Please keep this card in a safe place for easy reference.

I want a camera. I had one once. It was beautiful and purple. It took many amazing pictures in the United Kingdom. Then it decided it wanted to stay there and went back on the plane without me. Come back, camera. I miss you.

I'm suuuper tired today. Apparently running around Orem and Provo all morning from printer to printer causes unwanted fatigue throughout the rest of the day. Who knew? Luckily for me I found the perfect place. FINALLY. 400 front/back color invitations for what? $292?? Sign me up, friend! They're called ColorQuick and they are awesome. Definitely recommended. I pick them up on Friday morning, just in time to go out to lunch with the Rawlings clan. Mmmm...free lunch.

Had my apartment inspection check today. They must've missed the cock fighting pit I have in the storage room, because I passed and they're even going to come fix my railing some time in the undisclosed near future. And possibly the decaying wall by the bathtub. Although it kind of adds some character to the Gilbert...

Valentine's Day was yesterday, and ding ding ding! Bracken and I were the lucky couple who got to work until 10:00 at night. However, he still managed to keep the fiery flame of love alive by throwing a bag of heart confetti at my face and giving me a box of Ghiradelli chocolates. That's my man! ;) We also watched 500 Days of Summer, and yes, we definitely watched the Hall & Oats dancing scene multiple times. All in all, a great V Day.

38 more days, people. 38. Then I can finally stop turning my brain into mushy soup. Hopefully I can salvage it for further use. If not, at least Bracken will be thrilled to have a zombie wife. And oooooh my gosh if I have another student come up and ask me to print off their schedule I'mma throw my computer monitor through their face!

Perhaps I should go now. Still to come: more engagment pictures. I know, I know, try to contain yourself.

PS: See, if I had a camera this post wouldn't be boring and 100% reading. And short. Fine, here ya go:

Zombie Wife

Mailed from zip code 29303

Another Saturday has arrived, and now that work is over it's going swell. We're watching the BYU v. UTAH game and Bracken is multitasking by both watching the game and playing some game on his Gamecube. Lots of "game"s in that last sentence.

Big news! I picked up my dress yesterday! Also it was Bracken's birthday! He said it was a good one. I got him a Plants vs. Zombies t-shirt and the board game Dominion. Brian got him a new Gamecube card and the Coheed CD. Oh, and a flashlight and Old Navy Performance Fleece blanket. And by Brian I mean Grandpa Turner for Christmas. I got a scarf. Not too shabby this year, Grandpa. Anyway, he lounged around and played video games with his roomies, then Brian joined us, then we all went to Red Robin and met up with like, 16 people. He's soooo popular.

AND today Dana gave me back some of our engagement photos! They look so good! I promptly sent them in an e-mail to Verna, Dana (sister), and Wendy, created an album on Facebook, and am now about to post them to this very blog. Excited? I know you are. Except everyone who follows this blog has by now already seen them on Facebook. But I obviously don't care.

Can't wait to get the rest of them!! XD

Flavored beverage with other natural flavors.

Huuuuggghhhhhhhhuuughghhhaaaggh.

There. Now that that's out of the way, we've got 47 days left. But who's counting, right? Me. I am counting. And burning my retinas into nothingness with 24/7 bridal blog viewing. Speaking of which, found a real gem of a site called offbeatbride.com. Check this doozy out: 

Classy, right? It's a German LARP (Live Action Role-Play) wedding. Charming.

Anyhow, I've been redoing my women's boutonnieres over the past 24 hours and finally finished them! Here's a crappy pic from my phone:

Obviously getting all the materials took much more than 24 hours, but what I mean is I finally realized how I wanted them all to look and have been cutting, hair spraying, and hot gluing like a mad woman. Now I just have the men's boutonnieres to do and I'll be done with them! Of course that just means I'll get to start on the 50 other projects I have left for this wedding. Luckily I have Sheri to help me with all things crafty/designy/pretty much everything.

Got a call from my Britishy sister, Dana this afternoon! While she regretfully let me know she probably won't be able to make it over the pond for the wedding, she also proposed the plan of getting dad to bring a laptop with a web cam, setting her at a table with a piece of cake in front of her and a boutonniere attached to the screen, and ta-da! She's there! What are you talking about, it will totally work. Also, so told me she finished making our bird cake toppers! I'm so excited to see them. :) And I told Bracken we're going to have to definitely visit them before they leave because....well because it's my sister and her family and it's London.

More excitement: my wedding shoes arrived!! Huzzah! Here they are in all their glory:

Beautiful, aren't they? I'm so pleased. :) Bracken got his a few days ago but it looks like they used green instead of yellow...we'll see what happens with that. Either way, they still look awesome!

Bracken's birthday is this Friday so a bunch of us are all going to his favorite restaurant (Red Robin). Looking forward to that. Also looking forward to figuring out what the heck I'm gonna get him. Any ideas, Verna? I'm sure you're ripe with them.

