To Recap The Wedding: Part 1

Wow, it's now Thursday December 27, 2007. A full two weeks ago I last wrote and since then I've had a bachelor's party, wedding, honeymoon, and Christmas. I have been stressed, sick, in love, and in utter joy. It's been a whirlwind of emotion and activity and now it's time to settle back into the routine. Before I do that however I must take a smidge of time to reflect on the happenings of the past 14 days.

Friday December 14th: I finished my last day of work before the wedding. It was an incredibly stressful day and I woke up sick on the day to top it off. I got so much stuff done at work and I never thought I'd make it out. Family flew in from all over the place and my Best Man Aaron threw me an amazing bachelor party complete with all the dudes decked out in suits, Hooters, the Bowling Alley, a limo, and swanky lounges downtown. It was quite a night. I even had a gigantic stuffed pink flamingo taped to my loins the entire evening. I will share a few pictures from the evening to illustrate and leave the rest of the evidence in my unlisted album. Enjoy! As always more in depth detail on the wedding can be found on our wedding website: http://www.florandbrian.com/.

Living Like Christ Everyday

My dad has been blogging for a few months now and I must say it's probably really good for him as it's getting him used to using the computer on a regular basis. I helped him put together the basic framework of his blog back in June and in August he started writing in it most every day. I have found it very nice to read what he has to post as he has such a rich volume of religious writings floating around in his head that it's always rewarding to read what is "speaking to him". If you're interested I would encourage you to check out my dad's prayer blog. He writes a lot of commentary on the topic of devotionals, theologians, and encouragement.

Anyway, with my wedding fast approaching I've been a little behind in reading my blogs and news feeds so today I came across my dad's post back on November 22 regarding Oswald Chambers' The Shallow and The Profound. It's been about 3 weeks but I'm finally getting to read it and I find something that really spoke to me too. Oswald says (to paraphrase) to place some solid emphasis on living like Christ in everything mundane in your life. This of course means that you should live like Christ while you drive to work, cook dinner, do house chores, email coworkers, etc. instead of trying to be like Christ only in the Profound moments of your life.

The point is there are not enough Profound moments of one's life to make up for the mundane so it's best to live like Christ in the mundane because it speaks more about Christ to others. After all, Christ participated in all the mundane aspects of life as he once was a living man and he did indeed act like Christ in those times just as much as he did while preaching and teaching others.

Anyway, for some great words of wisdom on a nearly daily basis I recommend checking out my dad's blog and subscribing to the feed.

In other news it dawned on me that I forgot to post the pictures from the 5th annual Thanksgiving at Abby and Kathleen's. There's not too many but here they are:


I gotta say it was great to see friends that I haven't seen in ages, namely Kelli, Evan, and Judi.

Happy December 13th everybody! Just 4 more days to go!

Christmas Time Is Here Again

Man time flys! I can hardly believe that Christmas has come again. Last year I wasn't blogging hardly at all but it was the first year I ever bought a Christmas Tree. Granted Aaron and I bought it together so I guess it was our first tree but now I get to say that this is my second tree and my first with Flor. :)

It's really great to be able to continually share new experiences as a couple even though we've been together for some time now. Anyway, last week I went out and picked up a tree late Wednesday night and then Thursday evening we stayed up and decorated it and our balcony. We also snapped some pictures and here they are your enjoyment.



Now whenever we go into our living room it feels so festive and happy. The tree really makes our place feel like a home.

For further picture pleasure the following are our pictures from last year decorating. Yes, Flor was there. We're now making it through our second round of holidays together. How fun!

Thanksgiving with the Rodriguez's

A couple weeks ago now Flor and I spent our second Thanksgiving together, the first of our engaged lives though so it was a bit more meaningful as we now know that this is just one Thanksgiving of many to come. Of course no holiday is complete without a little illness and this was no exception. By the end of the night I started feeling under weather and by Saturday both Flor and I were on medication and eventually antibiotics. Pictures luckily were taken when we were still feeling good. Take a look:



Later that weekend, despite the illnesses, Flor and I experienced our very own wedding shower hosted by Flor's family at their church in LA. My mom made the day trip down for the event and we had a nice time. Many gifts were given to us which was very kind and unexpected. I don't know why but I just didn't expect gifts to be given. Anyway, later that night we traveled up to Fresno to get my dad sick and see him for the first time for the holidays. We did church and lunch on Sunday and then eventually started the long trip back to San Diego.

Crazy but we didn't get any pictures of the Shower, though Flor's LA Pastor did and we hope to get copies from him, and we didn't get any pics of Fresno with my family. I think we were just feeling lucky so we didn't think to capture the moment. :)

Anyway, that's that!