Christmas Spirit

Our first Christmas together has been great and it's not even Christmas yet! Being our first year sharing a home, we really got into the Christmas spirit! The day after Thanksgiving, my family came up to Portland and we all went to see the Christmas tree lighting in Pioneer Square. As you can see, we were all really excited about it! Ha!



We actually had a lot of fun singing carols before they lit the tree.





After we said goodbye to the fam, we headed straight to Lowe's and bought a bunch of lights for the house. Matt got up on the roof even though it was POURING rain! Colorful lights on the house, white lights along the fence :)



We put some lights inside the house too and have a beautiful tree. Matt set the DVR to record Christmas movies and the Christmas cartoons from when we were kids. It's been so fun watching them together... he seriously knows all the words to Charlie Brown and Mickey's Christmas :) And of course, we've been listening to lots and lots of Christmas music.



We leave on Thursday to spend Christmas with Matt's family. I'm excited for my first Christmas with the in-laws!
Merry Christmas everyone!

Baby Shower for Baby O

Last month Michelle and I went down to San Diego to reunite with our college friends and celebrate Baby O. It was a very special weekend - we were all so thankful to spend time with Nicole while she's pregnant and experiencing something that none of us have. She looked beautiful and we are looking forward to meeting the little guy at the end of the year.

Heather and Julianne did a great job with the picnic, complete with blankets on the grass, baby games and yummy, yummy food!

I won the draw-a-baby-without-looking contest! Thanks Nicole for recognizing my artistic abilities :)

Truly was a wonderful weekend to reconnect with my favorite ladies. I love you all!

To see some beautiful photos, check out Nicole's blog post about the shower: http://www.theomanfamily.com/?p=1172

Mr. & Mrs. Sizemoore

We spent last weekend in Kneeland to celebrate my long-time friend, Boo (her real name's actually Lauren, but we've called her Boo forever) get married to Cody. I've known Boo since before we started school and went kindergarten through high school with her. It was so special to be in her wedding - especially when we realized that both of our parent celebrated their 30th wedding anniversaries the same year Boo and I both got married :)

The wedding was out in the boonies on Boo's parents' ranch... it was a beautiful location on a HOT day. This is Boo and her bridesmaids during the rehearsal, the night before the wedding...

And the beautiful wedding day! She looked absolutely stunning in her grandmother's custom made (in 1957) wedding dress. I don't know Cody well, but I could tell how utterly happy his was to be marrying Boo, as he held back tears watching her walk down the aisle.

Thank you Boo and Cody for making me part of your wonderful day! I could truly feel the love that day and I wish you guys all the happiness in your marriage together! And man, what a great dance party!

PS. Thanks to Facebook for the pics. I can't find my camera, so for now it's iPhone pics and stealing from fb!

Labor Day in Pismo Beach

We've spent the last two weekends in sunny California (Labor Day in Pismo Beach and last weekend in Kneeland for a friend's wedding). Matt's family was camping in Pismo and lots of SLO friends were back in town for the long weekend, so we got to do a lot of catching up and visiting.

The kids fed the animals at Avila Farm...




And silly Uncle Matt stole Lauryn's stroller while we were waiting for lunch.


Here's Rusty the lap dog. He's a pretty lazy dog that will let you do just about anything to him :)

We spent most of the weekend playing cards at the campground, walking on the beach and eating delicious food (best part about taking vacations!). We stayed with a friend in SLO who lives in Matt's old apartment. We love going back there and pretending we're still in college!

Lucy

This is Lucy (affectionately known as Lucifer). She is our neighbor's cat, but seems to like our house better. In fact, she was sitting on our porch the first time we came here and still spends most of her time there. The neighbor told us we could have her, but we're still not convinced that we want her.

Here she is looking very regal and sweet, which she is most of the time.

For awhile she got quite comfy with us and was even sleeping on our bed. We finally let her stay in over night, only to wake up at 6am to the wonderful noise of barfing cat. She's an outside cat now.


She does love attention and will let you hold her for as long as you want. She loves to be held on her back while getting her belly rubbed. Weird cat...

She's also very playful and loves the bamboo in our yard, which I obviously do not since here she is sitting underneath the pile of 5 bamboo trees I just cut down. Don't get me wrong, bamboo is beautiful and the trunks make great garden stakes, but did you know that it looses it's leaves ALL YEAR ROUND?? What a mess! We would basically have to rake our yard once a week to keep it under control, but instead I just chop it down and wait for it to grow back... which only takes about a week anyways.

So, we're trying to like Lucy because it looks like we might be stuck with her, but she makes it very difficult sometimes!

Our Little Tiny House & Garden

Ok, here we go. I'm new to this blog thing, so please bear with me. My goal with blogging is just to share pictures with friends and family so we can all stay connected. Since so many of you live so far away from us, we want to share our lives with you the best we can. I hope you enjoy!

OUR PORCH

Matthew looking so so happy sitting on our front porch :) I swear he really loves this porch! It has been wonderful eating meals together out here during these few nice days in Portland.

THE GARDEN

Here's my little garden. After my bachelorette party weekend, I came to the house to find that Matt had built me this sweet little planter box for my veggie garden! Best surprise!

Two tomato plants and a row of scraggly lettuce (it's been way too hot for it) Oh and please ignore the piles of bamboo leaves, I'll complain more about that later.

Our snap peas are going crazy along with Thai chili peppers and Cowhorn peppers. I also planted two jalapeño plants from seed, but they're only about an inch tall and nowhere near producing any peppers. There was lots of cilantro too, but I just picked it all so there's nothing to see there.

And a few pots of herbs... parsley, basil, lavender and mint. Matt thinks basil is the only thing worth growing out of these, but I disagree!

THE TABLE

Finally, I have to show off the beautiful mosaic table that my grandpa made and gave to us for our wedding. He had the wrought iron frame custom built and we found a great deal on some stools that match perfectly. Now we eat dinner on it every night and will be sad when it gets too cold and rainy to be outside, which I know with be much too soon!