Christmas decorating

We had a lot of fun picking out our first Christmas tree, hanging ornaments, putting up lights, and giving the whole place a Christmas-y feel. We even put some garland on the top of the armoire now it reminds me of the ghost of Christmas present.

Living Room

Here are a couple of shots of the living room before redecoration:





Obviously, it didn't have all those wine bottles all the time--those were from the kitchen. Here are shots of the way it looks now:

wedding shots

Ok so the photos from the photographer are due any day now, but I've had so many requests here are a couple of photos that people took at the reception of Junius and me dancing that I rather like.

Basement--Before and After

Two weeks ago I undertook the project of building a beautiful new home for Rebekah out of my old one. You see, we're going to live in my current apartment, but in order to avoid the feeling that she just moved in with me, we decided to do a pretty major renovation. As soon as my summer teaching ended, I began work; she was pretty busy with her own job at the time, so I had the help of some of my most fantastic friends to pull it off. Over the next few posts, we will highlight the changes.

In this post, it is the basement we are concerned with. The original basement was in all off-white, which made for a pretty dreary look. The plan was to convert it into a home theater, with a ceiling mounted projector.


In this picture, you can see where we are planning to put the screen for the home theater:


We chose a charcoal gray for the walls to absorb light (which would make the picture from the projector brighter), while leaving all the trim white to break up the monotony (just adding a fresh coat):


We painted the screen on using a specially formulated paint, then added velvet tape around the edges to complete it:


We are very pleased with the results!

Registries

We have completed our registries (well, as complete as these things ever get). We really had a lot of fun shopping and planning together, and were kind of sad when it ended. Oh well, plenty of other things to do. :) We are registered at the following places:

Bed, Bath and Beyond
Macy's
Target
Babcock's (Memphis only)

If the links above don't work for you, you can search either of our names. We have also selected St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis to receive a donation whenever a gift is purchased from either our Macy's or Bed, Bath & Beyond Registry. We are very pleased to be able to do our small part to let our joy be a blessing to others.

Ways to Get to New Haven

New Haven, CT, home to one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the United States, formerly the first step any Broadway musical had to take if it was to "make it," is not the home to a major airport. Because of this, getting here may pose some questions. To help, we have assembled some information about your various travel options.

Airports

Your first choice is a choice of airports. New Haven does have a small airport (Tweed), but it is often expensive to fly into. There are 4 other large airport possibilities. In order of increasing distance, they are:

a) Bradley International Airport (Hartford, CT./Springfield, MA) -- closest (about 50 minute drive), but not always the most inexpensive.
b) LaGuardia International Airport (New York, NY) -- Also very close (~1 hour drive, plus traffic), and usually one of the cheapest.
c) JFK International Airport (New York, NY) -- On the other side of NYC from CT, you WILL have an interesting time getting to New Haven from there.
d) Newark International Airport (Newark, NJ) -- Also far from CT, though close to NYC.

To get from the airports to New Haven, you have several options:
1) Rent a car
2) From New York airports, you can take either a bus or the subway to Grand Central Station, then take the commuter train to New Haven (Metro North, look for the New Haven Line, East of the Hudson). Trains leave about every hour, and the round trip cost is $28-$37, depending on when you're traveling.
3) From any of the 4 airports, you can take CT Limo. They have a stop in New Haven, and also a stop directly next to the hotel. Rates range from $86 round trip from Bradley to $130 round trip from JFK or LaGuardia. From Newark, they will only bring you to New Haven (not Milford), at a cost of $176 for the round trip.
4) Amtrak also runs to New Haven directly from Newark Airport, with prices ranging from $78-$142 for the round trip. AAA discounts are possible.

The church and the reception location are 2 blocks apart, and quite walkable. The hotel is a 10-15 minute drive from the hotel. We will do all we can to coordinate transportation between the hotel and the church for those who cannot have a car on hand.

Let us know if you have any questions!

Hotel

Yay! We found a fantastic hotel for you to stay in! Many thanks to Heidi and Lark for their recommendation. It is called the Hyatt Place in Milford, CT. The rooms are large, all of them have a queen sleeper sofa and wet bar, as well as 42" HDTV. The cost per night is only $119 for our guests. It is the same cost for a king bed, one queen, or two queens, so ask for whichever you want.

