Sorry I am late with my postings!

*I know I have done a pretty poor job with blogging lately.
*I am sure that some of my followers want to stop following me.
*I promise you, I have NOT fallen off the wagon.
*I feel like the blogs that I read and the people who follow me on my journey have made a huge impact on my life and my success losing weight, so I don't want people to think I am not taking this serious.
*One of my Saturday Sessions goals is to make sure that I am blogging more regularly, since I missed two of my regular topics this week.
*On a lighter note, I have to admit that I have been missing in action for a pretty good reason...


I got engaged on Friday night!!!!!!!!


For those of you who don't know (I am guessing that this is many people) I live in Minnesota and on friday we got a healthy serving of snow.  My boyfriend bought us tickets to the Russian Nutcracker ballet awhile ago and it also happened to land on the same day as another event that my friends and I had been planning to go to called the 12 Bars of Christmas which is a bar crawl that raises money for a local children's hospital.  It is a lot of fun.  Since they are both in Downtown Minneapolis we decided we could squeeze both of them in.


At noon yesterday Ron called me and said, "I booked a hotel room for us at the Hilton downtown because it is going to be such bad weather, so now we don't have to worry about driving."  I was super excited and decided that I would meet him at the hotel. 

I loved the cute Sweet Dreams pillow on the bed of our suite.

When he got to the hotel he told me that we needed to hurry up in order to make our dinner reservations.  So, we went out into the cold, snowy night and walked to dinner.  On the way there we passed Peavey Plaza, a small area that is lighted with an ice rink.  In one of the corner's there is a small patch of evergreen trees that were beautifully dusted with snow and glowing with dazzling lights.  As I stopped to take my camera out to snap a picture, I turned around and found my boyfriend on one knee in the snow.  He said some very sweet, touching, amazing things to me before asking, "Will you marry me?"  To which I ecstatically shouted "YES! YES!" with tears in my eyes.  We both cried and hugged and took pictures. 

I think that my face says it all!

There he is in the snow.  My fiance!

After all of this excitement we went to dinner and then to the Russian Nutcracker ballet.  The ballet was fabulous and the State Theater is gorgeous.  

A view of Hennepin Ave in Downtown Minneapolis on our way to the State Theater.

I LOVE the music from the Nutcracker and going to the ballet was a dream of mine.

The inside of the theater.  Gorgeous.

This was the story of my fairytale proposal followed by my childhood dream of going to the Nutcracker. Friday night was the most amazing night of my life.  After the ballet I was able to go out and tell all of our friends.

Excited friends.

Really excited best friend and my fiance.

After the 12 Bars of Christmas we went back to the hotel and crashed because we has been through so much excitement that day.  I hardly slept because I was so anxious to tell my family at cookie baking.  Every year my sister and my mom and I spend an entire day making cookies.  I planned to tell them by writing in a cookbook that I got for each of them and I wrote them each a personal message and then the P.S. said "We're engaged!!!"  I got to my sisters and quickly handed the book to my sister and mom and then opened them and I watched as they read their messages and then my mom was the first one to read the line.  Both of them had apparently saw it coming and started to say, "I knew it! I knew it!"  We exchanged hugs and started to talk about how it all happened.  I waited for my other sister to come so I could tell her and she was thrilled.  I only had my Grandma and brother left and I called them both up and then made the announcement on my facebook page.  I am so happy at how this all unfolded and could not feel more blessed and loved by my fiance, family and friends.  It was the perfect proposal and best way to share the news with everyone.  We are thrilled to start planning a wedding and I bought some wedding magazines yesterday.  Woo hoo!  Excited for the next chapter!!

After all of the excitement we still managed to make a lot of cookies, which I will show you below.  I promise to get back on track next week when things have settled down a bit.  Hope everyone is doing great on their journey!

My mom and her/our family dog Gabi.

My mom showing my niece how to carefully lift out the cut-outs for cream wafers.

One of my sisters at the cream wafer frosting station.

Piles of cream wafers all in a row.

These cookies are beyond amazing and delicious.

Cut-out cookie station for the kids.

The beautiful cookie creations that the kids made.