Recent Happenings

I haven't written, but I've been feeling the need to write for a while now. Here are some recent things that have happened:

• The biggest deal is that I got engaged this Thanksgiving while at Immanuel Mission in Arizona, visiting my Aunt Anne! My favorite quote from the trip was this: Dale: "So Joel, what was your favorite thing that you did on the trip?" Joel: "Grace getting engaged!" It made me laugh, and reminded me of another similar quote from three years ago... Sarah: "So Tim, would you rather have a girl who's really athletic, or one who's really musical?" Tim: "Uh... Grace!" Aw, you both are so sweet!
• Me being engaged leads to me thinking about a wedding, which is quite an adventure when you're on a tight budget! We have a place down, and a date (June 26th, by the way!) so now I can, for the most part, relax. I am getting ready to go on an excursion with my maid of honor to search second-hand stores for a hidden gem of a dress waiting for my expertise to fix it into something wearable... who knows? Maybe we'll find something!
• Speaking of my ability to sew... This blog post has mainly been an excuse to procrastinate a bit more of my task to finish five bridesmaid dresses for a wedding coming up on New Year's Day. Wanna see some pictures?! These are of my sewing adventures so far:
  

Here is the old Pfaff sewing machine I have to work with. She's actually pretty sturdy, and if anything goes wrong, my dad is a great help to fiddle with it for a while.

When I got to this point, Joel said, "Oh, so it's gonna be an Aladin wedding, and all the girls will look like Jasmine?" just to tease me, of course, but he tried one on for a picture!
I've gotten a lot further since then, but I am very ready to get these finished so I can focus on my own wedding! I am determined to have fun with this all, and to only focus on what really matters.