a stl wedding shower

the mom . the bride

my mom wrapped her gift in wrapping paper that

her mom purchased for her wedding shower

shelly . sophie . missy

the shower throwers

julie . paula . marilyn . jeannie . bonnie . marilyn . pat

campbell . shelly . sophie . missy . barb

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i heard the bells

today is the fourth sunday of advent. the fourth sunday of expectantly waiting for the coming King. his hope. his peace. his love. his joy. 

earlier this month at church i was re-introduced to a well known christmas carol. i learned that the song we now know as "i heard the bells on christmas day" was originally a poem penned by henry wadsworth longfellow entitled "christmas bells". henry wrote this poem in the midst of personal tragedy. his oldest son had been severely injured in the civil war, and his wife had died unexpectedly when her dress caught fire and they were unable to extinguish it. in short, things were not going well.

the fourth verse says this:

and in despair i bowed my head
“there is no peace on earth,” i said,

“for hate is strong and mocks the song

of peace on earth, good will to men.”

but then...the bells rang again.  

then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;

the wrong shall fail, the right prevail

with peace on earth, good will to men.”

at the end of that service, we were invited to come to the front where we rang a large bell. with each clang we were reminded that no matter how dark the days, God is there. he is not dead. he does not sleep. and he is our peace.

this year, peace has been a bit of a challenge for me. perhaps it's because planning a wedding in essentially three months does not naturally lend itself to being a peaceful experience if you're an artistic, type-a like myself. i'm working on it. and in the meantime, i have this song playing on repeat.

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the wedding website

our story

about us
donald marsh dyer junior was born and raised in raytown, missouri with his two brothers and one sister. he has a degree in psychology from sbu and currently works in the psychiatric department at the university of kansas medical center in kansas city. donald loves movies, pizza, fantasy football and playing cards. he is looking forward to the many adventures he will have with shelly as she broadens his travel horizons.

shelly lynn williams was born and raised in st. charles, missouri and is an only child. she has a degree in art from sbu and is currently a substitute teacher at pleasant lea middle school in lee's summit, along with a number of other odd jobs. shelly loves corn, taking trips, organizing and things that are free. she is looking forward to having some of donald's laid back personality rub off on her.

how we met
donald and shelly met in college at southwest baptist university. donald's first memory of shelly was playing mafia in the living room of the blue house...but shelly has trouble remembering such details. a mutual friend began playing matchmaker and donald developed a bit of a crush on shelly, but she was convinced he liked another girl. once the truth came out, in a grocery aisle of the bolivar wal-mart, they began seeing more of each other and eventually started dating. after a year or so, life took them different directions but they remained good friends. they saw each other often, as their mutual friends threw parties, got married and hosted game nights.

in recent years, donald and shelly's encounters had become few and far between. however, in september of 2011 david (donald's brother) and kim (shelly's roommate) decided to do a little match making themselves and orchestrated a 'chance' meeting in vegas. he was charming, she was beautiful...and the rest is history.

wedding events

game night : january 25, 2013
to kick of the weekend of celebrating, there will be a game night on friday evening in the great room of the lodge. everyone is welcome to join donald and shelly for snacks, games and getting excited for the big day. the fun starts at 7pm.

the big day : january 26, 2013
the wedding ceremony will begin at 4:30pm in the great room at pere marquette lodge.  dinner and dancing will follow at a reception held just down the hall in the banquet room.  a note about children: donald and shelly love the kids in their lives but, due to the extremely large number of them, have limited invitations to adults only.

sunday brunch : january 27, 2013
before heading out of town in the morning, you are welcome to stop by the great room one last time to say farewell to the happy couple. bagels, fruit, donuts, juice and coffee will be available from 9-11am.

kansas city open house : february 23, 2013
an open house will be held at sterling acres baptist church in kansas city, missouri on saturday, february 23rd from 2-4pm. if you are in the area, feel free to stop in and say hello to the newlyweds.

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donald loves shelly

for everything you've ever wanted to know about the wedding of the year...

www.mywedding.com/donaldlovesshelly

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the one with the invisalign

fourteen months, fifty two trays and countless public restroom visits later...

