Wedding Wednesday: The Bachelorette party!

It is that time of week again! Wedding Wednesday!!
I cannot believe that my one year anniversary is in a little over a month! So crazy how fast time goes!

Today I am going to tell you about my wonderful and crazy fun bachelorette party! My lovely sister and two of my beautiful best friends planned my party and they did such an AMAZING job! They went above and beyond and I can't believe how much work they put into it! They kept the theme a secret from me and it was so fun to be surprised!

J+L
Bachelorette Party
April 20, 2013

They scheduled the party for about a month before our wedding. That was a good time frame for me because I didn't want to be stressed out while celebrating and I knew that if we had it close to the wedding it would stress me out. I was going to go to my last dress fitting that Friday night and met my mom and a few other friends in Ankeny that night for supper after my fitting. The next day was my party!

My sister had planned a fun scavenger hunt at a mall in town it was so fun! We were split into teams and had a list of items to find in different stores and then we had to take pictures of them to send back to her. It was such a great idea and VERY fun! :) After that we had a few hours to do some shopping.


What a wonderful group of women! I am so thankful for them!



Unfortunately I am having a hard time finding my camera with the rest of the pictures of the mall on it but will upload those as soon as I find it!



After the mall we headed back to one of their houses to get ready for dinner.

They had decorated the house and it looked awesome! I then found out that the theme of my bachelorette party was BARBIE!!

How cute is that?
 It definitely brought back memories from when I was a little girl and we played Barbies for hours and hours!










All dressed up for dinner


We ended up going to a cute little Italian restaurant for dinner. It was delicious and we had such a great time with awesome conversation.


After dinner we went back to the house and played games, had some girly drinks, opened lots and lots of gifts and hung out. It was perfect!















SO thankful for these amazing ladies and their friendship to me! A special thanks to Betsy, Loretta and Julia for planning this party! You did an amazing job and it was so special for me!

Love you all so much!

Thanks for reading along and I will post the rest of the pictures from this party very soon! Stay tuned for next week when I post about my second shower.

Love,

             Lindsey

Five on Friday!

I just cannot wait for the weekend. Helllooo sleeping in, shopping for antiques, and good coffee. 

This week has been filled with get together's and lots of hangouts. So that is my theme for this week! 

-ONE-

I hung out with a bunch of girls from our community group and we had such a wonderful time! We drank wine, made homemade pizzas, snacked on a LOT of food and just hung out! It was such a refreshing and relaxing time. After we got done hanging out at one of their houses we decided that we didn't want to go home so we went to a local brewery in town and hung out for a little longer. I hand't had a girls night in a while and I definitely needed it. 

-TWO- 

We celebrated my parents 30th Wedding Anniversary last weekend and it was a blast. We went out to eat at an amazing brewery and spent the rest of the night at my sisters house. It was a wonderful evening. 

-THREE- 

On Monday, our community group had a meal night and hang out. We are so blessed to have such an amazing community. 

-FOUR-
On Wednesday night we had a couple from our church over to our house. They are engaged and getting married in June. Since we are still newlyweds, both Jordan and I love having engaged couples over for dinner to talk about marriage and the things that they are nervous or excited about. We also played a pretty intense game of Sequence. Such a wonderful night full of laughter and food.



-FIVE-
Tonight we are hanging out with some close friends of ours and staying at their house afterwards. I am so thankful for their friendship and this time in our lives that we can hang out with so many other young married couples. This season is definitely a blessing.

Have a beautiful weekend friends!

Love,

             Lindsey

Wedding Wednesday: Engagement Pictures!

Hey Ya'll! (wish I was southern!)

Today I am following in my Wedding Wednesday fashion and posting some of our engagement pictures!

After we got engaged, one of the things I was super excited about was that we would get to take engagement pictures. I immediately started looking up poses on Pinterest and thinking about what we were going to wear. 

When Jordan and I were dating we enjoyed going on day trips together. It was so wonderful to be able to get away somewhere and spend the day together. One of our favorite places to go is Galena, Illinois. If you have never been there, you need to go! It is a beautiful and quaint little town with so much charm and preciousness (is that a word?). We traveled there multiple times while dating and loved it! SO.... I knew who I wanted to take our pictures and she just happens to live pretty close to Galena. April, from Blue Sky Photographs , did our pictures and it was really great to work with her since she was a family friend of mine! It was such a beautiful and perfect day and we had so much fun! 

