The journey is the destination...

A women that both Nathan and I hold very close to our hearts told me "The journey is the destination". I think it was the first time in days that I was able to put everything into perspective. I for the first time realized that it isn't 6 months until our wedding, or 17 days until I see him again. Right now, these moments, they are all building our relationship. Its not the wedding that matters or having him home. Its all the moments in between that add up to a lifetime of love and happiness together.  I have heard every cliche saying since Nathan left. "Everything happens for a reason", "Absence makes the heart grow fonder". But really, the only thing that has finally made me realize that every thing, every little thing is going to be ok.

This hurt in my heart, this ache for Nathan will never go away until I see him again. It is just something that I have to deal with. I can't make it go away, and I don't want to make it go away. This pain that I feel in my heart, this ache for Nathan, it is a constant reminder of how deep our love is. This journey that we are on together is one of a kind. The love that we have for each other is unique. I knew it the moment I saw Nathan in the board room on my first day at CBE. I knew it on the day that Nathan asked me to spend the rest of my life with him after only 5 months of dating. And I knew it when Nathan asked me if it was okay if he went and worked in the Atlanta office for awhile. I know that the love we share will take a hell of a lot more then 912 miles between us to break that bond.

So, although my heart aches more than I ever knew it could, and I have a constant feeling of missing something, I know that this is only going to make us stronger. This journey we're on, this wonderful, amazing journey..it is building the foundation of our relationship. It is building the foundation for our children and their children. And I am so grateful that I get to spend it with my best friend.

Keeping up with Nathan

The name of this blog should have always been "Keeping up with Nathan" instead of "Keeping up with the Joneses" I have come to find out!! HOLY MOLY! It has only been 4 days that Nathan has been gone and this house is a disaster. I mean, I always knew that it was me making the messes and Nathan cleaning them up, but when no one is cleaning them up, I learned just how big of messes I really make.  The sink is overflowing with dishes(mind you we have a dishwasher, I am just too lazy to put the dishes in there), the trash is overflowing(I also didn't put the trash by the curb when I was supposed to), the yard needs mowed(hey, its supposed to rain, give me some slack), the laundry is overflowing(I'll do it on Sunday), and the living room looks like a tornado went through it(well, one sort of did. Its name is Amanda).  I finally unloaded the groceries from the trunk of the car(that I bought on Wednesday).

This house is more then a full time job and I am so thankful for everything that Nathan did around the house all the time that I was clearly unaware of. Or just took it all for granted.  Jack and I are having...welll...let's just say...fun.  I tell you what! That dog (now that he is eating) wants food twice a day, wants his water filled up CONSTANTLY, he only goes outside for a few moments to do his duty and then he barks until you let him back in. Now that Nathan is gone, he takes up MORE than half the bed.

Ok, anways...time for me to buck up and start doing my part around this house. Especially now that there is no one else here to do it!!

Circular Seating

So, for the wedding I decided on circular seating for the ceremony.  It would cost like an extra $500 to get everything all mic'd up for outside and that is just outrageous to me. So, I thought outside the box and this is what I have come up with.

Now, the only tricky part...We will have 4 1/4 moons and they will each need to sit about 38 people.  I cant figure out how to do the rows. Clearly, designing a puzzle was not my strong suite.

I suppose I will leave Nathan and his analytical brain to determine this!

Babies

Well, its no secret that as soon as Nathan and I get married, people are going to start wondering when we are going to have kids.Hell, people thought the reason we got engaged so fast was because I was knocked up!! Surprise, Surprise...a year later and there is NO baby! So now, I already get asked the question all the time "when are you going to have kids" and I simply answer "we will start trying next October".  Tonight, it was brought to my attention that this is maybe not the correct way to say this. It was brought to my attention that maybe I meant we would not start having sex until next October. Well, thats just not the case. I always thought that when people started "trying" to have kids, they just simply stated, they were trying to get pregnant.  I guess what I mean is that we will no longer be preventing it from happening. This probably gives a bad mental picture to some people, but to me, I think it is a beautiful thing between a couple to be "trying" to get pregnant. Its natural. It is what is supposed to happen. Why is there a politically correct way to say this??  Who knows! It seems that there is a politically correct way to say everything and it changes everyday.

