A Very Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We sure did! My favorite part of this time of year is that usually my entire family is here to celebrate together! Britt and Jeremy were able to fly up for about a week to spend Christmas with us, and Melanie is home from school. :)

Here's some pictures of our christmas decor and Christmas Eve (unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera on christmas day!)

Little gingerbread cottage I made with a friend

Our cute little tree!

This is the most decorated part of our apartment.

We built a fire on Christmas Ever and really enjoyed just the 2 of us hanging out by it. And LaRue, of course.

She loves ice cubes and is always sticking her little paw in glasses to play with them! I don't think she liked my Bailey's though.

New Christmas Eve Tradition: Sushi!

Our little family. :)

So cozy!

We were attempting to get a picture with our tree, but it didn't turn so well.

Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope and pray that this next year will be filled with blessings and God's love for you and your families!

Christmas Pictures

We are very blessed to have a sister who is an amazing photographer! And she is always wanting people to practice on, so it made sense to have her do our christmas photos! She did them last year and we loved those, too! I decided to only put a few up so as to not overwhelm you. :) We still haven't decided which one we're going to use but all the ones I posted here are my favorites, so let me know which ones you like and it might be a winner!

*All photos were taking by Emma Rushing of Everlast Photography*

Eli and his hat. :) Silly boy.

We had to include one of Eli's cars!

We're rockstars.....?

Fall turns to Winter (an update post)

Well, it sure has been a while since I've posted anything new, so I'll give you a quick rundown on what has been going on around here! First, it is officially winter (to us alaskans!). Snow has fallen and stuck. The weather was kinda weird at first, snowing then melting, then snowing some more but I think it has finally come for good! It is 5pm and the sun is already setting. :)

Secondly, we have a coffee table! It was actually purchased this summer, but we had to strip it and re-stain it and that took a little while. I think it fits beautifully in our living room, don't you?

(As you can see on the table, I've been addicted to Bones lately! Quite an interesting show. )

My mom has gotten me into knitting these past few years and I really do enjoy it! And a few weeks ago I had a chance to put that knowledge to good and help someone out. A friend of ours has an old friend in Colorado whose 8 year old daughter was diagnosed with neuroblastoma cancer about a month ago. So my friend wanted to send her a gift package and she asked me and some other ladies from church if we would make something to give to this girl. My mom and I got together, found some girly yarn and knitted her a matching scarf and hat set. Unfortunately I only have a picture of the scarf (since I made it) and I only had about a week to make it, so it's nothing fancy, but I think she'll like it!

And that's what has been going on around here (beside the usually work and such). This next month and a half are going to be crazy for me so I might not be posting much. I really do love this time of year, all the festivities, parties, decorations and yummy food!

Courtney

What a WONDERFUL weekend!

This weekend just turned out to be wonderful! Not only did I get a new car and a couch, but got to spend a lovely saturday morning with my darling husband, eating blueberry muffins and just sitting at the table talking. :) I love easy going mornings like that. And to top it all of, listened to a great service at church about the sabbath and resting. Now I don't feel so lazy sitting here doing pretty much nothing!

And here's my "new" car. We bought it from some friends who are moving to Australia and really wanted to get rid of it. Perfect timing for us, 'cause we have been discussing getting me a car for a few weeks now. I love that it's a Jeep (a jeep was my first car) and that it has 4 doors! I also love the freedom I now have to go do whatever I want, whenever I want. Within reason, of course. :)

And here's the couch! Also bought from before mentioned friends. (Thanks Cornelious Family) And of course it's green. ;) This one is in our TV room and now we can actually have some friends over for a movie and have room on the couch for everyone!

My 6th Piercing!

Now, I am not one of those people who have all kinds of weird piercings, but surprisingly I have 6! 5 of them are on my ears and my newest one (number 6) is a nose piercing! I love it! It's something I have been thinking about getting for almost 2+ years and today finally worked up the courage to do it. These pictures are not the best quality, but they'll do.

Gardenias

Gardenias are one of my favorite flowers. I just love the scent, their pretty appearance, and the fact that you can float them! So simple and gorgeous.

In fact, I loved them so much, we used them for centerpieces at our wedding. A few colored marbles, some ivy, a pretty bowl, a mirror and flower petals added some color and made it absolutely beautiful!