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a practical wedding

i’ve looked at more than my fair share of wedding books and magazines over the years because, let’s face it, i love weddings. i always have. and i  imagine i always will. and as someone with an extensive background in the industry, you’d think i would have seen this coming. 

here’s what i have discovered about weddings. for someone who is a painfully slow decision maker, seriously dislikes shopping and has an aversion to spending money, no matter who said money belongs to, planning a wedding can be a teensy-weensy bit on the difficult side.

thankfully, there is a glimmer of hope for brides like me and it comes in book form. honestly, i feel sorry for my married friends who had to go though the wedding planning process without this book by their side. it must have been awful.

i really can’t put into words how much i love this book. at times, it’s been the only thing saving me from certain insanity. the days that invitations (or flowers, or ties, or registries) feel like they are taking over my life, i can read this little gem…"a whole industry is set up to sell you a beautiful wedding; it’s set up to sell you how things will look and how they 'should' be. but what matters on your wedding day, what you will remember until you are old and gray, is how it felt. it’s about the feeling that sweeps over you when you fully realize that you have so many people you love in the same room at the same time…and that they are all there to celebrate the massive commitment you are making." that’s something i can get excited about.

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save the date

i love a good countdown chain. really, who doesn't? there's one particular countdown chain i've been waiting a looong time to make and it's finally here...we have a wedding date! donald and i are getting married january 26, 2013 at pere marquette lodge in grafton, illinois.  

it's really fun to relay this information in person because we get to see people's eyes bug out, especially when talking with a wedding industry professional. it's going to be quick, but in the end what gets done will get done and what doesn't won't matter. as our good friend harry once said to sally...

"when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody,

you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible".

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i said yes to the dress

in a shocking turn of events, i picked out and purchased my wedding gown exactly two and a half hours after the search began. no one was more surprised by this than me.  

kim, missy and my mom joined me for what was to be an initial scouting trip. the goal for the day was simply to try on a lot of dresses and get an idea of what i might be looking for. when they asked what would happen if i found 'the one' on this visit, i chuckled. given my poor shopping and decision making abilities, i was certain that would not be an issue. but just to appease my entourage, i picked a conservative dollar amount as an absolute max for the day and off we went. nine dresses in...there she was. exactly one penny shy of the max for the day. of course, being the thorough and slightly ocd person that i am, i still had to try on the rest of the dresses on the possibility rack. and put 'the one' on again. and wear it around the store for thirty minutes. and consider the possibility of buyers remorse. but in the end, i did it. i made the decision. i rang the bell. i said yes to the dress!  

missy . marilyn . shelly

shelly . kim

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the ring bling

i love my new ring.  i love it a lot.    

the meinhardt family is lucky enough to have our very own jeweler. my cousin eric, the third generation of our family jewelers, made my ring with a stone that belonged to my mom. his grandfather, walter goerss, made my grandparents wedding rings; his father, bill goerss, made my parents wedding rings; and now eric will make ours. this ring was pretty much perfect to start with, but the family history makes me love it even more!

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i said yes

october 4, 2012 started out like any other thursday. i had a job molding young minds at pleasant lea middle school, where i spent the day helping seventh graders write expository paragraphs. yes, that is in fact as thrilling as it sounds. i had an oil change appointment scheduled right after school so as soon as the kids were gone i was out the door, ready to be on my way...and then the day got interesting. i rushed to the parking lot and was surprised to find donald waiting by my car. since he works on thursday evenings, and our work schedules are exactly opposite, this was definitely out of the ordinary. i mentioned the fact that i had been hurrying to an oil change, but he said he had made some plans for us that were time sensitive and asked if i wouldn't mind rescheduling the appointment. that was the first time i said yes.

we headed back to my house where i was given thirty five minutes to change and get ready. i was instructed to dress in a sort of 'fancy date' way. being unsure if that meant skirt fancy date or dress up jeans fancy date, i asked if he would be changing as well. he said no, he would be wearing the jeans and polo he had on. seeing as how the weather had just turned fall-like that afternoon, i decided to go for it and try out the new-to-me boots i hadn't gotten to wear last year and dress it up a bit. i must say i'm pretty impressed with my ability to go from teacher to 'fancy date' in thirty five minutes with no prior warning or wardrobe planning.

