Wishing for a white Christmas.... or any snow at all??

Living in Kansas my whole life I have become use to having a white Christmas and most winters by December 31st there have been many storms that have covered the ground with snow! Even though I am use to it does not mean I like it...in fact for the most part I hate the snow or really the ICE that we get here. However; this year has been great!! There have maybe two light dustings of snow and not even close to a white Christmas. Yesterday was in the mid 60's and today isn't much lower! We have had a lot of rain, which is completely fine with me!!

Now enough of the weather :-)

Amar and I had a great Christmas. We woke up Christmas morning and opened presents from each other. I made breakfast and then we headed to my moms for more presents and more eating. We spent the whole day at my mom which was really nice!

I have been off work for 7 days and have 3 more to go... it has been amazing!! I have gotten so much done around the house and its been great to be here whenever Amar is off work! We also have had a lot of time to map out a plan for the next year or so. We are very excited and there will be more information as time goes on!

2011 and 2012 are going to be very big years for us!

Happy New Years everyone!!

Love Jenny and Amar

Christmas Baking

I have recently found a new wonderful love!! Fortunately for my fiance it is with cooking :-) I have always liked to bake and usually I make my "famous" chocolate chip cookies. This year I was feeling a little more adventurous because I decided to make Christmas cookies for my co-workers. I made four different types of cookies and put them all in a Christmas Chinese To-Go Box for everyone I work with. I made holiday gingersnaps, peanut butter cups with a kiss, mint chocolate dipped brownie bites and chocolate chip snow balls. My favorite were the peanut butter ones :-)

Chocolate Chip Snow Balls

Holiday Gingersnaps

Peanut Butter Cups

Mint Chocolate Dipped Brownie Bites

Now for the fun part!!

We started our wedding registry!! So far we don't have very much, just at Nebraska Furniture Mart... you can check it out online. We will also register at Bed Bath and Beyond. We will keep you posted :-)

The first item on the registry...it was my pick

Enjoying the Season!

We have had a very busy Christmas Season and there are still four days until Christmas!! So much happened this last week/weekend...Friday was our second annual chili cook-off at work. Katherine and I planned everything, as always :-) and it turned out really fun! My brother, Eric, got in town to spend the week before returning to Dallas. Friday night I met up with Eric, his girlfriend Kacy, my Mom and sister Andrea for dinner. Kacy's parents drove in from Mattoon, Illinois Friday night. Saturday was the annual ornament exchange at my mom's house. That evening we all went to dinner at Talk of The Town. Amar was able to meet up with us when he got off work, which was really nice! Sunday was the family Christmas at Grams. Sunday night Amar and I went to dinner with Eric, Kacy and some of their friends. I didn't get too many pictures, but here are a few....

Katherine and I with the Trophies for the Chili Cook-Off

Mimi and Papa at the Ornament Exchange

My cousin Leah and I with our presents :-)

Me and Amar at Talk of the Town

Getting into the Christmas Spirt!

I am a firm believer in celebrating one holiday at a time so after we had a great Thanksgiving we were ready to put up our Christmas tree! Last year I picked what colors we used, red and gold. This year Amar picked, white, silver and blue. I bought new ornaments and Amar got our tree out of storage! We are starting to get presents wrapped under the tree but its a good thing Christmas isnt for two weeks :-)

Amar and my second Christmas Tree :-)

Koda trying to stay warm by the fire... he is NOT a winter dog!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Amar works retail so he is unable to take any time off between Thanksgiving and New years. We have to stay in town for the holidays so we spent Thanksgiving with my family. We started the day off by going to my Aunt Gay and Uncle Brian's for Thanksgiving lunch. This is a tradition in my family and I believe it is the 18th years they have hosted. After lunch we went to my grandparents, of course ate some more, and then headed to the movies. We saw Harry Potter, for the second time, which was totally ok with us seeing that we both love those movies!

