Marriage

So I actually want to write about the political campaign- but since I haven't blogged in so long I felt I needed to give at least a brief update on my life. I am now MARRIED!!! Things are going well. :) We got married on 11.11.11 and all of our immediate family was there even though some extended family that was close to us was unable to make it (due to school and other scheduling things). We are both very opinionated and stubborn and are very happy with each other, but there are lots of times when we fight. We always have. If we've disagreed, someone has been vocal about it- but one of the things I liked about Jon is that we've always been able to work through it. In that sense, life has not been "blissful", but it has been very good and fulfilling. We are not in the oblivious phase, we have already started having minor arguments about how to do laundry ( I prefer to sort it into lights, brights and darks and he's a boy who has always just thrown it all in together). We have a three partitioned laundry basket so it hasn't been too hard for him to conform on that aspect. You throw it where it goes when you take it off and it's already sorted for you when we get to the laundry. Learning to work with each other on different things has also caused some arguments. I say arguments simply because we both get heated (probably has something to do with me being stubborn and opinionated and him being like me) about our side of the issue. But through everything we have grown closer together. We have a financial plan and although we are on the poor side now (aren't most people at one point in their lives) but living graciously on family's charity in many aspects for the first year. The roof over our head belongs to my grandma and we made a deal with her to help out in exchange for "room and board". :) We've been growing together spiritually and learning from each other in many other ways. The future is bright, and each argument we have just helps us learn more about the other person and resolve things so we can figure out how to work with each other, now and in future cases when SOMEDAY we have kids. (Not a hint at anything- we are waiting at least a year and then we'll pray about it). Anyways, life is great and I'm sorry I'm not always great at blogging. I've always enjoyed it, but sometimes it just seems hard.

I have recently become a huge supporter of Excel. I took a class on it to help with office skills (but haven't used it except personally yet). I made several spreadsheets when I got married and found I like a lot of aspects with the wedding planning. I like designing invitations and can do it for pretty cheap. I helped with my brother's as well (who also just got married on Dec. 30th). I like planning things and making sure everything has been attended to. I like making the schedule for the reception, making a playlist (for a dance party or background music). And several other things. I like spreadsheets to the point where I have made one to track my New Years' goals and friends' and family's addresses and I even made one for our budget and when we bought a new car. We found out his car was going to need repairs- ones that shouldn't be needed with the amount of miles that were on his car. So I figured out how soon they would all need to happen (in the next 2 years and divided it by the amount of months). I found a website that told us the average mpg (to determine approx. how much money we spend on gas for it in comparison to other cars) and then we searched for used cars to trade it in for. I made the spreadsheet of all the different models, how much we'd have to spend on gas to go the same distance we were in his car and how much our monthly payment could be to still save money on the repairs. Well when all was said and done we were both satisfied with our buy. We traded in his "fun" car (which he misses but he decided to do it) for a more economical one. He had a Pontiac G6 Convertible that he loved and now have a Honda Civic Hybrid- not a convertible and we've now had problems twice going up hills where we wondered if it would start going backwards. :) It hasn't gone backwards, but the engine is smaller and so hills are harder and it slows down. So it's still very reliable, we just weren't sure the first two times going up steep hills. :)