I chose both of our outfits and I got most of it at Kohls and Target.

Without further adieu...

J+L
Engagement Pictures
September 14, 2012


My dress is from Kohls. Jordan already had this outfit.

My outfit is from Target. Jordan's outfit is from Kohls.

My shirt is from Kohls. 

                

I love how our photographer captured so many awesome moments! 

Thanks for stopping by! Next Wednesday I will be posting about my bachelorette party.

Love,

             Lindsey

Five on Friday!

Morning!
Hope your day so far has been filled with joy, Jesus and lots of coffee!

-ONE- 

Last weekend was BEAUTIFUL and we definitely soaked up as much time outside as we could. We even ate supper outside and took a super long walk around our town. It was glorious. 

-TWO-

I am SO ready for summer clothes and dresses again! I cannot wait to go shopping for maxi dresses and bright fun jewelry! 

-THREE- 

My sweet husband always finds ways to surprise me and make me feel special. On Wednesday he got me flowers for no reason and also volunteered to do all the dishes. He is a keeper. 

-FOUR-

On Wednesday I participated in sweet Rachel's Coffee Date linkup. It was a huge success and it was so fun reading what was on other women's hearts on Wednesday. I am so thankful for the blogging community I have met and have gotten to know. I have learned so much from them. You can read my post here. 

-FIVE-

It is my parents 30th wedding anniversary on Monday so we are going to go celebrate with them tomorrow with my sister and her boyfriend. I can't wait to spend time with them and celebrate such an exciting anniversary!

Have a great weekend! 

Love,

             Lindsey

Coffee Date

Good morning my dear blogging friends!

I just want to say that I am so encouraged by you. The blogging world has been such a blessing to me and I have so enjoyed "meeting" many of you through your blogs. So many of you share such amazing and inspiring blog posts and I enjoy reading them every day! One of those lovely and encouraging women is Rachel from Oh Simple Thoughts. She has such a beautiful heart and it has been so fun getting to know her the last couple of weeks. 

Today I am joining Rachel for her Coffee Date linkup. I wish so badly that we could have a coffee date in person but since we live so very far apart from one another we will sip our coffee and learn about each other through this sweet linkup hundreds of miles away from each other. It's going to be fun! 

My topic for our coffee date is The Beauty of Submission. Now, I know that the word submission is not very favored in today's society, even sometimes in the Christian community. It is a word that people usually associate with control or yielding to. What I want to share with you is that submitting to your husband is not a duty but gift. It is a way for us to bless our husbands with the opportunity to live our their role as the leader of the house. That is the way God designed it and the way he designed marriage.

I want to clarify and say that submission does not mean that our husbands make all of the decisions and that we do everything they say no questions asked. Marriage is about teamwork and unity. Husbands and wives should discuss everything and the wife's opinion should be heard just like the husbands. The act of submitting comes in when you both have different opinions about a decision and you have talked and prayed about it but instead of insisting on having your way, you follow your husbands lead and do what he thinks is best. It may not always turn out right but does that mean that we rub it in his face and decide to never submit to him again? NOOO!! I plead with you not to do that. It will tear down your husband more than anything else in the world. If the situation turns out badly when your husband makes the decision then he should take responsibility for it but we need to tell him that we still respect him and love him just the same. We need to be women of encouragement. I truly believe it will bless your marriage more than you know.

I would love to share with you a personal experience I had with submission and how God changed my heart.

Last year in January and February, Jordan and I were looking for a place to live after we got married. He was living with a few friends at the time and I was living with a family in our town. We had been looking for an apartment for a while and we weren't finding anything. It was really starting to stress me out and I was scared we were never going to find a place. After seeing how stressed out I was about it Jordan asked if he could have the responsibility of finding a place for us to live so I didn't have to worry about that and finishing wedding plans. I should have been excited and thankful, right? I mean that was so thoughtful and sweet of him to take on that responsibility. Well, I have a large struggle with control so... I was freaking out inside. What if he finds a place that is gross, too small, in a bad neighborhood or too expensive? I know, these thoughts were totally crazy! This was my future husband, not a stranger... I can trust his judgement. But, I bought into all these lies and concerns because I wasn't able to control the situation anymore.

