Wednesday, March 10, 2010

it's the end...

Well, I'm a bit sad to say this, but I fear my beach preacher days are over. One chapter of my life closed and many more opening up. To those of you faithful readers: thanks so much for your love and support. My journey to California was one of the most tranformational times of my life, and I am grateful to people there and those around the country and world praying for me during that time. Please direct your prayers now to the adventure that is in front of Kevin and I. For those of you who want to keep reading the latest, we have started a wedding blog to keep our guests (and others who we wish we could invite) informed on the details of our upcoming nuptial. For privacy reasons, we are only sharing the website with those who we personally know and trust, so if you are interested in Chapter 2, comment with your e-mail address, and I'll send you the link. Happy to share our journey with you! God Bless!

Friday, January 15, 2010

dance moves!

Again, a few weeks have passed since I last posted. I imagined I'd be a lot less busy once school ended in December, but that proved to be a dream. After a blizzard shut down nearly every road to Southwestern Minnesota on Christmas, Kevin and I crashed at the Bergeson's for a few days. I finally got to give Kevin his present (that had been hiding in his parent's basement since Thanksgiving: a kayak! He loved it! Much to my SHOCK I got a pair of Ugg boots from Kevin and his family, along with the second half of my blog published in a book. Fantastic, thoughtful gifts. We made it down safely for New Years for a late Christmas with my family. On our way down, the surprise of a lifetime: Namrata Kamath (who I hadn't seen in person for 2.5 years) managed to keep her return to MN a secret, and the girls of KNAK were reunited once again. Great afternoon!
We made it safely to Worthington later that day and celebrated Christmases and Madison's birthday over the next few days. Here are a few photos of that to bring you up to speed: Just so you know, this may end up being a post of many dance moves!
Madison blowing out candles on my first culinary creation! I think I might change professions and become a cake maker now!
On January 3, Kevin and I had to go to Sioux Falls for my final candidacy interview: Approval. By far, the most intense. We picked up a 44 oz real fruit smoothie from Sonic to get me pumped for the interview. It went well. That's about all I can say. I felt as though I was true to who I am as a Lutheran, as a woman, as a 26 year old, and my committee was kind, warm, challenging, and got me. Grateful for the people of the South Dakota Synod for all their hard work these last 4 years with me! We drove back through Worthington and had supper and celebrated with a chocolate cheesecake!! One more think checked off my list!

A week later, we were down in Worthington again, only this time for a quick 24 hour trip to celebrate my sister's 30th birthday! A surprise limo, and a great meal! 2010 is going to be a year of many big happenings, and this was one of the first! We were so glad we could get down and celebrate with our families!
Lastly, my final excuse for not posting is due to three little projects I've been working on. 1. Our Save-the-date cards. 2. Our wedding website (to be unveiled soon). 3. My application for the Graduate Preaching Fellowship. This was the most important of all three, and consumed my life for the last three weeks. I've been perfecting each sentence, meeting with people, reading books, and dreaming big on where next year might take us. Our choices ended up being: Hong Kong, Jerusalem, England, St. Andrew, Scotland, and Stockholm, Sweden. We won't find out until next month if we actually get it (so please begin praying that if God wills this for us, that we'll get it). I handed in the 30+ page proposal today in a bright green folder (attention getting, right?). Insert excited dance move here. Now I can focus on #1 and #2 above.

I also took a two week intensive class starting January 4. Genesis to Revelation. Talk about a whirlwind...it's a crazy amount of information to process in one day. If you want to see more of life's latest details, check out my interview for the NEW Luther website by clicking HERE, and of course, the life at Luther blog I write almost 4 times a week on is HERE.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Christmas Wish

Warm Christmas greetings to my family...3 hours away...darn blizzards! See you next weekend!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Sunday, December 20, 2009

a letter to mom

Dear Linda,

Today we woke up to snow flurries with reindeer poop on the table. Sad news: Sara Lee died a tragic bug infestation death a few weeks ago, and was not available for her own wake. Kelly's grammar has gone to pots and has learned some new neck exercises (instructional video to follow in a coming blog post), we're predicting Amy's hair will have enough grease in it to deep fry ten snickers bars by morning, and Amber got rats after eating crab dip off Jason's pants while watching Julie & Julia. As you can see, we're delirious.

