Trying to figure this new thing out....

Evalie Says....

I've been very busy this week taking pictures left and right of my little bug. I think they are turning out very nicely. We do have a bit of a problem when I ask Kate to smile at the camera. She says, "Cheese" but won't look by direction at all. We will have to work on this...

Playing Playdough in our jammies

Josh doing what he does best!

Making sure Shiner doesn't get her slice of cheese...

We had an early out for the approaching snow storm. With the change in the schedule at school, I didn't get to eat lunch. I grabbed McDonald's on the way home. Kate fell asleep with her hands in the fries container!

It is hard to wait for your nails to dry!

The blizzard arrived and Josh tried to snowblow in it!

I have pretty nails...


Princess Belle, our favorite.

I'm a bad parent...

Evalie Says....

Kate just got the movie Beauty and the Beast and Snow White for Christmas, which has taken the princess infatuation to a whole new level. We watch one princess movie every day. Poor Josh got Netflix for Christmas, and the majority of the movies that brought to our house are Disney Princess movies. Tears were involved when we had to send back Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid.

Anyway, not the point of the blog post. Kate has a little microphone that sings "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast. Since we watch the movie so often at our house, she really has the words down. She found her microphone in her toy box and began singing around the house. I decided that I needed to get it on film. So I asked her to start singing for me while I recorded. Suddenly she became very shy and wouldn't do it. Finally, I convinced her to do it.




I'm a bad parent, I couldn't stop laughing when she fell.

New Camera

Evalie Says...

I have been in desire of a new point and shoot camera to keep in my purse for those moments that I want to capture in photo while out and about. Our other camera works great, but it is very large. I know that my cell phone would probably work, but I wanted something with a little better quality. I had one in particular that was on my Christmas list, and I had been keeping my eye on its price. It suddenly was cheaper than it was on black Friday, so Josh bought it for me for an early birthday gift. I want to make sure I had it before we left for our Mexico trip in March.

We went to purchase the camera at Wal-Mart since I had seen it on sale there the day before while picking up something quickly for work. The whole process has given me one more reason why I hate the place!

You see, we have three different Wal-Marts here in town and went to the one that we feel is the cleanest. When we arrived the camera was thirty dollars more than it was at the one I was at the previous day. Wal-Mart informed us that it does offer price matching but not with themselves! So we put our purchases back on the shelves and headed to the Wal-Mart where I saw the sale price.

When we got there, they were out of them! They called the third store in town, and they had the same price as this one and had only ONE more in stock. They put it on hold, and we drove down to the third Wal-Mart in town (more Wal-Marts than I needed in one day). When we got there, we were able to purchase the camera, finally!

As we are walking out of the store in a hurry because the babysitter was going to beat us to the house, I realized that the total of our purchases seemed very high and asked to see the receipt. Josh got it out of his wallet and sure enough they charged us the wrong price, so back to customer service we went!

We finally got it all straightened out and made it home just in time to meet the babysitter for Josh and I to head out to my staff holiday party.

On the way to my holiday party I turned to Josh and said, "This new camera is going to bring my blogging to a whole new level!"

The first few pictures taken on my new camera....

My friend, Beth, and I

Amy and Bill

I'm back!

The Holidays

Evalie Says...

Our adventures over my Christmas break were very eventful! I got out of school on the 22nd for our break, and we left the next day to head to Alton to spent time with Josh's mom and step-dad. We were able to spent two nights at their house and really enjoyed their company. It was beyond wonderful to spend time with Dave and Sue, Shelby, Drew, Grandma Norma and Josh's step-brothers on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning coming down the stairs at Grandma's

A CAMERA!!

On Christmas day, we were off to my dad and step-mom's house in the Dunes. My sisters had been there for a few days, so we were able to celebrate Christmas day with everyone. We also invited Uncle Paul and Molly for our Christmas Day dinner. In the evening, we invited over my Aunt Annie's best friend, Connie, and her partner, Brenda, over to celebrate life.















The day after Christmas we headed off to South Dakota to see Josh's dad and grandparents on his dad's side of the family. We were lucky to be able to see two of Josh's aunts and uncles. Grandma Lola was a little under the weather, so it was a short trip.



On Monday after Christmas, we loaded up early in the morning to head back home. The drive was horrible with poor road conditions and took us NINE hours! We were so happy to finally be home! We had our Christmas and exchanging of gifts right away. Santa even stopped at our house and filled our stockings while we were gone!




We were able to spend the a few days at home and able to spend some time with my best friend, Jillian, who was home from Hawaii, before heading back to northwest Iowa on Thursday. Josh's great friend, Seth, was getting married on New Year's Eve. Dad and Sandie watched Kate while Josh and I had a great time celebrating with Seth and Jill. It was such a wonderful time seeing many old friends.

Ah, Seth

Josh's best friend, J.J, and Brooke

Josh and I (the party hat needs to go)


We aren't traveling next year :)

Merry Chrstmas

Merry Christmas!