Our First Christmas






Starting to unravel



 This was the first Christmas that Evan and I have  lived together, our first Christmas married.  It was the most fun ever, watching Christmas movies every night and getting our first Christmas tree.  Granted we didn't exactly know where to go, so we went to the local Rite Aid and purchased our bundled Christmas tree.  Here are some pictures for the unveiling of the first Christmas tree.

Then Christmas Day approached.  We were extremely excited to get Kerry's kids up early and open stockings.  This is a Howard tradition, and I was excited to be apart of it this year.  Also Evan was a bit excited to use his new camera.  So you will now notice the difference in camera quality for the rest of our blogging years, thanks to this year Christmas and to Sharon and David!  Thanks again!  The kids were adorable, and half awake and I think we took a million pictures.  Enjoy!

The morning stocking opening

Jackson opening all his gifts.

This was the cutest thing ever, Wyland LOVED his bike and started opening his presents on it.

                                

                                  See?  They LOVED their bikes.                            

 We made a stop at my parents house for Mimosas and a quick nap from the early morning festivities.  Evan got an awesome avalanche beacon, which I think I'm more thankful for then anyone.  Now we can find him if he gets caught in one during his crazy back country adventures.  I got an amazing sweater that I had been eying for months, and lots of other goodies.  We had a wonderful Christmas and it's always wonderful to be with family this time of year.  It also was nice that the sun was out that day, made for a beautiful Christmas morning.

After we left our parents we got news that Oliver (my adorable new nephew) is released from his sun box.  Sorry I don't know all the proper terms, all I know is Kerry was super sad that he had to be in this horrible thing and we were all hoping the little guy could get out for Christmas and he did!  It was the best Christmas present anyone could ask for.  Also that meant that Evan and I got to cuddle him for a lot of the afternoon.  He is the cutest little thing in the whole world.                                            

                                   



And no people let's not get any crazy ideas.  We love our nephew to a million pieces and are perfectly happy with living through Kerry of having the most beautiful baby ever.  Keep in mind we still have these two little kids.  They never tire either!!



Christmas

Needless to say we had a whirlwind Christmas with minimal sleep because we were extremely excited to spend it with our families.  I have tons of pictures to post since we got a new camera for Christmas!!  Thank you Dave and Sharon! 

Also once I get home to post pictures we have finally finished our bathroom.  When we moved into our townhome, we have a dome shower.  It was tiny shower with a dome on top, weirdest thing I have ever seen.  I showered it in maybe once before Evan and I both agreed this was never going to work.  Keep in mind my husband is 6' 4 and I'm 5' 9, we aren't exactly short people, especially Evan in a dome tiny shower.  So we ripped everything out and have been in the extremely expensive process of making a walk in shower that is now 3 feet wide and 5 feet long.  It is a dream boat and looks 500 times better.  Tonight is the wonderful night that we will be 100% finished building this, with my Dad's help of course.  We couldn't have done any of this by ourselves without his knowledge of anything.  Stay tuned for lots of pictures!!

Christmas so far...

Well besides having pictures I have yet to post we have had a wonderful month.  It began with Evan's special day and all his friends coming up for a fun day of skiing, grilling hot dogs, and a relay race in the parking lot.  I laughed so hard because Evan was once again allowed to drink and he was on cloud nine.  We went to Canyon Inn that night and his friends all came out to show the support of him conquering TB.  I am so proud of him for honestly only drinking twice this whole 6 months.  It had to have been hard.  Thanks to my parents for coming out to the bar that night and hanging out for the most of the night, that was such a great surprise! 

The next weekend we had my company Christmas party which are always so much fun.  Evan and I have had really good luck at every party with Rossignol and winning prizes.  Last year we won a one night stay at the Newpark hotel which is extremely nice and we used that for our honeymoon.  So we were extremely excited for this year.  They had it at Jupiter Bowl, which is an extremely nice bowling alley.  They have lounge couches, a giant bar and awesome food, all while you bowl there are giant screen TVs playing sports, ski clips, etc.  It was so much fun.  At the end of the night, we won the grand prize!!!  What are the chances??  I was screaming and danced my way up to get our prize, which is two round trip tickets to anywhere in the domestic United States.  All our close friends know that we are planning a two week trip to Europe so this will help us get there.  We are so so so excited.  Counting down the days until July.

