As promised long ago, the full story of the engagement.

I wrote this last night when I was sitting on the couch bored to death on our 2nd snow day. Sorry for the length, but there are just so many details that I felt needed to be included:

This had been a long time coming. The whole thing started back in June and July when I was trying to figure out a way to talk to Amanda's dad Tom about asking for Amanda's hand in marriage. I had been having breakfast with him once a week since January and everyone thought that's what was going to happen but what some of you don't realize is that I'm a really big chicken. I mean I had even been going up to the house once a week during the past month to help him stain the house and just couldn't find the opportunity to ask him. They were there, but I just didn't take them. So here we are having breakfast one morning and he asked me if I've ever gone hiking. I like to go on occasions and we picked a day and decided to go for it. Now I haven't been hiking in a few years and thought that this was going to be a really easy one, you know hike for a mile or so and then come back down... boy was I wrong. We hiked Mt. La Conte and from what I remember that was an 11 mile hike. 5.5 in and 5.5 down. Now the only reason I bring any of this up is to say that while we were hiking, I mentioned to him that we did need to talk about somethings and we both decided that hiking wasn't the time. So one of the next times we went to breakfast I finally asked him and he said yes.

Then came the hard part... looking for the ring. Now some of you would think that this would be the easy part, you know she told me what she likes and doesn't and we maybe even went and looked at some... nope. We hadn't done any of that and the only thing I knew was that it was my choice and she didn't really like one certain cut. So here I went ring shopping. I know nothing of wedding rings just that they look nice and are supposed to sparkle when the light hits them. My journey started at Jamison Jewelers in Franklin and I saw a nice marque cut solitaire, but something was telling me to move on. I walked up the street to Stewart's and looked around saw some pretty solitaires, but nothing the struck my attention until they pointed me to the estate pieces. There it was, the piece that I knew I was looking for. It was beautiful a solitaire with 4 smaller diamonds around it. But of course I had to get a ladies perspective so I asked my best friend Jenny to come and look at it. After eating lunch she looked at it and said and I quote "Robert, Amanda is going to love it!"  So the process of buying it started. I worked a few different band camps and saved my pennies to get it.
The process of deciding how to propose was actually quite simple to start with. Chonda Pierce a christian comedian had come to the SMCPA last year and I had gotten Amanda and myself tickets on the front row. Amanda got me backstage to the meet and greet and during the 2nd act she joked with me and Amanda about how we should be married by the next time she comes around. So I thought it would be perfect to propose when she came back the next time. She was scheduled to come back in November. I asked Scotty to help me out he said he would email her. Word came that Chonda had a scheduling conflict and would have to reschedule, I got bummed. Then I had another plan. We were in rehearsals for Jekyll and Hyde and I thought it would be cool to bring Amanda out on stage during the bows and ask her then. Thinking about it I decided that wasn't a good idea seeing as how I don't like large groups of people, but then thought it would be cool to do it during a dress rehearsal and have Scotty have the stage crew practice coming out since they never came out during the curtain calls. I had mentioned it to Scotty and he said that it may be better to do it before dress since more people would be out in the audience to watch. I had to agree with him and since the theatre was so special to us I wanted to do it then so that they could share in the special day with us. Now the really funny story is that Amanda had choreographed a small dance during the appropriately named Engagement party where we were set to dance together (thanks Scotty). So I had a plan all I needed was a date.

I don't really know what made me decide on November 2nd only that it was before dress rehearsal and I had always said that I would never propose on a "typical" day like Christmas, Valentines Day or a Birthday so election day was just right. So I went the Friday before and finished paying for the ring and they told me they would have it ready by Tuesday. Tuesday comes and I get no phone call or anything from the jewelers so I'm freaking out trying to figure out how many quarters I'm going to have to spend in order to get a ring out of the machine that looks like what I would have actually gotten (joking people I really am). I finally went up to the jewelers and they had the ring in the machine cleaning it as I got there. So here it is sitting on the passenger seat of my car. My hearts racing and I'm questioning if I'm doing the right thing and I have to keep telling myself that I still have 3 hours before rehearsal even starts. I go back to the school to try to finish out the day (Buddy was a God send by keeping me calm till he had to go to his bus), then to my Relay for Life Committee meeting where I really don't remember a lot of what went on, but I do remember being there. Then it came time to go to rehearsal. Now to explain the planning that went into this rehearsal would take a while, but with the help of Scotty and Nikki we had everything planned so Amanda's parents could be there without it looking suspicious. Her mom was going to be there to videotape the rehearsal so Scotty could see the blocking for the songs he was in and her dad was going to come and get the keys to her mom's car at the right moment to see things happening.

