Update

My birthday was last week (10 days ago...) and my dad came to Raleigh to take David and I out to dinner! We had a blast and I got to wear a new dress. Yay! As presents go, I got a few more things off of our registry, Avett Brothers tickets from Jackson, and new Toms!

Today we went to Hyco lake to hang out with Dad and the Apples. I picked up my Toms from Dad and Ransom had his first swimming experience! He did very well. We dropped him because he never decided to swim out on his own, but he hung out on floats with us for a while before deciding to swim back for the bank.

 Ransom and David in the water.

My new Toms on the ride home!

I'll make an effort to blog more in the coming weeks. We're currently finishing plans for Europe and will start packing soon (10 days left!) and I plan to keep the blog updated while we are traveling. I think we have free wi-fi everywhere we're staying, so I should be able to handle that.

Memorial Day Weekend

Well, we started our memorial day weekend with a quick trip to South Carolina for Big Daddy's birthday (that's David's grandfather). We're on our way home now, and all I can think about is how I haven't seen my puppy in almost 10 hours! How sad! I feel like a new mom who left her child for the first time. We left him in his kennel at home and had a friend stop by this evening to feed him, let him out, and play with him for a while. I miss him though! I can't wait to get home to my warm bed and go to sleep with my puppy (and hubby, of course).
Tomorrow we leave him again to head to Greensboro. We're off to Caldwell's graduation to celebrate with Tyler Perkins (Congrats, Tyler!!) and then to Reidsville to hang out with my parents for the day. The plan is to not break down and take the puppy with us, but to leave him kenneled again. He'll have someone take him out two or three times tomorrow. At the rate I'm going though, I won't be able to spend another day away from him.
The main(well, only) reason we don't take him with is everywhere we go is because the poor little guy gets carsick. We've been told he'll grow out of it, and for big trips we normally give him Benadryl, but it's just not worth driving him all over creation this weekend and cleaning up all that vomit. Hopefully he'll grow out of it sooner rather than later so we can start taking him on day trips!
We don't have any big beach or lake or cookout plans, but I'm sure the rest of you do, so have a blast! Happy memorial day!

Mother's Day

Sorry for the absence. We've been busy, but I'm graduating Saturday! I got an iPhone 4 (we're pretending it was our graduation present to me) and have been wasting all my spare time taking cute pictures of our puppy!

Ransom and his new raccoon toy!

Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of updating, but for now, here's a picture of us with our new moms (and dads)!

Happy Mother's Day! We love our moms!

Birthday!

It's a few days late, but happy birthday to David! Last night we had a pretty fun (nerdy) party. We hung out with a bunch of friends, played old game cube games, board games, and had some pretty awesome cupcakes! 

Kiersten and I worked super hard on these cupcakes. I borrowed a recipe from Smitten Kitchen and made "Car Bomb Cupcakes." For those of you who don't know what a car bomb is, I will explain.


To drink a car bomb, you fill a pint glass with Guinness and a shot glass with mostly Irish whiskey and top it off with some Bailey;'s. You then drop the shot glass into the Guinness and chug it. If you don't chug, your Bailey's will curdle in the Guinness. It sounds weird, but it's delicious and sweet. The only reason I don't normally do car bombs is because I struggle with drinking that quickly. David, however, loves them.


The cupcakes are made with Guinness batter, Jameson ganche filling, and Bailey's icing. They were delicious and a great way to celebrate David's birthday!

New Apartment

Sorry for the lack of posting lately; we've been extremely busy. I've had a lot of school work to do, David has been busy with his 40 hour/week mulching job, and we moved!

Moving was a great decision! Our new apartment is much closer to Lake Johnson and to a lot of our friends. There's a back yard area where the puppy can play, and an extra bedroom for our friend Brant who is going to stay with us this summer!! Our kitchen even has a cute little window over the sink that I can open to smell the fresh air. 


My parents came up to help us last weekend and brought their puppy to play with Ransom. The moving was very hard on the pups...

Anyway, hopefully there will be more regular updating in the near future. Also, happy birthday to Nikki!! 

COMING SOON

Very exciting blog post!

