Sneak Peak.

I cannot believe I have forgotten to write a post on this. For now, I will leave you all with a little teaser or I shall call it, a "Sneak Peak." Our AMAZING (that is an understatement) photographer, Kelly Manno, took our engagement pictures a few weeks ago. She posted some of her favorites from our session on her blog a week ago. Bryan and I don't even have a word to describe how in LOVE we are with them so far. We will be getting the rest sometime soon. Enjoy!

Engagement Pictures.

As for the weekend, hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I am starting my weekend early by going to see "The Ugly Truth" with a friend, and then I'm off to the Lake of the Ozarks with all the women on Bryan's mom's side of the family for a Girls Weekend. I am so excited! I have a feeling we are going to laugh a LOT and do some relaxing! I hope to catch up on reading my really good book "Belong to Me" and taking some more pictures! Catch you all next week where I will have some pictures up from the weekend! Lots of love.

Little Taste.

As we go through the wedding planning process, Bryan and I are learning all the different traditions that hold true in my culture. Saturday night was simply intimate and beautiful if I must say so and will give you all a taste of the cultural experience you will be a part of in less than one year. My parents invited Bryan's immediate family, my aunt and uncle, and some of their friends over to our house. Once everyone was there, a ceremony was performed by my mother and aunt. After the ceremony, my aunt read from a scroll and officially announced our engagement as they would in India. Once the ceremony and announcement were over, we all got to celebrate by eating some fabulous desert and appetizers made by everyone. It was a wonderful time, and it made Bryan and I so happy to see our families come together! It makes us realize how wonderful our families are and how grateful we are for them!

We are getting so excited as the months are going by. We're down to less than 11 months. I cannot believe how fast time is starting to fly. Before I know it, I will be an official Lindsey! Love.

Congrats Jordan and Annie!

I was not kidding when I said I had a lot to blog about! This past weekend was...how do I put it... simply amazing! It was a weekend devoted to spending time with both of our families. This post is dedicated to Bryan's cousin, Annie and her new hubby, Jordan. Now, I must start off by saying Bryan and I had tickets to the Coldplay concert in St. Louis-we LOVE Coldplay! After we bought the tickets, we found out about Annie's wedding causing us to sell them to a friend. I will say the wedding was worth every minute of being in attendance to the concert. (It might help that we saw them already once this year.) Their wedding was beautiful last Friday afternoon, but in my opinion, you can never go wrong with an outdoor wedding! I remember the whole night being an absolute blast. I told Bryan when we were getting ready to go how much I adored his family. There is never a boring moment b/c everyone is always doing something to make you laugh or just having fun! The celebration did not stop at the reception. It continued on at the Himmel household, which only got better as the night progressed! Opening presents Saturday morning was a great time as well. I, for one, will say Annie was glowing with happiness, and it made my heart bubble with happiness! You might notice a tequila bottle in one of the pictures. Let's just say that little bottle made for some of the best entertainment the night before! Another plus to their wedding was I got to use my camera. I definitely learned some things, but I am pretty pleased with how the pictures turned out for the most part! After the wedding, we made a stop at little Izzy's first birthday party at a park in Troy! I don't have words to describe how cute this little girl is. Take my word for it when I say she just is. Love.

The Fray.

Gorgeous outdoor theatre-check. My best friend-check. Three amazing bands-check check check. Last Wednesday, Bryan and I went to see a band I have long awaited to see-The Fray at the Starlight Theatre (check out picture below). What I did not know until recently was Jack's Mannequin was one of the opening bands. Needless to say, it was one amazing concert. I think it might tie in second place with Brad Paisley's concert (Coldplay still remains number one and always will I believe). What I loved about this concert was how the lead singer interacted with the crowd. He told us about all those days when he was younger how he had to wake up at 4 in the morning to open a coffee shop and work late hours. He continued to tell the crowd how grateful he was for their fans to allow them to do something they love. The encore gave me goosebumps and made me tear up (surprise surprise) when he was talking about the world right now and how hard life is for some people with the economy and wars going on. While they played "Happiness" as their final encore song, it made me realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by such wonderful friends and family not to mention one heck of a future hubby! Shout out to my amazing fiance: Thank you, B, for the awesome tickets and for a wonderful date night! I love you.

Main Street St. Charles.

Oh do I have some catching up to do on here. On my last post, I mentioned I would comment on the new Harry Potter movie that came out. I know there were many that loved the movie. However, as an avid reader of all the books, I was not as impressed with the sixth movie. Please do not get me wrong. I thought it was good, but not as good as some of the past Harry Potter movies. I know there was a lot that happened in the sixth book, and to cram it all in one movie that was long to begin with, would have been hard. However, I wish they would have included some of the major details they did not include in this movie. On the flip side, I thought this one was hilarious. Martha and I sat by one another, and I think at one part of the movie (when Harry is a little happy), we could not stop laughing. I'm pretty sure we embarrassed Ryan and Bryan. I am hoping that splitting the seventh movie will avoid leaving out some of the important details.

