Presents Presents!

When you get married its like Christmas early!

Ben and I received our first engagement present from my moms dear friends and my cousins Aunt and Uncle. I call them Uncle Clive and Aunty Maschelle! They live in New Zealand so the present they sent was coasters made out of New Zealand materials. I truly enjoyed them! Not only were they our first engagement present with a card that had both of our names on it, but it was from Uncle Clive and Aunty Maschelle and from New Zealand (the land I spent 5 years of my life living on). The coasters are now displayed with my African inheritance from my mom (I was born in Africa and I longed for my moms African stuff that was always displayed while I was growing up, so when I moved into my own place mom gave them to me to display)

The second engagement gift we received came from Ben's Grandma. She sent me beautiful pearl bracelets that I am going to try to wear with my wedding dress if I can (they are fresh water pearls). Ben received a nice solid stamp holder with a whole roll of stamps. The holder is nice and neat for his desk. It was fun opening this package(our second engagement present)

Today I got a call from Ben that our first Wedding present had actually arrived! Chelsea and Mike, Ben's sister and brother-in-law were the first to purchase gifts from our honeyfund account. Ben had heard that you can go to this website http://www.honeyfund.com/ and set up an account where people can go and purchase a day at the beach or multiple people can purchase your airfare for your honeymoon. So he checked it out and created us an account! Through it you can also link your registries so that everything can be accessed from one location or in this case one website. We had fun setting it up and I had fun registering through other stores online while Ben watched a movie and later he linked it all together though honeyfund. So as I was saying we told Chelsea about the fund online even before we sent her the invitation with the information included (which actually we still haven't sent her the invite yet although it is coming soon) and she already purchased items from our Pampered Chef registry and I received them today! Yeah! I had been praying for the packages to arrive while Ben was sick and staying at my apartment on the couch while I was at work ,because I knew for sure we would get them and well we did! The picture on the right is the exciting items I get to play with now! The following pictures are of my two helpers! Moses and Baby.(after looking at these pictures scroll down. I blogged about our engagement pictures)

Engagement Pictures

Why is it that when you are anticipating something it seems like time stands still? This is how I felt waiting to see our engagement pictures. I couldn't wait, so I checked my mail box every day until they came and once they did Ben sat down with me in his kitchen and we watched a slide show of them. He even helped me pick out the ones we liked the most and put them in a file.

Abi our Wedding photographer and our pastors daughter came to Durango to see her parents but while she was here in Durango she took our engagement pictures! I chose 3 outfits for me and then went to Ben's house with my clothes and chose 3 outfits for him that would coordinate with mine.

Ben and I had picked out the first location for the first bunch of pictures. We wanted to take pictures on one of the trail bridges that crosses the river. For one we liked the bridge and second we had our first official date at midnight rafting down the Animas River with a full moon out.

The second location we took pictures was in the bushes by the river (The first above picture was one of these). I wasn't so sure about this location but I have to confess that these pictures are among my favorites. And so the journey of pictures continued as we went down town Durango and took pictures in the places Ben and I like to go like The Rockey Mountain Chocolate Factory (ok so I really like this spot-Chocolate! who can resist I tell you! My Nan said at her Birthday lunch a few weeks ago while we were on the topic of Chocolate and such, "well at least when we get to heaven we will be sweet!"I totally agree Nan!!). Then we went and took some pictures walking down main street and into one of our favorite store's which we call the magnet store(It has a real name but this works for us)we like it because we enjoy going in there and reading the magnets and occasionally bring one home. We also went to a Fuzzywigs the candy store that looks so good but we always just walk in, look around and leave or we just walk by on the outside. The last place we took pictures was the Lions Den over looking Durango! What an adventure we had taking pictures!

Oh one more thing I love this picture (one of the bushes pictures) but I have to tell how funny it is to be in the middle of a photo shoot when the whole Durango track team comes running by and you are suppose to act natural. Its not that easy! Just thought I would relive the moment again by giving you a picture that the camera did not capture at that moment.