Last weekend, I know I already posted this, but my amazing sister in law Kerry had an adorable baby.  Oliver is gorgeous and Kerry looks awesome.  We of course had to see the baby the day he was born, and Kerry was up and talkative.  I was shocked, if I would've been in that position I would've been dead, gone, and not near as cheery.  Kerry you are amazing!  Since Kerry and Jeramie were busy watching over their little one in the hospital, Evan and I took Jackson and Baylee to Yogi Bear.  Those kids crack me up, Jackson and Baylee sang to us the entire way to the movie theater and we love those kids. 

Overall we have had a wonderful month with family, surprise gifts, and skiing every weekend.  It's been wonderful and we couldn't ask for a better family and how blessed we are.  It makes you realize how blessed you are when you see how little people have.  Evan reminds me of how lucky we are, especially with the people he works with it's nice to be reminded of how blessed we are.

New Baby

This gorgeous little boy was born yesterday and he is so wonderful and cute.  Congrats Jeramie and Kerry, he is positively gorgeous just like the rest of your children!  I love him to pieces already and he is only 2 days old.

A Little Christmas Cheer

I love the movie Elf, not just love but LOVE.  Evan and I like watching Christmas movies.  I will post the pictures we took of putting up our tree with ornaments, it was rather festive.  So of course we turned on any Christmas movie we could find which ended up being "Fred Claus".  As a side note, that movie is actually pretty funny.  But I think Vince Vaughan is hilarious though.  Getting back to my Christmas cheer sharing, here is clip from Elf.  I love Zooey's voice and every single time I laugh hysterically at the end of this clip, ENJOY!!!

PS.  I get an adorable little nephew in two days!!!  I'm so so so excited!!!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycAmi3r2rWM

Terrible Ending to a great day...

In case no one knows the history on our dog Torre, I will give you a brief summary.  We adopted her March of last year and she was a rescue dog.  We didn't really know her history because Humane Society basically said have a nice day and off we went.  It started with close to a 1,000 dollars in doctor bills for her with having kennel cough which led to pneumonia, which led to her overnight stay at the vet because she got so sick at Humane Society.  We found out she really doesn't like other dogs, which I have a feeling came from her previous owners.  Torre is the most loving dog ever, ask any of my family.  She loves my nieces and nephews and doesn't bit or do anything that would scare the kids.  She loves being petted, cuddles anything to do with love.  The only problem we have with her is the other dog issue.  We have tried socialization classes and it honestly did nothing.  Whatever her previous owners did to make her this way I have no idea.  Some days it's frustrating but for the most part she is a loveable dog and we wouldn't change anything about her. 
Sunday was an awesome day, Evan and I skied all day in the sun and came home to get ready to go to family dinner.  We had an awesome time at dinner celebrating Winter's birthday and then started to head home.  Keep in mind we take our dogs everywhere.  We arrived back at our house and someone was in our parking slot (this is my biggest pet peeve ever) so we had to park in the common area.  This always makes me nervous, with Torre's past etc. but she is super good about listening to Evan.  So we all started to unload the car, I let the girls out and started to head back to our house since it is a longer walk.  Before we knew it we heard barking and yelling, and Evan was incredibly quick to yell for Torre to come back and she ran back to us with the owner swearing at us (classy right?)  So Evan is telling him we can't hear him because he is continuing to yell at us and we are concerned with getting our dogs inside, considering this has never happened to us before.  As soon as we get inside we go about our normal business and Evan goes back outside to get the rest of the stuff out of the car.  To his surprise he is met by this man and his wife demanding our names, phone number, etc and will be calling the police since our dog apparently attacked him and his little rat dog.  Evan comes back inside and tells me all this and we both are in a giant state of anxiety.  We have never owned dogs by ourselves, let alone having any trouble with the law.  Sharon calmed us down a bit when we went back over to her house, but I couldn't sleep.  So at 11:30pm last night we have a pounding at our door with a cop needing to file our paperwork for this "attack".  He gave some smart remarks to our dogs considering they were barking at him, which he commented we don't need two attacks tonight (um, hi you are the one at my door at 11:30 at night, they have every right to bark at you)  I didn't find him nice, helpful, basically nothing.  He couldn't give us any information except for the guy  has a laceration on his hand, which Torre has NEVER bitten a human ever.  I can guarantee he put his hand in the way, which of course makes our dog look worse for biting a person.  The whole thing is completely upsetting and I'm well aware our dog was off the leash so we are in the wrong, but I'm still allowed to be upset.  So if you feel on commenting on this blog, please don't give me the 10 cent comment about how bad we are as owners having our dog off the leash.  Trust me we have gotten plenty of that.

