So we’re nearing one week until the Big Show. It’s only fitting that I share some photos of my “hen party” from last weekend in Temecula. (Almost) all my bridesmaids were there, along with some other great friends.

kalin, heidi, erin, me

First up are three lovely Thousand Oaksians. We all went to TOHS and graduated in 2002. They all lived together at one point, but now two of them own homes! Kalin is on the left. We’ve gone on many trips together, most notably: Chile and San Francisco (several times!). We got lost on the streets of Santiago and road-tripped the coast to San Fran. Pretty sure we would win The Amazing Race if we were a team.

Next to Kalin is Heidi. Heidi and my birthdays are 1 week apart (she has the same birthday as my sister!) so we have celebrated many times over the years, especially in Vegas. It’s a tradition that I don’t see us giving up. Heidi is also a fellow wine lover and our favorite past-times including uncorking a bottle (or two) of red.

it was a windy day!

Next to Kalin is Erin. Everyone jokes that Erin and I butt heads so much that we must not like each other, but it’s because we’re too much alike in the sense that we are both pretty stubborn! We are like family because although we may bicker, we still love each other more than words at the end of the day! Erin will also be my makeup artist for the wedding day (and our engagement sess!) so if I look good, thank her!

hanging poolside

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll have more for you later! Enjoy the photos!

We have been really busy over here, hence no blog posts in the last month. We are going to kick it up a notch with only 2 and a half weeks left before we get married, YAAY!

We hired our photographer , Leigh Miller a while ago and we loved the way she captured people in a photograph. Now, after getting our pictures back, we LOVE her photos. We took Preston’s Red Truck to Julian and met up with Leigh for our engagement session. After some pictures in town we drove ten miles or so out of Julian and found a great setting to showcase us and Preston’s Truck.

Head over to her site to check out the photos and give us some comment love!!

We have two adorable ladies who will be walking down the aisle before me: Sami, my cousin’s daughter and Anneliese, our officiant’s daughter. The two little blondies will be rocking dresses that my mom had made for them!

Sami visited in June for my brother’s graduation. We went to Disneyland and the beach in San Diego. She loves princesses, Miley Cyrus, and spinning in tea cups. I know she’s so excited to come back to California that she’s probably packing her bags now!

Anneliese also visited recently and we got to play with this little firecracker. She’s got a zest for life and she’s definitely a product of her fun-loving parents. Her father, Lars, is Preston’s former youth pastor and he will be performing our ceremony. It’s great to have the Rood family involved since Preston has known them for over 10 years!

We have waited so long to make this post.  All the preparation and hard work has come to an end.  We LOVE our invitations and we would love you to comment about them.  We created them ourselves from the screeenprint to the post office.

Many people helped along the way that we would not like to forego thanking. Thank you Dorothy Hatfield for guidance and knowledge with the YuDu screenprinter. Thank you Ruth Vowels for personally typewriting all the addresses and stamping the return addresses. And thank you Ann and Maggie Bern, Betsy Connolly, Lindsey Timpson, Cindy Fullerton, Diane Folsom, and Greg Hatfield for stamping, sorting packing, tying raffia, licking and closing all of our invitations. We could not have done it with out all of you.

So what do you think?

Happy Birthday Katrina Louise Hatfield! You are the best and I wish you the best day ever. I wanted to give a little shout out to Katie. In 69 short days you will say some vows and it will be done… last name changed. Enjoy your last days as a Hatfield and look forward to a-e-i-o-u-and sometimes y.

I do have an announcement too! Katie entered in a contest a while back to win a ‘Day of Coordinator’ and SHE WON! I am so happy for her. She said she has never won anything before, except for Bingo, but what a great birthday gift.

Yay!

When it came to who would be my Maid of Honor (MOH), there was no question that little Stacy Hatfield would be the one for the job! At almost exactly 6 years apart, I am the wiser sister, but in recent years, there has been some question as to who is the oldest! Come on, you’re telling me that this little one looks older than me?! She just turned 20 on Saturday, so maybe she is getting more mature…

i think i look much older!

