I'M ENGAGED!!!!

We're ENGAGED!!!!!!!! Yep...total surprise proposal to me! Here's how it went down....

Matt's perspective:
Last Christmas I talked to Kelly's dad and brought up the idea of a proposal on a cruise and got permission to start planning. Many of her relatives decided that they wanted to come too so it was easy to convince Kelly that this was just a family vacation. She had no clue that me and my family were also coming along. As the date approached (Sunday, December 16th) the secret became harder and harder to keep. Finally it was here!! Me and my family flew to Florida (the departure for the cruise) all the while telling Kelly that I was at my school's graduation ceremony because I was an RA and "had" to go. When we got on the boat around 2:00, we immediately went to our room and hid until the formal dinner at 5:00. Her family was all having dinner on the 5th floor while my family was hiding on the 6th floor with me. Once she saw the video I made her (a surprise video for the cruise to let her know i was thinking of her) I
snuck up behind her at the table while the video was still playing. Leaning on her chair, I casually remarked that I liked the video I made. She freaked, turned around, and jumped into my arms.......

Kelly's perspective
....Going back a little bit, I had no clue about ANY of this!! I was totally fooled with the idea that Matt was still at school. I even called him right before we left for dinner because I knew it might be my last chance to talk to him before our cell phones lost service. (at this point, he was just a floor above me and I had no idea!!!) We went down to dinner and my mom said that there was a video for me to watch from a "special person". I of course figured it was a video from matt, but had no idea what was really about to happen. I watched the video (with the thought of a proposal crossing my mind, then leaving because I knew there was no way he would do it over video and not in person). When the video ended, Matt (who I didnt know was right behind me at the time) made a comment and I immediately knew that it was his voice. I turned around and he was standing right there in front of me!!! I was in complete shock! He grabbed my hand and had me stand up. I of course gave him a huge hug, at which point he said "I promised I would surprise you...". He then pulled a ring box out of his pocket, got down on one knee, and asked "will you marry me?". Right away I responded with a YES and then I saw that his whole family was there too!! I then ran around hugging people...and of course came back to matt to put the ring on. It took me a few minutes before I even realized that he was actually on the cruise with me for the week too!!!

Needless to say, it was a complete surprise and everything I ever wanted!! My family got to be there too so that was really exciting. Can't wait to start planning the wedding!!!!!

P.S. Two days later, Matt got sick with tonsilitus, bronchitus, laringitis, dehydration, and a fever of 104!!! He spent much time recouping in his bed, but at least we got those first few days :) It was still fun anyway!


Here's kinda the play by play in picture form...


WE'RE ENGAGED!!!


Both families

Happy Birthday Coldstone!!!

Today was Coldstone's 3rd birthday (or something like that) in Mt. Pleasant so they were giving away little 3.5 ounces of ice cream. Well...they decided to do a special for the people that got there right when they started the free ice cream and they gave us each a bag to fill with ice cream cups!!! Needless to say, Ashley and I have enough ice cream to last us quite awhile!!!


These are the bags...filled with ice cream!!!!!


Here is our freezer after trying to fit the ice cream into it....not a whole lot of room left on our bottom shelf ;)

Christmas Cookies

Today Ashley and I decided to make Christmas cookies!!! We even used homemade dough AND homemade icing!

rolling out the dough

cutting out the cookies...we only had christmas tree and star cookie cutters

getting them ready to bake

you can't make christmas cookies without eating some of the dough!!

making the icing

licking the icing beaters...that was a sugar rush :)

decorating our cookies

we made 5 big christmas tree cookies...1 for each roommate

and lots of little ones! aren't they pretty?! they were all decorated using dyed icing, decorating icing tubes, and valentines day sprinkles! (we are poor college students, we use what we have!)

they were tasty too!!!

*NOTE* All of the pictures with both of us in them were taken using a timer. We got very inventive on how to prop up the camera in our kitchen, for example, this last picture was taken by placing the camera on the open refrigerator door!

Goodwill shopping

On Monday, Stina and I had a lot of fun together!! First we went to go work out (as you can tell from what we are wearing in the pics) and then we went to the bank. Next to the bank is a Goodwill, so we decided to go in there and look around. We saw this funny sign and decided to buy it and hang it in our kitchen! We also saw the game Racko and bought that...all for a total of $3.18! Then we had to go buy some nails so we could hang up our sign, so we went to Menards. Did you know that Menards sells food too? It was weird, but the food was kinda cheap and it was name brand, so I might have to do some shopping there :) Anywho, here are some pics of us hanging up our sign...we were very excited about it!!!


The game, nails, and sign that we bought


Putting in the first nail...


...and the second nail...


Yay!! It's up!!

His House Winter Formal

Along with the MAC Championship game, Saturday night was ALSO the His House Winter Formal!! It was sooooo much fun! Everyone got dressed up in old prom dresses and suits (in my case I wore my bridesmaid dress). It was like high school homecoming all over again, but with a Christian aspect to it. We danced and hung out and ate snacks. We even did one of the High School Musical dances!!! I took 11 videos, and if you are lucky and this website works, maybe you will get to see one or two of them :)

Oh, they also had a backdrop set up for pictures, just like in high school!!

Doing the Billie Jean dance

Here is a video of the Billie Jean dance!!

Colleen was my date for the night ;)

Me and Lauren eating a cookie...

Slow dancing with Chris while he serenaded us with the song that was playing

Me and Chad...we decided to use some props that we found in the room

Here is a video of the first High School Musical song that was played...we all were singing and dancing to it

Danielle, Me, and Jessy

Chris and Danielle...aren't they cute?!?

Grease flashback!!!

Derek singing the song "Bye bye bye" by NSync to the giraffe that we have in our church basement. I have a video of this too...it's hilarious!!!

Here is one of the videos of us doing a dance from High School Musical. I am kinda in the middle...I have on the long pink dress. After this loaded onto here, I watched it and it is a little harder to see for some reason. Sorry it is so dark, but hopefully you can tell what is going on anyway.

MAC Championship

The MAC Championship game was yesterday and we were back to defend our title from last year...and we won again!!! We are back to back MAC Champions!!! Once again, the CMU Chippewas were invited to the Motor City Bowl that takes place the day after Christmas and we are going to be playing Purdue. Unfortunately, we lost horribly to Purdue when we played them earlier this year, so it could be an interesting game. Anyway...here are some pics from the MAC Championship

Fire up Chips!

Me, Ashley, Stina, and Mark

There was a lot of people there!

The 3 roomies

Back to back champs!!!!

Here is our trophy

The score...CMU 35, Miami Ohio 10