Harley

I just had to put a picture up of Adams new puppy... Harley! He is so adorable and so friendly to everyone!



Harley



Harley and Crawford

This is a picture I stole off of Emily and Jacobs blog of Crawford and Harley. I saw the picture and loved it so much! Emily took both of these pictures.

Christmas

We hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas! We were so lucky to get to spend lots of time with our families and we had a great Christmas! I am so lucky! A few years ago I had to sell my horse and I have regretted it ever since and have wanted to get him back. Ryan's parents bought him back for me for Christmas! How amazing! Ryan called me as I was on the way to his parents for lunch and told me that Adams horse was hurt and to come to the barn as soon as I got there. When I walked into the barn I noticed Fred right away! I started crying, I couldn't believe they would go through all that just for me! Then when I realized what was going on I noticed that Ryan had gotten all my family there and his family, Granny and his Aunt, Uncle and Cousin were all there! I can't believe they did that! I will post some pictures when I get them. I can't wait to start riding again! I am so glad that he is with us now. He is going to have the best place to relax and enjoy the rest of his life and he will be so well taken care of! I am going to be posting some pictures as soon as I get them! My mom is so excited that Fred is back again too!

Again, we love you all and hope you had a great Christmas, this Christmas was so special to us, knowing that next year this time we will be spending our first Christmas as a family! How exciting!

I have made some additions to the posts below so check them out!

Updates

I have been bad on updating the blog lately so I wanted to update it and update some of the past posts with new pictures. So scroll down and you will be able to see new pictures on the different blogs below.

Planning is going good. We met with the tent guy today and got an idea on what he thinks we can do. We booked a caterer and I think everyone is going to love the food. We have been busy. I am just ready for it to be here. I would do it tomorrow if we could get everyone here in time!

I am so lucky to have so many people that are wanting a willing to help me. It is so nice.

Ryan and I are going to spend tonight with my family, tomorrow night with his family, and he has to work on Christmas day. We are looking forward to spending the holidays with all our family (my new family and his new family!) and we can't wait for the new year which will bring us that much closer to May 2!

We hope you all have a wonderful and safe Christmas and New Year and keep checking for more pictures and posts!

Planning

Whew! This week has been so busy with all the phone calls and emails I have been trying to do to get people lined up to do things. We are going to hopefully get our save-the-date/Christmas cards out next week. Emily is going to take our Picture on Saturday and I am so excited, she always does an amazing job! I don't know what I would do without her advice! She is so good at helping me out with stuff and answering all the questions I have about her wedding!

Ryan's cousin Beth flew in this week from Utah and we were so excited to see her. We don't get to see her often enough and although this trip was too short we will get to see her again at the wedding! YAY! She made the family some amazing food she learned to make while she was in Mexico and we got to eat and hang out with the whole family last night so that was a lot of fun!

I know it is still a ways away but with every passing day I get more and more excited. As much as I want a great wedding I am more excited about the marriage part of it! I would do it tomorrow!

Our families, as usual are being so great and supportive of everything. I am sure my mom and Nancy are tired of my phone calls and emails but they are so wonderful with everything. Poor Nancy is being so great with all my questions and input for our honeymoon... she is so sweet! My mom is busy trying to keep me calm and not stress out (like this week when I found out the place I wanted to do my cake was booked and so were the next three places I called!) she has her hands full with that! Overall the planning is fun and I am keeping in mind the advice Emily gave me, slow down, relax, and enjoy it because it will all be over soon! I am just so thankful that we have such great families and friends to share in this fun time and are so supportive. We are truly blessed!