Fall BBQing

Our fall has turned out to be beautiful so far! The trees are turning colors and losing leaves and the temperature has been so warm! It's almost like summer. :)

My dad's coworker gave us his old grill and we gave a try tonight! The hamburgers are delicious and it smelled wonderful!

Eli's 23rd Birthday!

A barbeque is the perfect way to celebrate a birthday (or anything!) and Sunday turned out to be a wonderful day for a party!

Me & The Birthday Boy

Playing Geezer Shoes

Devin helping Eli blow out the candles?

I had a great time and I hope everyone else enjoyed it, too!

Somehow I can't remember how faithful He is.

I am always amazed and overwhelmed by God and His faithfulness. Yet somehow I always forget it and think that there is no way I can deal with or get through whatever is going on. My most recent "incident" started yesterday....

I got home from work and decided to check the mail (first mistake!) and of course, they were bills. One was addressed to me and had no return address. I was curious and opened it right away. It was a letter from a collection agency. Being me, I freaked out immediately. The letter said I needed to pay my hospital bill within the next 3o days, and there is no way we just have an extra $1,ooo laying around. I cried. What were we going to do? Why did they send us to a collection agency? Isn't it a law that hospitals have to allow people to make payments? And to top that off, I had only received this bill about a month ago and had sent in a payment (these were the thoughts running through my mind). I showed the letter to Eli and he was just about as confused as me, but he was able to calm me down and tell me that we'll figure it out. The rest of that night I was kinda in a fog. I didn't want to think about it, but it's hard not to. We went to a BBQ for a friend of Eli's and that helped take my mind off it for a while, but it came creeping back up, frustrating me, giving me a headache. During this time, I did pray. But I think a part of me wasn't really into the prayer. All I could think about was how horrible this was, we're going to be in debt for years, etc. My mind always runs to the worse case scenario. Before we went to bed we prayed about it and I felt calm and was able to sleep. My darling husband told me that he would call the agency in the morning and figure out what was going on. I woke up feeling peaceful and knowing that God was going to get us through this. I have tried not to think too much about it today and I didn't want to bother Eli any more than I already have about it. Especially when he is at work. Well, I just talked to him and apparently the hospital accidently sent the wrong accounts to the collection agency! It was all a mistake! When I heard that, my first thought was "God is amazing!" Here I was freaking out, thinking the worse, and it was just a mistake. God knew that..... I wonder is He trying to get my attention? He is always here for me, will give me the strength to endure, and loves me. Every time something like this happens, He gets us through it. But I forget that. I need to thank Him on a daily basis, but somehow I never think to do that. Maybe that's what He is trying to teach me, to be constantly praising and thanking Him. No matter what is going on.

Wedding Flowers

I had the pleasure of doing the flowers for my brother-in-law's wedding last weekend, July 24th. Unfortunately I only got pictures of the bride's bouquet and throw bouquet, but believe me, everything else was pretty too! For the bridesmaid's bouquets we did orange and yellow dahlias with plumosa, variegated pittosporum and some white little flowers that we get from a local grower (I can't remember what they're called). And then the boutonnieres were orange roses with plumosa (the groom's was a yellow orchid to match the bride) and the corsages were a mixture of daisies, carnations and roses.

The Bride's Bouquet: white asiatic lilies, orange roses, white hydrangea, and yellow cymbidium orchids with some plumosa.

I love the way it turned out! The ribbon we used to wrap it was like burlap, complimented it nicely.

Throw Bouquet: yellow-y/orange dahlias, orange spray roses, white hydrangea, solidaster, with some plumosa.

Hand Tram

Alaska is seriously one of the most amazing places on earth! We have mountains, wild animals in our back yards, crazy combat fishing, and beautiful almost unworldly forests and waterfalls. Don't believe me? Take a look at these pics from a hike we went on a few weekends ago.

Location: Girdwood, Alaska

This is the Hand Tram. Some one has to pull you across or if you're like us, you pull yourselves across.

Crossing over the river. I have no idea how high up we were.

Gorgeous!

This place reminds me of The Lord of The Rings, so beautiful and almost unbelievable.