Thursday, December 25, 2008

California trip


Steve had to be in Southern California for a business trip the week before Christmas. I tagged along to spend some time with Steve's brother and sister in law out there. What a trip it was :)

We had a fun lunch and then a walk along the coast:


Trip to see one of the giant Christmas tree:

Unexpected trip to the hospital:

Pizza and pizookies while Lara was in the hospital:


Setting up the nursery before the boys arrive:
It looks great!


Joe right before the boys were born:


Pictures of Xander and Jax coming very soon :) What an unbelievable blessing to see our nephews just hours after they were born. It was hard to leave right afterward, but we'll be back :) So far we kinda like being an aunt and uncle!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hello friends and family! We have had a wonderfully blessed year, and thought we'd share some of the highlights with you all.

Winter 2007 - We traveled to Charleston, South Carolina with Ang's family for Thanksgiving and spent a short but fun time with them. Then a few weeks later we spent some time in the Minneapolis area with Steve's family. Steve's brother Mike was married Dec 22, 2007 and he and his wife Chen now live in the Minneapolis area. Steve and Ang were both a part of the wedding, and stuck around to celebrate New Years with the Mellema family.

Spring 2008 - We took a two week vacation from work, and spent some time in South-Western Michigan, relaxing and sleeping! Ang is still volunteering at a local pregnancy resource center, and their spring banquet was a great event to be a part of.

Summer 2008 - Steve's band had a busy summer this year. We got to play at the Indiana State Fair, as well as several other venues mainly locally but some as far as West Virginia. It was a great summer for the band. This summer was also our fifth anniversary! In July we got to spend some time with Steve's mom's side of the family, as we all spent the 4th of July together. We finished up the summer with a Labor Day trip to South Carolina to visit Ang's family again.

Fall 2008 - We traveled to Colorado to attend a cousin's wedding. It was also our 5th year college reunion, so we traveled back there to see lots of old friends and former professors. Ang's mom spent a weekend in Indiana with us to help us get curtains up in our house, and finally we traveled back up to Minnesota to spend Thanksgiving with Steve's family. The only ones not able to be at the family's Thanksgiving feast was Steve's brother Joe and his sister in law Lara. Lara was pregnant with twin boys, and not able to travel the long distance from Southern California.

Winter 2008 - It's been a great winter so far, and it's only just begun! Steve had a business trip out to Anaheim, California, so Ang traveled along with and spent the week visiting Steve's brother and sister in law, Joe and Lara. Unexpectedly, at the end of our trip, Lara gave birth to their twin sons, Xander and Jax! We were very blessed to be able to see them on their birthday. We're spending the week of Christmas with Ang's parents out in South Carolina before heading home for New Years. Since we're still on the road, check back later for more pictures to be posted.

Wow, when you put it all together like that it reminds us what a wonderful blessing God has given us in our friends and family. And most of all we are thankful for the gracious gift of our salvation.

We try to keep this blog updated throughout the year with fun activities and pictures, so bookmark it and stop by often!

Merry Christmas!
Love, Steve & Ang

Thursday, December 11, 2008

ahh

Weather where I am now: 29 degrees (feels like 22 degrees)

Weather where I will be in 3 days: 61 degrees (feels like 61 degrees)

Nice.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Thanksgiving and a tag

I've been tagged :) I'm posting the 4th pic from my 4th folder, and surprise, it's of our basement. That's what we've been using our camera for the most in the last 3 years!


Fortunately, the 5th pic is more interesting, so I'm putting it up here too :) It's one of my friend Holly's baby shower back in February. I actually remember we had so much rain that week and seeing some flooding as I was on my way up to the shower, so it's fitting that the basement and shower made it into the same folder. Thanks for the tag, Hols!


