of March it rained..and rained and rained. And it was quite chilly. Where's the sunny side of California I signed up for? Or is that only southern California that gets perpetual sunshine? Much of the rain has cleared but it's still been nippy in the mornings. And that's all I will say about the weather lest my inner meteorologist come out and talk about geostrophic forces.

Doesn't this look cheery?

I wish I could say new and exciting things have been happening but I'm afraid Joe and I are quite boring. So far we have been to:

Napa-This place has some of the most amazing food I've ever eaten! And I'm a gal who loves food! We took our first trip to wine country around the end of November. The vineyards were not as pretty as I imagined them. But then again most of the foliage in our area was an earthy brown so it wasn't too much of a change. We ate a place called Ristorante Allegria. The cool thing about this place is that it used to be a bank. You can even eat inside the vault if you're feeling unsafe. (Pun intended) I think that privilege costs a little bit of money so we just ate in the lobby area. The food was delicious; we had calamari and mushroom ravioli and salsiccia pasta.

The next time we went was for my birthday and of course we went back to Allegria. The food was still awesome and we even bought a jar of their dipping sauce. Yes we have a little jar of Allegria in our pantry.

And finally, we went back to Napa when Joe's dad was visiting. We still have no idea where much of anything was so we enlisted the help of Yelp (!) and blindly searched for cheap dinner and wine tastings. We ended up stumbling upon a tasting room that houses two wineries, Trahan and Olabisi. We were the only ones there so we got bonus round tasting. I'm not sure if that's why we got extra glasses of wine or it was because of our good looks and charm. Either way the wine was delicious. Side note, not a good idea to go wine tasting on an empty tummy. You get dizzy pretty fast. After getting pleasantly buzzed (actually only me, I'm a lightweight) we rounded the corner for dinner at a tapas place called Zuzu's. About halfway through the meal our waitress comes over with a glass of port wine and tells us the gentleman at the table next to us sent it over because he heard Joe talking about how he's in the military. I was stunned at the nice gesture. Sad to say nice gestures are a rarity these days but I'm happy that there are still nice people in the world. He was also nice enough to pay for our corkage fee. Thank you, sir!




San Francisco-Joe and I have only been to Frisco a few times but we love it every time we go! Side note, I didn't know that San Francisco has a nickname. My step-mom asked me if we had gone to Frisco and I replied I didn't know where that was. Frisco sounds like Fresco which sounds like Fresca which is delicious but can also sound like Fresno which is another city in California. But that's neither here nor there. The first time we traveled to the city who gives out Rice-a-Roni as a treat, we went straight to Pier 39. Seagulls, seafood, sunshine; what more could a coastie want? After our walk around the area we went to visit Joe's cousin and her family.

View from Ghiradelli Square

Sacramento-Sacramento is a neat town seeing as it is the capital of the Golden State. The only times we go to Sacramento is a) for me to take a teacher exam or b) to visit with Joe's dad when he is in town. We mostly meet up in the downtown area. Downtown Sacramento is surprisingly clean and has a safe feeling to it. I don't feel nervous walking down the street at night nor do I have the fear of gum or other unmentionable things sticking to my shoe.



Dog News! Bjorn is doing great. We like to take him hiking at a nearby park. He loves running up and down the hills and smelling all the outdoors have to offer. A few weeks ago his instincts got the better of him. Let me set the stage: We are on top of a hill overlooking some cows. At the bottom of this hill are two cows and two calves. Bjorn stares out majestically at the land and the wind blows his ears back. I call him Mufasa when he does this ("Everything the light touches is our kingdom.").




Suddenly, as if his tail is on fire, he speeds down the hill full force at the cows. I yell for him to come back but either the urge to herd cows is too great or he just thinks I'm a nag and ignores me. Joe chases after him and I am rooted to the top of the hill. Bjorn looks to be having the time of his life. He begins to chase the cows and nip at the backs of their legs. The cows begrudgingly get up and give him an annoyed "moo". Bjorn continues to herd the cows about 500 feet to the right. I'm not sure why he wanted to place them there; dogs are mysterious creatures. As soon as he's moved them to his liking he happily bounces back to Joe and up the hill to me. At this point I am crying. Yes, I know, crying. I thought he was going to get squished or the mama cows would get upset and kick him. I hugged Bjorn and then scolded him for scaring me. He's just like a kid. Except with a tail...

