Before November Ends

I haven't written on my blog in forever, and I promised myself that no matter what I would get at least one post done for the month of November, and seeing that it's the last day of the month, I suppose today's the day to get it done. (I just realized that was a seriously long sentence, ha.) It simply isn't fair for me to try to condense my whole life from the past few months into one small post, so I'll just give some highlights and write further about said highlights in separate posts!

November 2012 marked Jeremiah and I's first Thanksgiving that we celebrated as a married couple! :-) We decided to have our own little dinner together before heading to my parents' house to celebrate with them and the siblings. 'Twas very fun. Here are a few pics from the Husband and I's dinner.

Our turkey didn't fit in our oven (we use our toaster oven as our oven! Works out better than it sounds ;)) So the Husband came up with the idea of putting our deep fryer to use for half the turkey, and then putting the other half in the oven! We didn't want our apartment smelling like deep fried turkey for a month, so the fryer ended up on a chair outside until it was done! Turned out tasty, by the way. 

That first item is cake. The Husband woke up early just to make it. And he ate the whole thing himself. That's a normal occurrence in our household, lol.

Days and days and days and days and days and days of LEFTOVERS!!!

Awww, I smile just by looking at it. We enjoyed putting it all together for ourselves. We ended up eating around 5 something pm, which is late for him, early for me! We probably would've eaten earlier, but we took advantage of his day off work by have a nap together before getting too into cooking. :-)

Blurry, but I love it! And we matched! I have the best husband.

And again.

And again.

And, yes, again.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures while we were at my family's house, but we had a great time there too! Plus my padre was in town from work, so it was truly a family celebration. After the eating and talking and fellowship was done, me, my older sis, her husband, one of my younger bros, and my younger sis headed to the mall for the Black Friday festivities. I guess it wasn't so festive for my little sis since she had to work... But I must say it was rather freeing for me this year to not have to worry about rushing from Thanksgiving dinner to the mall to work retail! 

Anyways, while at the mall, my older sister and I went to TJMaxx (yes, the one store with no sales on Black Friday because everything is always on sale...go figure!). We browsed and browsed and ended up in the baby section, and she blessed me and the husband with our first sets of onesies for baby girl! Yup, I'm pregnant, 23 weeks today :-) I wish I had pictures of the adorable little outfits since they're so freakin' adorable (so nice, I said it twice!..lame, ha!! You loved it though.), but I shall share some other time. Here I am on Thanksgiving Day:

Anywho, that's all for now! Much has happened over the past few months, but that's all I feel like writing about at the moment. Don't worry, I won't disappear for another five months. Maybe just five days. :-)

The Month To Surpass All Months

It's here! It's here! We are officially in February and I am too hype, because that means my wedding is in just over three weeks! Ahhhh! Excitement, man. Excitement. So many awesome things are happening this month, I just have to share...

February 4

Bridal Shower! My maid of honor, who's been my best friend since like...forever!, has been totally enjoying herself by not sharing ANY details with me about the shower. Grrr! Oh well, I know I'll enjoy it :-)

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February 5

 The Favorite and I's 3 year dating anniversary! (Oh, you thought I was gonna say the Super Bowl?! I didn't even know it was on the fifth til my brother told me a couple days ago. Shows how much football I watch!)

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February 14

 Valentine's Day! Not even one my favorite "holidays," but I'm always down for chocolate :-)

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February 18

 Spiritual Birthday! On this day of 2001, Jesus drew me to Himself, opening my spiritually blind eyes to see my need of Him and His grace and mercy! No longer am I among the walking dead, but the alive in Christ!

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February 25

WEDDING DAY! "And the two shall become one..." It's so surreal; I'm marrying the love of my life! My first boyfriend is also my last, and I have the honor of being his wife! (And he has the honor of being my husband! hehe) Definitely pray for us, that we'll truly have a wedding & marriage that honors the Lord!