Here are our pics from Thanksgiving. You can see them all HERE if you don't have the time to sit through the slideshow.
What a fun weekend we had, even if it was super short.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

decorating for Christmas

Every year there's a bit of a balancing act going on in our house. We like to decorate some for Christmas but we're always gone for at least a week over the holidays, so in some ways it's kind of a hassle, especially with all of the other things on the calendar. So we don't really want to go all-out. We don't do a live tree because they will just die while we're not here. Same for poinsettias and other holiday plants. But this year even though we'll be out of town for 2 weeks, we did buy a few extra strings of lights and decorations. Steve's been trying to get them out on the pine tree in our front yard, but by the time he'll finish we'll probably be about ready to head out of town :) We underestimated the amount of strings we'd need and I need to go buy 2 more at least.

Steve's a pretty traditional guy when it comes to the holidays. We have a few traditions of our own, and I think that I've tamed him down as far as his expectations of how those traditions are carried out because I'm not really that traditional. I like to mix it up and play it by ear. But each year as we set up our slightly pathetic-looking, pre-lit tree, I remember the first Christmas we were married. We did the whole, picking out a tree (the only year we've bought a real one) and setting it up, etc. Steve was taking out each ornament of his and telling me who gave it to him, or when he made it. I had a few ornaments that I'd bought on sale when I worked in a bookstore, or that people had given to us as wedding gifts, but as we were going through them all, Steve looked at me and asked very seriously "where are your ornaments?" I thought it was so funny, it was the classic "his tradition" meets "my non-tradition" moment :) That memory always makes me smile.

Anyway, here are a few pics of our decor...

Our tree, notice our topper. Yep, it's up there each year. No angel or star for us!

Thursday, November 20, 2008

that time of year again!

The holidays are upon us! I just looked at my calendar and there are less than 6 weeks left of the year. We are going to be out of town for almost 3 of them. Goodness, the time will go by fast. Bring on 2009 :)

Friday, November 14, 2008

crafting - sneak peak



When I finished the first one, Steve promptly informed me that I couldn't take a break, that I had 3 more to finish before Christmas. Can you guess what they are?

I'm glad to say now that I have 1 finished and two more almost finished. I can't wait for Christmas :)

spewing house

Our house has turned the tables on us and started spitting water OUT :)


I just think it's really funny to watch our sump pump now that it isn't hooked up anymore. Actually it's not funny that it's still not hooked up and our yard is still torn up, but they've said that they'll take care of it and we keep believing them. And they've said that at least they'll hook the sump back up to the drainage pipe sometime next week. Then I won't have the entertainment of watching our house spew like old faithful.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

more progress

Steve and I finally ordered him a new wedding ring. I think that we will both like it, we really liked the picture. That's the trouble with ordering online, you can't see it before you buy it. But it's Tungsten and I like every Tungsten ring I see with similar styles in stores so we should be fine. Plus for $35 and free shipping, we'll like it for that reason alone. But wait, there's more! (said in my best infomercial voice) If we ever need to resize it, I can send it back to them and pay a $3 restocking fee and get a brand new ring in his new size. Ahh, I love finding a good deal! And it's about time, I see from my former posts that he lost his ring back in late July/early August.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

you know you've had a long week when...

your husband tells you that you get to pick where we have our date night, and I want to go to Sams. Seriously, that's where I want to go. It's been a long week :)

Monday, October 27, 2008

progress

My mom visited last week for about 4 days and boy were we busy.

In the middle of the madness: (we hung newspaper to get an idea for a valance or cornice board)

One down, two more to go:

And they're up:

One more to hang over the sliding door once we get some more hardware up:


And another really exciting note of house progress: the last few rain storms we've had, we've checked the basement and had no water whatsoever! There have been at least two really good downpours to the point that we're pretty satisfied that it's done *cross fingers* and have talked to the contractor who will put some more soil down and then lay sod. I'm thinking that it will get done before the end of the year, and that is going to be a huge relief!!

Monday, October 13, 2008

5 year reunion



This weekend we traveled back to our Alma Mater for homecoming, it was our 5 year reunion this year. What a fun time, catching up with old friends and classmates, and reliving freshman weirdness. We walked past the house I lived in my senior year with 4 other close friends, of course we went to Ivanhoes, we poured over some old photo albums from the good old days, and laughed a whole lot. Check out all the photos here.

