Jenn and I Have Completed Our Pre-Marital Class
It is with great joy that I write this post today, as Jenn and I have completed our six week Pre-Marital class that we have taken at the church we attend The Grove. We have loved attending The Grove over the past 3-4 years, we feel it is a really great moving stone forward in our faith and has been a true blessing for both Jenn and I. With that being said this class has been a little disapointing. That is not to say that Jenn and I took away nothing from the experience it was just a really hard time for Jenn to be taking the class. Jenn's new job at SCE has been tough on her, who is to blame she takes the train at 6:00AM each morning and doesn't get home until 6:45pm and works extremely hard so the weekend is her time to just relax, so I can't say we were going into this with complete open arms.
So did I learn anything from the experience. Although I really didn't need it, it just confirmed what I already knew, and that is that Jenn is the perfect match for me. Its funny they have you take all of these different questionaires and surveys to see your compatibilty (I would imagine similar to something like Match.com) and yeah we pasted them all, but those tests don't tell me I want to spend the rest of my life with Jenn, I do and this class although not necessarily the most enjoyable experience was just another reason why I cannot wait for September 19, 2009, our wedding day.
So what's next? Well we planned/booked the Honeymoon which I will go over in another post, and now we are looking for our own place. At first we were looking to buy a place, but Jenn's current job has a lot of mobility both within the company and location and we want to do everything not to restrict that, so we have decided to get an apartment for the time being. More then anything we are just beyond excited to get our own place. We stayed at home throughout college for a number of reasons, it allowed us to travel, it allowed us to save for us, for this time in our life, and it allowed us to plan and boy have we planned.
Since deciding to go the Apartment route we had contemplated living close to home in Riverside, or even going outside this area but to be honest we just never found "that place". And granted we know this is a temporary location we really wanted to start out right, this is what we have saved and planned for so I think we have finally decided to live where we really want to, and that is in Irvine. Having gone to school their, and Jenn gone to school and worked out their we loved the area. We have the beach 10 minutes away, Disneyland/Angels Stadium is 20 minutes away, and all of the food and shopping you could want. We are really happy with coming to this decision and I can't wait to start posting about the rental process and showing us start to move in this summer!
5 Tech Gadgets I Would Like to Buy in 2009
So as many of you have undoubtedly have heard, I am getting married in September, and with that means Jenn and I are going to be getting our own place. Although we eventually will buy a house we are going to more then likely to start with an apartment which gives me a little extra breathing room when it comes to spending money on gadgets. So with that being said lets check out five items I would like to purchase this year. Will I actually do so? Probably not, but its always fun to dream.
#5: DirecTV HD-DVR
This is one item that I can almost guarantee I will be purchasing, unless the place we move into doesn't allow DirecTV, if it does this is a for sure must have. Jenn has a standard DVR and I have an HD-receiver right now and it seriously time to combine the two into one box. I love watching TV and Jenn does to so we often like to watch our shows on the weekend, especially when work gets hectic so having this ability especially in High Definition will be critical. Can you say two of them? One for our master bedroom and one for the living room!
#4: Roomba Vacuum
So I don't plan on Jenn and I having that large of a place and I know one of my duties around the house is going to be to vacuum. Why Vacuum though when you can have a Roomba do it for you? Now I have heard stories that these do and do not work. I am willing to invest the $200-$300 to test this theory. If this gets me out of vacuuming for a month or two that will be money well spent. Plus if it does work for a small apartment then all the better, our apartment will stay nice and clean!
#3:Nikon D40: Digital SLR
Jenn loves photography. I am more of the point and shoot variety. But if you ever travel with Jenn to Europe she likes to take her time to line up her photos and since I have known her has wanted a Digital SLR. The Nikon D40 is our choice right now and I think it would be a great starter for us. I have a nice pocket size Sony digital camera that Jenn got me for my birthday before last year's Europe trip and I thought it took really nice photos but after seeing what the D40 can do I am convinced that for our honeymoon we should take this camera for a whirl.
#2: Apple iMac 20" (With iLife 09)
Jenn and I are both Mac users. I took the switch 2 years ago and Jenn last year and I can tell you I don't lan on going back. I love my Macbook, I love OSX, I have fallen in love with countless Apple products. My Macbook is hitting the end of its lifetime, at least for me. My battery is starting not to hold that long of a charge and my daily activities on the Macbook are starting to get a bit slow. I need a computer thats going to give me a lot more power to do my daily updates for Darkstation.com and to store our pictures and movies. The iMac is both sleek and powerful and I really hope we decide to buy one. I am just skeptical that if I buy one they will come out with a new model the next week.Regardless I can't wait to buy one and try out the new iLife 09 suite which has a lot of features that I really want/need.
#1: LCD TV 40"+ (Brand Not Decided)
Right now I have a 37" Toshiba 720P LCD and Jenn and I are going to be using that for our bedroom. I would like to get a 40"+ for our living room that is in full 1080P. As I mentioned in a previous post I have started to invest in some Blurays and I would like a TV that can nativley display the picture in its full glory. If I was going to buy right now Best Buy has a good deal on a 46" Samsung 1080p LCD which is pictured below. I am not all that picky on brands, although I have heard the best things about Samsung. This is another must have for our new digs.