Step in dog poop kind of day...

Have you ever had days that start terrible?  Then it's hard to wrap your mind around being positive the rest of the day.  My morning started off with my jeans dragging in dog poop.  How you might ask that happens?  Well Alta decides that grass isn't good enough and pulls moves like pooping on our sidewalk...classy.  Anyway I discovered this little present while I was filling up my car with gas and got it on my hand.  Yes, the whole chocolate/poo phrase (Baby Mame quote) came to mind but I was busy thinking dirt/poo.  Well it was poo, and I wasn't exactly the happiest person at 7:45am at a gas station realizing there is poo on my pants.  Long story short, good thing I stole my husband's Monster or else this day would've been a 0.  Miraculously I am having a perfect 10 kind of day, thanks to sugar, oh and the fact that Evan didn't drink his last Monster.

11 months...

Now I'm not trying to say I'm some kind of expert on marriage but I have learned a few things over 11 months.  Evan and I next month will be married one year.  And we have learned a lot about each other.  Some things I think are majorly important:

Always make each other smile, no matter the time, day, whatever

Make an effort to compliment each other, you married each other because you couldn't live without each other, so it should be easy to do.

Try to make a dinner you know they like at least once a week, the rest of the week you can be selfish and make food you like.

Take an interest in each others hobbies, yes sitting on the couch all day Saturday wathcing football is not my number one favorite thing to do, but being with my husband is my number one favorite

Actually pay attention when they share interesting facts, yes Evan quizzed me on the bowl match ups and I do believe we are rooting for the exact same teams in every bowl match up.  Ps, he could've rigged the system though.

ALWAYS make time for cuddle time.  (It's my favorite)

If your special someone likes taking walks at night, and it's freezing, put on another coat and go with.  It's those times alone, outside that are the best times.

The joys of being a couple without kids, you can enjoy being poor and trying to save every penny for projects, trips, a big purchase because eating mac n' cheese every night doesn't get too old.  Only after week 3 does it start to taste a little weird.

Enjoy a good song, whether you sing it to them or vice versa.

Always offer to help even if you may not be good at the project.  Normally when I offer to help, Evan prefers I sit while he tackles it because it involves tools.  Not exactly my strong point.  But I always think it's the thought that counts.  He may offer to help clean, but gives me that smile that gets him away with murder and yes instead I bring him either pink drink, or Pepsi and he continues on his merry way with ESPN.

Date night-enough said.

I'm sure there are people out there that have years of experience over me, or may think some of these ideas are stupid.  But I can without a doubt say I love my husband more today then I did last year and I know it will just get better every year and day.  Love ya Ev!

New Kitchen

Evan and I have very exciting news, we have FINALLY gotten our cabinet boxes back and now we can FINALLY move forward with our new kitchen.  It's been a long process of basically just waiting around, so it's nice to have them home and be able to move forward with our home improvements.  Excited to have our friends and family over to show off the new goods.  Merry Christmas to us!!


Also Evan's big day is in 2 days.  It's been a long process for him of taking pills to make sure the virus was gone and he has been more then diligent.  I would personally like to thank him for all the times he has been the designated driver for friends, family, and myself.  I hope everyone does decide to come out on Friday at Canyon Inn around 9 to celebrate with us that he is done with having the scare of tuberculosis and for his dedication.  I am so proud of him and this is such a great way to celebrate.  If you see him, want to post on his facebook wall, text, please congratulate him or better yet show your support by coming out with us.