Celebrating Chloe Claire!

We had a family party to celebrate Chloe's FIRST Birthday.

She is such a doll!!!!

Bye Bye!

Here's some kisses for the road...

Turkey Time in North Carolina

This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Cheryl and Brian's home in North Carolina. They have 4 very active kiddos, which made for a fun and wild time! Before we arrived, Faye and I received little invitations to a "Fancy Nancy" tea party. We were told to wear our "fanciest" accessories. This was the cutest thing ever! The girls had planned and prepared a whole tea party in our honor complete with treats, games, favors and of course...tea!

The girls made their party plans straight out of the "Fancy Nancy" tea party book. It is TOO CUTE!

It even provides ideas for games such as "Fancy Nancy Freeze Tag". Here I am frozen in my "fanciest" move!

These little princesses are so sweet and such wonderful little hostesses!

While we were having our tea party, the guys (Brian, Doug and the 2 boys) were off having "Man Day", which is what the boys planned. This involved lots of hiking, fire-building and grunting I'm sure.

Brian got a fire pit for his Birthday, so we had a great time sitting around the fire at night. It was so cold, but we snuggled up, visited and enjoyed the warmth of the fire. We also got to roast marshmellows and make S'mores! So fun!

And of course, this little dolly was being cute everytime I looked at her!

In preparation for the Thanksgiving meal, there was lots of cooking going on. Brian is an amazing cook and we enjoyed multiple amazing meals during our time there. I got to help Faye make her amazing apple pie, and so now I know her secrets...as far as making that pie goes at least!

The kiddos at Thanksgiving dinner

Doug and his two best gals!

Our wonderful hosts, Brian and Cheryl...What a wonderful time we had at your home. Thanks for all that you did to make it such a fun and memorable time for us. We love you all so much!

Steffens-Gobble 2009

I did a dreadful job of capturing this very fun event! Each year, we celebrate Thanksgiving one week early with Doug's Uncle Russ and Aunt Linda and their sweet family. We had such a wonderful time, enjoyed amazing food and sweet time with family!

Sweet Chloe is ONE!!!

Has it really been a whole year since God blessed our family with this precious bundle of love?

It seems like it was just yesterday that we were waiting (im)patiently in the hospital for her to be delivered...

and now she's a one year-old!
Two things are true: Time flies when you're having fun...

AND...We love you, Chloe Claire, with all of our hearts!!!

Happy First Birthday, Sweetheart!

Happy Oink-o-ween!!

Most of you know that I married a pretty funny and creative guy. Not only that, but he LOVES any reason to dress in costume. So it's no surprise that about a month before Halloween, he was already making plans for our costumes. Here's what he came up with...

The Swine Flu!!!!

You know I must love this man ALOT if I would agree to wear a pig nose that makes the "oink" sound around in public! Just kidding...you know I loved it! We had a great time, and got alot of laughs along the way. We went to my sister's house for dinner and trick-or-treating. It was a great time!

We were there mostly to see the cutest duck ever...

and her big brother, Spider-Man! Funny story on that note. Brock LOVES Spider Man. Well, I guess that growing up in a family of all girls, my sister never learned that there are 2 Spider-Men. There's a good one AND an evil one...who knew?

Well apparently everyone, but us. When Allie got to the store with Brock to pick out his costume, she said, "Look Brock, there's two options...you can be Red Spider-Man OR black Spider-Man!"

He chose black.

And therefore, he was called "Evil Spider-Man" by many passersby.

He did NOT find this amusing at all.

I didn't take enough pictures, but we sure had a GREAT time!!!

Grandpa Steffensrud

Last weekend, we traveled to Pleasant Hill, California for Doug's Grandpa's funeral. Grandpa Steffensrud had been sick for awhile, and finally got to go home and be with the Lord. He was such a wonderful man...witty, charming, smart, a total flirt, loving and most of all a person who truly loved God and his family.

Our trip was somewhat of a whirlwind, and I didn't get nearly as many pictures as I wish I had. I did want to share a few from the funeral service itself as it was such a special and meaningful time. Since Grandpa served in the US Army, military honors were awarded at his funeral serive.