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February 26

 Cruise!! DEFINITELY looking forward to the honeymoon, ya'll. Nobody better try to contact us! ;-)

Do you see how much LOVE is in each of these days!? From the beginning of the month with people showering love and gifts on me and the Favorite, to the beautiful union we'll have before family and friends, love, GOD's love is so real and present. And with that in mind, I already know that there are probably more things that are going to arise during this month, some great, some not so great, but in the midst of it all, whether good or bad, I choose to rejoice, and I choose to count my blessings because they are MANY and my great God has been doing, is doing, and will continue to do a great work! 

Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you 

will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.

~Philippians 1:6

Marking Time

We're almost an entire month into 2012, but I'm still going to say it, for posterity's sake: HAPPY NEW YEAR! Time is FLYING, and for obvious reasons, I'm very excited. Oh, did you miss the obvious reason? I'M GETTING MARRIED NEXT MONTH!!! Woohoo! It's so crazy how quickly time has passed; one day the Favorite is proposing to me in DC, the next day I'm 27 days away from being a bride and a wife! Excitement!

Unfortunately the Favorite and I weren't able to bring in the new year together because he was sick :-( He was the first person I called though! :-) My family and I went to our church's annual NYE gathering with food, games, worship, and testimonies about the Lord's working over the past year! It was a blessing. My last time having a New Years Eve with my "maiden name"!! :-)

Life is definitely busy right now, as anyone who is married, has been to a wedding, or has at least watched a wedding show can imagine. (Hence the reason I'm saying Happy New Year 29 days into the year! hehe) But I don't want to neglect to share the awesome things that the Lord has been doing from day one of 2012! I will definitely be having more posts to give a glimpse of these final weeks as I go from being a Miss to a Mrs.

How have you seen the Lord work so far in 2012? Are there things that you are anticipating happening during the upcoming months? I'd love to hear :-)

Holiday Week and Sore Feet

Sorry I've been gone so long, guys. I just could not seem to work up the motivation or the energy to write a new post. (Something I'll be working on for 2012 ;) hehe.) These past few weeks I've been working a ridiculous schedule at work. I've been a sales associate for Things Remembered (TR) for almost two years now (I do sales, managerial, and engraving duties), and this job has definitely made Christmas the least anticipated season of the year for me! Sounds sad, right? Maybe if you've ever been a sales associate during the holidays, you understand. TR engraves items for customers same or next day, and any items that customers choose to pick up the next day have to get engraved overnight. Big deal, you say? Well, overnight typically means that a shift that would normally end at 11:00pm extends til 8:00am the next morning! Alas. Sleepiness. And soreness. Nothing like standing over an engraving machine for 10+ hours! Thankful for the job, even still. Well, now that Christmas is here, I can officially say that the holiday craze is over (at least for my store), but my sleep schedule has been all out of whack! So here I am, 6:15 in the morning, typing a blog post! In spite of the time, I'm glad to be getting one done. :-)

Anyways, MERRY CHRISTMAS! everyone!! Today is also my younger sister's 19th birthday, so a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY shout out to her! My family, including the Favorite and my brother in law, had a Christmas Eve birthday celebration for Erin so we could all be together for it, and it was So. Much. Fun. From the delicious food my sis and her husband baked from scratch, to singing along to the Sound of Music, to dancing the Cupid Shuffle to finishing off the night with homemade pound cake and homemade fried ice cream, it was an all around fantastic night!! After we left their place at like 2am, we got our Christmas tree. Better late than never, right? Well typically my family gets it closer to Christmas anyway, so this was no new phenomena, hehe. I was knocked out in the car during most of the tree buying process, except for when I was ever so rudely awakened by gusts of cold air swirling into the car as my dad and brothers tied said tree to the truck :-/ Even more...excitement...followed when we got home... But I won't share those details on here, not yet. Haha. But yes, it's now only 6:31am, and it's already looking to continue being a great day!

In other news, today is the two month mark for the Favorite and I's wedding day!! So incredibly super excited!! It's crazy how quickly time has flown by, and thinking about it in terms of days (62 days!) makes it seem all the more close. There is still so much prep to be done, but slowly but surely it's all coming together.