The Superbowl was today. I mostly just heard the first 3/4 of it (including the horrendous half-time show from the Black-Eyed Peas...Fergie sounded like a dying goose) from the kitchen whilst doing said gluing, but we definitely watched the Puppy Bowl for the 2 hours before the Superbowl. Our favorite puppy even won Most Valuable Puppy! His name is CB and Bracken voted for him about 3 times online. At first I figured he won because Bracken was the only voter, but apparently over 8.6 million viewers tune in to watch the Puppy Bowl (as they should). Congratulations, CB.

Okay, time to go stalk more bridal blogs. Because I totally haven't been doing that for the past 4 hours...

Superior Water is Purified by State-of-the-Art Reverse Osmosis Technology.

Holy two-months-to-go, Batman! Well, technically 9 1/2 weeks, but you get the idea. I got my ring, ordered my dress, purchased and received my awesome feather hair clip, bought killer Nike wedding kicks, somewhat decided how I'm doing my hair, made half of the boutonnieres, decided on photographers, booked the venue and temple, taken engagement pics, finalized invitation design, got most of the addresses for invites, found a place for the luncheon, bought some decorations & made a few more, booked honeymoon flights and hotel, found a place for the Open House (well, Verna did that), decided on cake design, gave bridesmaids dress instructions, looked at a bajillion wedding blogs, got work off for the wedding week, registered at Bed Bath & Beyond, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting.

I still need to pay for the rest of my dress, pick up the dress frabric swatch for Celeste, do the alterations and make the lace bolero (well, Celeste will do that), decide on flowers, get final guest count, set pre-wedding temple appt, finish buying decorations, finish making some more decorations, finish making boutonnieres, decide on what I'm wearing to the luncheon, print and send invitations, figure out the food situation for the reception, give dad our wedding dance party song list, make the sign-in trees, pick our cake place, buy other temple stuff, keep up with my Wedding Workout (compliments of Women's Health Magazine), decide on shirt and tie colors for the men, attend bridal showers, buy any tickets for places we want to see on the honeymoon (i.e. Alcatraz), take bridals, get my nasty hair trimmed, and breeeaaaattthhheeee....

Luckily I have awesome friends and family who are helping me out, not to mention I'm marrying the absolute B-E-S-T guy ever who also helps out with wedding decisions. The biggest hurdles right now are deciding on/making/ordering the rest of the decorations, the cake, and the dress stuff. The invitations are a pain, but that part's almost over. I ordered my dress the week before my birthday back in November and it doesn't ship until February 28th, scheduled to arrive either March 1st or 2nd....and the wedding is March 25th....and we're making a lace bolero thing-a-ma-bob to add on to it...sooo kinda stressed about that.

But, I'm still having fun with everything. There are definitely a lot of fun parts to it all. And I just can't wait to be married to Bracken. It makes all of the hectic planning and running around totally worth it, and that's what it's all about anyway.

Plus, I'm excited to see my britishy sister and possibly britishy niece *crossing all fingers*! Alright, no pictures this time, but I'll post engagements when I get them in 2-3 weeks! And who knows, I may even feel like blogging before that.

But Twin Draftguard Provides an Air-Tight Seal!!

So Christmas happened! Bracken and I went up to his parents' house in glamorous Preston, ID. The festivities included a bajillion-kajillion games (which I actually enjoyed), mountains of never-ending home-cooked meals, lots of extended family, and an AWESOME new Kindle!! Hooray!! It's pretty and black and has unlimited, free 3G! Like I said, awesome. I've been downloading books like mad. After getting a long list of free classics, I have about 47 books and only paid for one of them. Actually, I didn't even pay for it because my $25 kindle gift card took the honors. And I'm sooo not even done! But I will be busy reading those for a while.
Now that the holidays are pretty much over, the wedding planning is back in full swing. And actually, last night Bracken pointed out that I was the one playing video games and he was the one looking up wedding things online. (As you may have gathered, those roles are usually reversed.) Hey, it's not my fault I've become hopelessly addicted to Dance Central, just one of a few games that came with a brand new Kinect that was delivered to Bracken's doorstep this week! And what's more, we have no idea who sent it! Who does that?? Our new anonymous best friend, that's who! If I could play Dance Central while sleeping, I would. It's that addicting. AND, Bracken got Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the Kinect!! I'm marrying a genius. (For those of you who don't know what a Kinect is, it's like a Wii remote game but twenty times better. It hooks up to the Xbox and has some cool laser reader thing that reads how you move your body, so you can play games by actually standing up and moving around with no remote.)
All this talk of Kinect has made me want to play, so I'll add some pictures and leave with a shaking fist at the off-and-on blizzard that's been sweeping Utah this week. Stop it!

