Sometimes Dogs Just Know...

I think Nikita has a sixth sense. I think all dogs have this actually (which would be a good reason to get a dog, Christy and Jen). I was having a really rough night last night, for a number of reasons. I was crying and just plain sad, and Nikita came up to my room and just cuddled up by my feet. She is so sweet when she needs to be!!! Mom and Dad had company over and she usually likes to be where the action is, but she just came right up, it's not like she could hear me crying or anything, it wasn't like that, but she just knew I needed her. Don't get me wrong, she can be quite prissy at times, and doesnt come when called, but she knows when she's needed. Good Girl, Nikita!!!

My Makeshift Room

This is my new room. Lovely, isn't it? We are getting new carpet in two weeks, so dad has decided that we have to move all my stuff out of my room NOW!!!! Why 2 weeks before you ask? Well, for one, my dad is crazy. If he wants to do something, it should be done YESTERDAY. I remember moving into this house 6 or so years ago, and about a month in, mom and dad started talking about building a new deck out back. the NEXT DAY dad had ripped out the old deck, and pretty well had plans for the new deck. Construction finished within.. 2 weeks, I would say. Every sunday morning, Dad insists on leaving half an hour early for church, even though church is only 10 minutes away. Mom ends up having to sit all by herself, the very first person in church. (Wonder why I go to E-Free?? haha just kidding.) Anyway, so dad figured that my stuff had to be moved to the basement so he could rip out the carpet in my room. I hate basements. They are so dark, no windows, I'm always afraid a fire will start and I won't have a window to jump out of or climb out of. Somehow, mom convinced him to move my stuff into the guest room upstairs instead of down there. THANKS, MOM! One small problem: There's no carpet in the guest room, since dad ripped it out a few days ago (starting to see the anal-ness?). So my stuff is kinda strewn about the middle of the room. I'm afraid I might step on those tack strips along the walls. On the bright side, (literally) ITS NOT THE BASEMENT!!

Mom and Dad #2

This is Sheri Fletcher, and Lyle Fletcher. They are my future parents-in-law. From the first time I stepped into their house more than three years ago they were so welcoming. It feels like home going to their house. Mrs.Fletcher is more extroverted, and outgoing. I think she finds secret pleasure in doing the things that embarrass her children. Like her "hip-hop" dancing. I love being around her. If you need someone for anything, she is there. She is the first to offer comfort and help in your time of need. She reminds me a lot of my mom. They actually went to Nurse's training together 25+ years ago. Mr.Fletcher is a bit more introverted and quietly funny, much like my dad. He loves playfighting with his boys, also like my dad. He is always seeking knowledge, and wants to keep his brain occupied. Very handy with cars and machinery, he has taught Travis a lot of what he knows, and has helped me out numerous times with my car. He quietly offers his opinions when needed. Unlike my dad, he is very good at carrying on a conversation. I love them both so very much, and wouldn't trade them for any other in-laws in the world. Love you guys!

P.S. The bunny ears are provided by Mr.Stromsmoe, Tiff's dad. Another very nice guy and long time friend of Mr. and Mrs.Fletcher.

My crying "shades"

These are the sunglasses I wear whenever I say goodbye to Travis. I think they are quite stylin', but I know they are not for everyone. If fashion trends are cheap to buy into, I'm all for following them. Travis no longer likes to see me in them at any other time, because they remind him of my sadness when he has to go "home" to Fort MacMurray. Isn't he cute? So they have been aptly named "my crying glasses". They do a good job of hiding my puffy red eyes on the drives home, on this one I happened to be bored and snapped a few self-portraits, but don't worry, most of my focus was still on the road ahead of me. Since you can't see my eyes, I can still watch the road while taking pictures of myself. Very multi-functional. The drive to Calgary is becoming second nature to me, and I don't mind doing it when Trav gets the flight down, because that means he doesn't have to drive 20 hours in a weekend. Although this weekend, he did have to go on a bus for 16 hours straight on the way here!! The poor guy, his whole trip was a blur. As mentioned in the last post, we had a great weekend, once he was down.

Congratulations Shane and Kristin!