Cows are everywhere.

How can you get mad at this face?

I think I've got you guys mostly up to speed now. As the weather continues to get warmer I will probably stay inside with the air conditioning and update more. We shall see. Until next time, friends! Have a great day!

Boxes and Baby Bjorn

It's been over a month since I last updated but there have been a lot of things happening. It seems like everyone says that. The "things-have-been-crazy-but-I-promise-to-write more!" lame-o excuse. Guilty. Anyway, let's back track a bit to when we finally got our stuff (thanks TMO!) two days later than scheduled. The movers were able to move all the boxes in to our 3rd floor apartment in about a 2 hour span. We honestly didn't have that much stuff even though it felt like it when we unpacked. The grand total was 98 pieces (and that's with furniture) Surprisingly we weren't missing anything but they did send us every single DVD from the apartment, some that belonged to Joe's room mates. I guess they didn't think we had enough movies. The more the merrier! They really did a great job packing up the fragile and potentially dangerous items. I was unpacking all of the kitchen boxes when I reached into the box and pulled out a knife. Yes that's right, a knife that had come out of the knife block. I know what you're thinking, "That could have been disastrous!" Tell me about it. But in an effort to tone down the drama, it was only a paring knife. Good thing I was pre-pared! Haha! Get it? ....anyone?.....Hmm, right well let's move along, shall we?

I suppose the most exciting news is that we adopted a dog! We had been looking at a few dogs from a German Shepard Rescue group and actually picked out a dog, named Smalls, that we liked. When we got to the adoption day outside of the PetSmart we found out that Smalls was likely to be adopted that day and we were still lagging on our paperwork. We looked at the other dogs and spotted a black dog calmly sitting by a volunteer. He didn't really look like a German Shepard but he seemed to be what we were looking for so we asked to see him.

Joe and I walked him around the PetSmart building with his foster parent. We instantly fell in love! (With the dog, not the dude). After our walk, we told his foster dad that we were interested in adopting him and that we'd have the paperwork by Monday. (That sounds super official) I guess they thought we were legit enough because the next day we got our puppy!




So a little bit about him: His name is Bjorn (originally spelled "Beorn" but I liked the weird spelling better). The odd spelling is actually Icelandic and means "bear". He is a little over 1 year old and very energetic. Bjorn freakin' loves fetch and will drop his toys on our laps in an effort to get us to throw them in our very small apartment. You can guess how well that turns out. Bjorn is a mixed doggie: his mom is a German Shepard yet they are not sure about the dad. They think he was either a Black Lab or a Border Collie. Can't we call Maury to get the answers for this?

He's a shy puppy but once you get to know him he loves you and wants to be around you. Visitors, ye be warned! Actually, visitors ye be excited because that means he will want you to play fetch with him for 8 hours instead of us! :)

This was taken 5 hours after we started to play fetch.

Californ-i-a!

We finally made it to California.....a mere two weeks ago! Forgive me for not updating as much as I should. I promise I'll try and do better! Let's see now, you should be caught up on the story of how we got here.

On our first day here I was star-struck by everything as we walked around: "This grass is California grass!" or "That jack rabbit over there is from California!" or "This wi-fi I'm using is pure Californian!"

I had trouble sleeping the first night because I kept thinking an earthquake would strike at any moment. That's true, it could...but I think I stayed up almost the whole night thinking things like:

"Okay, an earthquake could happen any moment...it could strike...NOW!!" *looks around*

"Or maybe....NOW!" *looks up at painting mounted above the bed*

"Oh great, what if this thing falls during the earthquake that could happen.............NOW!.....I am thinking too much!"

Being the worry wart that I am I slept with a pillow over my head. Ya know, just in case. The next morning I tried to move the painting to see how loose it was but it wouldn't budge. It was bolted to the freaking wall. So I slept with a pillow over my head for nothing, really.

The day after we got to California we started our great apartment search. This is a little known fact but looking for an apartment is kind of stressful. Who knew, right? We didn't really know where we were going or where the good parts of town were located so driving around aimlessly with the GPS shoved in the backseat seemed like a good idea. We stopped at a grocery store to grab one of those real-estate booklets hoping that would help a little. It was more or less a game of "turn to a random page and point and let's go there!"

