If this were a movie

Today marked the end of my second week at my new job. That's right! Two and a half weeks ago I said goodbye to my amazing coworkers and STOPPED COMMUTING!!

Excuse the horrendous picture and my apparent lack of eyebrows

 It's been a little rough. Between new information overload, adjusting to a much harder work schedule, and completely rearranging my sleeping schedule I have been struggling just a little. I have reverted into a full blown Starbucks addict (although today I have made the decision to quit... Except for when my boss so generously buys it for the office because come on... I'm only human) and it's become completely outrageous. The past two weeks have also been completely unhealthy... Stress and not sleeping and eating to keep me awake etc etc.
On top of this we are currently moving into our new apartment.

By "our" new apartment what I really mean is our new apartment that only A is living in currently. I spend all of my time there but since we are not married yet I am not sleeping there. It's been really fun to move in but the day after we got the keys A got shipped off an hour away to stay in a hotel for job training so I was by myself for the week.It has been fun moving everything in though. I will post pictures as soon as we are officially done for the time being. The in-laws are coming down on Sunday to see it so it will have to be done by then. 

On top of all of this we have been super happy. Almost too happy. Everything that we have been talking about for the last couple years has been coming true. About a month ago I started to worry. It seems so silly to see it in writing but it's true. Things were going too well, at least in my mind and I was actually afraid to be too happy. It was like I was afraid to have such a big high because I was worried about the huge low I was sure that was going to follow. I didn't say anything to A because I didn't want  him to worry too. But then, a couple weeks after I started feeling this way A and I were driving and all of the sudden he turned to me and said, "Do you get the feeling that everything has been going too well lately?" I was amazed and so relieved that we were on the same path. "If this were a movie something tragic would happen right about now." I hadn't quite thought about it in those specific terms but he was right, that was the exact line of thought that I had been on. But in the end, that's a terrible way to live. You can't just live life expecting the worst. God has been teaching me to trust Him lately so that is what I am going to do. We are super happy and just trying to live and love and enjoy this precious life. What will come will come and we will take it when it does. As long as we do it together we will be perfectly fine.

Times They Are a Changin

This past month may have been the best month of my life so far. At the very least it's been a whirlwind; a blur of happiness, hope, and plans.
September started out with an engagement. Mine, in fact.
Yes, ladies and gents, I am marrying this hunk:

On September 7th, 2013 after church and a lovely dinner with my parents, we stole away to the beach  for a nighttime stroll in the sand. Eventually we sat down with our feet just avoiding the water and he launched into this story about a tv show we both enjoy and how the series finale (which I haven't seen) involved the two main characters being able to spend two lifetimes together. In response I casually told him that I would spend two lifetimes with him (because, come on, how obvious is that?! :P ) so he pulled out this baby 

How beautiful right?! He picked it out all by himself (**swoon**)

and said "Want to start tonight?"

We got celebratory coffee at Mickey Dee's and then headed home where my father snapped this suuuuper attractive picture of us. It was ridiculously hot that day and humid and awful and not at all a good representation of Southern California coastal weather. So this is what we looked like at the end of the day...

My parents have been very excited and supportive about this. Yes, he asked my dad's permission to ask me. Yes, that's required in my family. Yes, he was super scared to ask (my dad, not me... Obviously I was going to say yes. In fact, my exact words were "Well duh!"). 

So there you have it... I am the Future "Mrs. A". Yes, his first AND last name starts with "A" :] We are so excited to start our lives together... But that comes later in the post so stay tuned.

September continued with a birthday, also mine. September 15th was my 22nd birthday. I got to celebrate it with my friends in the house that I used to live in while I was in school. 

It was hipster themed as per my former roommates' instructions and we all had a great time getting to catch up and see one another again.

September ended with A and myself interviewing for respective jobs. It was a lot of fun because A had to be down here for all of his interviews since the job he applied for is in my hometown. The job I was interviewing for is not in my hometown but in a bordering town so I would only be commuting 25 miles a day instead of 140. That's just fine with me!!!

October so far has been incredibly good to us. 

A got his job in my hometown so he is officially moving down here in two weeks.