Ryan, Granny Doby and Beth



Ryan and Beth



Beth and Crawford



Casey and Beth


Casey, Ryan and Beth

Eventful Week

Just a little over a week has past since Ryan and I got engaged. A LOT has happened in such a short time! We have set a date (May 2, 2009), chosen our rehersal, wedding and reception site (ok that was an easy one! His parents house), I got my dress, my bridesmaids have chosen the dresses they want, got the best wedding planner, booked a photographer and set up meetings to talk with florists and I am calling tomorrow to set up a meeting with the cake people. Whew! This wedding planning business is harder than I thought! I couldn't have done any of it without all the help from everyone! I hate making all these hard decisions so I left the dresses up to the bridesmaids and let them get their own dresses! After all, they are the ones that are going to be wearing it, not me! Now all I have to do is get Ryan to decide what he wants to wear!
Poor thing, he is taking it all in stride and being wonderful about listening to all my wedding talk and not getting upset with me. He is the absolute best! He does however give me some of the funniest answers when I ask him about things for the wedding. I think I came close to getting in trouble this weekend. I drove up to the hunting cabin and saturday we were sitting around the camp fire and I broke out my "wedding bag" as he calls it and started asking him questions! He loves to give me a hard time about it but he knows I just want it to be a FUN day! I want to get all this planning over with so we can relax and have fun! We are so excited! I saw an article in a magazine from this lady that had been doing wedding planning for years and her main piece of advice is to plan a wedding that tells the guest exactly who you are. She made the point that good planned wedding can be beautiful but a wedding that is done specifically with your likes and dislikes in mind will have guests saying, that is exactly what we would have imagined them doing. I want a wedding like that! Dont get worried, no camoflage in the picture...yet!

Wedding Date

So we finally have a wedding date. May 2, 2009. We have been thinking about that date for a while but wanted to make sure we could have our pastor Ty perform the service. We are so excited! We can't wait to see everyone! We are going to have the wedding and reception out at Ryan's parents house, it is going to be so beautiful! Hopefully we will be getting the save the date cards out soon, we are going to have Ryan's sister-in-law (and my matron of honor) take our pictures for the save the date card, she does a GREAT job and they are going to be beautiful! We are busy picking vendors for the wedding and thankfully so far all the vendors we have met with are free that day. I picked out the dress yesterday! Thanks so much to my mom, Nancy, Emily and Kim for helping me make my decision and being there for moral support! Also, a neat little bit of information... our wedding will be on Kentucky Derby Day!!

Below are some of the pictures she took of us! She is great!

The Proposal

Friday Morning November 28, 2008 Ryan called and woke me up at 6am and told me to be ready by 7am that we were going on a road trip. He wouldn't tell me where we were going except to dress warm... big help. So I bundled up and he drove and drove and drove. Finally we got to Boone, NC where Appalachian State is (where he went to school). He took me to breakfast at the Daniel Boone Inn. While we were eating he told me that he brought me up there to go get our Christmas tree. We were going to go to a Christmas tree farm and pick it out! He knows how much I love Christmas and Christmas trees. After we ate we took a tour of Appalachian State, we saw all the places he lived and the giant football stadium and went shopping in the Mast General Store. Once we were done with that we went to the Christmas tree lot and after I picked out the largest Christmas tree that would fit in his house we got it cut and loaded in the truck and were on our way to go see the Viaduct. This is the bridge on the blue ridge parkway that is so beautiful and it is the only bridge that was built from the top down. I had always seen it in pictures but never in person. He remembered that I wanted to see it so he wanted to take me to see that... well bad weather caused part of the road on the blue ridge parkway to be closed down so just our luck we weren't able to go see it! Lucky for me Ryan improvises well and he took me just down the road to Price Lake were he used to run the wooded trail around it when he was at school. It was so beautiful! The lake was frozen in areas and it was so pretty! He took me on a separate little trail that went down to a clearing right beside the lake. He told me he had a present for the Christmas tree that we had just gotten. I opened it and it was an ornament in the shape of a house that had our picture on the front and said "Our Family 2008". As I took it out of the box I noticed that he had the ring tied to it. It was so sweet and so well thought out. He took everything that I enjoyed and combined it into a really special day! We are both so excited about getting married... we can't wait! We have a tentative date set for the wedding of May 2, 2009, we still have to check on the church to make sure they can accomodate us. We saw Reverend Ty this morning and told him the good news... he grabbed me and hugged me and then did the same to Ryan, I think he was excited! I am so lucky to be going into such a great family (even though they have always made me feel as if I was already part of the family). I love his family so much and I am so excited to become an Elrod... as Ryan says it will increase my popularity =) From what Ryan says, he is excited to become a part of my family as well! My mom even said if Chip didn't watch out Ryan could take over his favorite child spot! My whole family loves Ryan and would probably be more likely to kick me out of the family than to kick Ryan out! We are so excited about the wedding and can't wait to share it with everyone... I will do my best to keep everyone posted, I am new at the blog thing. I had to get Emily to show me how to set it up!

Ryan at the Christmas Tree Farm



Casey at the Christmas Tree Farm



Ryan and Casey at teh Christmas Tree Farm!



Ryan tagging our tree!



Ryan at Price Lake!



The REAL reason for the trip!