Happy Birthday to Me!

I know this post is a tad late but better late then never I say. One week ago today was my 23rd birthday and I just wanted to thank everyone that made it extra special by sending their love and best wishes. I must have got over 30 messages by text and facebook! Gosh I felt loved.

I spent my special day at home (TRACER didn't call me woohoo) and went out for dinner with my family at night time. I got lots of lovely presents: a GHD hair straighter from Mum and Dad, money, two bunches of flowers, gift vouchers, bundle of things from Kevin, picnic mat, sewing cushion, cheese knive and phone cover.

On Saturday Jeff's family had a BBQ where we celebrated my birthday and another family member Emma too! I'm a very lucky girl and couldn't have had a more special day so thank you everyone!

Here Comes November Again!

November seems to come around very fast each year. I still remember writing this post about November last year. Usually I'm very excited because it's almost my birthday but this year I'm just very tired and I guess a bit overwhelmed with planning a wedding. My birthday is on Thursday (2 more sleeps) and I decided that truly I have everything I could ever want and feel very content. I'm just going to have a small dinner with my family, no fuss! I couldn't be happier. Rachel took me out for coffee and cake yesterday which was a lovely suprise and really really nice! Thanks Rachel :)

Plenty of other things have been happening in the world of Carmy and Jeff. I'll give you a small update:

- We bought a HP mini laptop from our friend Jason with a portable DVD/burner.

- Jeff has discovered white TimTams... I'm pretty sure he thinks they've changed his life hahahaha! We don't seem to be without them at home now.

- Term 4 has actually been quite busy for work and I've been working at Peachester, GCCC, Glenview and Beerwah.

- We finally found time to wash and polish Dobo (the Polo) and it's paint came up beautifully. We couldn't be happier.

- We celebrated 7/11 by having free surplees (so important in our lives hahaha!)- We found time for a date night at long last. Toscan's and San Churros Mmmmmmm!

- My wedding dress is half made and looking beautiful

- Jeff has been trying to get all the boys suits and ties sorted out

- I spent $28 and bought a new LCD screen for my camera, hoping Jeff can put it in and will be able to take nice pictures again.

- Totally paid off Jeff's loan and have offically started to save for our house woohooo!!!

I've also started a wedding blog so I've moved all my wedding posts over there and will continue to update it. Check it out - Our Wedding Journal

23 things before I'm 23

Talia just updated her blog with a post about 23 things she'd like to do before she's 23. Well I just realised that I'm 23 in just over a month so this post is more of a list of things I'd like to or need to get done by then.

1. Get up to date with my bible reading. (I'm a fair bit behind!)

2. Start organising christmas presents

3. Clean out the Dobo... he's looking a bit messy

4. Get some more teaching days

5. Book someone to make our wedding cake

6. Go walking more often

7. Plant some herbs in my side garden

8. Totally pay off Jeff's loan

9. Get my burner working again

10. Burn a CD of wedding photos for Jan and Simon

11. Continue to pray for Jeff and his young adults study group

12. Cook a little more

13. Blog a little more

14. Buy one thing from my wedding list

15. Eat healthier

16. Less chocolate more salad!

17. Continue saving my gold coins

18. Continue saving for our house

19. Buy the ribbon for our invites

20. Get my camera back

21. Sort out my centrelink issues

22. Give my room a bit of a spring clean

23. Decide what I'd like for my birthday!

By God's Grace

12 Months and 15 days
By God's amazing grace things are starting to really come together for our beautiful wedding. I've been thinking about it so much that I even had a nightmare about the colours we picked out hahaha! I was so glad to wake up! More then anything I'm excited about being a wife to my amazing future husband Jeffrey! We've both been talking a lot about being married and we absolutely can't wait!

I'm so grateful that we decided to have a long gap between engagement and wedding because I can make sure everything is well and truly organised. Slowly but surely it is and I'm so grateful for the help I've been getting from family, friends and of course Jeff! I'm especially grateful that God is in everything that we do.