when my time was up we hopped in the car and thirty minutes later we pulled up to the nelson-atkins museum of art. donald handed me a photo album and told me i was being sent on an art scavenger hunt. he led me inside to the entrance of an exhibit, gave me a few instructions and left me to my scavenging. the album had pictures of specific pieces of art, and my job was to find each item one by one and answer related trivia questions. i take these sorts of things very seriously, so i was all business at this point. 

on our way into the nelson

the album and my favorite trivia question

after locating a number of items inside, my final clues took me out the front door and onto the steps. i made a loop around a birdie before the last clue led me to the thinker statue at the bottom of the staircase. when i made it there i saw donald, who had been waiting just out of sight. he had changed clothes and was now looking all fancy and dashing. he met me in front of the statue and held my hand while he said those five magic words...'shelly, will you marry me?' i sort of remember him getting on one knee and pulling out the ring (which i LOVE) but it's all kind of a blur. i do remember that my answer was yes.  

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oh pinterest

i love pinterest. it's one of my favorite inventions. i like being able to save all the websites and links i want in one place. and i love browsing everyone else's pins and copying their creative ideas. here are few things i've made with the inspiration of pinterest...

donald has been wanting some 'art' for his wall,

so i made this sign out of some old pallet wood

i couldn't go to honduras myself this year, so i sent some 
sponge balls for the kids at project manuelito to play with

i finally finished decorating my mom's bedroom and

made this shelf to hold a few family heirlooms

earlier this year i got a new-to-me laptop and i 
wanted to make it fun so came up with this laptop skin

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the tour de donald

sixty two hours and fifty three people later (which may be a low estimate), the tour de donald is complete. we had a whirlwind weekend in st. louis where i impressed even myself with my scheduling abilities. there was not a moment to spare as i tried to squeeze in a meet and greet with as many friends and family as possible.  

we rolled into town on friday afternoon and after a quick stop at dr. jack's we headed straight to donald's first high school football game experience. it just so happened to be homecoming at francis howell and there also just so happened to be severe thunderstorms in the area. but being the super fans that we are, we sat though the rain with kim and my mom and cheered the vikings on to victory.

we started saturday off with a visit to the st. charles republican headquarters (where i felt really important knowing the girl in charge) before having lunch at a friends house. then we spent the majority of our afternoon at the park since our weekend visit just happened to coincide with the salem camp reunion picnic, which was pretty helpful for making introductions. donald got a crash course on my church family and the legend that is salem family camp. we contributed nothing to team abraham as we failed to bounce even one pencil into our glass (while the other teams each bounced three), but we did have a respectable finish in the egg toss.

after dinner and ice cream with some high school friends we headed back to my mom's house to watch mizzou's slightly disappointing football debut in the sec. sunday morning we made the rounds at church, followed by lunch with our regular crowd. and even though donald was anxious to get to a tv for the opening day of the nfl, we managed squeezed in a visit with edith and edna as well. later that day my aunt, uncle and cousins came over to eat dinner and evaluate donald for potential acceptance into the family. i've been assured that their report will be on its way soon and we're keeping our fingers crossed for a positive review.

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like daughter, like mother

i am not known for always having a kitchen full of food. in fact, what i am known for is spending an astronomically small amount of money on groceries each month. it's something i've sort of perfected over the years, without being able to totally explain how i make it work. at some point it stops making sense even to me.  

my kitchen only has two staples...cereal and milk. everything else is optional. this works well for breakfast, but is not especially helpful when it comes to packing my lunch. it was a situation such as this that prompted what would become one of my friend missy's favorite stories. i was at her house for dinner one night (a regularly occurring event that is a contributing factor in the low grocery budget) and i realized that i had enough odds and ends to make a lunch for the next day, if only i could find some bread. not wanting to stop at the store for a whole loaf, i asked if i could have two pieces to go. she found this hilarious. (and i went home with the bread)

that being said, missy was the first person i thought of when my mom told me what happened to her the other day. she was at a friends house having dinner and packing boxes for their upcoming trip to honduras. as she was leaving at the end of the night they offered her one of their home grown tomatoes. she accepted and was anticipating a delicious blt when, alas, she remembered she didn't have any bread. so naturally, she asked if they could throw in a couple of pieces to sweeten the deal...and they did.

as missy said when i told her the story, "it's a good thing there's those of us in the world with bread to spare". a good thing indeed.

