On getting married

Did you know that if you wanted to get married in Victoria, you have to submit an intent to marry at least a month and one day before your wedding? Me neither, luckily I checked :)

Marc and I are going to formally register our marriage here in Melbourne just before we fly to Malaysia for our wedding. I had to print out a whole bunch of forms and fill them out today because that naturally falls under my fiancée job description.

Tonight, Marc and I went to our local police station because we needed a police officer to witness our forms and various identification. There is seriously a ton of paperwork required for guess what – another piece of paper!

Funny thing was on the way home from the police station, Marc randomly asked me if I thought I’d feel any different after we got married. My truthful answer was a no. I honestly don’t think we would feel any different. Yes, it would be formal and legalised, we’d be husband and wife and we’d be able to refer to each other as ‘hubby’ and ‘wifey’ (as cheese balls as that sounds!) but when it comes to actually living our everyday life? It would be no different than what it is today.

The fact that we have been together for almost a decade and lived together for almost four years now… You could say we’re pretty much married! And I say that with utmost pride, love and loyalty. One of my besties is about to move in with her boyfriend for the first time and she asked me what it was like living with a man you know you want to spend the rest of your life with. My answer? It’s like living with your best friend. And so much more. I just can’t describe the companionship and the friendship and the love that comes with living with someone you love and will marry one day.

The past four years living with Marc has been amazing. I consider myself a very lucky girl. The fact that we’re pretty much always on the same wavelength when it comes to cleanliness and hygiene levels, common interests, general compatibility – that is a huge plus times infinity right there.

But of course like every other relationship and when two people not only share their lives together but their living space, it’s not always rainbows and unicorns and lollipops. I wish! Marc and I have our days, our moments… There are days where all we do is pick fights or bicker. There are days where he just pushes my buttons and is so goddamn annoying. There are days where I’m just a plain bitch (hello PMS!). We definitely have our not-so-pretty moments…

But I honestly reckon that that is all part of what a serious, committed relationship is all about… At the end of the day, we are quick to make up, we love and adore each other, we want each other to be the happiest we can be, we support each other, we share the same values and beliefs… And we understand that it is going to take a lot of hard work to keep our soon-to-be marriage going!

So hard to believe we have hit the 3 month mark to the big day! It’s just a little insane… I’m so, so excited to start this next part of our journey together. Ive realised over the last six months that my emotions and feelings of stress from planning our wedding really did overwhelm me and definitely tried to override my excitement for the big day… But now? Now that we’re mere months out from our wedding day, even the stress can’t get me down… I’m not letting it. And I’m determined to keep it that way for a little while more!

My Friday night

I’ve had a good week at work… Met my targets and was happy to be able to leave work just after four this afternoon. Nothing beats leaving work early on a Friday!

Marc was home early-ish too and we had planned to go to the gym together. But of course the ‘but it’s Friday!’ excuse got the better of us and we skipped our gym session. Instead we cooked the most delicious stir-fry noodle dinner together. One of Marc’s favourite things to do is for us to cook together. He loves it. I don’t love the cooking part, but l do love the company. When we cook, we talk a lot, we laugh, we joke around… It’s actually kind of nice to do that at the end of a busy week – to reconnect, recap the week, plan the weekend – lately, as much as I’ve loved the tv shows I’ve been watching religiously, I’ve found that it’s so nice and surprisingly relaxing to have the tv turned off. Even if it’s for just an hour. The tv is turned on a lot in our house! A bad habit we’re trying to get rid off.

After dinner, it was still light outside and to make the most of whatever daylight savings we have left, we put on our walking shoes and walked our neighbourhood. We do evening walks around the ‘hood a fair bit but once in awhile we throw in a big one. Like an hour and a half, sometimes two hours long. It’s another way we can connect with each other and just catch up on each other’s day or even week without distractions around us. We also use our walks to explore the many beautiful streets around us which happen to have some most amazing and beautiful homes – I like to stalk pretty houses!

So tonight was one of those extra long walks – we walked out and the sun was still out. It slowly went down and by the time we got home, it was pitch black. And that was pretty much my Friday night… If that is what my Friday nights are going to be like for the next fifty years of my life? I’m okay with that :)

Have a great weekend!

I want to renovate!