This week we got all the bridesmaid shoes and we also bought the paper for the invitations (because it was on sale woohooo!) Talia has given me some awesome invitation ideas which I've incorporated with mine to come up with what we'll be having! But Jeff was the clever bunny who came up with the main idea just as Mum and I were walking out the door to the paper shop. I'm so happy that he wants to be involved in everything... even the paper! We're going to check out suits on Friday which he's quite happy about.

Bad news is that I took out my camera on Sunday and it's screen (not the glass, the LCD) was all cracked and almost impossible to read. I have to send it away to be assessed and find out if it's covered by warranty or not. I bet it will take ages though!

That's about all that's been happening. I'm also on school holidays and am starting to do a little bit of exercise each day. I enjoyed my time teaching the Year 1/2s and I've added a few pictures here or what we got upto. We also helped Rachel and Aaron move house which you can check out here.

Siman and Jan's Wedding

Jeff and I had a busy weekend as we had two birthday parties and a wedding. Our Pastor got married on Sunday after church and I sang at the wedding as well. It's was a really beautiful ceremony and we got to see the Pastor who's going to marry us doing a service. It was only a small service but it was truly beautiful and very special to see two people who you could just see God wanted together!

It made me feel extra excited that we got to see the Pastor who's going to marry us doing this service. We got to chat to him about starting our pre-marriage counselling and about the wedding in general. We're going to do 3 sessions next year and will be travelling to Rockhampton for one of them at least! I think Jeff is pretty happy about that as he loves visiting everyone in Rocky!

We've started to talk about how we'd like our ceremony to take place, how we'd like our vows to be said and who can do what. We're also going to sing so trying to figure out where to fit that in. It's really important that our wedding is something that will honour God because we wouldn't be getting married if it wasn't for Him. We're also going to have a lot of non-Christians present so we definitely would like a small message to share the gospel!

I don't really like to write negative blogs but I need to share about whats been happening at the moment. At least I can read back on this blog and remember how I felt night now. So things are feeling extremely full on and to be honest just a little too overwhelming!

School

My class at school is less then well behaved, in fact they are horrible. I seem to have behavour problems coming out of my ears. Now lets get one thing straight, just because it's stressing me out DOESN'T mean I can't handle it. I'm handling them quite find but it is very stressful and a lot of extra work. The school performance is the most stressful part as the school expects a good performance but my class can't stand still let alone sing and do actions! I'll be extremely happy when it's over on Wednesday night! Mum's coming in to give me a hand for the next two days which is a HUGE blessing!

Wedding Planning

Yes this is very much fun but getting down to the nitty gritty is a bit stressful... most likely because I'm thinking about it on top of my school stuff. At the moment I'm trying to find bridesmaid shoes that will fit and suit each of the 5 girls. I found some really pretty black shoes but I'm not sure if they will suit their dresses! I'm also thinking about invitations and have been making some practice ones! I think I'll put the planning aside until the school holidays! It's also hard because I have an idea of how things will look in my head and it NEVER works out the same. I just have to cancel my thoughts and look at whats in front of me.

On top of all that I fell down the steps yesterday and my leg is so very sore. I can't really bend down at the moment! Must've fulled a muscle in it. Oooweeeeee. Hopefully it gets better quickly because I have to be at school all of this week.

What a Week

This week has just flown by for me! I've been getting to school at 7:30am every morning because Mum and Dad went to Tassie for a week and Jeff has been dropping me to school. My class is still very full on and I'm constantly writing down problems in my behaviour book.

I had my first angry parent on Thursday morning. They came in and pretty much yelled at me over their child being bullied. I spent most of the morning sorting out the problem and talking to kids involved. Fun fun!

Next week is going to be even more busy with the school performance. Monday is the technical run through, Tuesday is the dress rehearsal and Wednesday we have a matinee performance and a night one that starts at 6:30pm... very late night for the teachers. I can't wait until the school holidays begin!

So that's about how school is going at the moment. I've also been looking at invitation ideas with Talia and have been trying to think of exactly what will look really nice!