Hmm, let's see what else I can update you all on... Well, I have been cooking alot of random yummy things lately, and if you couldn't tell by the word "yummy," they've been coming out delish! Fried fish and grits with seasoned tomatoes, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, country fried pork chops, and more! Yum yum yum. I took some pictures, so if I can find them perhaps I'll share :-)

Ya'll familiar with Pinterest? Well, I am new to it and already absolutely in love with it! It has so much amazing cool stuff on there that I want to try! What's really cool is that I found out about it around the same time my bestest and I began discussing how we can become more Proverbs 31-ish in the new year, and we've both seen on the site that we can really put to use! Excitement! Actually, there are more details to come about this; I'll probably share in a New Year's post!

Life is good though, really. The Lord has been so gracious and faithful to continually, by His Holy Spirit, remind me of the things He's been teaching me in His Word, preaching, articles, and other formats. I have got some MAJOR stuff to work on though!! Like it says in James, the Bible really is a mirror, and it is a constant fight to kill my flesh and keep on looking into that mirror and make changes as the Lord leads instead of going away and forgetting what I really look like before Him. The Christian walk is a constant battle, and I'm working on keeping my armor on every day!

Well, this has been quite a smorgasbord of a post!! I could hardly ask you to provide as many snippets of your life from the past few weeks as I've just provided you with, so I'll end this with one question that I'm asking myself also:

What are you doing this year during this Christmas season to really make Christ known to those around you, to set you apart from Christmas celebrations as the world knows it? 

Hmm... Food for thought!

Enjoy your Christmas, guys! :-)

Thanksgiving Comes 365 Days A Year

I had such a great Thanksgiving with my family! Unfortunately, my hermanita and her husband weren't with us this year, but my boo and I got to do most of the food prep this year together, which kinda made up for that, haha. Even though we should be thankful every single day out of the year, it is extra special to have a day set aside to celebrate the manifold blessings the Lord pours out on us! No matter our circumstances, the sovereignty of God alone is a reason to rejoice and give thanks! 

Elijah made the green bean casserole this year, and it turned out delicious!!! Making it is pretty straightforward ...unless of course your can opener is broken. Ahhh!! Thanksgiving day issues!! Well the Favorite was able to put his knife skills to the test, and at a safe distance I watched as he chopped open the can of green beans, hehehe. 'Twas quite entertaining, I must say. Just glad he didn't lose any appendages!!

He was so intent on it!! How adorable. :) 

I made cranberry sauce from scratch, as I have been for the past few years now. Turned out tasty, but for whatever reason the two bags of cranberries I got from the store made sooo much more sauce than it has in years past!! Weird... Funny story though -  When the Favorite and I went to the store to get the cranberries, as we were approaching the produce section, all of a sudden A BIRD FLEW OUT OF THE GRAPES!! Yes, there was a bird in the grocery store, hiding out in the grapes, eating them! Guess we scared it off! We just looked at each other and busted out laughing. I'm still chuckling to myself now just thinking about it!!

We decided to go the pre-cooked turkey route, primarily thanks to the hermanita and brother in law getting our turkey for us! I am SO glad it was precooked too, because I really wasn't feeling like putting in the work this year to do it from scratch, hehe. It was really quite tasty, though. Yay Butterball!

Now, check out these before and after pics of these rolls we get every year! You butter them, let them thaw, let them rise, then bake them!! We ended up letting them rise for a SUPER long time so they went from 

THIS...

to THIS....

Hahah!! They were pretty much swelling up over the pan! It was fun to poke them though; they were definitely the most abnormally plush rolls I've ever had! Tasted really good fresh out the oven though!

Pretty much all the food is ready to eat....

Mr. Turkey and Mrs. Ham....

Joshua planted himself right in front of the turkey, and I can't say I blame him! I was ready to eatttt....

My hubby to be is just too cute. :)

Erin's home from Howard for Thanksgiving break!! Not to into taking pics right now... but once the food's getting served, smiles pop up all around!! 