Stacy had to put up with my teenage angst when she was yet a teen herself. I don’t think that my brother and I let her talk much when we all lived together. As we’ve gotten older though, she has become a great friend. Turns out she has a lot to say! After trips to Europe, a cruise to Alaska, and road trips through the East Coast, my favorite travels have actually been visiting Stacy in Oregon where she’s going to school. The sisterly bond goes even deeper because she joined the same sorority as I was a part of in college. I went and surprised her for her initiation and she was SO surprised! It’s a story we will tell for YEARS! I’m so blessed to have such a radical little sister and awesome Maid of Honor.

at on off broadway show

enjoying the view on martha's vineyard

i make weird faces

visiting stacy at osu

talent show at osu

Be honest… she really does look older than me, doesn’t she?

We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas on this wonderful day.  We are so happy to be able to spend time with our families and cannot thank them enough for all the love and support they have given us.  Only 106 days left to our big day and we can barely wait.

This year’s Christmas holiday has been a good trial run for Katie and I to figure out how to split time between two families.  Yesterday, on Christmas Eve, we left Leucadia and drove to Westchester (about 100 miles) for Preston’s Mom’s family party.  Later, we drove out to La Verne (50 miles) for Preston’s Dad’s family party.  Finally, we drove over to Thousand Oaks (65 miles) to spend the night with Katie’s family and open presents Christmas day.  Today we get to enjoy the day with the Hatfield’s and feast on Dorothy and Greg’s wonderful food.

Ruth and Robert (Preston’s parents) came over for a Christmas breakfast with two different kinds of french toast on the menu. Then we split the presents up and take turns opening them. It gets to be such a lengthy process that bathroom breaks may be needed for some family members.

Right now we wait for the turkey and ham to be ready (even though we only have 5-8 dinner guests at the table, we make both!) while we play with our Christmas gifts. We love to give funny gifts that may or may not prove useful and usually gift giving doesn’t end after the last gift has been unwrapped: something is always hiding under a bed or behind the desk, ala “A Christmas Story.” That’s what makes Christmas so fun. Yet the true meaning of Christmas, celebrating the best gift we’ve ever been given, isn’t lost among the wrapping paper, sugar cookies and ornaments. We love that Christ came here for us and that we get a chance to celebrate that Love with all our family and friends.

We hope that you all get to spend the day surrounded by loved ones, doing the traditions that you hold dear, that bring back childhood memories or your last as a single person, or the first with a little one. We can’t wait to continue on with the traditions that are unique to our family and to create new traditions of our own. From the both of us: Merry Christmas!

I want to introduce you all to our wedding party and what a better way to start with the Best Man.  I do think all the other Groomsmen are Great Men though.  I met Steven through my dear friend Lars Rood, the officiant for our wedding, in the winter of 2005 when we were volunteer leaders for a high school youth group snowboard trip up to Mammoth Mountain.  We kicked it off after I moved down to San Diego to attend the University of California, San Diego.  Lars set us up as roommates even though we didn’t really know each other.  That first semester was really fun living in a house off campus: I listened to Steven sing his annoying Emo music, we played ping pong until we broke the paddles, he talked about his CRX like it was the end-all be-all, he introduced me to spicy cooking.  We shared a room the remainder of college and until he went off and married his wife Haley.

We have grown in our friendship and enjoy starting new hobbies (bouldering, soccer, slack lining) all to the bane of our significant others.

What do you think would be a good hair style for Steven at the wedding?  Vote in the comments section.

What we’ve been up to… a pictorial.

{in maui august 2009 for a friend’s wedding!}

{outside coyote cafe in old town san diego}

{in vegas for katie’s birthday in january 2009}

{in Waikiki cruising Ala Moana}

We want to share with you some of our passions and one of them is giving.  We are interested in supporting charities that are concerned with not only changing the world for the better, but also have an impact on our local communities.  We put together a list of the organizations that we feel are creating change and helping our world become a better place.  Environmental stewardship {Nature Conservancy}, health {American Cancer Society}, entrepreneurship through micro-loans {Kiva}, and needy children {Compassion} are issues that are near and dear to our hearts.

We have not only given our money, but our time to these causes. Katie has taken part in ACS’ Relay for Life not only in Thousand Oaks while in high school, but also started a team at UCLA. She also has supported a child through Compassion for the last eight years. One of the coolest things is watching little Robinson grow up. She has years worth of letters from him that chronicle his progress in learning to write English. We hope to only strengthen our commitment to these issues as we begin our life as a family. We want to encourage you to get involved in organizations that fight for issues close to your heart. If you’re looking to learn more about the charities that we love, please take the time to check out the links for these organizations to the left under “Things We Like. You Should To.”

We have been so blessed to have the love and support of our friends and families and we only hope we can give back a portion of what we have been given.