Our Memories in Marriage

Six months and counting

2011-02-27T13:17:00.000-08:00

Well, we've been living together for over six months now! These past few months have been the best of my life. I am so thankful to be living with my best friend.

John was promoted to Staff Sergeant at the beginning of the month. His parents drove over to watch the ceremony and I got to "pin" him with his new rank!

We also have a new pet! John got him back in August. His name is Idzik, which is Greek for "shield". He is turning into a really sweet pet!

I would say the duplex is definitely our home now. We have each other, we have a church we enjoy attending, we have our pets, and we have a lot of love from our families. Life is good!

John and I are enjoying our new home

2010-08-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

How did the time fly so quickly? John's year long deployment ended when he came home July 31st. His parents and I were there to welcome him home and that evening John got to step into our new home for the first time. We moved into a duplex near base and have been enjoying getting to live together for the first time. The adjusting is going well and we are looking forward to his block leave!

New Car!

2010-02-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

John and I bought our car today! We've been looking for one that will be good for driving long distances and that will make a good family car (eventually), and we ended up getting a 2010 Ford Fusion. It's in "Atlantis green", but I think it looks black in most lighting.

Even if you can't tell it's green, you can't say it isn't shiny!

The air freshener for when I'm driving it! I'm not sure John will want to drive around with a gnome.

This is a photo I found online, maybe the lighting is just bad today, but I don't think it looks like this color in person! It's still pretty though!

Good week for mail!

2010-01-16T16:32:00.000-08:00

This week I've had a couple of pleasant surprises arrive in my mailbox! First, on Thursday, I received a package from John, which included videos he made for me of himself talking and a beautiful glass rose crossing a heart.
Second, on Friday, was our wedding album! It took me six months to get back to the photographer about our "must have" photos for the album, but he is so patient and has amazingly fast turn around:

New Year In Iraq

2010-01-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! The last year has been fraught with adventure, travel, and new beginnings. Thanks in large part to the love and care of my wife Xenia we were able to make it through the last year and are now married with many more years to enjoy life together.

I hope everyone made it through 2009 OK and wish you the best in 2010. I will be departing Iraq around mid-late July of this year and can't wait to see my lovely wife once more.

Here's to all the people that were able to make the last year enjoyable and worthwhile. God Bless.

-John

End of the Year

2009-12-31T17:02:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the end of the year and I'm looking forward to the new one. Each month that passes brings me closer to seeing John again. It's been quite an interesting year! John moved to the West side of the country in January and we got to spend almost a weekend a month together for the first half of the year. We got married on June 13th and got to spend a week together in the Seattle area for our "mini-moon". The first week after the wedding was very humbling. Seeing John so devoted to taking care of me was awesome. I knew of course that he was willing to take care of me, but his enthusiasm made me feel so precious. Our honeymoon was also wonderful. It was strange to take a vacation without any of my family, but John is my family now. After being together for five years I get to say that.
Saying goodbye to John in August was very difficult. I was so used to getting to see him often that the first two weeks after he was gone were heart crushing. I made some goals to keep me busy until school started and once classes began at the end of August the time started to fly by. I had a big course-load, but I managed to get all A's again this semester. I spent the Holidays with my family, and I'm here at my brother's townhouse with his girlfriend and my sister to celebrate the New Year. I wish John could be here, because I know he would love all the games we are going to play tonight.
Last year John and I spent our first New Year's Eve together. We spent the evening having an Indiana Jones movie marathon. I hope that by the time we are ready to ring in the year 2011 that John and I can celebrate together again.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to our friends and family! I have been thinking about John all day and wishing he could be here so we could spend our first Christmas as a married couple together. I miss him so much.

We took this last year when he was home for the holidays.

Commenting

2009-12-17T00:13:00.000-08:00

I have enabled anonymous commenting so if you do not have an account you can now make comments! Please remember to leave your name, otherwise we won't know who you are.

