Continuing the Journey

Well, we've made it to Psalm 125, which means we've been reading the Psalms now for 25 days, one each evening. I know we still have a long ways to go, but can I just say how wonderful it has been journeying through this portion of scripture together? It's been awesome! And such a fun way to count down to our wedding! We have realized how much depth there is in the psalms, how much joy, anger, grief, honesty, celebration and uncertainty there are in these prayers. We've been marking ones we might like to incorporate in our wedding ceremony somehow, there really are some powerful words found in this portion of scripture! I would highly recommend this as a way to count down to any important event in life--graduation, a new baby (praying some of these prayers over your unborn could be a powerful thing to do as a couple), a wedding etc. We definitely have a treasure that God has given us!

In other news, we made our first attempt at registering for wedding gifts last night--that was quite the adventure! We have made a pretty strong commitment to one another that we really only want to register for the things we don't have (a set of matching dishes, queen sized bedding, some random kitchen appliances/tools I don't have--like a rolling pin--not that my water bottle doesn't work great to make homemade pizza dough, but a rolling pin would be nice...). We have seen so many friends get married and get so inundated with gifts that they literally have no where to put them (and don't need half of what they receive anyways). We are picking what we really need/really want to have for our home and then are going to encourage people to consider other ways to give--gift cards for date nights, money towards our honeymoon in June, or to donate to an amazing organization in our names. (We'll post more about Acres of Love on our wedding blog eventually, it really is an incredible organization that we are so excited to help support a little!). So, with this frame of mind in place, we headed out to Bed, Bath and Beyond. I don't think Chuck had ever been in one of these stores. They are overwhelming. Floor to ceiling stuff--anything we could think of. We checked in at the gift registry spot, were given some instructions, the handy-dandy little scanner to select the items we wanted to add to our list (which of course I let him control, my attempt at making this process less painful for him...), and the warning that we really needed to register for about 300 items for the number of guests we are inviting. Yeah, that's not happening...even though the sales clerks all swore this was very important to do. We finally explained our philosophy of wedding gifts and they backed off, saying that was actually pretty cool (although you could see the disappointment that they weren't going to sell us on fine china...)

After a few hours of wandering, with my list in hand of the things we actually need (courtesy of a very helpful conversation with my sister, who went through all the things she received she's never used, the things she can't live without, and the things she wished she had received as wedding presents...which came out to 1 page, as opposed to the 5 pages of things the people at Bed, Bath and Beyond said we really NEED) we finally called it quits. For the night that is. We spent a ridiculous amount of time looking at dishes/table linens, and couldn't find anything we both liked that matched the table linens. So we finally gave up and decided it wasn't us, it was their selection. So dishes will be selected from Macys or Crate and Barrel. We DID successfully choose our bedding, thanks to our wonderful new friend, the Bedding Expert (a BBB employee who was VERY helpful!). So bedding is done. Dishes are not. But they will be, soon =) My goal is to get the registering all done before the Christmas crowds overtake the stores...

It was kind of fun to wander and dream about setting up our home together, well fun for me =) Chuck had fun scanning things and going to Starbucks for his caffeine pick me up (which I think was his way of getting away from me and the piles of placemats I was holidng up to each set of dishes...I kind of don't blame him...)