Joe and I looked at several apartments, all within his housing allowance. Most of the places we saw were nice looking in a seemingly good area of town. I especially liked the one that was near a library (naturally!) As we continued to search we came across a few apartments that didn't give off good vibes. (I think the graffiti was a hint.)

As the sun was setting we had already narrowed down our choices to two apartments. We work fast; we are from Mississippi after all. I tried to pile our brochures and flyers we had been handed into a semi-neat pile but it ended up becoming a huge sea of papers on the floor. After returning to the Inn, our stomach reminded us that apartment hunting had made it hungry so we stopped to get dinner...at 4 pm...it seemed our bodies were still working on Central Time. That probably explains why I fell asleep at 8:30...So all in all we had a productive day apartment hunting and exploring the wild, wild west. (Right here is where that Will Smith song from the movie "Wild, Wild West" should pop into your head).

Vegas, baby!

Day 4

I woke up excited in Flagstaff because today was Vegas day!! I almost wanted to watch "Vegas Vacation" just to refresh my mental image of Las Vegas.

Since the trek was only a mere 4 hours, Joe and I took our time getting ready and eating breakfast. Apparently our system's were still on Central Time as we were fed and ready to go by 7:30 am. So much for being lazy.

The drive was just as exciting, if not more, than the previous day. Insert sarcasm here. When we got closer to the Nevada border our "care factor" (as Joe likes to say) perked up. It was there that we a) jumped back an hour while simultaneously going forward and b)passed by the Hoover Dam. Insert "dam" jokes here. I know I did.

Go ahead! It's fun!

We had initially wanted to walk on the actual dam itself but it cost $7 to park and we said, "No way, dude! That's too much!" We opted for the free parking and slight hike to the bridge overlooking the dam. I had shown my 8th graders a Bill Nye video on energy with a segment on the Hoover Dam and I was geeking out over it. Yay for science! On our way back to the car I thought about hopping to and fro near the Pacific Time Zone sign but decided against it as I'm sure I'd get some interesting looks. But hey we were close to Vegas; weirder things have happened.

Time Zones: making science nerds geek out for decades

After taking the dam bridge tour and asking no dam questions (ha!) we reached Vegas. Our hotel was located a few blocks from the strip and was pretty easy to find. (Thanks to the GPS!) We were informed that the hotel bar had a happy hour from 5:30-6:30 and offered the hotel guests free drinks. I was starting to like Vegas already!

Joe and I dropped off our stuff upstairs and prepared to walk the strip. At first it seemed a little sketchy but as we turned the corner it got more crowded, and yes, still sketchy. As we walked down the street I saw Buzz and Woody from Toy Story, three Elvis impersonators (or were they?), many guitar wielding citizens and a man dressed as a show girl. I felt really far away from Mississippi then!

The Strip

Lobby at Caesar's Palace

Later that night, after we had had a few drinks (free makes them delicious!) we headed back to the strip once more. This time we were on a mission: to see The Blue Man Group. I was excited because I had never seen them before or really knew what they did. Since we had a couple hours (okay more like 4) to burn we decided to see what Vegas had to offer. We walked to Caesar's Palace and toured the mall that was nestled inside the building. I probably would have enjoyed it more had I been able to actually afford anything (Gucci, Dior, Dolce and Gabanna anyone?). I got excited when I saw a Bath & Body Works because I knew I could afford something!

The Bellagio is next to Caesar's Palace and we stopped by the fountains to watch the show. The fountains moved in time to "The Pink Panther Theme". It reminded me of Disney for some reason.

Ba dum da dum, da dum, da dum da dum da dum da duuuuuuuuuuum da da dum!

Our next stop was the Venetian which is where the Blue Man Group plays. The Venetian was huge as well. There is a small river of water that weaves its way around the food and shopping places. After getting lost multiple times we finally found a place to eat. Too bad the place we picked out was hosting an event and was closed to outside guests. Our options were limited as we were on a budget so we settled for the next cheapest place, The Luxe Cafe. They had good food but the portions were gigantic! I tried as best as I could to eat all of my pasta but my stomach said, "Are you crazy?!"

