Merry Christmas!

Hope you and your family had a wonderful day. We celebrated on Christmas Eve in Atlantic. Here are a couple of pictures from our celebration.

Us in Dubuque in front of the tree at my house

The whole DeArment Family

Reese and Aunt AngieThe girls learn about baby JesusMatching Pajama Pants for the whole family

Jason gets a new suitcaseReese thinks the scooter is for standingAddie knows what to do!

Time to go home

Jason and his Best Buddy

Jason has a shadow, his name is Garrett Keith and he is 2 years old. He loves Jason. According to his mommy, he asks about Jason all day long. Last night we celebrated Christmas with the Keith family, and I snapped a few pictures of the best friends. Garrett will be our ringbearer in our wedding, but if he were a few years older, he'd probably be a groomsman!Did I mention that Garrett has two big sisters? Adrianna and Alexis will be junior bridesmaids in our wedding. For Christmas, I wrapped up ten dollar bills in huge boxes for their presents. They thought they were getting clothes. What a relief to find cash!

I love that you can barely see Lexi behind the box in this picture!

Happy Birthday, Princess Addie!

Addison Maggie turned 3 years old on Sunday! She was sick with a virus this week but recovered just in time. We celebrated on Saturday with a pizza and princess party. Addie was decked out in her princess dress, light up crown, dangly earrings, and slippers.

The birthday girl with little sister, Reese.

The princess bids her guests farewell.

Jason and the Princesses

Jason came up with a great Christmas idea for my nieces: "Princess" scooters! So he went to WalMart and purchased the scooters on his own and then put them together the other night. I thought it was pretty cute to see Jason, an anti-pink, anti-princess, anti-girly kind of guy slaving over pink scooters for two sweet little girls! Hopefully they won't check our blog and figure out what they are getting for Christmas...hee hee!

"You aren't really going to take my picture, are you?"He even read the directions!

Testing out the first one...

The finished product The unsuspecting future princesses

Christmas Greetings...

Our attempt at a Christmas Picture:

Not bad, eh?
Merry Christmas everyone!

Blast from the not-so-distant-past...

Jason and I started dating in November of 2005, so our first Christmas together was last December. He drove to Atlantic on Christmas day and met my family, spent the night, and drove back to Dubuque the next day. He was so nervous to meet everyone! Truthfully, so was I! My family immediately liked him so the rest is history. It is still amazing to me how quickly things can change in just a short year. This Christmas, we will be spending a full week in Atlantic.
Here is our "first photo" by the tree at the DeArment house.

The tree is up!

I had some help with the Christmas tree from my little elves: Adrianna, Alexis, and Garrett Keith. Jason couldn't help us because he had class. Kimmie made peanut butter cookies while we worked on our masterpiece.

Our Thanksgiving

Jason and I spent a busy but relaxing Thanksgiving weekend in Atlantic, IA with my family. Thanksgiving day was spent with my parents, my brother Jeff, and my brother Nathan and sister-in-law Shannon, and my two nieces, Addie and Reese. We spent the day eating too much turkey, watching football, and playing cards.

On Friday, I spent some one-on-one time with Addie at the movie "Happy Feet"...between the two of us, we almost finished a bucket of popcorn and a bag of M&M's.

Saturday, we headed to Sioux Center, IA for a bridal shower for my cousin Jill. Jason was introduced to my grandma, and several aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was a long day, with a 3 hour drive to and from Sioux Center, but we were glad that we made the trip. I hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving holiday! Time to go Christmas shopping!

Jason watching football

Addie and Reese sharing Aunt Angie's lap

Aunt Angie and Reese

Addie is the princess of the Leaf Parade...at least that is what Grandpa told her!

Reese's funny face

Love those blue eyes!

Shannon thought it would be funny to see
how close she could get to our faces while
taking this picture! Don't be frightened!

Welcome to our new Blog!

I am switching us over from a Windows Live blog to a more visitor-friendly blog here on e-blogger. A couple of friends have blog sites here and I like the format better. I'll be adding pictures and blogs from the other site first, so some of what you see will be a repeat. I'll be updating at this site from now on. Thanks for stopping by!

Wedding Dress Shopping Day!

Last weekend my parents came for a brief visit. Their sole purpose in coming was so that we could go wedding dress shopping! Me, Mom, and a couple of bridesmaids (Jenna, Kim, and Grace) hit the shops for what I feared would be a looooong day. I found the dress that weekend (it didn't take long at all and it wasn't a hard decision) and I am thrilled. Obviously, I won't be posting a picture of the actual dress, but if you e-mail me, I'd be happy to send you a picture of it! We also ordered all seven bridesmaid dresses!

This is going to be fun, right??

With three of my bridesmaids: Jenna, Grace, Kimmie

With Mom

With Jenna

With Grace

With Kimmie