This is the game that took over about 90% of our said game-playing. It also teaches Italian. ...no, really.

I'm actually reading the first book of this trilogy they have on the screen riiiight nooow. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. 

So FREAKIN excited about Christmas!!

Cousins Table!! Bracken wasn't invited.

After the initial shock and "What the hell!?" of the self-moving Santa hat, Grandpa was thrilled to wear it...

It's like crack.

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Oh hi, Mark! I mean blog! I just saw Aly's blog and read about a million and one posts and got insanely jealous of her travels and decided I should probably write a new post since my last one was...that one time that I posted last.

As seen on Bracken's blog, TA DA! We're engaged! Let the villagers rejoice and the wedding planning begin! ....or maybe I had most of that done before I actually had the ring on my finger and I'm not a total creeper. I am naaahhht! But the date, venue, temple session, dress, decorations, cake, invitations, and various other things may or may not have already been bought/decided upon before the morning of November 21st. I would mention it's on March 25th at the Logan temple, but hey, my three followers are my mom, my sister and my fiancee himself, so....hmm.

Yesterday was the third Globe University/Minnesota School of Business/Broadview University/work party at Thanksgiving Point. Joy. I came in to work at nine to "help" wrap the Secret Santa presents (I put "help" in sarcastic quotes because I was doing it all before doing the female guilt-trip on those standing by and watching). Whilst ushering in the Christmas Spirit, I snipped my finger pretty dang bad. Like deep. And gushing blood. And it hurt. Mica put ointment and a band-aid on it, thus demonstrating the great Medical Assisting education she's receiving here at our fine institution. Don't worry, I survived. Once the presents were wrapped, I got in Staci's 4-runner and we headed up to the Garden Room at Thanksgiving Point in our business attire. As per usual, the food made me sick, the awards were rigged (don't even get me started on the award our campus got for..what was it? Matt Moon's contributed processes adapted at our campus?.....), the company founders gave some stuffy speaches, blah blah blah it got out a half hour early.

THEN, I went and picked up Bracken...or rather rose him from the dead after pulling an all-nighter to finish a final project...and we were off into the construction traffic on the good ol' I-15 to meet Grandpa at his place for my birthday dinner. I was getting stressed cuz we were running late due to the afore-mentioned construction traffic, leaving Grandpa about 5 messages/missed calls letting him know we were coming. We made it to his house just a few minutes after 5, knocked on the door, and no one was there. After waiting in the car for a good 20 minutes, we headed back onto the 2-15 West. Right as we reach the entrance to I-15, my phone goes off with a reminder that my birthday dinner is in 15 minutes...DING DING DING! My fried brain goes off and suddenly remembers it was at 6, not 5. By this time I had gotten on the I-15 NORTH and got off on the first exit, followed it around and parked in some KFC parking lot in who knows where. I get ahold of Grandpa, tell him the story, and we're off to meet him at his place. Only problem is I'm now lost. We park in a church parking lot and I do the girl thing and cry. Greeeaaat. After I pull it together, with some help from Bracken since he's amazing like that, we find the freeway, get to Grandpa's, and have a delicious dinner at Maccaroni Grill in Salt Lake. (Thanks for nothing, 60-70 minute wait at P.F. Chang's.) It's ok, though, Maccaroni Grill was even better.

Wow, this is a lenghty post. Better add some pictures...uh...here:

Other than that, I'm waiting on a check from corporate so I can get paid for Thanksgiving *shaking fist*, school's almost over, work is...work, and I'm gonna go make more paper snowflakes for the windows now. Promise I'll blog again soon. To all...three of you out there. Get excited!!! XD

Kills 99.99% of Germs

Today has been entirely too long. I woke up at 8:30, went to a work meeting from 10 AM to 3:15 PM (yeah, don't even get me started on that huge waste of time that just caused even more problems than what was trying to be "solved"), had a 2 hour lunch break from 3:30-5:30 during which I went home and played Freecell because I couldn't sleep, came back and get to stay until 10 PM. One more hour to go until freedom...one more...
On a lighter note, I got free Rumbi's. That was actually the only good thing about the "meeting". I like to "use quotes" to convey my "abundant sarcasm".
On an even lighter note, pay day is tomorrow! FIIInally. I actually get to start setting money aside to save this paycheck! I've forgotten what that feels like, but I imagine it's wonderful. I'm also going to spend some of that money on a couple shelves and a small entryway table from DI to display my heart-stoppingly gorgeous witch boot on. Yes, I've become addicted to the strong substance that is arts & crafts again. Thank you, Wendy Rawlings. See, in this instance, being an enabler is a good thing!
OK, I'm all out of interesting things to say. I guess I'll go fold, stuff, and mail a sizeable stack of letters that have been pushed off onto me by one of our loveable Admissions Reps. Again. ..perhaps I should have used the sarcasm quotes. I think you get it.