Volkswagen + Star Wars = Love

Wedding Slideshow

Here's the wedding slideshow from the rehearsal dinner :)

Christmas

One Christmas down, three to go. Last night we had Cottrell Christmas (my dad's family) and the next Christmases, in no particular order, are nuclear Cottrell Christmas, nuclear Earley Christmas, and friend Christmas in Reidsville. Last night at Cottrell Christmas, the cousins outlasted the adults at dinner for the first time ever. It was quite an accomplishment! We were sitting and chatting at the dinner table almost an hour after the adults had gotten up. We're growing up so fast!

With 15 days left until the wedding, we've been very busy, and it has been a little hard to get into the Christmas spirit. David is sad that Christmas snuck up on us this year. We haven't had as much time to enjoy it as we would have liked. My hope is that next year Christmas will be a huge deal! It will be our first married Christmas and we will be able to make a big deal out of everything.

I don't expect to have a lot of time to post between now and the wedding. Merry Christmas to everyone, and Happy New Year! We look forward to seeing many of you at the wedding and the rest of you during our many Christmas travels!

ChickfilA

17 degrees. That's how cold it got in Kinston while we were camping in the parking lot. Freezing. I had every intention of actually photographing this ChickfilA experience. Eventually I want to photograph the experience from 6am to 6am, but this one was cold and boring.
We got to Kinston at 4:45am and sat in the car with Nickel Creek and the heat blasting until 5:55 when they lined us up and counted how many people were there. Luckily, we were at 96 and we all got to go inside, sit down, and sign our consent forms.
For the next 24 hours we hung out in our tents in sleeping bags and under 10 blankets. The plan was to read, but it was too cold even for that, so we slept and watched season 4 of Mad Men (good season, by the way).
In the end we left with four meals in our bellies and 104 free number one coupons. Success! Here's hoping the next ChickfilA opening we go to is somewhere between 40 and 60 degrees!

Christmas Party

We had a Christmas party last night! The apartment was appropriately decorated with lights and my roommate had a tiny little tree set up. We drew names with six of our friends a few weeks ago and exchanged secret santa gifts at the party. Lots of fun gifts were received, including a bunch of games! We spent the rest of the night playing "What's yours like," Bananagrams/Speed Scrabble, and Rock Band. We made pizzas (from scratch!) before the presents and enjoyed eating those along with our festive snacks and drinks (Christmas cookies, apple cider, and eggnog). Fun, drink, and food were had by all and it was a great night!

Puppies

I love puppies. I want puppies. But I can't have puppies right now, so this is second best.

Thankful

I never said what I was thankful for, and after such a long week, I'm going to take the easy way out.
I'm thankful for David. Here are the blurbs from our wedding website about how we met and how he proposed. Enjoy!


How we met:
Catherine and David attended the same school (Caldwell Academy) from 1996 when Catherine started there until 2004 when she graduated. They knew of each other but did not become friends until Catherine's senior year. They dated for a few months but decided to take a break and went their separate ways for three years. Neither of them know exactly how they started talking again, but in July 2007 they decided to restart their dating relationship. After graduating from Appalachian, Catherine moved to Raleigh where David was in school at NC State to work and begin graduate school (and to put an end to their long-distance relationship). Catherine and David were not apart for more than a weekend from the summer of 2008 until David left for Alaska in June 2010. 


How we got engaged:
David spent the summer of 2010 in Alaska set-net salmon fishing. After being gone for a week he knew that he never wanted to be separated from Catherine again, especially by 4000 miles. He called Catherine's father (and woke him up from a nap) to explain this and ask for permission to marry Catherine. Cecil told David that he and Catherine's mother trusted David with their daughter and gave him his blessing. For the next 8 weeks Catherine and David's parents kept the secret from her and helped David find a ring and arrange a surprise proposal for the day he flew home. On Sunday, August 8, David's plane landed at 1:09 pm. He deplaned and walked towards the people waiting for him (his parents, Catherine, Catherine's parents, and his sister and brother-in-law). After a few hugs from parents, Catherine hugged David, and at the same time his father passed him the ring. He then stepped back, got on one knee, and proposed. Of course, Catherine said yes, the date of January was decided, and the wedding planning commenced.