Friday, October 3, 2008

How do you know Steve?

I finally joined Lin.kedIn a while back. If you don't know what that is, it's just one of many social networking sites, this one is targeted for professionals. I joined after getting several invites, and other pressures to join :) and today I decided to add Steve to my list of connections. The question was asked "How do you know Steve". What should I put? Colleague? Kinda true. The site suggested that I add him as a classmate, we went to 2 schools together. So classmate is also true. There is an option "I don't know this person" which is definitely out because I do know Steve. I finally decided that he is my friend. Awww :)

Monday, September 29, 2008

Colorado trip

Steve and I flew out to Colorado for a wedding. Steve's cousin got married, and we were really excited to be able to attend, and spend time with everyone. It was a super short trip, but we had a great time. Here are some highlights: Steve's sister Laura and her husband Cordelle


Me and Steve


The newlyweds


Grandma and Grandpa


Steve's Mom and Dad - soon to be grandma and grandpa!! :) (thanks to Steve's brother, not us!)


A brief appearance on the dance floor


Chillin' outside. The weather was beautiful.

Snuggling with the kitty


Brian riding


Taylor showed off her stuff


Eric showing off his stuff


We got to celebrate Kyl's 18th and Brian's 12th


And then we all crashed :)

All of the pics will be posted here as soon as I can get them all up... it might take me a few days.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

critters

I'm not a fan of jumping things. Flying things either. But I have enjoyed taking pictures of these critters that I've come across in the past week. Just as long as they keep their distance and don't try any jumping. Or flying. Not around me.


This little guy hung out on our grill the whole time I cooked up dinner. After dinner I asked Steve how I should get him off of there... hint, hint. Steve said "just push him off". Yeah, right.


I went out for a run one evening and thought that the grasshopper sitting on our welcome mat was kind of ironic.

Can you tell I just got a new camera? :)

Monday, September 22, 2008

phew!

It's been a crazy month, and it's not over yet! The past couple of weeks and weekends have been busy, as the mountain of laundry that I tackled on Saturday will attest to. And the week nights had all filled up as well. I'm looking forward to October and November, as my calendar for those months is pretty clear so far. It makes me happy to flip forward a few weeks and not see so many things blocking chunks of time off.

This week will be a short one for us, as we're flying out to Denver on Friday morning. Actually, I should say in the middle of the night Thursday night/Friday morning, but that's a different post, about how unfair it is that airlines are free to change the time of your departure by hours, and not give a second thought to how this might effect your plans. (is it affect or effect? I never know...) Anyway, let's just say I'd never buy a plane ticket that leaves that early, but apparently I did without even knowing what I was doing. Ahh, where was I going? Oh yeah, this week will be short, but very nice. It's season premier week, people. There are a few that I'm looking forward to quite a bit. It will be nice to have some new episodes on tv for once, and a little bit of free time to watch them every once in a while :) Enjoy your week!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

introducing

My new toy! Steve actually bought it for me; he surprised me. I guess I'd been talking about it so much he knew exactly which one I wanted, and why. Poor guy, he probably just wanted to stop the rambling, haha :) I'm super excited!! The band is playing next Saturday night, and I can't wait to compare pics taken with the new camera to pics taken with my previous, aggravating point and click camera.

Friday, September 5, 2008

I'll just have Jay answer your question, Holly. :)


Thursday, September 4, 2008

Labor day in the Carolinas

I didn't take too many pictures over the weekend. I guess we were too busy relaxing :) But we had a fun trip to my parent's house. We got to see their new place, and meet some of their friends. Here are a few of the pictures that I did take.

I think this is funny, I put them side by side. The first is before Jay paused his movie.
Here we are by the pool, the best way to enjoy the heat.
This is their back yard as seen from their main level porch. That's the boat dock in the background. We did have a fun day out on the boat and managed not to get too sunburned :)
We wish the drive were closer, but it was a fun weekend. It's nice to have a few days of laziness.