Dos anos

 

Happy 2 year anniversary fiance! Thanks for amusing me and going with me to watch Happy Feet Two.

P.S. We're six months away from the wedding (eek!!)!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Flag football in the morning

Food in the evening

"Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;

let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

Let us come before Him with thanksgiving

and extol Him with music and song."

Psalm 95:1-2

Tis the season to be giving

Americans are expected to spend an average of  $715 on Christmas presents this year. That's a lot of pennies. The older I get, the more I realize that gifts need to be one of two things: 1. practical or 2. an inside joke. Anything else is pretty much a waste of money.

Thanks to pinterest, I have been inspired to do more DIY projects, and before I knew it, I ended up making monogrammed kitchen towels for my in-laws! (Shhh, it's a secret, so don't go sharing this with them!!) It brought me back to my childhood, when I used to spend long plane rides cross-stitching. All I needed were some bargain kitchen towels (found mine at Marshalls for $4), some thread, and a stitching hoop! I cranked these babies out during two evenings of TV before bed.

(Please ignore the deformed monogram in the middle)

Wondering what you could do this holiday season? Give presents that give back: TOMS, World Vision Donations (great ways to give under $25!), volunteer at a local soup kitchen over the holidays...

...or donate a diaper bag filled with awesome/ridiculously cute baby stuff!

My church offered us various opportunities to give back to the community around us this holiday season; Operation Christmas Child boxes and three different Foster Care opportunities. Before I knew it, I was signing up to fill a diaper bag with baby stuff for infants needing emergency placements. Just look at how cute that baby stuff is! It was so much fun -- except for the part where everything had to be gender neutral.

Dare to be different this year. Consider spending that $715 on others in a practical way. No matter who you are, you can do something to give back this holiday. Happy giving!

I would rather...

Me: I think we should have puzzle nights when we're married!

The fiance: ..............I would rather do long division with fire ants on my face, than have puzzle nights when we're married.

You know you're getting married when...

...your friend makes this for you:

Thanks Allison!

Everything about this makes me jump for joy!

Whats-in-a-name

The fiance has always found ways of saying words/calling people weird names a la Peter Klaven from the movie "I Love You, Man". It's both awkward and super cute. Don't believe me?

My name is Jocelyn. It was shorted to Jocey. Then it turned into Yosse - in what my fiance calls a "soft y". Then it cocooned itself and morphed into Yossigans. Then it got rhymed with "shenanigans" and voila - a blog url was born.

I am also known to the fiance as: lotus flower, fortune cookie, yellow panda...and my all-time fave, snags. The first three have something to do with my ethnicity, and the last one refers to the snaggle front-tooth I have been sporting since birth. My fiance is considerate and kind.

The fiance's nickname is Rounds. He has a cousin whose child's name is Loundes. She once bit him square on the butt cheek circa Thanksgiving 2009. I became fascinated with rich, Southern family names, and "Rounds" just rhymed and had something to do with his...round-ish midsection that I love dearly. And that's where my creativity stopped. No more nicknames from me.

Nicknames are funny and strange...but more strange than funny in our case. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have forgotten the fiance's real name.