Our friends Shane Schooten and Kristin Sawchuck tied the knot yesterday. Their wedding was GORGEOUS, and it gave us lots of good ideas for our own. From our perspective, the wedding went off without any glitches. But who knows what went on behind the scenes. I am, however, a little more stressed out. I realized that there is still so muc left to do, and I have no time to do it. I know, I have 7 months yet, which is more than lost of people are even engaged for, but I havent been able to do a thing since I started school, and from what I hear from people who have graduated from my program, next semester is even worse. All nighters all semester... GREAT!! Really looking forward to that! Anyways, the wedding was a great excuse to get Travis down for the weekend and we had a great time together. He even offered to help me out more. How sweet! He said he could make/ order the bridesmaid's dresses, what do you think, girls? haha I said no. But I will delegate other tasks to him. Don't the bridesmaid's dresses look bought? A lady from our church made them! I am for sure getting her number and she will be making our dresses! So that is that! I can get exactly what I want, which isn't in stores! Tiff, you did a wonderful job as a bridesmaid/ maid of honour for Kristin, and you looked beautiful. I think we need to make your dress a little uglier so you don't upstage me! You said you liked the big bellied. puffy sleeved look, didn't you?

The pictures I was talking about...

This is the bridesmaid dress from a few posts down, but on me this time. I still really like it, but I am not sure what the colour will turn out like, since the fabric sample in the book is only and inch by an inch! I want to take a trip to Calgary before I do anything, and try on more dresses, and go to a fabric store to see if I can find my dream fabric, the fabric and colour that has been in my head all along. We'll see about that, and keep this dress on the "maybe" list. It's a lot better without that huge cheesy fake flower, isn't it?

Pictures from a Pro

These are our engagement pictures taken by Karen Smith from Shutterbug Photography here in Lethbridge. I took the pictures using our digital camera of the pictures in our album, so these do not give the pictures justice, in some of them I look orange, or they are kinda blurry, but I thought I would share with you some of her handywork. I am so happy with them, they are the best pictures of us.. ever!! And we take a lot of pictures as a couple!

The Missing Link

Now I don't want to flaunt it or anything, but i just thought I'd show you what was missing on my finger in that picture. Travis and I did look together, and this was my favorite ring, but I did not expect to get the one I wanted. Without further adieu, here it is:

The picture is kinda dark, and my hand is a little purple since it was 9:00 pm in Waterton, but there it is. The center "stone" is 4 princess cut diamonds kinda shoved together, and there are 4 round diamonds down the channels on either side. I love it! But as I told Travis many times before he proposed, a shoestring would do just fine. His parents also talked him into this ring, lucky me! I'm sorry this post is pretty materialistic. I really am not like that!!

Thanks again, Trav, for writing that blog about me. It was very heartfelt and I know you like to do things in your own time. When you do them, you do them well. I love you with all of my heart, baby. 237 more days!!

The Greatest Gift from God

The is Rebecca Nicole Vriend (soon to be Fletcher!). I just want to take the time to outwardly show my deep love and appreciation for the girl of my dreams. We both first "officially" met one night just over 3 years ago. Justin, Eric (Justin will be my best man, and Eric and Derek will also be groomsmen), and I were cruisin up the strip like we'd done thousands of times before. :) Seeing one of our friends Kristin (who is getting married to my friend Shane Schooten) was with Becky at IGA parking lot. So we whipped in there to chat. Little did I know that I would be meeting the girl who I was going to marry 3.5 years later! I asked them if they wanted to come in the Lethbridge parade with me to sit in one of the hot tubs. Both of them said yes and were really excited! I got on the ball asking more people to come parading with us, however, the day before the parade everyone was busy! So as it turns out only one of my friends Ashley, Becky and I showed up. We had a blast tho! And I was very very interested in getting to know Becky as a good friend...

2.5 years later we got engaged! As you can see from the pic, no ring on Becky's finger yet. However, it was only about 10 minutes after this that I asked for her hand in marriage! So her finger feels no more lonesomeness. Check out Becky's post to read about our engagement. Rebecca is the greatest gift to me from God. She truely is the woman of my dreams. I love how she's always smiling and cheerful, even when its hard to be. I always try to make her laugh or smile; that is if I'm not gaming... ;) hehe. She has beautiful, what we call "poop colored" eyes! But it's just a joke; I love her brown eyes, seeing as everyone in my family has blue eyes. We've had several discussions around the probablility of our kids having blue or brown eyes, but we've concluded it's 50:50. She's has beautiful long brown hair and an amazing body! ;) She's so much fun to be around and has such a radiance of love, both for me her family and God. She is amazingly smart (along with a very good memory) and always makes me laugh and smile. Becky brings so much light and excitement into my life. I truely could not be with anyone else. It is amazing to see how God has astounded me yet again, to allow me the opportunity to take this beautiful woman in marriage. I am so excited for the life we have ahead of us! Becky thank you for all thing wonderful things you have done and brought into my life. You have taught me many things and important lessons. I can't believe I'm the guy who has this wonderful opportunity to be with you; what did I do to deserve you?! :) It's so hard being away from you for this year while I'm working up north, but time if flying by, and our wedding is coming quickly! (I can account to this as Becky informed me of all the things we HAVE to do in the next 2 months!) lol. Sweety thanks for writing such wonderful blogs about me, and sorry I havn't posted sooner. You know me, blogging just isn't my cup of tea... WOW is... hahaha. ;) I love you with all my soul, heart, mind and strength, and look forward to the day when we can be together forever. I love you...

