3 Years!

Three years ago, I said “I do” to Jason! What a man! I am so in love with him. He is an incredible husband and he shows me he loves me day in and day out. Max and Gwenyth are very blessed to have him as a father. He is a great provider, role model, and such an amazing example for them to follow! Three years ago, I would have known we would be happy and still so in love, but I could not have imagined how absolutely wonderful it would be to do life with this guy!!! I pray for many, many more years with my main man!

Our Wedding Day, February 2011
 
August 2012
 
October 2013

Also, in case you thought you had the best friends, you are wrong… We do! Ha! Here is the proof. There is nothing like a flash mob at your wedding reception! Thank you to all of you, you know who you are! 🙂

http://vimeo.com/20770631

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One Year Ago…

One year ago, Jason and I got married!  The Lord has blessed me with such an incredible husband.  I loved Jason very much a year ago.  I remember the anticipation of becoming Mrs. Rude.  There were things that I thought would be amazing like waking up to Jason every morning, sharing meals together, becoming parents together.  All wonderful things but, nothing I thought or dreamed up was as great as being married to Jason really is!  As I have gotten to know Jason more and more over the past year, I am so pleased to say that I love him much more than I did a year ago!  So much more!
So much has happened in this last year.  One of the most amazing things is seeing Jason become a dad.  He is so great with Max.  They already have such a great relationship and I know that Max adores him just as much as I do.
Some of my favorite things about Jason include his laid back personality, his good looks, his ability to talk to just about anyone, his work ethic, his good looks, his relationship with the Lord, the way he leads our family, his good looks, and the way he knows how to love me.  Oh… did I mention his good looks?  🙂

Here are the vows we made to one another a year ago.  What a great reminder of the foundation of our marriage.  Thank you, Lord, for an incredible husband.
“Amanda, you are my best friend and I love you and I know that you love me.  Because of this, I desire to be your husband.  Through the pressures of the present and the uncertainties of the future, I promise to be faithful to you.  I will love, serve, adore, and lay my life down for you like Jesus laid his life down for the church.  I promise I will never divorce you.  I will never hold anything over your head.  I promise to lead you and our future family in a way that honors Christ.  I will honor and love you while we’re together and while we are not in each other’s presence.  I will laugh and cry with you.  And I will cherish you for as long as we both shall live.”
“Jason, you are my best friend and I love you and I know that you love me.  Because of this, I desire to be your wife.  Through the pressures of the present and the uncertainties of the future, I promise to be faithful to you.  I will love, serve, respect, and submit to you.  I will never divorce you.  I will never hold anything over your head.  I promise to follow you as you lead me and our future family in a way that honors Christ.  I will honor and love you while we’re together and while we are not in each other’s presence.  I will laugh and cry with you.  And I will cherish you for as long as we both shall live.”
Happy anniversary, BFF.

I am a Rude! :)

Being married is so great!  Jason and I have just celebrated our two month anniversary and it has been the best two months of my life!

Here are some highlights:

Our honeymoon was so fun!  We got to go to Daytona Beach the day after we got married.  We got bumped from our flight, and made it to the hotel in the wee hours of the morning but we still had fun on the way there!  When we arrived in Orlando to get our rental car we were informed that all they had left were minivans… but then after they learned we were on our honeymoon, they surprised us with a really fun car!

While on our honeymoon, we went to Disney World!  It was my first time and I LOVED it!  We went to Hollywood Studios and Epcot.  We were there all day and the night was capped off with some amazing mexican food and FIREWORKS!  We got VIP seats down on the dock to watch the nightly fireworks at Epcot.  So cool!

This is on our way in… It was kind of chilly!
24 and I finally made it to Disney World!
Jason with his “Happily Ever After” Button

Our 3D Muppet Adventure

After Beauty and the Beast

Jason’s scared face at the Tower of Terror

My scared face

At Epcot

Jason sporting a moo moo (sp?)

The end of our fabulous day! Our VIP seats to the firework show!

When we returned from our honeymoon, we went to my parent’s house and opened up our wedding gifts.  People were SO generous!  Even though a note could never express our thankfulness to all our friends and family that helped to make our day so special… official Thank You’s will be out soon!