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oh canada : the travelogue

last year our mother/daughter road trip took us to the east side of our neighbor to the north, so this summer we decided to explore the west. we rented a little blue fiat, piled in our luggage and headed up the sea to sky highway...

whistler : british columbia

this quaint little ski town was not only the host mountain resort of the 2010 winter olympics, it was also my favorite stop on the trip. there was quite a bit of hiking involved as we explored the capilano suspension bridge, as well as the beautiful lakes and waterfalls around the mountain. and since we needed to relax after all that fresh air and activity we indulged in an afternoon at the outdoor scandinavian baths.  

vancouver : british columbia

the first two stops in vancouver were especially fun. first was the olympic cauldron from the 2010 winter games, because i LOVE the olympics! and second was a visit to the meinhardt store, discovered a few years ago by another member of the meinhardt clan. after lunch and a stroll though the granville island public market we headed over to stanley park for the rest of the afternoon. my mom took a horse drawn carriage tour of the park while i rented a bike for a ride around the seawall.

victoria : british columbia

after squeezing onto the early ferry as the second to last car we sailed over to vancouver island, where we stopped at butchart gardens on our way down to victoria. we checked out the float houses at fisherman's wharf, took a water taxi across the harbour and visited miniature world...because i love miniature things!

seattle : washington

a little more ferry luck took us back to the good ol' usa and olympic national park where we took a drive up to see the mountains. in seattle we rode to the top of the space needle before visiting chihuly garden and glass. mr. gott introduced me to this glass blown art in college and i've loved it ever since. then we headed over to the pike place market to watch the fish throwers before having dinner at the crab pot and capping off the trip with a ride on the great wheel.

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d.w.d.w.d.

even with the lure of free chicken, sitting outside in a parking lot for twenty four straight hours on a 100 degree day probably doesn't sound like an appealing option to most people. it wasn't donald's first choice either, and since he was such a trooper at chick-fil-a, i thought he deserved a little treat. so on friday he got to choose everything we did, all day long. it was the first ever d.w.d.w.d...or 'do whatever donald wants day'.  

since donald's day doesn't really start until about lunchtime, (who am i kidding...when it's summer that's when my day starts too) the first thing we did was order a pizza. because all good days start with pizza. and the olympics. always the olympics.

next up: fantasy time. i was the scribe for some sort of heads up baseball competition versus mark. and then he taught me how to do a mock football draft. he was pretty excited about this part...it was kind of hilarious.

we perused pinterest for some dinner ideas and landed on these. they are little smokies, wrapped in bacon, swimming in a pool of butter and brown sugar. donald's crazy for health food...obviously.

and we wrapped up the night with some movies, more olympics, a shoulder massage and a game of gin. i think it turned out to be a pretty good day.

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will sweat for chikin

my second first 100 was a smashing success. the lee's summit chick-fil-a just opened this week (finally...chick-n-mini's for breakfast!) and i was lucky number 16. my first camp out was back in november, when i was wearing seventeen layers of clothing and hibernating in the tent for warmth. this one was a teensy bit different in the sense that if i hadn't been able to borrow a canopy to block the sun, we would have certainly withered away in the scorching heat. but the weather wasn't the only difference, this time i had friends! donald and amber (a former co-worker) decided to be adventurous and brave the heat with me.

coincidentally this opening happened to fall on chick-fil-a appreciation day, and since we were on the outside edge of the parking lot we became the unofficial spokespeople. there was a lot of confusion about the store not actually being open yet, along with a good number of people who assumed we were participating in some sort of 'occupy chick-fil-a' movement. we did have an actual protestor show up late in the day, but he just politely stood on the street corner with his sign.

we had a fun time playing games, eating free food and getting our picture taken by just about every other car that went by. we really should have kept a tally for that. the heat gave us a rough couple hours in the late afternoon, but once the sun went down all was well. amber and i did get the giggles around 3:30am when we were woken up by the butternut delivery man...the hilarity of sleeping in a parking lot voluntarily is compounded in the wee hours of the morning.

donald and amber at our campsite

the guestbook...to document our visitors

 our free chick-fil-a!