I got my job so I am officially going to stop commuting in two weeks.

God has just been so incredibly good to us and I don't think I have ever prayed more in my life. I am so thankful that words fail me on how to convey how I truly feel.

A came down again this weekend and on Saturday we did some serious apartment hunting. We have found the apartment that we want to live in. We are just waiting on official letters of hire from our new jobs to come through to us before we apply for it this week. I am praying that the apartments don't get snagged up by other people before I can get there!

Sometimes it is hard for us to believe that this is all actually happening. That we are finally grown-ups and have big-girl and big-boy jobs and that we are applying for our first apartment together. I'm so excited to have our little family together all in one place (you, me, and the kitty). I am also completely stoked that I don't have to move to LA and I can stay here in my amazing hometown. I am even more stoked that this means I can continue attending my church that I absolutely love. God is so good! 

I had literally given up on my job. I thought that I hadn't gotten it. I made up my mind that the next day I was going to start applying again. I wasn't even upset about it, because I became acutely aware of how much God has taken care of me these past couple of months. For a while I was so upset that all of the plans I was making were falling through and that nothing was working out for me. But honestly where would we be if all of them had "worked out"? God has a plan and that was clearly not in His plan. In a way I feel like He was trying to teach me how to trust Him and as soon as I latched onto the concept and gave everything over to Him I was rewarded with seeing what He truly had in store for me and for us. I feel truly lucky to be embarking on this journey with my best friend and the most incredible guy I have ever known. And I feel so lucky that I have a God that is taking care of us and who has a plan for us. 

Long Distance

Long Distance sucks. I always thought that I would never be the girl to put up with long distance... That is until I fell in love with a boy that just happened to move back to his home town three years into our relationship.

In my mind there is really no perk to being far away from each other and nothing to really make it better. I think that perhaps it may have been easier on us if our relationship had been this way from the start. At least then it would be our normal. But it isn't.

A and I met in the dorms of our University our freshman year of college (Fun Fact: My parents met each other in the same dorms, just on a different hall). We both lived on the Honors Hall and started out as friends.

The concert that lead to us getting together 

For anyone who has not had the fortune to experience dorm living, let me explain a few things.
1. Here is how it works: A bunch of strangers of roughly the same age are taken and forced to co-habitate with each other for a year. You find people you love, and those you don't.
2. Because you are all forced to live with each other, relationships are ridiculously accelerated. It shouldn't be that surprising really, you see each other every day, every night, in the bathroom, and in our case for honors we were taking classes together. In this type of environment you find out who people are pretty quickly. So, strangers can become best friends, total enemies, lovers, etc in about 2.5 seconds. One can also go through the stages in about 5 seconds.
3. I was a little bit different. Because I was so involved with the dance team, I spent the first couple of weeks (most of the first quarter actually) away from my hall. By the time I started making friends with people the rest of the hall had already sort of established its groups and whatnot and I slowly broke into some of them.

When I met A, he still had his high school girlfriend, but we became friends. Really good friends. It was in our second quarter when we got together. A few months into our relationship he reasoned that he had already probably spent more "actual" time with me than with his longest relationship. Because in a dorm you literally eat, sleep, and live with your hall mates. In other words... We were living together before we were even together.

Our second and third year at school all of my hall friends moved into the same apartment complex so that we were all still effectively living together. The girls and boys apartments even shared respective patios.

Summers sucked but we made a lot of effort to see each other... Going to Disneyland (the halfway mark) or going on vacations. But it was always okay because it was only 2.5 months and we would just go back to school.

Now because we are both working full time and A's schedule is so inconsistent we maybe see each other once a week.

After living together for three years we are now two hours away from each other with completely conflicting work schedules. My dad says to be thankful that we have modern technology like Skype and cell phones and Facetime... And I am.

But it is 6 months into this arrangement and I don't know how much longer I can handle it. Our plan is to get married but we want to be financially stable and we both need jobs in the same area and... and... and....

It just kind of seems like it isn't ever going to end.

P.S. 

If anyone has any suggestions on how they cope with long distance... I'd love to hear them :]