Save the Date!

Today I finished the Save the Date Cards and will mail them tomorrow. I had fun designing the cards. They are in the Fourth of July theme. But then I went to the post office to get stamps and the postcard stamps are ugly! They are lime and peach with pictures of tropical fruit cut open with the seeds hanging out, uuggh! It just doesn't go with the red, white and blue. I was so freaked out that they were the only ones they had that I just didn't get any. Tonight I went over my options. I could have photo stamps printed, but they cost more and would take time to ship out. I could use the regular love stamps that I'm using for the ivitations but people would wonder why I didn't use the cheaper postcard stamps. I talked to Bob about it. He understands my creative frustration, but after talking with him I decided to just go with the fruit. Maybe some people eat tropical fruit on the fourth of July so it won't seem weird to them. And guys probably won't even notice the stamp. Most people reading this probably think I'm just being silly obsessing about stamps, so yeah, they will go out tomorrow with the fruit. The card mention our new wedding website. I will be posting blogs on that from now on instead of here. So just go to www.mysite.weddingsolutions.com/pamandbob and read from now on. That will take you to the main page. The blog be be the link on the left that says "Wedding Journal" . But make sure you visit all the other pages. There is all sorts of information there for you. Thanks for reading!

Working on The Guest List

I have been furiously working on the guest list. Bob has family coming from Arizona that are going to have a family reunion then. I had asked the Root Cellar if they rented their hall space because it is larger than the space at the church, but they don't rent it to private parties. So I think we will be able to have the dinner downstairs at the church and then the dancing part at the Reactor next door, where they have the Youth Group meetings. There really doesn't seem to be enough space in either room for both activities. I will need to check with Pastor Don about this as he is in Nicaragua on a mission trip right now, but he did say he would marry us, so at least we have the Preacher! I'm thinking that after the ceremony, the wedding party will go across the street to have pictures taken in front of the river. Hope we have good weather.

Bob's daughter, Lyzz, bought me a wedding planner book and it has a webpage that goes with it. I am working on setting that up and will give out the address when it's ready. It has lots of neat things on it, like our registry, places of interest for travelers, info about us, a guestbook, plus it has lots of checklists to help me keep track of things and I am able to enter my guestlist into it and it keeps track of the rsvps. It's pretty cool. I may transfer this blog over to there if there is something similar there, but I will keep a link here to get to it.

Lyzz is acting as our Wedding Planner. She loves the details and seems to having a lot of fun with it. My daughter, Jess, has some creative ideas too, but she's not as good with the details. It's going to be a real collaborative effort and everyone has different gifts. Jess wants to sing a song at the wedding. She has one in mind, but I'm not sure if I like that one or not. I have a good idea on the dresses now. I think I'm going to go with burgundy bridesmaids dresses instead of the blue. And we have decided on a Victorian/Western/4th of July theme. What a combo, huh? But it will be fun.

Where Will We Live?

The first question that everyone seems to be asking me is, "Where are you going to live"? That is because I currently live with my Mom and my daughter in Portland and Bob lives with his youngest daughter and several pets in Acton, Maine, which is an hour away. We have been praying about this for a long time and decided that we wouldn't wait until we had everything figured out before we got married. We felt the important thing was to be together and take things as they come. If we don't find something midway before July, I will move to Acton and commute to work.

I am a bookkeeper for Seacoast Scaffold in South Portland. I have been there for 15 years and I am sure that I would never find a job like this one. My bosses and the people I work with are wonderful and the pay is good too. This is one thing that I really don't want to compromise on. Everything else is negotiable. I will need to come to Portland anyway to check on my Mom and my great Aunt Hattie, who is 93 and lives with friends right near my office. And Jess is not 100% independent yet either. Plus I am quite involved at my church, Stroudwater Baptist Church and hate to leave. If I live in Acton, I may not be able to go as often though, especially in bad weather and I will need to go with Bob wherever God wants him to be. He's thinking of becoming a Pastor and I need to listen to what plans God has for us.

Bob is a printer and works for a publisher, Odyssey Press, in Rochester, NH. He operates an HP Digital Press and has been there for 8 years. He is specially trained on this press and there are only a few in Maine, which means finding a comparable job is difficult, especially in this economy. He likes where he works, but if the opportunity of a job closer to Portland arose, he would consider it. He is a Trustee at has church, Liberty Chapel, in Milton Mills, NH. His house is literally on the border of NH and he can walk there. The Acton/Milton Mills area is really beautiful. There is a river with a waterfall right behind the house. I really do love the town, and the people are very friendly there too.