Your fiance,
Eganwp... I mean Travis! hehe

The one??

So I went to Once Upon A Bride last friday, and I found this dress. I tried it on and was so excited that I called Tiff, and luckily she was availiable and she tried it on too. I love it! It has a natural waistline with a pretty ribbon, and handpainted flowers! The flower pin in the pictures is separate, and I like it better without. AND, it comes in APPLE GREEN!! Apparently, all the Dessy dresses I was looking at before are no longer availiable at Once Upon A Bride, because they were upwards of $300.00 a peice! And thats for a short, simple dress! So that's definately out. So girls, what do you think about this pretty dress? I would like to order it soon, because it takes 4-6 months to get in, and then there are alterations to be done! we have 240 days until the wedding, which is about 8 months away! Apparently these dresses take the same amount of time as my dress!! Actually longer. One thing I don't know about the dress is the colour of the flowers. I'm sure it will be nice, though, whatever it is. I mean they are handpainted! So, let me know if you like the dress, and if you don't we can keep looking. And if you are worried about being pregnant, I can keep looking for an empire waist dress, which makes it possible to allow for baby belly.

P.S. the dress looked better in person, so I can post pictures of me in it, if you like.

Thanks for the Turkey that gave his life that we may Dine

This thanksgiving, I am thankful for:

• Travis coming down for 4 whole days and 4 whole sleeps!! (longest yet)
• Spending time with Ben and Megan (thanks, Chris)
• My new family, Travis' side. Ever since our first date, the Fletchers have been so welcoming, and that has only increased since then. They are so excited for us to get married, and to welcome me into their family. This weekend Mrs.Fletcher just realised that I, too, would be Mrs.Fletcher!! (She is still getting used to the fact that she is no longer a Telke)
• The new member of our wedding party, Tanya Fletcher. We gave her the option of picking who's side she will stand on, and she is leaning toward the groom. Welcome, Tan!!
• Derek not getting a black eye from a mercy fight with Travis
• Not embarrassing myself too bad playing memory games
• Finding a potential Bridesmaid dress
• Mommy so nicely driving Trav to the airport so early today
• class is over in an hour!!!

How cute is he?

Travis came to visit this past weekend!!! He stayed at our house (in the guest room, of course), and we had a great visit. I took this picture of him when I woke him up on Saturday. Isn't he so cute? I can't wait to wake up looking at him. All scruffy and such. Travis got to take the COMPANY JET back to Lethbridge on Friday, so after my test I drove and picked him up at his aunt and uncle's house. We had lunch with his wonderful aunty Sonia, had a tour of their gorgeous new house in Calgary, and then visited Trav's sister Tanya. After that we went home and had a weekend in which we could actually be by ourselves!!! This was so great, because every single other visit of ours we have been either at someone's house or too busy to get time alone. That has lead to a lot of unneccessary fights on our weekends together. I didn't even realise it at the time, but this visit, we didn't fight. Not even once! We were just so happy being together. And guess what! I get to see him in 5 more sleeps for thanksgiving!!! Hurray! Only 249 more days until wedded bliss to this handsome bloke.

What do you think, girls?

So girls, these are some of the dresses that I am thinking about for bridesmaids. I have been having the hardest time, because NOBODY has the shade of green I am looking for, and the ones that do are either super expensive or not availiable in Canada. Stupid 'States! The colours on these dresses also are probably off, like the first one is supposed to be way lighter, according to the swatch. the pink one is actually availiable in a nice shade of green. The greens I have found so far are either emerald green or super light pastel green, which is not flattering. I am thinking of changing to an aqua colour, but Travis doesn't like blue.. well it's not blue its AQUA! Why don't boys understand the difference? Anyways, Please comment and tell me if you like these dresses, especially Tiff, Christy and Amanda. Love you guys, and I hope you like them!! I also don't know if these are the dresses that we can get here, but we can try!! I might have to resort to buying fabric and getting aunty Margaret to make them or something, we'll see if we find good material and patterns. I want to get dresses done this month, So Christy, make up your mind now if you will be preggers!!! Just so you guys know, I am partial to the first one. The colour really isn't that dark, if you check on www.dessy.com, and look at style #1986, the colour is Kiwi, pictured on the side. It is supposed to be kinda like the colour of the 3rd and 4th pictures. Also I believe they carry Dessy in Lethbridge. I'll probably want to get your measurements soon, so keep that at the back of your mind. Love you!