My mommy is so pretty! And she got her braces off! Look at that sparkly white smile! :-D

Daddy insisted on getting some dishes done RIGHT before we were about to eat!! Typical, hehe. He's looking forward to dinner, too, especially since we were eating around 5:30 instead of our typical late dinner :-/ 

Smiles :-)

Yep, that's my plate. And that's not even all the food!! That's just all I could fit on my plate at the time... (sidenote, my dad makes the BEST sweet potatoes in the WORLD!!)

Our food preferences are quite different, and we're still learning to adjust! But included a few of my Favorite's  choices on the Thanksgiving menu this year, so yay :)

She kept trying to sneak extra ham!! But I caught her in the act ;-)

There's me!! Haven't quite made a dent in my food yet though... 

Falling into a food coma... 

The Favorite is falling into a food coma, too! 

I HAD to make some ice blue raspberry lemonade koolaid :)

Erin and Daddy having fun dancing off the food! :) So sweet.

Hope all of my readers also had a FANTASTIC Thanksgiving this year!! Anything special happen? What'd you do? I'd love to hear! Next up...CHRISTMAS! :-)

O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!!  ~Psalm 30:12b

He Proposed...And I Said YES!

I know, I know I haven't posted in a while and now I'm springing this news on you! Nope, no joke. As of Wednesday, April 6, the Favorite and I are engaged to be married!! Woohoo!!! Sooo exciting! :-)

Let me give you a little background. Since we both live in the DMV area (which is where I was born and raised), the Favorite has met all of my immediate family, but I only met his mom and one of his sisters once (when they came to visit up here!). We've been dating a little over two years, so it was definitely about that time to meet his fam. So we planned a trip to Miami (where he grew up) for a few days this month. The day before the trip (April 6th), we planned to meet to go to a Borders blow-out sale (yay books!) after I finished Bible study on campus. So we met up at the metro, and I must say I was quite happy when I saw him. Looking handsome as usual, I came up behind him and gave him a hug (shout out to Jamil for the cut and shape up!! lol!). Amidst lots of laughs and teasing, we finally found the Zipcar he'd reserved and set out for Borders. (Now something I should insert here that I didn't know until after the fact is that the Borders sale was just an excuse for us to meet up! ...I mean, not like an excuse was really needed hehe, but he did a good job in covering his tracks in making sure nothing seemed out of the ordinary.)

After some book hunting, the Favorite suggested that perhaps we could go to the National Mall to check out the cherry blossoms while they were in bloom, before the Festival ended. A few weeks prior to this day, we had actually been talking about the Cherry Blossom Festival (and how we always miss it!), so viewing some of the lovely blooms under the beautiful DC night lights sounded like a plan to me. (Sidenote: we didn't actually go! He had other plans...)

On the way there, we stopped by Potbelly, and anybody who knows anything about me knows that I love their sandwiches - a Wreck on white, to be specific - and also their chocolate malts! He dropped me off at the entrance, long enough for him to drive around the block while I got my sandwich. As we headed over to see the cherry blossoms, I rambled on about so many things, such as our upcoming trip to Miami and the poor service I had just received at my beloved Potbelly. Needless to say, I was rather aloof about anything that was about to happen!

Just look at that yummy delicious goodness!
Photo courtesy of Google Images

Once we parked on the Mall we simply wandered for a bit, talking, laughing, and reminiscing on the many times in the past that we'd done the exact same thing. (As a matter of fact, he asked me to be in an official courtship/dating relationship with him at the Washington Monument!) We happened upon (actually, no. I found out after the fact that the Favorite had scoped this place out months ago!) this lovely garden that, as many times as I've been on the Mall, I had never seen before. It had a huge cast iron fountain in the center, with several perfectly placed lights to illuminate the unique foliage that surrounded it. We sat on a bench across from the fountain, and the Favorite pulled out a book that we have been going through for a few months now entitled, 101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged. This wasn't at all odd or out of place, because we pretty much would take the book whereever we would hang out. Dinner, the movies, the park, anywhere! It was a fun and interesting way to get to know each other even better, and also to prepare us for the marriage that we both knew would inevitably come, though neither of knew (or at least I didn't!) when.