Bob grew up in Tuscon, Arizona and I can't wait to visit there some day. I have lived in Maine, within a 30 minute radius of Portland, all my life, well at least so far. So it will be a new thing for me to have to venture out a bit more. I was hoping Bob could move here, but that would make an hour and a half commute for him, which is even more than it would be for me. So, in the meantime, we will make the best of things. As long as we can be together, it will be great.

Dresses and Colors

My Bridesmaids are going to be Bob's daughters, Lyzz and Zealia and my Maid of Honor is going to be my daughter, Jessica. Bob's oldest son, Pete will be his best man and the groomsmen will be his younger son, Nate and my son, Chris, who will also give me away. We will give special jobs to Chris's wife, Kimberly and Pete's wife, Nikki, like passing out the bulletins and sparklers - well it is going to be the 4th of July, so we have to have sparklers!

I had originally thought that my dress would be dusty rose and the bridesmaids would be white with rose sashes. My reasoning for this was that it is a second wedding for both of us so I probably shouldn't wear white, you know, the whole purity thing works better for the young girls. When I told the girls about this, Jessica was appalled that I wasn't going to wear a white wedding dress. She said it would be ok because it was a new beginning for me. Maybe she is right and I may reconsider. But if I wear white, what color should the bridesmaids wear? Should I go with the dusty rose for them? Jess thinks I should go with purple or lavender because that is my favorite color. I do like purple, but I like rose too. And then there is the red, white and blue theme for the reception decorations. Should the dresses go along with that theme or is that too tacky?

I went into David's Bridal to look at what dress styles look like these days. Everything is sleeveless, strapless and very plain. I was not impressed. I know I can make something better for much less. I did see a lace dress that was sort of nice, but they wanted $799 for it and I couldn't see spending that much money- must be the Scot in me. Then I went over to Joann's Fabrics and looked at the patterns. They were just as bad as the dresses at David's. And the fabric wasn't very impressive either. They have a lot to make quilts, but not much bridal stuff. I guess no one has time to sew anymore. I found some nice lace online, but they wanted $85/yd. for it and who knows if it will look as good as in the picture.

Bob likes wearing black, so the guys are pretty easy to decide on. It's just a matter of the color of the tie and vest. And for styles that I like, well I'm kind of partial to victorian. I really like the high collars and long sleeves. That was really popular in the '70's, but it's like non-existant now. Oh well, I don't care to be like everyone else. But they sure make it difficult to get what you want when it's not in style, thanks to the fashion czars. So, if you have any ideas on colors, styles, patterns, fabric or places to get such things, please let me know.

Our Story

I thought I would tell you the story about how we met. Most of you probably know already because I love talking about Bob. But for those of you who don't know, here goes:

It was during my daughter Jessica's junior year in high school, I started thinking about when she goes away to college, I will be alone, just me, my Mom and my cat, Weenie. I had quit the dating scene to raise my daughter without distractions, but now it was getting time to think about me. Jess had wanted to create a "MySpace" page because all the other kids were doing it. I didn't know much about it, so I told her that after I made one up and learned more about it, she could have one too. I found that it was a really creative and fun thing to do. Then I found out that you could do a search of people with certain perameters. So just out of curiosity, I did a search for a male, around my age, who was a Christian, and lived near me. I didn't get much to choose from. So I moved the zip code out a little further, and still not much. So I kept moving it out until I was an hour away from where I live, but alas, there was nobody that interested me at all. I was about to uncheck the Christian box, but then I decided to go just a little further and there he was! But he lives in Acton, which according to MapQuest is 70 minutes away.

I wasn't really happy with the fact that he lived so far away and it said that he was 5'11" and that's pretty tall for me. I'm only 5'0". So I didn't do anything for a while, but I kept going back to look at his picture and read his profile. He loves his kids, he likes to read, he's a Christian, he likes the same music that I like and he's doing the computer thing. I love computer stuff. Well, maybe I could just say hi. So on 7/20/06 I sent him a message, not expecting a reply. The next day I got a message back telling me all about himself. He had 2 cats and 2 dogs and they had fleas - wow, a real person! He was very polite and very nice. I wrote back. We kept writing every day until we decided to IM each other - that's instant message, instead of waiting for emails, you get to 'talk' back and forth in real time. That was fun. I couldn't wait to see him online after he got home from work. We did that for quite some time and it was months before we got up the nerve to talk on the phone. It sounds silly, but I had talked to some other guys online before and had run into so many perverts, that I was being really careful. But this guy was different. He answered all my questions just right. I was falling in love with someone I hadn't even met yet!

