Life Changes

Soooo this is my first post in a long time. The trip home was amazing. We were able to spend a lot of time with family and see friends in Chicago, Normal and St. Louis. We had a great time at Amy and Josh's wedding and a phenomenal trip to the Smoky Mountains with mom, dad, aunt pat and uncle don. We had such a great time that we were convinced to plan for our move home. The best part of the trip was our engagement which happened in a cabin atop a mountain in North Carolina. It was such a wonderful night and we were so happy to be able to share it with family. We were able to announce it to most of our family members in person before we came back to Thailand.

Things here are moving pretty quickly. We are busily planning our Thai wedding, arranging for Otto's fiance visa, and organizing everything for the move home as well as looking for jobs. We have set the wedding date as May 22nd and we're so excited that my family will be able to join the ceremony here. We are going on a trip to southern Laos just before the wedding. We are planning to do a traditional Thai ceremony in Otto's village and then have a reception at a hotel in Ubon. After that, we will have a week or so to travel to Koh Chang with the family. We will hopefully be able to move back right after the wedding. We haven't really started planning for our wedding in the states, but we know that we want to have an outdoor ceremony with camping and a festival-type feeling.

We are going to Otto's hometown over new years to get some of the wedding planning done. We are going to check out hotels, photographers, look for a cake and a place for the family to rent Thai-style clothes for the ceremony. I haven't started dress shopping yet, but plan to do so after the New Years holiday. So it's a very exciting time for us and I'm looking forward to all of the changes in our near future. We want our friends and family to know that they are welcome to the Thai wedding but of course we understand that traveling so far is a big financial burden. We will hopefully have the opportunity to see everyone at our wedding in the states! Hope you are all having a magical holiday season.