How time flies when you're wrangling kindergarteners...

It wasn't personal. It was just the swarm of screaming kindergarteners and the resulting need to take a *&^%^&^ nap. That's all the excuse I can truly offer for our inability to update this thing in a timely or reasonable fashion. With that said, let's have an update and then we can move onwards and upwards towards posts with significant content:

On October 9, 2010, Nate Kemphues ate a vanilla Krembo, took the wrapper, made a ring out of it, and put it on my left ring finger with a very loaded request: "Will you be my wife?" The ring fell off my finger two days later and I ran over it with my bicycle (it is very, very flat now). While some might take this as an evil omen of things to come in our marriage, I take it as a sign that 1) having single use engagement rings is pretty reasonable as accidents do in fact happen and 2) he's a darn thrifty man with good taste in confections. Many, many thanks go to my future Mother-in-Law, Marlana Kemphues, for offering to take charge of designing and executing my engagement ring. How cool of a present is THAT?! We hadn't even intended to have an engagement ring, so it's really pretty lovely. Thank you, Marlana.

Into the deep end of the swimming pool of adulthood we go!

Using all of our reasoning powers gifted to us by g-d, we're getting married in Chicago in, um, February. Doesn't it make sense? We think it does, too! We can't afford to get married here and have our friends and family around us, so we're heading back to the Windy City in the coldest month of the year. We don't even have real winter coats here, much less mittens! Yes! The wedding dress has been purchased along with shoes and a hat that's being made for me, for less than I had budgeted for shoes. The dress and shoes are currently hiding in a housemate's closet, but I promise, it's a pretty darn awesome ensemble.

Planning a wedding from several thousand miles away has turned out to be minimal in the stress department, and downright enjoyable. We have amazing friends and family who has stepped up to the plate to be our DJs, our photographer, our planner, our flower finder, our person-who-will-keep-people-calm-or-resort-to-slapping-them, among other honoraries/titles/things that need to get done. Our pre-marriage counseling is happening via Google video chat and we're headed to Jerusalem sometime in the next couple of weeks to go ketubah shopping. It's just not legal until it's an illuminated text written in Aramaic! For those of you who have already bent over backwards for us, just know that we've got what may be the best darn thank-you presents imaginable up our sleeves (and no, they're not the ubiquitous Israeli genie pants that so many people will be getting as souvenirs).

Look forward to exciting posts in the next 24 hours covering the following issues:

1) Security Issues and You: Drink that Kool-Aid, Damnit.
2) The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Kindergarteners and the American volunteers they kick and bite (and hug, and cuddle with, and draw pictures with).
3) Ways to feel better about your accent and Hebrew skills: tutoring non-native speakers