It was December and my daughter asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Just kidding, I said that I wanted to meet Bob. Little did I know she was going to take that to heart. On the 16th (the day after my birthday), she took me out to the mall and bought me a new outfit, paid to have my hair done and bought me lunch. I thought that was a pretty good present. But then she had her friend, who had a license, drive me to an undisclosed location. As we got closer to NH, I was pretty sure I knew what was happening. Actually, I think I sort of knew a few days before because she was acting so giddy, what else could it be? We arrived at the Olive Garden in Newington and she confirmed that we were going to meet Bob. I was so nervous! What if we didn't like each other? What if just one didn't like the other? I didn't want to lose my penpal and also the hope for more. Every person that walked through the door, I compared to the one picture I had seen. Would I even know if it was him? When he did walk through the door, he looked at me with a big smile and I was in heaven! He looked even better than in the picture.


The waiter seated us together and put Jess and her friend, Sarah at a table nearby. They sat there taking picture of us. We were so nervous. We found out that we liked the same food and talked about how our kids had gotten us all ready for our date. He has 4 kids who are all grown and his ex had been gone for a couple of years and he was new at this dating thing. He had talked to some women online, but none of them ever clicked. The girls had the waiter send over a piece of that deadly chocolate cake for my birthday - yum! Then we went over to the mall and the girls went shopping while we sat in the food court for hours just talking about everything. It was getting late, so we said our goodbyes and we went home. I was on cloud nine!

We continued to talk online and I wondered if he was ever going to ask me on a second date. It was near Valentines Day that we went out again. He gave me a framed photograph that he took as a Valentine's present. I was so happy that he actually give me something! Later, Jess laughed at me because it was a picture of some mushrooms on a tree! I guess she didn't think that was very romantic, but I didn't care. We went out to dinner and were going to go to the movies, but we missed it because we were talking so much. We went to the bookstore and had some coffee and talked some more. When the bookstore was closing, we went back to our cars. Then suddenly I realized that I couldn't remember which way to go home. He hopped back out of his car and came over to me in the moonlight and before I knew it he picked me up and kissed me. It was so beautiful out that night under the stars. I knew then that this was the beginning of something really good. And we have been together ever since!

Getting The Word Out

Last night Bob and I, and Bob's daughter, Zealia, went to the Saturday nite church service at New Life in Biddeford. That's like the midpoint between our houses and we joke that we have our dates there. We got to see some of our friends that we had met a few months ago and were pleasantly surprised to find that one of the couples had gotten married last month. During the service, the Pastor asked people in the congregation to stand up and tell what God had blessed them with over this last year. He was surprised to find that there were about 7 couples that had gotten engaged. The guitarplayer, Nick, joked that they should change their name from New Life to New Wife Fellowship! We had a good time and then went out to dinner afterward.

Today we went to Stroudwater Baptist, which is my church, and announced our engagement at the service. Afterward, everyone asked to see my ring and wanted to know about all our plans, most of which we are not sure of yet. We would like to set the date as the 4th of July, but Pastor Don was on vacation today and I need to check his schedule. There weren't many people in church today so there are still a lot of people that haven't heard the news yet. I have put out a bulletin and a note on my MySpace. My page is www.myspace.com/pamhouston and Bob's page is www.myspace.com/boblandrews . Check them out! Next Sunday we will be making the announcement at Bob's church, Liberty Chapel in Milton Mills, NH. He also will be doing the sermon that week. I love to hear him preach. He's awesome!

We were thinking about making up a "save the date" postcard that lists the address for this blog and sending it to people we don't see very often. Since Bob is a printer, he can help print them. We need to figure out what we want for a picture on it. He can also print our invitations and bulletins for the service, but we need to start designing them as well. This is so much fun! Let me know if you have any ideas.

Tomorrow I get to tell everyone at work and the girls at Amatos who make my lunch, which is usually a salad now because I've got a lot to lose before July. I know they will be very excited. Girls always want to see my ring. Guys don't really care about the ring, but they are happy for me. Bob said the people at his office were really excited when he told them too. He says I glow! Yes, I probably do. I am very happy.

Welcome to our Wedding Page

Yesterday was Christmas and I got the best present ever! Bob asked me to marry him and I said YES! We have decided to create this blog so that we can keep you posted on our wedding plans and you can make comments, give suggestions or let us know how you can help us with your special gift. Since I will be making most of the posts, anytime you see "I, me or my" it will be referring to me, Pam, although Bob will be giving his input from time to time. The most current post will be at the top and the date will refer to when I wrote the post. I will be adding pictures and more information as time goes on, so be sure to check back often.