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

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.

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.

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!