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hillbilly heaven

awhile back i was lamenting with some of the behrs about the fact that we haven't been able to take our annual beach vacation the past couple years. we decided that if we couldn't make it to the beach we should at least do the next best thing, which is obviously branson. we took a short but sweet trip to the ozark mountains to eat deliciously authentic mexican food and play at silver dollar city.  

waiting in line to see the pretty girls at the saloon show

megan . jacob . shelly . matthew . gracie

words can't really describe what was going on here. it was voted hands down the best part of the trip. there is a fairly large ride at silver dollar city called the giant barn swing. as someone who is not especially a fan of roller coasters, i would personally rank this as a medium level thrill ride. you would think that a macho high school graduate would be able to handle such a ride, but you would be wrong. soon after the ride began matthew started crying like a little girl. he was hanging on for dear life saying things like "no, no, no" and "please make it stop". it was hilarious.

jacob . matthew . gracie . kim

he did manage to pull it together and we all got gangsta-fied and took one of those old time photos.  i just don't know why so many guns are pointed at me.

matthew . gracie . jacob

marilyn . chris . kim . shelly . megan

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33 pennies

it's pretty standard for my birthday to last longer than just one day and this year was no exception. the free food started rolling in about week early, but the best part came on my birthday eve. we rolled in from omaha around 9pm and the most spectacular birthday penny scavenger hunt you have ever seen was waiting. there were thirty four pennies hidden all over the house, one from each year i've been alive. (yes, technically that makes the title of this post incorrect, but i'm only thirty three...it's confusing) donald left me a note and a game board and the search was on. i was a penny finding machine, and i was pretty good at finding the bonus prizes too. i blazed through the first half in about thirty minutes and then it started getting tricky. kim and my mom helped a bit, but there were a few stragglers that we couldn't find until the next day. it was SUPER fun.

after a breakfast of gas station donuts on my birthday morning we headed to the pool for a bit before my mom "threw me a birthday party" at noodles for lunch.

mom . donald . kim

shelly . christy . tommy

the nighttime festivities included a super fun game night at grant & erica's house. we feasted on cheese ball, funky punch and peach crisp/cobbler/pie and played the night away. it was hilarious and fun. the best birthday game night i ever did have.

donald . shelly

erica . grant . missy . kim

i just love birthdays. and i'm so thankful i have family and friends that know that and try really hard to make it special and fun. i enjoyed lots of birthday wishes and had a perfectly lovely day. happy 33rd birthday to me!

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we're cheering for the umpire

kim and i have had quite the string of house guests lately, the most recent being christy (my second cousin), tommy (my second cousin once removed) and my mom (still my mom). my house was the halfway point on our journey to visit matt (christy's brother) and watch him work. but before we headed north to cheer on our favorite umpire, we had a little fun kansas city style. since tommy is a big fan of all things lego, we hit up the new legoland at crown center. we played, built, rode and watched...my personal favorite was miniland. lots of kansas city buildings and icons made entirely of legos. it was pretty sweet. once we had partaken of the full experience we headed over to fritz's for hamburgers delivered by train.  

christy . tommy . lego conductor man . donald . shelly

saturday  morning we loaded up the car and headed to omaha for a weekend filled with america's favorite pastime. it was a fierce rivalry between the omaha storm chasers and the iowa cubs, but we were more interested in the guys in black and blue. matt worked the plate on saturday night and third base on sunday afternoon. it was by far the best umpiring i've ever seen. as an added bonus we had wonderful weather...it was cool and breezy all weekend long. (that's not true)

mom . me

mom . matt . shelly . tommy

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july 4th @ the twogoods

ah the fourth. america. freedom. hot dogs. explosions. as the great jim gaffigan once said..."it's what the founding fathers would want". and no one i know does explosions quite like kelly twogood. with lots of food, lots of friends and a table overflowing with fireworks we celebrate america in what i can only describe as uncontrolled chaos. which i suppose is what you get when you put a bunch of dads in the street to set things on fire with an innumerable amount of small children running around vying for the chance to help. the good news is that we all survived. happy birthday america!

kim . shelly . donald

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for the love of meinhardts

such a good looking family we are.  and we're funny too.

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bring it on summer

lately the vast majority of my life has consisted of the following things...

teaching. painting. catering. and a variety of other odd jobs. but soon and very soon, it will instead be filled with...

waking up whenever i want to. going to the pool with kim. and eating more cherry blasters than is probably wise.

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