Moving on, the engagement pictures were awesome; we were blessed with weather that is not heard of in the middle of July-70s and partly sunny! I know what you are thinking..."Whhhhaaaaattt." We were thinking the same. Bryan and I had so much fun with Kelly. Exciting news with Kelly: she is pregnant with her third child! I think it must be baby booming time because there are over a handful of people I know who recently got pregnant that are due in January and February of 2010. Anyways, I want to take a moment to tell everyone if you ever need a photographer, look into Kelly Manno! Bryan and I felt like we were on an adventure with her going all over St. Charles. She has an eye for this stuff because she would bring us to the neatest and most fun spots to take pictures. We will hopefully get those back in the next month or so, so be on the look out for them. I know we both are very excited to see them!

Afterwards, we decided to ventured around Main Street since we never get a chance to enjoy that part of town. Not to mention, it gave me a chance to take my new camera out and play with it. It was so much fun. We had breakfast in this cute coffee shop and some ice-cream later on. I love places that look like Main Street. We ventured into some of the antique shops and found some neat things. I would love to live in that part of town.

Here were some of the pictures I took. Love.

Cannot Sit Still.

The title of my post pretty much sums up how I feel today. Why you ask? Many reasons. The first of which is getting to see Harry Potter tonight with Bryan and our roommates, Martha and Ryan. I did not want to fight the crowds at the movie theaters yesterday, so we opted to wait a day. I do not think it will be any better, which is why you will find me in line waiting, so we can get some good seats and enjoy the AWESOME movie I have long awaited for. A review will be awaiting soon afterwards.


The second reason mainly has to do with the amazing weekend that awaits us! We are heading...you guessed it...to good ol' St. Louis. What might you ask excites us about this weekend's visit from any other? First up, we have our engagement pictures with our AMAZING photographer, Kelly Manno, in Main Street St. Charles. (Check out the link on the right under "Blog Love" to see her blog full of more wonderful images.) So far, the weather is going to be perfect for our engagement pictures-mostly sunny with a high in the 70s. WHAT?! In the middle of July. My thoughts exact! Hey, I am not complaining. We have a meeting with Father Don that afternoon, so instead of driving around all over town and back to Main Street, Bryan and I decided to spend the remainder of the morning walking around Main Street and grabbing a bite to eat. If you have never been, Main Street is full of cute little shops, cobble stone walking paths, and this cute, old town feeling that I love! (Check out the picture from Skyscraper Forum to see what I mean.) After our meeting, we plan on heading to Troy for the annual, best, most favorite time (excluding all holidays) of the year for Bryan and I-Lincoln County Fair! Not only are we possibly going to be blessed with lovely weather, but Blake Shelton is going to be the main performer. Who is excited? This gal. After a fun-filled Saturday, I hope to spend part of Sunday morning relaxing on Bryan's mom and stepdad's sunroom reading "Gracious Living in a New World" by Alexandra Stoddard (I am going to meet this woman once in my lifetime-she is an unbelievable and inspires me in more ways than one!) and sketching! Life is fabulous. Have a wonderful weekend! Love.

I. Love. Holiday. Weekends.

Did I mention from my previous posts how much I love three day weekends? Well, our 4th of July weekend was amazing. Originally, we had planned on going to the Lake of the Ozarks. However, our plans changed Friday morning, and we made different plans.

Friday was awesome! We enjoyed a nice lunner (in between lunch and dinner). Afterwards, we went to see The Proposal. (Yes, Bryan gets brownie points for going with me.) I loved the movie, and I think Bryan did as well. We spent a majority of it laughing. It was funny and sweet. Plus, Sandra Bullock is such a great actress, in my opinion. I'm so glad we went to see it because I got a chance to catch a glimpse of the trailers, which after each one, I kept whispering to Bryan I wanted to see. (Side note: Movies from Sunday through Thursday only cost $5.00 at the AMC theaters, at least in KC. I love it.) The next movie we are waiting for is Harry Potter-one week from tomorrow! The best part of the day was heading to Weston, MO to take our friends Ryan and Jane to this awesome Irish bar Bryan and I love called O'Malleys. They have live Irish music, and we had such a blast with the band. They had some fun songs that we even sang along to! Not to mention, great Irish accents. These two men had some gifted talent to say the least. I'm pretty sure Bryan, Ryan, and Jane were quite happy with the drink selection as well!

Saturday we relaxed for the majority of the day. In the evening, we headed to downtown to Riverfest to go see the fireworks show. It was great! Plus, I was in love with my strawberry and peach smoothie (see picture below). YUM. Sunday, we spent the day relaxing, watching movies, and headed to the Plaza for a bit in the afternoon. It was so nice to walk around and just enjoy the gorgeous afternoon. (Side note: I think I wanted to buy everything at Anthropologie. Thank goodness Bryan was with me to give me some self-control. I love him.) We stopped at the cutest popcorn and candy shop to buy a piece of white chocolate with M&Ms and crunch chocolate bark. We enjoyed it with a yummy smoothie at a coffee shop. *sigh* If only all Sundays could be spent this way. Plus, we made some yummy meals while we were in town! My favorite yet was some oven-baked french fries with fresh herbs. Overall, our weekend was wonderful. I haven't felt that rested and relaxed in awhile. It was so nice to be in town and do some of the things we both wanted to do in KC! Hope everyone else had a wonderful Fourth of July! Much love.