After our meal fit for any large mammal we waited outside the theatre. While we waited I had to use the bathroom. As I walked into the gilded and luxurious powder room I heard "Phantom of the Opera" being played on the speakers. I began to sing along with the music, forgetting where I was. No one was around to tell me to stop or that their ears were bleeding but I did get a funny look from the bathroom attendant.

By this time it was time to enter the theatre. (that's a lot of "time" in that sentence). We shuffled in and found our seats which were in the back of the middle section aka perfect! The show was great. I didn't realize it would be so funny/cool/energetic. All in all I was pleasantly surprised.

When the show let out it was almost midnight or when things start getting going in Vegas. We were both tired as we left the Venetian but everyone around us seemed drunk or hyped up on Red Bull.

Our tryst through the City of Sin was pretty tame. No gambling or putting all our money on black. No, no. The craziest thing we did was sing show tunes in the bathroom (ok that was just me) and eat crazy amounts of pasta. Wow we are craaaaaaaaaazy!

The most boring post of all...

Day 3

After our relaxing day in the Springs, it was time to go on our longest drive of the whole trip. 11 hours to Flagstaff, AZ! As I reluctantly got out of my warm bed at dark-thirty in the morning I opened the door to find three bundles of energy awaiting me. How do dogs get so perky in the morning? 'Tis a mystery...

We left my dad's house just as the sun was rising. Again this was not part of my normal routine. I liked to wake up when the sun had already been at work for a few hours.

The drive through Colorado was nice and hilly. We caught a morning radio show that had a contest in which retro songs were played and you had to shout out the names. I have to say, we kicked some serious retro booty at that game.

I could sit here and regale you with our eleven hour journey to Arizona but there is nothing special to tell:

And now you can see why this post is short. You're welcome!

Finally finally after 11 hours in the car, we made it to Flagstaff. I for one am surprised I did not get kicked out of the car due to my constant singing. (Thanks Joe! :))

Kansas, Colorado and an Unruly Fence

Day 2

Wednesday morning dawned chilly and windy in our small Kansas suburb. After a quick breakfast we were ready for another adventure.

Driving north through Kansas proved to be almost as riveting as Tuesday's trip. We did see a lot of wind mills spinning furiously, helping to make wind energy. (Or Win-ergy as I like to say).

Just as we were about to strap a rocket to the back of the car to get out of Kansas faster, the Colorado border shone brightly in our view. Well, okay the sign was not that bright but for weary travelers like us it was a welcoming beacon of hope.

As we headed westward the view of the Rockies slowly came into view. Colorado became a bit more hilly as we drove away from Kansas (finally!).

We made it to my dad's place around 3:30 in the afternoon. My step-mom was still at work and my dad was on his way home. Joe and I decided to chill out in the backyard because it was unlocked. However, we couldn't figure out how to unlock the gate. My dad had just moved into a new home with a lot of extra yardage and I had only been there once a few months ago. Blame me if you must for what transpired next. Since we couldn't find the locking mechanism for the gate we decided to go nuts and hop the fence. Joe went first, standing on the pile of firewood next to the fence. Just as he was about to hoist his other leg over he slipped! I panicked thinking there would be a large gash of some sort that needed tending to and the only medical supplies I had on hand were my hand sanitizer and some socks. He was okay sporting only a minor, shallow scratch. That was nothing compared to what awaited him as he cleared his other leg over the side of the fence. Two Brittany spaniels and one bulldog puppy came clamboring over to the six-foot tall bundle that was sitting in their yard. As they happily welcomed Joe to their turf, I prepared to climb the fence. I had barely gotten my leg over the fence when Joe said, "There's another fence over here that looks way easier to climb." I hopped down to investigate this outrageous claim. Sure enough there was a smaller metal door that I could have cleared no problem if I was a gazelle.

We celebrated our successful fence hopping by playing fetch and keep away with the dogs. Of course they were happy to see us because we rubbed their tummies and offered many opportunities to play. After half an hour, my dad arrived and let us into the house. It was great getting to visit with my dad and step-mom since I only get to see them twice per year. The only downside was that we had a long 11 hour trek the next day to look forward to. At least that gives us more time to play the ABC game!