Anyways. I enjoyed "dating" Nathan for the short amount of time that we dated, and I have enjoyed being engaged to Nathan for almost a year now.  I am in no rush to start a family, but I am also not dragging my feet. We get married in October and we will start trying a year later. I think that is a perfectly good timeline. I mean from the day we met until the time of us staring to try, we will have only known each other for 3.5 years, and only been romantically involved for 3!  People always have opinions about other people's lives, but I feel that as long as I am happy in my own life and Nathan is happy in his own life, and we are happy in our life together, there is no reason to make other people happy.

You also have the nay-sayers that tell me that I shouldn't plan on when I get pregnant. If you wait and plan it you will never do it. That is not what we are doing at all. I think there is a huge difference in being finically ready, because we never will be, and being finicially prepared. I don't like to jump into anything in my life, and I sure am not going to jump into parenthood.  Nathan is a very analytical person and he looks at things from ever angle. So, trust me, with mine and his planning personalities put together, our lives are fully mapped out!

Soon enough you will hear the pitter patter of a little Jones running around and then we all really will be "Keeping up with the Jonses" :)

Saving Money

Saving money is a constant struggle for me. I am a spender. I love love love to spend money! Like, if I could get a job to just spend money, I would be amazing at it!! Anyways, Nathan and I have made a very concious effort to save practically EVERY penny that doesn't have a NEED to be spent. This is killing me and it is absolutely NOT the life for me! I mean, COME ON! I dont work hard 45 hours a week to never spend any money.

Well anyways, we had a lot of birthdays in our family in the month of March and April, so I got to buy a bunch of birthday cards and birthday presents for everyone this past week. Man on man did it feel good to spend money!

As soon as this wedding is paid for, a down payment on a house is made, new cars are bought, new furniture is paid for....WAIT WAIT WAIT....who am I kidding??  I'm an adult now, I will NEVER be able to spend money like its my job again!! It will always be something that we are saving for!!  Oh well, such is life! I guess its just time for me to start poppin out those babies so I have something to spend money on. Just kidding! :)

Nannie

You hear me talk abou her a lot, but for new readers, Nannie is my Grandma. She is not in that good of health and to be honest for the last 3-4 years they have been telling us that she is only goin to be with us for six to nine more months. she keeps defeating their odds and she is still here with us today. The thing is, she's not getting any better she is getting worse. The whole point of this is that my wedding is still about 8 months away. It breaks my heart that my Grandla won't be at my weddin and that I will be walking myself down the aisle. I will absolutely break my heart if my Grandma isn't there. My grandparents have been so instrumental in my life. There were never like grandparents they at like parents to me. The way I have not been allowing myself to get heartbroken is to just assume and convince myself that my Grandma won't be there so then I won't get my hopes up. The thing about this is that my grandma wants to go shopping for something to wear and she wants to make all of these arrangements on when she is going to get up to Cedar Falls and blah blah blah. My mom kind of reamed my ass today because I keep blowing my Grandma off. I explained to her my reasoning and my point of view. She expressed to me her point of view. She thinks that I should be doing all of these things with my Grandma. She thinks that if the time does come and my Grandma isn't there I can look back at all of these memories that I made with my Grandma before my wedding. Tht it will be like she got to experience in it all.
Yeah, I dont know how I feel about her point of view. There must be a happy medium somewhere and I will just have to find that.

