Week 5

Preparing for Marriage

I got engaged! My life seems to be following the course of this class quite nicely haha. I love learning about all the things that will help me in my future life. I definitely don't expect anything else in the class to follow the course of my life right now...no kids for at least a year or two...but everything we've learned about so far applies. 

Before I got engaged, a few important things had to happen. First, I had to meet my fiance, Tanner. I met him on the way home from school one day. He almost ran into me when I stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk. After we met, we had to talk and get to know one another. We found an unclaimed list of get to know you questions in his apartment that helped us with that. Our dating life didn't start out like a dream...in fact, he cancelled the first date hours before it was supposed to happen. We rescheduled, but I was certain I'd never hear from him again. I was surprised when the date actually held, but disappointed when it barely lasted an hour and the only thing we did was eat lunch together. After that things started to pick up and we were a little bit more creative with our dating activities. 

Speaking of dating activities...dinner and a movie can get REALLY BORING when that's all you're doing every week. Don't get me wrong, I love cuddling and watching movies together, but when that's the only thing we can think of for a date, something might be wrong. So I enlisted the help of Pinterest and put together a jar full of dating activities to pull from! The best part is that if the date isn't completely free, it's really inexpensive. Perfect for the poor college students that we are! A date is the most fun when you can laugh and build memories with someone you love. Just a couple of ideas...

• Watch a movie neither of you have seen. Mute the TV and make up the dialogue.
• Play opposite of strip chess/checkers/scrabble and each time you lose, put on an article of clothing until you can barely move. 
• Have a chopped competition to see who can make the best dish out of items in your fridge.
• Make a Christmas countdown chain together. Even if it's in the middle of March...(Yes, we did this. Yes, our roommates all think we're crazy. No, we don't regret it.)
• Go for a walk and climb a tree.
• Go M&M or Skittles bowling. Draw a color before each turn. Each color represents a different way you have to bowl...for example, yellow=backwards, red=left-handed, green=eyes closed, etc. You can even draw multiple colors and mix them.
• Paint each others nails...yes, it's okay to paint your date's nails. You might want to have nail polish remover handy so his friends don't make fun of him...
• Play blindfolded pictionary. 

Greek is cool, right? We learned about the different forms of the word "love" in Greek. There are 4 different words for it:
Agape: Charity
Eros: Romantic love (intimate, sexual, passionate, etc.)
Philia: Friendship (brotherly love...like Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love)
Storge: Family, parent/child love
Each form of the same word is so different! Too bad English doesn't have multiple forms of the word "love."