Amar and Me at Thanksgiving

Amar, Me, Mom, Andrea and CJ... missing Kacy and Eric

Black Friday...You guessed it, Amar worked! This gave me some time to do a little Christmas shopping! I woke up early to go to the Flower Farm with my Mom, Grams, Aunt Gay and her mom Fran. This is also some what of a tradition for my fmaily. The Flower farm is in Louisburg and starting the day after Thanksgiving it is filled with poinsettias. They have so many different kinds that it makes choosing one really hard...this year I left with two :-)

One of the green houses

This is the poinsettia I took to work!

The Sunday after Thanksgiving was my mom's birthday! We went out to her house for dinner. My mom is not a cook so she was excited when I offered to make her birthday dinner. I made chicken parmesan and everyone loved it! We had a really great time just hanging out and I know it means a lot to my mom that we were there to celebrate with her, even if she clams that she doesnt want to have any more birthdays!

Thinking about her wish :-)

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!

We wish all of you a fun and safe Thanksgiving! We are very thankful for all of our friends and family during this holiday season... especially those who cannot be with us this Thanksgiving, we love you very much and will be thinking of you! For everyone else see you tomorrow :-)

Happy Turkey Day

Lots of Love,

Jenny and Amar

Hitting the Road

Asante and I are hitting the road tonight! Asante's dad recently moved to Indiana, where most of his family lives, so we are taking a road trip to see him. We are very excited to spending some time with his dad. Also I will get to meet a lot of his family that I haven't before. We will be gone for a few days so check back in for details and pictures of the trip! :-)

Goodbye to the Dot!

As all of you know Asante works for AT&T. He has been at the store in the Legends since before we met. Now that we are living together and at least 30 minutes away from that store it has been very trying on him. Well as of November 1st he started at his new store. The AT&T store at 135th Street and Metcalf...that is about 10 minutes from our apartment! So far he really likes it and so do I. His old store closed at 9 because it was part of the mall and his new one closes at 7! So most days we will be home by then. And that makes me one happy girl! Now that he is closer to all of us go in a see him... change to AT&T... the iPhone is the way to go :-)

Wente Wedding

Asante's best friend, Nick and his fiance Jessie moved to Hawaii last December. This August they had their wedding in Hawaii and since not very many people could make the trip they had their reception in Lawrence on 10-10-10. Asante was the best man. He was a little nervous for his speech but after telling both Nick and Jessie's families about their first make-out session to the sounds of laughs he felt much better. Asante caught the garder ... he was ready to fight for it since I caught the bouquet at Aunt Annie's wedding last November. We had so much fun and couldn't be happier for Nick and Jessie. We are really looking forward to them moving back home next Spring.

Nick, Jessie and Asante

All four of us ... can you guess who the DD was?!

Asante and Me

Fight for the garder!

Texas State of Mind

Asante and I took our second vacation together! We drove down to Dallas and stayed with some friends for the awhole week! It was so great to get away for a little while and we had a blast! Friday we went to the Dallas Aquarium, which was really fun because we don't have anything like that in Kansas. Both Asante and I love roller coasters so on Saturday we went to Six Flags Over Dallas. Asante always talked about how much better Six Flags was then Worlds of Fun, so I had to see for myself. One really great thing is you can purchase passes to avoid the line. This was a must because it was HOT! Asante is a huge Cowboys so Sunday we went to the game. The Cowboys lost; they aren't very good thisyear. Thankfully the new stadium made up for the loss! We bought party passeswhich is standing room only. It was a good time, however the next game we go to we will get regular tickets. Also knowing me we did a little shopping. Asante's cousin, Jennifer lives in Dallas so she took us to dinner Monday night. It was really great to meet her and I know Asante was really happy to spend some time with his family. We drove home Tuesday morning. Well really Asante drove, I was just along for the ride. We were glad to be home but are both looking forward toour next trip to Texas. Maybe next time San Antonio?!

Asante and I at the Dallas Aquarium

Manatee at the Aquarium

Leopard at the Aquarium

Before the Cowboys game

The New Stadium!

First Things First ... The Wedding

As most everyone knows we have set a date: September 10, 2011 ... 9-10-11

We are very excited to have such a special date and it will make it very easy to remember. We have found that there are quite a few people who have had the same idea. It's a good thing that we are early planners and Asante's couldn't wait to propose because we haven't run into much trouble. I knew a long engagement was a good thing!