And now we're down to 39 days! Everything is getting crazy with Thanksgiving, the end of the school semester, Christmas, and wedding planning! I just finished the wedding slideshow last night and I really want to share it but I'm going to (try) to wait until after it debuts. Here's a few cute pictures to hold you over, though.
 

Harry Potter (Spoiler?)

This was the perfect theater to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 for the first time. I've loved this theater for a long time because of the shimmery curtain, and it was very Harry Potter-esque at midnight!


I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I think David did too. There were a few times we laughed and no one else did (probably because it was a reference to the books in some way). I was very happy with the way the movie turned out. One of the biggest issues I had was that they didn't show the relationship the three built with Kreecher. There was never a, "thanks, Kreecher. Have the fake locket." and there was no indication that Kreecher had prepared a giant meal for them to eat when they got back from the Ministry (also didn't love the Ministry scene, but it was pretty good). I would have loved a shot back to Kreecher happily preparing their meal while Ron lie bleeding on the ground. 
The other big "leave out" was Phineas Nigellus's picture. This was vital to the story line. Because they took Phineas' picture frame from 12 Grimauld Place, Snape (the current headmaster of Hogwarts) had a direct link to the trio. This allowed him to send the doe after them when Phineas overheard Hermione say that they were in the Forest of Dean... I'm just curious how they're going to explain that in part 2.


Overall I was very excited about the movie. I think it's safe to say it was my favorite so far (if it weren't for the last 20 minutes of Half-Blood Prince... Oh, that reminds me. How sad were you when Bill introduced himself to Harry for the first time and was like, "Oh yeah. My face. Darn warewolf..." He deserved so much more) and I know it's safe to say I'm definitely looking forward to part 2.


P.S. David says this movie might have appealed more to the book fans than the movie fans (and this might be the first one to do that). Movie fans have noted it was slow and boring, but the book fans actually had something to hold on to this time. There was more accuracy than normal. Just a thought.

Harry Potter Plan

"Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry Humperdink in little-less-then-half-an-hour so all we have to do is get in, break up the wedding, steal the princess, make our escape, after I kill count Rugen."


Haha. That's just what I thought of when I said I had a plan. Now, on to the real plan.


The plan is to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 Thursday at midnight. We're going to go into the movie thinking it will be awful and that we've seen so many previews that the whole movie is already spoiled for us. They probably completely overlooked something really important in the movie, like Griphook, and we will be furious the whole time. Overall, the movie will probably be a horrible letdown just like most of the others...


Break!


"You probably got it all figured out, Corey. If you start out depressed everything's kind of a pleasant surprise."


P.S. Name the movie quotes and you get bonus points!

Rock Band 3

avid should be writing this post. I'll probably report everything wrong about our Rock Band 3 experience and he'll have to come behind me and re-write the post, but here we go.


Last night we had a big party and some of our friends went out and bought Rock Band 3. Woo! We were all very very excited. We have a lot of musicians in our group, so they were excited about the keyboard. it took some practice, but most everyone got the hang of the keyboard eventually. We started playing it on pro-mode, so the switch to keytar took some getting used to half way through the night, even though I'd say that's easier.


The highlights of the night were definitely Whip It by Devo and Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. We failed Whip It about a million times but it was hysterical because we restarted the song over and over and over again. By the end, Jessica and I were pros at the harmony. We played Bohemian Rhapsody twice, once at the beginning of the night and once at the end. Both times there was a rule that everyone had to sing. It was glorious. 


The review of Rock Band 3 is as follows: It was a ton of fun to play, but we were fairly disappointed at the set list. There weren't a lot of songs we knew, so it wasn't as fun to play as it could have been. Also, to add your Rock Band 2 songs to Rock Band 3 you have to spend 800 gamer points. Even after you spend that money, your old songs don't have any harmony, keys, or pro-modes. Sad. There are Rock Band 3 versions of a very few of the Rock Band 2 songs, but you have to buy those as well. Hopefully enough people will be upset about this that by the time David and I buy/get Rock Band 3, we won't have to pay o wazoo ut the just to play the songs we already have...


All in all, we had a fun night, but we're planning to wait a while to get the game because we want more options and more song we know.


P.S. Pictures in the Picasa album are coming soon.