After a few weeks Jordan sent me a link to a place and told me he wanted to go look at it. Well, this place was overpriced for the amount of space that you got and for the quality of the apartment... it was a dump. While we were walking through it I was panicking in side and trying to come up with a nice way to say that I hated it. Fortunately, Jordan didn't like it either so I didn't need to worry about that. We also looked at another apartment complex that was also pretty awful. BUT the price was great. We both decided that we would keep it in mind but would continue looking. After that the search continued.

That next week I had some free time so I decided to start looking at apartments online. After a little while I found a really cute little apartment with a great price and in a great part of town. I was so excited! I couldn't wait to tell Jordan about it and set up a showing. When I told him about the apartment he wasn't very excited. He said, "I thought you were going to let me handle it, don't you trust me?" Looking back I can see how he felt disrespected in that moment because I was trying to control our situation and take over from him. Unfortunately, at the time I couldn't understand what I did wrong.

After we talked about it and I apologized for trying to take control, Jordan agreed to go look at the apartment I found. Well, after seeing it, I was in love. It was in such a great part of town, it was so clean and it was a great price for us. When we got looking at it, I was ready to sign the lease that day. When we got in the car, I immediately started babbling all about how much I loved it and how I totally thought this was the right place for us! After I got done talking Jordan said, "I think we should wait, keep looking and pray about it." Hmmmm.... can you imagine how I reacted? I was NOT happy and I made that known to him. After I got done throwing a tiny fit we finally discussed it rationally and I agreed to wait a week.

That week was so very hard for me. I kept thinking that we were going to miss our opportunity and they would rent to someone else. Every time I asked Jordan, he kept saying that he still wanted to wait. I became more and more bitter about it. I even had that thought, "he is probably just being stubborn and not wanting to rent it because I found it instead of him." (Trust me I am not proud of this but I am just trying to be honest with you and tell you what I was really thinking.) I did a lot of praying that week. I also talked to a good friend of mine about it and she encouraged me to pray a little differently. Instead of praying for God to change Jordan's heart and love the apartment, I started praying for God to change my heart and for me to submit to Jordan in this hard time. I knew that he would not make this decision without spending time in thought and prayer. I needed to trust in my future husband and also trust that God would lead us to the right apartment. Later that week I found out that the apartment had been rented to someone else. At first I was devastated but I kept praying.

Well... LONG story short...(seriously sorry for how long this story was)

Jordan found us a HOUSE to rent. It was amazing and totally planned by God. Jordan knew someone who had just bought a house and was planning to rent it out. I always wanted to rent a house instead of an apartment but never thought we would be able to afford it. Well this house was amazing! It was in a town nearby where we were currently living and it was closer to where his parents live. It also had two bedrooms, a basement, deck, backyard AND a GARAGE! (Just so you know that was one of the best parts for me because Iowa winters...suck) Here is the very best part of the house though, it was CHEAPER than the one bedroom tiny apartment I found. God is so good.

I tell you this story not to brag about our current living situation or to tell you that God will give you whatever you want or more if you submit to your husband. I tell this story because God taught me a lot about submission during this time or our lives. When I found out about the apartment that Jordan found for us I felt like God was saying to me, "see my daughter, I will provide you with the things you need and I will even bless you with more than you need. I have given you this man to lead you and take care of you. Trust him."

 I learned that submitting to your husband is Biblical and incredibly important. When men take on the role as the husband they are the head of our households. We as women need to let them have that role and encourage them in it. I need to submit to Jordan's leadership and remember that if he is seeking God first then why would I have any need to worry? When you submit to our husbands, situations or circumstances may not turn out the way that you expect but they will always be a part of God's plan.

Sometimes they will be better than you expected.

If you are looking for a great book about marriage, motherhood, and submission consider reading Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney. It is an amazing book.


Thanks for reading and sticking with me beautiful! Thanks again to Rachel for hosting this linkup!

Enjoy your day and never forget how much God loves and adores you just the way you are.

Love,

             Lindsey