The event space is booked! The wedding ceremony and receptiopn will be held at 2000 Grand in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Asante and I looked at only a few places before we found this one and that was it. We knew it was exactly what we wanted! 2000 Grand is the event space on the second and third floor above The Cashew. The Cashew is a restaurant/bar which will be providing all of the food and drinks for the evening. As well as tables, chairs, linens, servers, bartenders, pretty much everything we will need! This has made it super easy because that doesn't leave much else for us to do.

Third Floor of 2000 Grand

My best friend, Jenna's mother in law will be making our cake. Which has been another huge plus!


This summer Asante and I took our engagement pictures. It was HOT ... but they turned out great! We have been so pleased with Angela; she has been amazing and is so talanted! We will be using some of our favorites for the save the dates which will be sent out early next year.

We are at a little bit of a standstill right now. We have booked pretty much everything that we need at the moment and won't have much else to do until the beginning of the year. I know that time is going to fly by so now that I have said I dont have much to do everything will hit me at once. But that is ok, I am having the time of my life planning this wedding and it makes it really nice that I'm engaged to the best man in the world!


Next is the wedding officiant and flowers :-)

Post from the World's Worst Blogger

Well it has been a very long time since I last blogged ... and when I say a long time I mean more than half a year!! I am making it my personal goal to keep up with this; I just have to find the time. :-)

Stay tooned for much to come!

Let the Planning Begin!!

This Sunday my mom, sister, Grams and I attended the Bridal Show at the Overland Park Convention Center. We had so much fun!! It was unbelievable how many people and vendors where there. It's a good thing we have a long time until the wedding because it was pretty overwhelming. There were a few vendors that really stuck out, mostly a photographer named Angela Needs-Shipps. All of us fell in love with her and I knew she was the one I wanted to use. However, I had no intention of booking anything that day. We saw about half of the vendors before we sat down to watch the Bridal fashion show, which had some good ideas. Since I already know what kind of dress I want, we mostly used the time to relax before we got back to the vendors. As the show went on they had drawings for different prizes; the first one was movie tickets, second was men’s rings for three grooms who attended and third was $500 dollars to use at any of the vendors there. I have never won anything before so I didn’t think that much about it, but when they called number 16 I jumped out of my seat and screamed a little, which in turn made Andrea jump! I ran up on stage to collect my money and take pictures! After signing a release form, we finished making our rounds but I knew exactly where I wanted to use my prize money. We walked over to Angela’s booth and started working out the package details. I called Asante and he was pretty caught off guard but gave me the go ahead to book her. We are both very excited because this is the first decision we have set in place for the wedding. We will be setting up an appointment for our engagement photos once the weather starts getting better, hopefully in a month or so. Feel free to check out Angela’s website, http://www.angelaneedsshipps.com/. Next step is the event space. We are trying to go look at a few place this Thursday so we will keep everyone posted!!

Cupid's Arrow

Asante and I just got engaged Friday the 12th!!!

We went to McCormick and Schmick’s on the Plaza for dinner to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Dinner was amazing... mussels, salad, shrimp, crab cakes and filet. Of course we also got heaven on a plate called the chocolate bag; those of you that have been there know what I’m talking about. We left dinner and course it was freezing, thank you Kansas. I wanted to go straight inside and down to the car but Asante wanted to walk down the stairs. Unfortunately for him I am stubborn so I just stood there as he started to walk down the steps. He got creative and acted like he fell and hurt his knee to get me to walk over to the top of the steps. As he lifted his head he also lifted his hand holding a ring box and asked me to marry him. I was so surprised, my first response was “are you serious?!?” Once I figured out what was going on I our course said yes! I was then totally fine with walking down the stairs to the car! My brother, Eric and his girlfriend, Kacy meet up with us for drinks afterwards because Kacy lives on the plaza. It was an amazing night; I’m the luckiest girl in the world!! There have been so many engagement/weddings in the last few months; I cannot wait to share ours with everyone!!!