I came home to these last week… Pretty :) Marc and I got into an argument and we were both extremely frustrated with one another. The next day he got me a bunch of flowers. Why is it that he is so damn freaking good at saying ‘sorry’? And I’m not? I am making such a conscious effort to be the one that apologises first… Not because he always does but because I need to learn to get off my high horse sometimes. I don’t know if it comes with being a Leo – too much pride – but my heart melts and l feel guilty to no end that in 90% of our bickering or arguments, he is the first to make peace. Bless his good, good heart.

Anyway! The point to this post is… Remember the house that we were extremely interested in a few weeks ago? It went to auction last weekend and it was passed in. It didn’t sell! Which means no one made a bid! Hmm, maybe we should’ve put an offer in… Maybe we would’ve had a new house to play with now. Maybe!

I’m just itching to renovate… I already know what my next kitchen is going to look like. I can’t wait to have a house big enough to entertain more than six people at any one time. I told Marc that our next house is where we’re going to have people over to celebrate our birthdays. At the moment, we have always celebrated our birthdays out and about, mostly at restaurants.

I just hope when we’re ready, there will be a perfect home for us… Somewhere out there.

I am marrying a keeper

Okay I’m being a little naughty today and gone off tangent with travel photos. I don’t have a travel photo. Instead, I have put up a picture I found on pinterest of one of my MANY (and I stress many) ‘dream’ laundry rooms. If anything, it’s really that laundry sink that I’m completely in love with… I’m a little short-ish, so a low sink is good. I like the look of front-loaders. I think my next machine will be a front-loader. Not a fan of the lack of lighting but hey, if you’ve got a fabulous laundry sink like that one, I wouldn’t be complaining about anything. Honestly.

On to more serious stuff! In our almost nine years together, I’ve always known right from the start that Marc was someone very special. I admit that it wasn’t necessarily love at first sight. We started off friends, then we started dating – although it was never love or lust right from get go, I knew. I just knew that there was something special about him from day one. Maybe it was his sense of humour. Maybe it was his gentle, caring nature. Maybe it was just the way he treated me and respected me.

So almost nine years later, there are still days where my heartstrings are being pulled. Where those butterflies I had forgotten about come to live and flutter inside my stomach. Where my heart just lets out this huge sigh as if saying, ‘Oh my’. All because the boy keeps reminding me on a daily basis just how lucky I am to have him in my life. Just how lucky I am to have found not just someone, but to have found HIM.

He never reads this blog, so it’s safe to write just why I know I’m marrying a keeper… and damn proud at that!

• He is one of the kindest people I know. We had a tough week last week as we buried his uncle and tried our best to console his teen cousins who really, have no idea how to even start grieving. Prior to the funeral, Marc’s aunty (late uncle’s sister) asked if Marc would be one of the pallbearers. Marc was happy to oblige on one condition. That it was completely okay with his uncle’s kids (i.e. teen cousins). So of course his teen cousins were happy for Marc to be one of the pallbearers and so, on a very sad Wednesday last week, Marc was one of six who carried his uncle’s coffin down the aisle of the funeral home. Later that day when we were due to fly out of Sydney back to Melbourne – in the midst of our goodbyes to friends and family at the wake, I saw Marc in the corner with one of his teen cousins. It looked like they were having a short but meaningful conversation – Marc doing all the talking, his teen cousin nodding his head, almost in tears. At the end of it, Marc shook his hand, patted him on his shoulder and gave him a great big hug. Then, we were off to the airport. Later that night, I asked Marc what he had told his cousin. My heart, oh, my heart. Marc said he simply told him what an honour it was that he was asked to be a pallbearer, that he was so grateful and thankful that they even thought of him. That his dad was a great bloke and would be dearly missed. That if ever they (teen cousins) needed anything that they could give him a call. That they are always welcome to fly down to Melbourne to stay with us. Whether it be for the weekend or the school holidays. When Marc told me all of that, I just couldn’t help slowly tear up. My heart was swelling with pride at how completely genuine, caring and thoughtful he was.