If you've never seen this as part of a funeral, it's amazing. Two officers come in and do a ceremony that involves unfolding and folding of the US Flag. Taps is played, and it's very solemn, but so powerful. What we were not expecting at all was that the flag would be presented to Doug! It was incredibly emotional and wonderful. The flag would have been presented to Doug's Dad, Dick, if he were still alive. Doug received it as the eldest of the 4 Steffensrud grandsons.

Here is Doug pictured with his sweet cousins (The Steffensrud grandsons), Matt, Adam and Michael. As a part of his eulogy, Doug's Uncle Bob had these guys stand and talked to them about the honor of carrying on the Steffensrud name. Grandpa was very proud of his Norweigan heritage and spoke of it often. Uncle Bob encouraged these men to carry the name proudly (even when they have to spell it for people 100 times a day!) as this name has been passed down through generationsof Godly, faithful men.

These are most of the Steffensrud cousins pictured with Uncle Bob and Uncle Russ, Doug's Dad's brothers.

Doug, Cheryl and Faye (Doug's Sister and Mom)
Doug and Cheryl
Here are most of the Steffensrud cousins including 2 of Grandpa's 8 GREAT-grandchildren, Meagan and Ben.

I feel so proud to be a Steffensrud!

What an incredible family heritage that I can't wait to pass on to our children and grandchildren someday! Thank you, Grandpa Steffensrud, for living a life that made your family feel so proud and blessed.

First Day of School!!!

Yes, some people blog about their children's first day of school.
I blog about my husband's first day! Here he is at 6:25 this morning about to leave for his first day of student teaching at Summit High School!!! I know he was a little bit nervous, but he's going to do great! I mean what kid wouldn't love THIS GUY for their teacher?!

Proud of Mr. Steffensrud

Doug got his grades back from the two classes he's taken this summer. I'm so proud of him!!!
He's worked so incredibly hard throughout this school process. On Monday, he starts student teaching at Summit High School. He'll have Jr./Sr. English. I'm expecting this to be quite an adventure!

Hooray For Vacay!!

Several weeks ago, I decided to plan a surprise trip for Doug. He's just finished a ROUGH semester of school and needed a treat for sure. So I did a lot of reading, researching, inter-netting, review-reading and talking to others and finally decided upon a destination...FLORIDA!!

Doug only knew that we were going SOMEWHERE. I didn't even want to tell him that, but realized that he might need to ask for a few days off of work. So, all he knew was to be dressed and ready to go at 6am on Saturday morning. I did all of the packing, so he didn't even know what type of climate to expect!

Since he's so laid back, his reaction to this idea was...

Once we finally got in the car, I felt sure he'd be just dying to know WHERE on earth we were heading. But no, he didn't want to know! He told me to hold out just as long as I could. So, for about 600 miles, it was just me and the map that knew where we were headed to...

Of course, the further east we headed, the more obvious it became that we were indeed going to...

But where? Which city? The beach?...YES!!!

Santa Rosa Beach!

After looking all over, I decided upon this beach which is situated between Destin and Seaside. It's all the beauty without quite so many tourists! Perfect!

The drive to the beach was beautiful...

And then, we finally arrived at the condo I had rented. I found this place online, and was feeling a bit nervous. For all I knew, it was going to be a total dump despite what the pictures posted online portrayed. But it wasn't!!!

It was GREAT!!!!!

The Inn at Gulf Place Unit 210

Complete with an awesome king-sized bed...


jacuzzi tub...

comfy living room...

full kitchen...
And it had the cutest look from the outside too. We were there on the 2nd floor. Awesome balcony with a view of the ocean. This condo was so fun in that it was situated above a bunch of cute shops and great restaurants. All you could want in one place!


The entire goal of this trip was to...

And that we did! Each day was spent like this...

We loved watching the birds, listening to waves and just doing NOTHING!

We took our lunch to the beach each day, and then enjoyed the great restaurants in around the area for dinner.

On the beach at sunset...

This trip was such a great reminder that...

Another great part of this trip was that on the way home, we got to meet with several of Doug's very best friends from college. Walker, Brian and Carla...we LOVED seeing you all! Looking forward to another visit soon!