Please mention you are part of the Johnson-Caldwell wedding party if calling or enter G-CJ08 code if reserving a room on the interwebs. http://www.hyatt.com/hyatt/place/

They won't hold the rooms very long at this rate so if you know you are coming please book your room by June 19th.

We are so excited you are coming!!

The Proposal Story Part 2

by Rebekah

About ten days before he proposed, Junius suggested we have a date night in which he make dinner. He does this every so often so it did not strike me as the least bit out of the ordinary.

When I arrived at Junius' house, he had new lit tapers on the table and the house smelled delicious. He had been cooking all afternoon. We opened a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, which our friends at the Wine Thief had picked for us. (For me New Haven is small town living and having an excellent neighborhood wine shop is one of the perks!)

Dinner was a Bermuda salad, dutch potatoes, and salmon, which all tasted amazing. But while I was enjoying the feast, Junius was just nibbling on his dinner. As soon as I slowed down, he hopped up and said "I have something else for you. Stay right there." After a couple of minutes, I called up asking if he'd lost it.

"Why don't you come up here?"

At the top of the stairs, there were rose petals which I followed into J's room where there were petals all over the room as well as candles and bouquets of flowers. Junius had me sit down as he read me a very sweet letter he had written which ended with "will you marry me?" I imagine if you are reading this blog you know my answer. I was really surprised because I expected him to propose in January, not November 1.

We spent about 15 minutes calling family members and then he said we had one more place to go. So we hopped in the car and drove to the church. There were about 30 of our friends gathered there to celebrate with us. They had brought champagne, wine, freshly roasted coffee, tea and desserts. It was fantastic. I was really impressed that so many people knew Junius was about to propose and didn't give it away. I later heard stories of people seeing me in the hallway the week before the proposal and turning around to walk the other way so they wouldn't have to talk to me and risk giving something away. Fortunately(?) CPC members are pretty sly because I didn't notice anything.

The Proposal Story Part I

by Junius

It all began the week of the wedding for our friends Dave and Emily (in mid-October). At that point I had decided that I would propose by New Year’s at the latest, and had decided that it would be best to go ahead and call her parents to talk to them about it well in advance. I knew that she would be out at the bachelorette party Thursday night, so I thought that would be a safe time to call her dad without any chance of her showing up at my place or calling him while we were on the phone. The plan of course backfired, as her dad insisted we wait to get her mom on the phone, which would be the next day. He promised that they would call sometime Friday afternoon.

As (bad) luck would have it, Rebekah was trying to take advantage of an uncharacteristic lull in her day (and the last lull before a busy wedding weekend) on Friday to spend time with me. I was writing a lecture, but more importantly, I was aware that her parents could call at any minute and that there would be no way that I could explain away why they were calling. I shooed her out the door as quickly as I could, but she could tell I was wanting her to leave, and got pretty upset by it. That was when I realized how hard this surprise proposal was going to be, because I really hate keeping things from her.

I had a great conversation with her parents that totally put me at ease. Over the next couple of days, I was frustrated by the inability to share my mounting excitement with the one person I most wanted to share it with, and realized that December, or even Thanksgiving, was too late to propose. I was hoping to be going home with her for Thanksgiving, and at that point we could either be getting engaged, or be going having already been engaged for a few weeks, with everyone having had some time to get used to it. The latter was much more attractive to me, and at any rate, her parents’ support was burning a hole in my pocket and I couldn’t wait.

It’s not easy to plan a surprise proposal in under 10 days, but it’s not terribly hard, either. I had pondered for months how I could create a special memory for her, and the weight of my own expectations on myself was crushing. That was finally relieved when I came up with the idea of following the proposal with a gathering of our friends at the church, so that she could immediately show off the ring and tell the story. I knew that that would speak volumes to her about my commitment to our marriage being embraced within the community, and that in many ways that would be the more important part of the evening. Having that piece in place, planning the rest was a lot easier.

I had already arranged a ring shopping expedition with my friend Josh, who was also plotting an engagement (he has since proposed and been accepted as well). We were both terribly nervous going in, but the wonderful lady at Peter Indorf (Sarah) put as ease and made us feel confident that we oculd find what we wanted in our price range. Within a few days, she had found exactly what I was looking for, and at a surprisingly good price.