I just finished up the last of my finals so I'm going to be recuperating over the next few days. Hopefully John will post an entry here soon!

Featured on our Wedding Photographer's Website!

2009-12-07T22:10:00.000-08:00

I was looking through our wedding photographer's website this evening and saw that he has used one of the photos he took at our wedding on the main wedding page! Click here to see the page. You have to scroll down a little bit to see it, but I took a screen cap in case he ever changes his website:

I'm glad that he chose that photo of us, it is one of my favorites!

Our First Christmas Ornament

2009-12-04T15:36:00.000-08:00

Last month I began searching for an ornament to commemorate the year that we would have our first Christmas as a married couple. Searching online produced a lot of results with ornaments saying "Our first Christmas together", but we've already spent Christmases together, just not married, and sadly, we will not be spending this Christmas together. I found other ornaments that were of brides and grooms with the wedding date and even cakes or other wedding related things, but I was looking for a more timeless ornament.

Finally, I happened upon this ornament. It had both reindeer & greenery, and could be personalized!

It arrived in the mail today:

It has our names and our wedding date on it.

It was a lot more glittery than I was expecting, but that is fine.

Furbabies

2009-12-03T11:07:00.000-08:00

Last week featured Dmitri, my six year old black cat. I have another cat named Zanita which was given to me by John for my seventeenth birthday, she is four years old.

Both of my cats sleep on the bed with me, especially Zanita. Last summer when John and I got married Zanita was pretty freaked out about John. At first she only hid under the bed when he came into the room. One night, however, I guess John had the opportunity to pet her and she decided he wasn't so bad. In the middle of the night she jumped up and slept on John's feet. John half-woke up and was complaining about the cat so I picked her up and put her on my side of the bed. She purred and purred until morning when I woke up to use the bathroom. Zanita had been sleeping near the wall at the foot of the bed, but when I returned to the bedroom I found Zanita lying right on my pillow, purring and STARING at John! Zanita has never lain on pillows before, but I guess she fell in love with John because she refused to move away from him. The next few nights she continued trying to cuddle with John at night, but he wasn't a fan of that since it was so hot last summer.

Holidays

2009-11-28T22:33:00.000-08:00

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! This Thanksgiving I learned how to make a few new dishes: fruit stuffing, vegetarian gravy, and ratatouille penne bake. Now that it is over I have a fridge full of leftovers and Christmas on my mind. I will be mailing John's Christmas presents on Monday to ensure that it arrives before Christmas even if the postal office is swamped with packages. My sister and I have already pulled out our Christmas decorations and have decked the house in our assorted garlands, lights, and figurines.

I have to say that these are my favorite of my decorations and ornaments:

This angel I got a few years ago. I love the gold detailing on the dress.

Here is a close up.

This ornament I got in 2007 and put a photo of John and me in it that was taken on his leave during his first deployment.

This deer I just got this year, it has the sweetest face!

When I pulled out the sheet to use at the backdrop for the photos my cat Dmitri decided he had to be a part of the action! He loves Christmas, he likes to pretend to chew on fake trees, it's the strangest thing.

My general theme for holiday decorating is gold, trees, and "realistic" (not cartoony) reindeer.

Package from John

2009-11-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

The first package I have received from John since this deployment started arrived at the end of last month! He's been getting a package from me at least once a month (the first two months he got a LOT).

He sent a disc with photos on it, many of them were like this:

I guess being deployed makes you go crazy...

I enjoy the other gifts he sent a lot more:

A robe with my initials embroidered on it...

And a beautiful leather diary.

Our Honeymoon

2009-11-08T13:47:00.001-08:00

For our wedding gift, John's aunt Laurie let us use her timeshare and we spent our honeymoon in Reno! We left from the Seattle area on July 3rd and traveled to Medford, Oregon.

The weather was nice and the roads weren't too congested. We stayed the night in Medford and left early the next morning.

I brought our cake topper with us on the trip to take pictures of. This was at a rest stop just after we got into California.