Kelly and Amy got their first lesson in snow removal today after Amy asked while holding the shovel, "How do we do this?" Needless to say, some great photos followed. Mama Sue cooked us a hearty Minnesotan egg bake, and let us take naps by the fireplace before driving back to St. Paul. We are running on 12 hours of sleep (for two nights), and are running on girly energy and a bag of high fat potato chips that took us 20 minute to polish off on the way to St. Paul. We watched the holidazzle parade, robbed Herberger's when Kelly opened another credit card and saved a whopping 20%, and met up with a male escort at Famous Dave's and got a wild chair dance while eating ribs, corn, chicken, fries, beans, brisket, coleslaw, and muffins. See the video below for evidence.

We have our beds prepared and are ready to call it a night. We'll report back on the greasy hair tomorrow with a wake-up video of sleeping beauty. We love you, and miss you (just a little). Oh, and we saw Santa tonight.

Sincerely,

The Snow Sisters

Saturday, December 19, 2009

They ARRIVED!!

The best Christmas presents arrived tonight safely from LA! Kelly and Amy!!!!!!!!! We watched their plane fly in overhead as we made our way down the freeway, and greeted them with a big long hug at the gate when they got in!!! This post is for Linda...we'll blog when we can, but FUN first! YAY for visitors!!!!!!!

Monday, December 7, 2009

free up-do?

I got this e-mail from a bridal shop in Roseville boasting free up-do's and veil giveaways for one day only. So, I called up Mollie, we both made appointments for Sunday afternoon and went in for our FREE hair consult. We both got some fun ideas for how to do our hair, and got to try on nearly every piece of headgear (not night braces) we could get our hands on. Based on what I picked out to be my favorite, and seeing it priced for over $100, I decided I'm going to make it myself. I bought the main material for it tonight at $9 a yard. It's going to be one of a kind (hopefully in a good way). Maybe I'll get a call this week telling me I've won a free veil and I won't have to bother with it, but either way, it'll be fun to give it a shot. I also found wedding shoes the other day from The Annex (my favorite discount store in the cities) for $5. I am attaching embellishments that will then match some details on the dress and in my hair...OOH, so fun! Here's a shot of Mollie & me doing what we do best: being goofy! :)

Sunday, December 6, 2009

engagement photos are IN!

Last week, Kevin and I received an e-mail directing us to our online engagement photos. A few days later, I jumped with glee when the copyright free disc arrived in my PO. I began editing, cropping, and perfecting the shots. I have to admit, when I first looked through them, I wasn't loving them...it took a few flips through to realize, "yes, Amber, there are some great shots in here!" I need photo therapy. It's so hard to give up control of something I LOVE to do myself. Even though my initial reaction was weary, I am now at a place where I can say, they are perfect, and Laura managed to capture our love in a way we cannot do with a tripod and remote! Here are a few of our favorites, hope you like them too!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

my little forest gnome

The latest greatest update on our forest wedding! :)

Thursday, November 19, 2009

one GREAT weekend!

Best Parts of Last Weekend:
1. Holly, Presley, & Madison at my house for a slumber party
2. MIA- Minneapolis Institute of Art
3. Children's Museum- FREE passes
4. Mickey's Diner
5. Candyland
6. Bridesmaid dress shopping with Holly
7. Mall of America rides
8. Build-a-bear
9. Mailing letters to Santa
10. NO SHOPPING!

What a fantastic weekend! I love when the girls come up! We had a great time touring and taking in the cultural aspects of the cities. Ok, not that Build-a-bear is considered cultural, but it was fun too! Kevin and I gave Presley a gift coupon for her birthday for a build-a-bear session. Such patience. She's waited 3 MONTHS! We couldn't take Presley and not Madison, so we treated them both to a bear and gave Madison her 2nd birthday present early! Holly and I had a great time (a 5 hour session) of shopping for dresses, and think we've found some winners! More to come on that later! As you can see, we took in two museums. The Children's Museum was awesome for the two of them, but MIA was a little rougher on Madison. I had to go there as a class trip. Presley seemed to like wandering around! Thanks to Holly for bringing the crew up for a great weekend!!