Stehower 2009 Christmas

We always get together for Christmas with my mom's side of the family. It's really the one time of year that we all get to see each other as we are all so busy throughout the year. It was great hanging out with the Stehower clan at my Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary's new home in New River, AZ!

Miss Sophia with her new ornament.

Cousin Adam and my brother Dan.

My sister-in-law Linda and brother Dave.

Aunt Donna, Adam and Uncle Jeff (my mom's brother).

My cousin Caitlin.

My beautiful cousins Jenny and Caitlin.

Sophia with one of her presents. It was a cute singing dog.

Shane getting a tool set. Now it's time to help dad!

My Grandma Anne with my Mom, Aunt Mary, Uncle Tom, Uncle Jeff and Aunt Donna.

The grandkids with Grandma Anne and Mart.

The great Grandkids, Sophia and Shane.

Grandma Debbie with Sophia and Shane.

Christmas 2009

A few shots from Christmas...

This is our new ornament we bought in WDM to celebrate our wedding year.

Our tree. I love my star that I purchased in Cabo San Lucas.

Christmas day at my brothers house. Brycen and Shane goofing off.

My mom gave Joe a leg lamp that is a replica from the move A Christmas Story. It was a perfect gift.

My mom and her grankids. We were so happy to have Caitlyn and Piper home for Christmas!!!

An orange creamsicle sky

The sky was amazing tonight at the start of dusk. We had this orange creamsicle display in some clouds outside our apartment. It was so pretty that I had to get a few shots.

Thanksgiving in Iowa

So, I've got a few post to catch up on...here we go.

We got to spend some time with the Cavanaugh clan in West Des Moines, IA for Thanksgiving and had a great time!!! We saw New Moon opening night, saw the Blindside, shopped at our favorite grocery store, HyVee and visited the local gym where I tried a Spin class for the first time. Between Spin class and my father-in-laws stairs my legs were like jello all week! Here's a few photos from our time in WDM.

11/19/09

Loren, Kaye, Kate and I in front of Bella's truck at the New Moon premiere. We saw the midnight showing and I did find it a bit difficult to stay awake because the movie theatre was warm and we'd been up for just about 24 hours.

I love the Chipmunks. My favorite is Theodore. The cute lifesize posters were in the theatre lobby. I could resist snapping their photo.

11/20/09
The amazing cookies at HyVee.

My hubby waiting at Maid Rite for our sandwiches.

Maid Rite sign...they have unbelievable loose meat sandwiches. I'm wishing we had them here in Phoenix.

Yummy time!

Thanksgiving football with John, Nelson, Murphy and Gabby. It was very cold out so there wasn't alot of time spent outside.

My hubby throwing the football.

John tackling Murphy...they had fun despite the cold temps.

More football

11/27/09

Major shopping day!

Here's Miss Murphy sipping a hot chocolate sample from Godiva Chocolate.

Uncle Joe and Murphy at Jordan Creek mall.

Me and Miss Murphy.

Uncle Joe and Nelson

Nelson attempting the upside down smile.

Merry Christmas!

Here's wishing all our family and friends a Merry Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. The picture below is of me and my brothers with Santa. It has to be one of my favorite photos. I believe this was taken in 1976 or 1977. It's a classic!

Today, we spent some time with my mom's side of the family celebrating an early Christmas. It is always nice getting together with them and catching up. Some pictures to soon follow.

Jim Carrey's awesome website

I stumbled upon Jim Carrey's website. Check it out. It's pretty wicked!

Happy Birthday to my brothers!!

Wishing my brothers a very happy 34th birthday! Love you guys!

New Moon fever...

We are super excited that in a few weeks we will be heading to West Des Moines, IA for Thanksgiving. We already have our tickets purchased for the midnight showing of New Moon (thanks Kate!). This past weekend we met Loren, a very dear family friend for lunch at Grand Lux at Fashion Square Mall. We had a nice visit with Loren and his sister. After lunch we walked over to Nordstrom's and saw these life size cardboard of Edward and Jacob. We couldn't believe all the merchandise that Nordie's had...shirts and jewelry with Team Edward and Team Jacob. Of course we couldn't pass up a few shots with the life size cardboards of Edward and Jacob.

Joe and Edward ~ 10/31/09 Nordies

Oh, who to chose?! I don't think you can go wrong with either one. ; )

And on this day 4 years ago....

Christina and Joe met on-line using a dating website. We instant messaged for a while and proceeded to talk on the phone until 5am the following morning. We had our first date that evening and needless to say it was an instant connection.

This is a picture of the white roses he brought me on our first date. So beautiful. I wish they could've lasted forever.

This was our first New Years together and was taken while we were having dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.

The proposal...October 14, 2007 at Cheesecake Factory.

Now four years later we are married and very happy. I'm a very lucky woman to have found such a wonderful man. I love you babe!

12 of 12 IV: October 2009

It's 12 of 12 for October - yay! It seems that this is the only reason I update my blog. All I can say it's all because of the new crack called Facebook. Well, here's my day...not overly exciting despite being a holiday. We had to work (no holiday for us- bummer!) so I couldn't take too many shots at work. Some kind of HIPAA violation or something. : )

As always...credit for this fun concept goes to Chad Darnell, click here to see more 12 of 12 participants.

7:30am - Fresh from my Boot Camp Chicks workout and all set to leave for work.

8:30am - My niece Sophia who's seven years old sending me a few instant messages. Oh, to be a kid again and have every holiday off from school. Such the life.


11:00am - The daily AJ's run to satisfy our caffeine kick.

1:30pm - My hubby fresh from his dental appt. Look at those pearly whites!

4:30 pm - Watching Mad Men from the previous night...Love, Love, Love this show!!

5:15pm - I was checking out the registration for The Freaky 5K. Our normal plans for Halloween at my brothers isn't happening this year so my hubby and I are going to do this fun 5K walk/run.

5:30 pm - Random shot of our little patio. Yesterday we walked to our storage unit a few blocks down the road to bring our bikes to the apartment. It's that time to get out and ride.

6:00 pm - Attempting to launch Farm Town on Facebook. Boy, was it slow...

6:15 pm - Finally! My farm it coming along. I had some blueberries to harvest. Cha-Ching!

9:00 pm - Watching the Rachel Zoe Project. Another addictive show. How cool is my pic? I got both Rachel Zoe and Taylor in one shot. Drama, drama! Just gotta love it!

9:30 pm - I'm ending one pic short for this month. My final picture is of the projected weather for this weekend...101? Give me a break! I'm anxious for some 70 and 80 degree temps.

October already?

I can't believe it's already October. Our temps are still in the 90's but it's better than 100 degrees. Give us another week and we'll be sleeping with the windows open. I can't wait! We've been spending Saturday's watching my nephew Brycen play tackle football and he is loving it. He won his game today. Way to go Nitros!

I'm getting close to having to buy a new laptop. My power cord is not staying connected and it's causing it to go into battery mode therefore my screen keeps flickering which is highly irritating. It all started after the motherboard was replaced. Of course, the warranty is no longer active. I'm not too happy about this at all but pretty soon it's going to force me to break down and buy a new one as it's grating on my nerves and may be thrown out the window soon. Argh!

I've been working on getting my wedding scrapbook album done. I can't believe how many pictures we ended up with so it's been a bit challenging figuring out what pictures to include but I'd rather have too many. I'll post some pics of the pages completed as soon as I can.