 

• So if you have followed my blog (and if you know me!) you would know that Marc loves my niece and nephew to pieces. As if they were his own. The love he has for these kids? I have honestly seen nothing like it. We don’t normally see the kids on weekdays solely because we live a good 40 minutes away from them and with us working full time and the kids bedtimes at 8pm every night, it just doesn’t give us much time to catch up during the week. So most weekends are spent hanging out with the kids – whether it be just being at my sisters for lunch (or dinner), taking the kids to the park, visiting them at swim school or even better babysit them when their parents need some time out. Most of the time, Marc and I visit the kids together. The kids see us as a couple. It’s not often at all when one is without the other. So in the very, very rare times that I go and visit the kids solo – Marc always, and I mean always, makes sure that before I leave the house that he gives me a run down of what he would like me to say or do for the kids when I see them. Like, he would tell me to make sure I give each kid a hug and a kiss from him. To make sure that I tell the kids “Uncle Marc says hi and that he misses you and that he loves you”. I normally just give him the brush off and say “Yeah, yeah I will”…but he would always stop me in my tracks and go “Make sure you do it!”. And that’s purely because he just loves them and not being able to see them, I’m sure, just tears a little piece off his heart. Oh, and he calls the kids every Thursday evening when he gets home from work just to have a chat. Dylan is at the stage where he never wants to talk on the phone. But Lara. Sweet Lara loves the phone and will always have a chat with Marc. She doesn’t say much – just “Hi, Uncle Marcus”. But she listens to every single word you have to say to her on the phone! It’s all very cute.

Friday tomorrow! Have a great end of the week, everyone!

 

We still have a house

In honour of the Tour de France which is actually coming to an end tonight, I thought I would post a picture of the Eiffel Tower. No, I haven’t been to Paris! But this was the Eiffel Tower a la Vegas (Paris Las Vegas Hotel)! It actually looked pretty awesome… I just cannot imagine the real thing. I can’t wait to go to Paris one day. I am slowly, very slowly, reeling Marc into the idea. Speaking of Le Tour – go Cadel Evans! We have stayed up the last couple of nights cheering our Aussie cyclist on. Well, Marc has mostly. I make it to about midnight then fall asleep and wake up again in time for the last few kilometers!

Okay, so remember my second last post? Where I talked about how I think patience plays such a huge part in maintaining a healthy, happy relationship? It completely proved me right last night! Let’s just say a certain someone used our oven to make his lunch and well, very conveniently left it on. He then went out with his mates. I went to my sister’s. I came home later that night (8 hours after said lunch!) to find our oven still turned on, on high heat! I walked into our house and thought I smelt something a little funny. Kind of like gas but not really. I turned the kitchen light on and looked straight at our stove and saw the oven knob slightly turned – I quickly ran to the stove to turn it off – whilst trying not to have a heart attack! My anger frustration was matched equally with complete relief and gratefulness that our stove didn’t blow up in flames in the five or six hour time frame that we were both not home and on the pure and simple fact that WE STILL HAD A HOUSE! Of course my first thought was to call the boy to give him a piece of my mind but I knew that it was, of course, a mistake on his part and that he did not mean to leave the oven on even though it was probably the stupidest thing to do. I knew that I could have easily left the oven on myself and not realise till hours later. I was honestly more relieved than anything which helped with the whole patience side of things. I did call the boy to tell him what had happened which made him feel terrible but it was forgotten very quickly. I don’t think it’s something that would happen again – very important lesson learnt! But last night showed me that by taking a step back to realise that mistakes do happen and that more importantly nothing horrible happened to our house. It would have been completely useless to get angry at the boy – it wouldn’t have done anything.

Breathe. Patience. Breathe.

Date night

Image via here

We decided on an impromptu date night on Sunday. We headed to the drive-in theatre  to watch, lo and behold, Scream 4. Awesome night. Dumb movie. But of course we didn’t expect anything else other than a silly, kind of stupid, horror movie. We just thought the whole idea of watching a horror movie at the drive-in would be fun. And it was. We cooked dinner at home. Left the house, stopped by the petrol station to grab some cash out of the ATM, picked up a couple of drinks and a bag of peanut M&Ms. Date night set! It was good fun. We got there in time for to see the ending of the movie before ours was to start. Then the movie ended and we watched the cars pile out. Then we watched another stream of cars pile in for our movie. Then we watched each car decide on a parking bay. Funny how people change their minds a million times before they settle on a parking bay. I guess you just want to find that perfect spot to watch your movie from. It had been years since we’d both been to the drive-in. In fact, it was probably 8 years ago, on one of our very first dates… oh, the memories!

Back to work tomorrow. This weekend flew right by.