Getting settled in our home has been fun!  I have learned a lot about how Jason organizes and his daily habits I did not know about before.  Truth be told, the more I find out about him… the more I LOVE him!  People have been asking a lot, “how is married life?”  Married life is great!  I get to see my best friend every day and night!

I still get excited whenever I hear Jason call me his wife and can’t stop smiling when I say the phrase, “my husband.”  Looking forward to a lifetime of being married to my best friend!

You guys! We are getting married in 6 days!!!

It has been exactly 3 months since Jason purposed and we are getting married in 6 days!

Planning this wedding has been so wonderful and great.  With experience in planning weddings and other events, I have always dreamed of planning my own wedding, and it has been so much better than I ever thought it would be!  The main reason it is so great is because I get to plan it all with my bff, Jason!

The living room and kitchen table are full of wedding packages and supplies!  Sometimes I wonder how it is all going to get finished but have been reminded that God is in control.  Thank goodness!

My Little Wedding Planning Helper!

The boxes in the Living Room

Hundreds of Little Chairs…

A lot has happened in the three months we have been engaged!  I have a new job, and a new place!  I moved in to what will eventually be me and Jason’s first home and with the help of Peanut, we have been keeping it warm until Jason moves in after the wedding.

We celebrated our first holidays together!  We went to visit my dad’s side of the family near Cleveland, Ohio for Thanksgiving.  Jason got to experience the 12 hour drive with my dad, mom, and me.  Peanut had to stay home for this trip.

Christmas was great!  Jason and I realized how blessed we are to have both our immediate families live so close to one another.  We were able to go to church with both of our families on Christmas Eve and then go out to dinner with my family and back to Adel to open gifts.  Christmas morning we were at the Rude’s.  It was a great time to relax with the family, open gifts, and watch movies.  Christmas night we went back to Adel, where we ate dinner and Hailee talked us through Toy Story 3.

Jason and Hailee (and cat.)

Heather and Me

Little Brody man’s first Christmas!

In between Christmas and New Year’s, Jason and I got the opportunity to go to a church conference in Omaha called Faithwalkers.  We got to spend time with our friends and learned so much!

With all this going on, we have still managed to plan our wedding and we are both so excited to see our friends and family and celebrate with them in 6 days!

We are Engaged!!!

Jason asked, and I said yes!

Last Friday night, Jason took me out to dinner.  After dinner, we got in the car and he drove to a spot were we usually hang out during our dates.  It is outside near my apartment and has a pond, a really pretty bridge, fountains, and nice places to sit.  It was a little cold that night so when we pulled up, I asked Jason if we were going to go outside.  He said yes, that it was going to start getting colder soon and we weren’t going to be able to go there much longer.

When we got out of the car and started walking towards the pond, this is what I saw… (the blurry pictures are due to the fact that both Jason and I were really pumped about being engaged!)

To me, the lights looked like part of the landscaping and so I said to Jason, “Wow, it looks like they lit up our path!”  He responded with a slow, “ya…”  As we got closer, I noticed the lights were little tea lights and there were rose petals laid out on the sidewalk.  That is when I knew.  I froze for a bit and Jason told me all these wonderful things about why he loves me, then he told me we had to keep going!

The next thing I saw was more candles and glow sticks spelling out…

“I think you’re great” is the first thing that Jason said to me when he told me that he wanted to date me.  It was so funny to see it written out with glow sticks!

Again, we had to keep moving and up ahead I could see more candles and glow sticks.

This time they spelled out “I love you.”  On either side of the message there were glow sticks sticking out of the ground.  They were to represent fireworks.  Jason knows that I LOVE fireworks!

Jason then got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!  I said yes!

We spent some time just the two of us being excited that we were engaged (and taking really great pictures) and then Jason asked me if I would like to go to Perkins to get some pie.  Of course I wanted to get some pie!

On our way to Perkins I called my mom to tell her the good news, she said that her and my dad were waiting for the call and were going to meet us!  When we walked in, Jason told the waitress there would be 10-14 people!  He had invited our friends and families to come out and celebrate with us!  It was wonderful to be able to see everyone and share our good news!