Daddy Drama

Well, this is odd. You wont find me talking about my Father often. Not for lack of love, or lack of caring, more for lack of knowledge. My Mom and Dad got divorced when my sister and I were very young. We moved back to Newton and lived with my Grandparents and my Dad kinda did his own thing. Grew up quite a bit. My Mom got to do the same thing, she just happened to live in the same house as us and my Grandparents. My Dad came back into our lives when I was about 5 and passed away from cancer when I was 9. I have always been a Momma's girl and the thing I remember most about my Dad was that he never forced us to go with him. I usually chose to stay at home with my Mom or my Grandparents. I have few memories of my Father and even fewer good memories. I know that he tried his hardest and really that is all you can ask of someone. I have always considered myself very luck to not have those "Daddy Problems" that some girls who grew up without a father sometimes have. The reason this is, I had my Grandfather. Now this is a man I will always talk about. But sometimes, weird things happen in my life and I have an odd sense of connection to my Dad, Randy. They happen at the most bizarre moments and sometimes it takes me quite a while to piece it all back to him. My Mom and Dad remained good friends until his passing and she truly lost her soul mate the day he died. I truly, 100% believe that if my Dad were still alive today, my parents would be married, living happily somewhere. They got married young, had babies young, and truly couldn't handle the stress. That doesn't mean they didn't love each other with all of their beings, they just didn't know how to make it work. My Mom was lucky enough to have my Grandparents to fall back on and got to do a lot of her growing up in a house with her children and her parents. My Dad kind of got the unlucky end of the stick and had to do a lot of his growing up on his own. I would never say that my Dad didn't love us, or he went off and forgot about us. I truly think he just didn't know how to have both lives that he wanted. I have accepted that, and truly try and love the man that my Mom tells me about. The man she loves so deeply she can barely talk about him without crying. This is a man that I truly don't feel I know personally, but a man that I have been told many stories about.

I have recently started watching a show Sons of Anarchy. It is about a motorcycle club that doesn't always do the best things. From the first episode of this show I watched, I just felt a connection. It was something much greater then just TV. Something more then being attracted to the actors, or the drama, or wanting to know more. It was as if I needed to be watching this show. That watching this show brought me closer to something. I talked to my sister about it, and she told me that her and my Grandpa watched it together every week before he passed away. I re-watched the show and realized that wasn't it. It didn't remind me of my Grandpa at all, and quite frankly it was weird to watch thinking that my Grandpa saw those things. I mean, my Grandpa was kind of a different person when my Grandma wasn't around. He would cuss, say "shit" or "damn" or his favorite "Jesus Christ". But, he wasn't this show. I was watching again last night and it kept taking me back to the same episode. Season 4 Episode 1. When Jax proposes to Tara. She talks about how she wants it, but she doesn't want her kids brought up in that life. I re-watched it 4 times and it finally clicked. My Father. Once again, I don't want to sound negative about my Dad, but from what I have been told, he didn't always make the best decisions. I can imagine my Mom there with children so young, thinking she wanted more for her children. She made the decision to leave and that is where we are now. My Dad loved motorcycles. My sister spent time with him in jail as an infant because he had her on the motorcycle with him at a young age. I don't want to say that my Dad was off running guns, or killing people, but he loved to ride. The feeling that your friends are sometimes more of your family then your own family was hit home as well. My Dad had a best friend, Jeff, who at times I think was more of a brother to him then some of his own brothers. This life, this doing anything to protect your family. This was my Dad. A scene in the show, one of the characters, Opie, chooses not to go home to his kids. He says that it is a bad time to be with his kids after something that he just did. I can see my Dad doing/saying the same thing. I am not a parent, but I can imagine there are things in life that you do that you arent proud of, that you dont want your children to know about or be witness too. I am grateful that my Dad loved my sister and I enough to walk away when he needed to and knowing that maybe being around us wasn't the best. I am thankful that he came back into our lives and that I got to spend the few years that I did with him before he passed away. I am thankful that I have people in my life that love him so deeply and are willing to share that love with me. I am thankful I have such a caring and understand Mother who could hate my Dad for some of the things that he did, but she doesn't. She loves him so much still to this day. And I am thankful for moments like this that bring me connected to my Father. A connection that is most of the time lost.