Now I normally sweat a lot on stage during a show, but at this rehearsal it was worse than normal. Scotty told me that Kathi and he would start singing their song and that when I felt the moment was right to just interupt them. Now being the music person I am, I couldn't just stop them in the middle of the song so I waited until the end. I found out later that everyone that knew what was going on thought I was going to chicken out. As the music was ending and Amanda was getting ready to walk away, I stopped her and told her that I had a question. She looked at me like I was strange and then I don't really remember what all I said, but there were people with cameras and just kind of staring at us. I do remember pulling out the ring out of my pocket, getting down on one knee and asking the love of my life to be with me for the rest of it. My favorite part of all of this was her first word after I asked... "WHAT!?!?!?!"

Scotty had gotten us a cake which is pictured below and after taking a couple of minutes to regain our composure, we started right were we had left off. After rehearsal we went to Fatz to celebrate with my roommates and the rest is as they say history. It's been an exciting couple of months, but I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with her.

About A Month... Again

So I thought that this blog thing would be an easy thing to keep up with, this just proves how wrong I was. Life is going well, no Christmas concerts this year due to winter weather, but that's okay God has a plan. Tis the holiday season and I've been having fun with my 12 days of Christmas on my Facebook page. I've been posting a video clip from various Christmas Classics and I have been reminded of so many of them that I have forgotten about and actually found some new ones. Not a lot, but it's been random. To all my loyal fans of the blog, Merry Christmas and if I don't see you Happy New Year.

Been almost a month

So it's been almost a month since I have written a blog and people have been asking me about it (actually, they haven't and I just thought I would say that so people would feel bad for not asking me about it... consider yourselves forgiven :))

Life has been going on pretty well recently, I'll get to all the exciting things momentarily, but life has been good. I am currently sitting at my parents house in Hickory after enjoying an awesome Thanksgiving meal prepared by my mother (and the good people at Target) and I am stuffed. I love the holidays around this time of year not only because I get to eat a lot and can feel great about it, but I get to see most of my family.

Jekyll and Hyde went on pretty well without a hitch and as I type this I kind of have to laugh. It was a really good show with a really great cast, but when we got to the shows it was like something went wrong each night. The first night, the light board decided it was tired after the first 5 or 6 scenes and froze, then we had to reboot the entire thing. The second night as we were moving a set piece it apparently got knocked over and then when they went to fix it, the top of it was to heavy and broke (keep in mind this was all while I was singing my solo and I thought I was going to die). Then the last two shows ended up getting canceled due to the fact that the lead got this really nasty stomach bug and could barely even move.

Now to the exciting part that I know all of you are waiting for. For the past 20 (almost 21) months, I have been dating a really awesome girl named Amanda Munger. She has stood next to me in the good times and bad times of Youth Ministry and marching band season and I have grown so much in the past few months just because of her. So I finally decided to man up and ask her dad if I could marry her. So I asked him back in June and went and found the perfect ring, and I do mean perfect ring. Placed a down payment on it and started the journey into paying for it here and there. Well this is all the boring part, let's get to the fun stuff.

I love having a lot of friends who would help me out in a number of ways with different things and the best part of that is when my friends are her friends they are even more enthusiastic in helping. Well I had been planning on asking her to marry me tonight when Chonda Pierce came back to the SMCPA, but due to unforeseen circumstances it wasn't meant to be and she couldn't come so I had to go to plan B. To be honest with you I didn't really even have a plan B or even a Plan A to be exact but this is where awesome friends come into play. Scotty Corbin and his wife Nikki are two really great and awesome people who have done a lot to help out with everything. I talked to him about letting me do it during a J&H dress rehearsal and he said that would be cool, he would even get a cake and help us celebrate, but afterwards because we aren't allowed to eat in costume. The more we talked about it the earlier the date got moved and we finally decided to do it during just a rehearsal on November 2nd (election day will  now have a brand new meaning to her. I voted for her and she said yes).


To Be Continued... i'm tried of typing for right now, but will get it done before Thanksgiving I promise.

Naps and Alex

So first of all, let's talk about the subject of napping. I believe it is awesome and should be allowed back into schools. I mean think about it, how productive would the average day be if we just took 30 minutes each day and napped? Today I took an hour long nap and I feel so much better and ready to enjoy rehearsal. I'm sitting here at the theater waiting for rehearsal to start.

Now on to the next subject of Alex. She is cool and witty with some of her comments, and I like having her doing shows. I'm so glad that she decided to listen to me and come back and stay in Jekyll. She gets to be a babbling old woman with rant ling black gloves and a fan, but the best part is that I have a better fashion sense than she does, only because I'm a Fop (don't know what it is? Take time to look it up).

Concert tomorrow night, and they will be fine, just wish that some of them would just take this class seriously. But okay, rehearsal is about to start so I will post more later. Go take a nap.

Sitting at rehearsal after a long day

So I'm sitting at rehearsal typing this on my IPod and it has been a really long day. To start off with, my car decided o die on me last night at church an I had to have it jumpe off, then after a really awesome youth revival at Iotla Baptist Church, I had to call my favorite heroine (Amanda) to come jump me off. Sure I could have called the roommates to come to the rescue, but then I wouldn't have seen Amanda at all. So I was kind of glad thaty car died. Now let's talk about today.