The timeshare was at The Plaza Resort Club, and this was our beautiful room!

John took this photo of the view from our window.

We walked around Reno and enjoyed visiting shops and seeing the different places in town.

On July 06th, we went to the National Automobile Museum.

On the 07th we went to Virginia City! This was our favorite part of the trip.

We saw a show put on by three guys, it was really funny!

We also went to a museum that was about Mark Twain and the newspaper he worked at when he lived in Virginia City. That is his writing desk he used.

The next day we visited Tahoe, is was a long drive but beautiful!

John got a tattoo while we were in Reno, it's a pair of Airborne wings.

The last night we were in Reno we went to a fantastic Thai restaurant. The food was delicious!

On July 11th, we checked out of the hotel and traveled back to Idaho. It was supposed to take twelve hours of driving time, but even with plenty of stops for food and to stretch our legs, we still made it in twelve hours...John was speeding a lot!

The Wedding Reception

2009-11-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

The wedding reception followed immediately after the ceremony a few yards away under a 40'x40' tent. The catering was all done by the UofI, including our beautiful cake. Unless otherwise mentioned, all the photos were taken by the professional photographer.

My mother and I spent a whole year visiting antique stores looking for tea-related items for the centerpieces (such as teapots, teacups, cream and sugar bowls, and serving trays). In the weeks leading up to the wedding, I created arrangements with all the items and my friends put everything together on the day of.

Photo taken by my aunt Sue. The wedding cake was three tiers, the bottom and top layers were white cake with strawberry filling and the middle layer was yellow with chocolate truffle mousse. The baker went a little bit overboard with the decorations to go with my gnome cake topper, but it turned out wonderfully!

My brother gave John a toast in place of John's best man. It was such a sweet gesture and I am so grateful he agreed to toast! John's dad, my mother, and John also gave toasts, it was our favorite part of the reception!

Our first dance was to "Fly" by Sara Groves. You can see John's bullet cufflinks in this photo!

My father and me. We had a parent-child dance to "You Raise Me Up" sung by Celtic Woman.

John and his mother.

John's parents' friends were willing to let us use their 1969 corvette as our "getaway car". We only drove to my house where we swapped out for a different one to drive to Spokane.

All in all, it was the best day of my life thus far and each time I look at these photos and think of all the memories I get so excited for our future together.

Wedding Ceremony

2009-10-30T22:12:00.000-07:00

The wedding was June 13th on the University of Idaho's Administration Lawn in the Presidential Grove (named so for the presidents, such as Teddy Roosevelt, who planted trees there). Today I thought I would share some of the highlights of the wedding ceremony. Unless otherwise mentioned, the photos were taken by the professional photographer.

The ceremony began at 2:00 when the bells chimed. My maids held parasols instead of bouquets and used them to "conceal" my entrance..

John's hometown pastor traveled all the way to perform the wedding ceremony for us.

My brother (also the groomsman) sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" in the style of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. It was beautiful.

Photo taken by my aunt Sue. My bridesmaids were John's younger sister Hannah, my cousin Becky, and my sister Kimberly.

My sister's husband Caleb played the guitar for the ceremony. Only a few days before the wedding he cut part of his thumb off!

Instead of a unity candle or sand ceremony, we used honey to represent our commitment.
"Honey is a symbol of the sweetness in life. And so, with this jar of honey, we proclaim this day as a day of great joy and celebration. A sweet day to remember.
As together you now share this honey, so may you now share perfect love and devotion to each other, share your lives together, and thereby may you find life's joys doubly gladdened, its bitterness sweetened, and all things hallowed by time, companionship and love."

"You may kiss"!

Photo taken by my cousin Amy. Unfortunately, John's best man wasn't able to make it to the wedding. He is also in the army and circumstances arose and he couldn't come. We missed him!

Where it stands

2009-10-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

We met at church camp, he joined the army, we got married, he was deployed for the second time, and now we have a blog. This is to let family and friends know how we are doing and what we are up to, enjoy!