Photo courtesy
of Google Images

In order to keep the book from getting too monotonous, we would each pick a number and ask each other the question associated with that number. That night was no different. One of the questions was about love, and whether or not the love we demonstrated to each other lined up with biblical love. Then, he asked me whether I thought we were ready to be engaged. Of course I said yes :-) But again, this wasn't weird or out of the ordinary because it wasn't like this was the first time we'd talked about engagement and marriage! **disclaimer: details from this point forward get a little blurry because it seemed so surreal!** We went back to the book, and the Favorite began flipping through it, looking for a particular page. He said something along the lines of him running across a question that we hadn't gone over yet. And there it was.....

Question 102.



Ashley Danielle Strickland,

Will you marry me?

I stared at the page, jaw dropped. As I lifted my eyes to look at him he began to kneel, and pulled out a little box with a beautiful ring inside. Somewhere in the midst of this, I said yes!! :-) He slid the ring on my finger then wrapped me in a tight hug. It was all so beautiful! 

I must have said "oh my gosh" at least thirty thousand times that night because I was in such shock. Jeremiah would just sit and gaze at me with a smile, while I had a huge grin plastered across my face, shaking my head saying "oh my gosh" and looking back and forth from the bling on my finger to his content face. A few minutes after he proposed, I said I needed to walk around for bit. As we strolled slowly around the garden, it finally hit me: I AM ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED!!! I squealed and the Favorite spun me around. (I'm smiling to myself just remembering!) He pulled me into a hug, and we stood there like that for a few minutes. I remember saying "Oh my God," and it was at that point that it really began to sink in the depth and significance of this moments. It wasn't just the fact that the Favorite, whom I love, wanted to marry me, it was all the fact that our Sovereign God who sits high in the heavens has been ordering my steps and his for years prior to this moment!!

Just to give you a snapshot (It didn't begin here, but this is where I started putting it all together)... 
--Family financial situation caused me to leave six years of private Christian school education to go to public school. The school opened my eyes to the desperate need in the black community for believers to take a stand for righteousness found in Christ! This prepared me for the next step...
--I didn't get into my college of choice; not because of grades, but because of a paperwork technicality! So I ended up going to Howard, my last choice of school (which I now love!) Howard led to ministry opportunities...
--I got involved with Howard's chapter of the Impact Movement, which allowed me to put feet to my faith and to fulfill my God-given desire to reach out to the African American community on the college campus (and at Howard, pretty much the whole campus is black, hence HBCU hehe). I was actively involved with evangelism, discipleships, campus outreach events, and more! The Favorite and I met through ministry...
--Jeremiah was a junior and President of our Servant Team on campus when I came onto campus as a freshman. We got to know each other through service to the Lord, and initially we weren't really even attracted to each other; we were just brother and sister in Christ! But as time progressed, we both began to realize that the Lord was changing our hearts toward each other...
--February 2009, after talking to my dad for his approval, the Favorite asked to begin an official courtship with me. It hasn't been all flowers and ice cream (weird combo, but you get my drift), but the closer the two of us grew to the Lord, the closer we grew in our relationship with each other. Time progressed and...
--April 6, 2011, two years, two months, and one day after beginning dating, the Favorite once again sought my father's approval, and upon receiving it he asked for my hand in marriage! Yayyyy! And here we are now :-)

So there is a very brief snapshot of how the Lord has ordered things long before I even realized it! Of course there's more (He knew me before I was even in my mother's womb!), but just to give you an idea. We certainly DO serve a risen Savior; I have His testimony in my heart and in my life! (Here's my Happy Resurrection Sunday plug!)

Photo courtesy of Google Images

Well to make to this long exciting story short(er), basically we ended up leaving the Mall and going to my house where I shared the news with my siblings and parents, and took lots of pictures! We stayed for hours and it was just a wonderful time! And then the next day we left for Miami where the Favorite introduced me to his family as his fiancee :-) God is good, eh?

I welcome prayers as God continues to prepare the Favorite and I for the wedding and our lifelong covenant of marriage!