Today started of like any other day with my alarm going off and me waking up to hit the snooze button, but apparently I decided that I wasn't going to wake up and turned off the alarm. So I woke up later than usual (only by 10 minutes, but it's still enough to throw tour entire day off). Then school was about the se as it usually is, concert choir concert next Thursday and B-Nats Dinner Theatre in November that we are practicing for and if I must say so myself (and I do) the choreography is some of the best that I have come up with yet. Thank Scotty for letting me participate in the musicals. I've got some really awesome ideas from that. Then 4th period comes and o decide I'm going to take my planning period and get my cars battery looked at and inspected so I can get my car registered, since it expires tomorrow. The people at Dan's Auto Service are awesome and come to find out my battery is okay, but in order to pass inspection I have to have a tire changed and two light bulbs changed in my tag light. Well the only place on town that has it is going to cost 95 dollars a piece for the tire plus tax. There goes my budget for the month. But at least it's done and taken care of. Tomorrow my goal is to get my tag taken care of and then it'll be over. But it's getting hard to type on the IPod so this is enough for now.

Lots of stuff going through my head

You know it's been a really long day when you think of something really deep and philosophical to post on your blog and then when you sit down to write it the only thing that comes out is..... "duh"... Now I know some of you (of the three people that actually read this) are thinking "Well, if you don't have anything to post, then why are you writing it. The answer to that question is very quite simple... because I want to. You have two choices, you can either keep reading it and just deal with my ADD or you can stop.

Now a lot has been going on lately. We have started marching season and are halfway through and we have had our ups and downs, but it's turning out to be an overall great year. The kids seem to be enjoying the show and the staff is having a blast with it. I have started a new philosophy this year of I'm going out there and giving it my best each week and if the judges like it then great and if they don't then it's their loss for not recognizing greatness.  Sound cocky? Yes, but then again I don't care. I feel as if this is the best choreography that I have done since I've started. Am I still learning things? Yes, and it will continue to improve. But we shall see what happens as the season continues. Three performances down and three left to go. If they don't win am I going to be upset? No, as long as they go out there and have fun that's all I care about.

Choir is going well. Concert choir has their first concert coming up in a few weeks and I think they are starting to realizes that it's quickly approaching. They'll be fine, I have faith in them (and we have been working on some of this music since the beginning of the semester). B-Nats is getting ready for their Dinner Theater performance at the AP Biology Italian Dinner on November 6th (Tickets are $10 a piece, and you can choose your seating time 630-830pm). Love songs are great, but they all sound the same to me after awhile so we just have to switch it up a little bit. I love singing Christmas music in September.

We had a tragic lose this week in town with the death of a young man. Makes me kind of think and hope that maybe this will be a wakeup call to some of the young people in town about making the right decisions and thinking about the outcome of things before putting yourself into certain situations. I can only hope that God's going to use this situation and get the glory for it. We aren't promised tomorrow and live each day so the preacher won't have to lie at your funeral.

There are two quotes that I'm trying to think about everyday when I leave the house and start my day:
1. Let us endeavor to live so that when we die even the undertaker will be sad-Mark Twain
2. Be who you want us to be- A kid from my youth group

I encourage you to take these two quotes and to apply them to your life. Live, Laugh, Love and Learn, but never forget that God's looking down and loving each one of us.

First Real Official Post

So welcome to a new world of blogging. Jessup has gotten himself a blog. The world will never be the same ever again :) Don't really know what I'm going to do with this thing yet, but I do know that I am going to use it a lot when I can't sleep or just need to get something off of my chest or just for my random moments like one that's about to come at ya in...3...2...1... I never realized how well my typing skills had gotten until I typed the first part of this then realized that I didn't even need to look at the keyboard or the screen. It's amazing how well you can multitask when you've worked on it a while.

School has been going pretty well. I've got some pretty good classes with some awesome kids in them. The concert choir is going above and beyond all expectations. We have our first big concert for just them on October 21st and I'm not in the least worried about it yet. All I need for them to do is to sing out and to take a little more personal responsibility in their performance. To help them with this task we will be having a lot of singing test and moving people around. B-Nats has impressed me as well, we have a lot to do in a little amount of time to do it, but they'll be okay like normal.

Then there is the colorguard whom I am really impressed with this year. Their work ethic and attitude as not yet ceased to amaze me and I'm proud to say that I am proud of each one of them. I try to stay encouraging with them, but it's harder some days because they are doing so well that I tend to focus on the little teeny tiny details that need to be cleaned that I don't focus on the positive. I'm working on that, not only with them but in some other areas of my life as well.

Church has been going okay. We are dealing with some big changes, but God has got a plan and it's not about what we want, but what He wants.

I am in an awesome relationship with a great girl. We are both busy, but the best part of my day is when I get to see her and hold her hand.

Well this has turned out to be a very random blog update, but I have 27 years of stuff to catch up the entire world on so I may as well start somewhere :)