The biggest problem was going to be how to get her over without giving away that something big was going down, since it wasn’t going to be an anniversary or anything. I casually suggested it in conversation, and had us add a day to the calendar, and somehow she bought it without suspicion.

The story of the rest of the preparations is dull, except for the amazing support I received from the folks at the flower store and the wine store. They made it very easy to create an atmosphere that I was certain would be special and memorable. The key was in my decision to do at my apartment—in addition to the comforts of homefield advantage, it also meant that I could have everything already set up upstairs without having to worry that she would notice.

At this point, there was nothing to do but wait—the hardest part.

The Ring

Here is the long ago promised photograph of my ring. Thanks Callie for taking his shot. Diamonds present a photographic difficulty -- it is hard to capture sparkle. Clicking on the photo will make it easier to see.

new favorite photo

So this is my new favorite photo of the two of us in large part because this is something we do often -- sometimes affectionately and sometimes we're just tired. -Rebekah

Our Amazing Wedding Partners

In the course of planning the wedding, we have both re-established contact with some great folks and met new folks, particularly in the area of the providers of our various wedding services. They are, without exception, competent, professional, fun, reasonable, and committed to making our wedding more than just another job. We could never have realized the wedding we dreamed of without them, so we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge them publicly. Do yourselves a favor: if you need any of these services in CT, check with these guys, and tell them we sent you.

Caterer: Catering by Christine, Milford
Photographer: John Morgali, Norwalk
Cake: Take the Cake, Guilford
Reception Band: BC & Co., Boston, MA
Printing Services: Royal Printing, Guilford
Jeweller: Peter Indorf, Guilford
Florist: Sara Jaeger, Fairfield

Winter Photos

These are a few shots that John Morgali, our photographer, took last month.

New York Times Names Yale Good Travel Destination

Ever sensitive to the fact that many of you will be traveling to a strange place for the first time, we thought some of you might enjoy the following article about Yale as a tourist destination:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/travel/01journeys-1.html

Who is Junius johnson?

He is a man that you wouldn't expect. I mean that. He is small in stature, but his presence is huge. He made D's in high school and yet was accepted to 5 of the top theology PhD programs in North America. He's usually right and often gracious. He is black, but he plays the French horn. He owns more books that anyone I know within 10 years of us in age, but he prefers his XBox. A child of the 80s, he still wishes love to be like a John Cusack movie, yet fights with all his might when things are rough. He is a dreamer, a hopeless romantic, a lover of the imaginative, yet insanely logical. His thoughts are always linear. He makes decisions quickly, he takes most factors into account. He drives like a bat out of hell, he never gets into wrecks. He loves both the romantic comedy and the action flick. He is seriously well rounded. He likes sports, cars, books, languages, music, TV, and our Lord. That is really the only thing that makes him make sense. Junius has long known that God is more powerful and His call more lofty than the apparent ceilings in his life, like cultural expectations, available resources or lack thereof. J's worldview is bigger than his life because there is someone in it so much bigger than himself. With this knowledge came opportunity and with it came responsibility. His call is one that many won't understand. Fighting for the evangelical faith in the academy looks like fighting for inequality, for turmoil, and actually against peace to many of his colleagues. But fortunately, we serve a just and faithful Lord, who has led us to know Him that we may walk in his ways, that we may serve him faithfully, that we may be blessed in His will. So come rain or shine, come good days or bad, come fair weather friends, come family crisis, we will stand together. I have faith in him, because we have faith in God. There is a lot to recommend Junius, his knowledge, his people skills, his musical talent, the high esteem others hold him in, but honestly I have faith in him and I have faith in us, because we have faith in God.

Conversion

One of the more interesting projects we've undertaken (besides, you know, getting married) is the renovation of my current apartment to be our apartment. We don't want it to feel like she just moved in with me, we want it to feel like we have our first place together. So, I've authorized a complete redesign of every room of the house. The only space that will remain largely untouched is my office, where I spend most of my days and do most of my work.

Very little will actually happen until July--a new piece of furniture here, clearing some space there. But the plans have been largely drawn up, much of the furniture chosen, and there are paint chips taped to the walls of several rooms in the house. The transformation will be nothing short of marvelous.

I watch and participate in this flurry of imaginative activity with no small amount of appreciation and awe--I've long dreamed of living in a beautiful space, and have always settled for a decent space. My days of decency, it seems, are numbered, and I count myself lucky on that front.

Junius