The party, graduations, etc.

I'll admit it, I haven't really felt like blogging in awhile, or have had the time, so I'm kind of playing catch-up...

First of all, the engagement party has come and gone. It was a lot of fun, and was at least pretty close to my original vision.

The thing that made me the most happy was that my parents and our friends got to meet some more of Darryl's family, and everyone seemed to get along well and minlge. Of course, Darryl's ice cream was the biggest culinary hit of the night, so he was rather pleased with himself, as was I. The signature drink, Randy's custom strawberry margaritas, set the tone for the night for sure (especially after we broke out the umbrellas). I couldn't believe how fast it went by, and that I didn't have party stuff to constantly think about. It was all worth it, though, since I think that it made our engagement more official to the family and bridal party members, and was just a good excuse to get together and have some crazy fun. I'm assuming everyone has seen all of the pics on facebook, so I'll just post this one which has consequentally become my desktop wallpaper :)

After the party was over, the main focus became Darryl's future in teaching. As his graduation from Vanguard grew near, he had decided to put all of his eggs in the UCR credentials program basket, since it was the fastest and cheapest program available. Afterall, he needs to secure his career asap so that we can not only afford the wedding of our dreams, but also to be able to live comfortably in our marital bliss. This all became increasingly and unexpectably complicated, however, as people in that school were a lot more disgruntled and less helpful than he expected, causing a lot of stress, frustration, and anxiety for us throughout the admissions process. But finally, after a second interview, writing tests, financial aid applications, and CSET tests, he's officially admitted! Unfortunately, he did not know until about a week ago that he needs to take summer classes, robbing him of the summer break he had been anticipating, but it does give him an excuse to move home and quit UPS a little sooner than he had planned. And oh, how he is looking forward to the day he leaves his five-year career with the Brown. Among other things, he'll be able to have a normal sleep pattern for the first time in years.

With all of the stress and tension building over the past few weeks, I decided that we needed a break from things, so on my day off last week I drove us down to Crystal Cove for a couple of hours in relaxing, beachy surroundings. It seemed to work, at least for that day, to get our minds off of things. Things are looking up now, but sometimes we need a moment to get away and remember that everything has always worked out before, and it's not going to stop now.

The rest of the week was almost completely consumed by graduations. First, there was Jason, the son of Darryl's landlady, who graduated from Crystal Cathedral high school. His graduating class was only 6 people, so that was by far the least painful ceremony I have attended so far. Next, there as Kasey's high school graduation. We couldn't go to the actual ceremony since I got out of work too late, but we stopped by for the after party. Finally, there was Justin's graduation from UCSB, which we were looking forward to for awhile since we've never been to Santa Barbara before, and it was another chance to get away. We had a lot of fun being with almost the entire family in a new place. I must say that Meesa's apartment is the cutest ever, and that plus the neighborhood of Goleta made us want to move more than we could bear. Unfortunately when I looked up the cost of living and job prospects, it doesn't look like a possibility any time soon, but I can dream can't I?! Honestly, anywhere but my present living situation would be nice. As much as I appreciate being able to grow up in a place like Orange County, there is a big part of me that wants to get the heck out of here and on to something different. There are still a lot of things keeping us here for now, though, so we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll just spend a lot of weekends away. Hopefully where we live won't matter as much as the fact that we'll finally be living together in our very own place with our own rules and way of life. Lately I've been looking forward to that even more than the wedding.