and so it begins...

Guess I spoke to soon about the snow. The day momma and deddy left this is what I woke up to...

Goodbye nice chilly days, Hello negative temperatures and snow shovelling. At least it feels like christmas!

Visit from Mississippi!!!

Hope all has been well for everyone during this busy time! November has been a really busy time for me. Between getting ready for christmas, baby, and working, I have had no time to feel lonely at all! Momma and deddy came up for Thanksgiving/Deddy's birthday this past weekend. We had a blast! Here are a few pictures :) We painted the Nursery! View 1,2,3 the room during the painting process. It went from a white room...


















After we painted! If you look closely, the two framed watercolor pictures flanking the window were a baby present from my so talented sister! I gave her a scrap of fabric leftover from the curtains I made and she painted pictures for me to match the colors! The room is still a little barren, but we are getting there!














We also decorated for christmas!

If you can't tell, I'm getting huge!

We did some christmas shopping, cooked and ate alot, celebrated deddy's birthday, and worked on the nursery some. The weather was gorgeous, not too cold with no snow, and we couldn't have asked for a better time. It was a great visit :) Also, a picture of our sweet baby :) Its kind of fuzzy because its a picture of a picture, but you can see the eyes, round cheeks, and pointed chin!

Baby showers and visits!

I have been so lazy at posting here. Things have been SOOO busy as usual. I have had Dale home for about a month now, so we have been nonstop with projects, visits from friends and family, working, and hunting (for Dale). Lots of pics to follow!

Sunrise in beautiful ND. Dale getting ready to take some ducks!

More gorgeous outdoors. Even though the horrendous snow comes with a vengeance in the winter, this part of the country is absolutely beautiful!

Its been GREAT with Dale home. He's done so much for getting things ready for the baby, not to mention the company has been good :) He has been hunting alot as well. In all his free time he's managed to bring home all kind of wild game. ANd luckily, the weather has been nice so he's done all the cooking on the grill. His grilled duck will melt in your mouth!

Dale and Adam with an antelope

Dale's first deer to take with a bow! He shot it from 40 yards away!

Kim, Brad, Momma, and Micah came to visit!!! We had so much fun! Brad came to hunt a bit with Dale and Kim, Momma, and Micah came to be at my first shower! I know its a bit early for a shower, I'm only about 6 months pregnant, but some friends wanted to do it now, and the timing worked out perfect for them, so we had a blast!

He's such a sweet happy baby!

I can't get enough of this cuddy man! You can see what I did for a majority of the visit!

My Awesome baby shower!

All the girls!

Dale made an appearance at the end, these were his two favorite things from the shower (you'l notice its camo!)

Belly Shots! Starting to get a bump!

random assortment of happenings

Dale has been home for a few weeks now and its SOOO good to have him back. We've been up to all kinds of things, the usual with work, house projects, catching up with friends, and getting ready for the winter. We keep getting snow advisories, but to date, no snow yet!!! Hope it will hold out for a bit longer. It has been cold and rainy, but the temps haven't dropped below freezing yet.

Gummi bear wilds is growing! I'm almost 22 weeks now now Our baby is about the size of a banana! The girls at work took this pic. One of the perks of working in labor and delivery - getting to see your baby pretty frequently on the ultrasound! We are still waiting until delivery to find out the sex of the baby, so for now its still just gummi bear wilds.

Look at these fools! We went to an Octoberfest german party the other night. Dale and I obviously missed the memo on the dress attire! Love these guys!

So we have been busy! As usual, we are alway doing projects around the house. Dale is FINALLY home!!! Since he's been home, we have been tending to things around the house. Here is one of our latest projects - dealing with two sink holes after a huge, 2 week long rain storm. We had to dig up the retaining wall that dale built, add more dirt, then rebuild the wall. Not fun! In other good news, I mowed the grass for the first time since we've been in North Dakota! We have a yard!

So thats about the end of my random assortment of pictures. My next entry will be much more organized with a purpose! I vow to get better about taking pictures

So long Minot, Minocqua or Bust!

There are always things to do around the house. With a new baby coming, I have been in full gear hunting garage sales for baby furniture, scouting out the fabric stores for curtains and crib bedding, refinishing some of that furniture I found, in addition to general "fall cleaning to make way for the precious bundle we are expecting. Not that I will never have time to myself again, but I have been trying to make the most of this solitary time by being productive around the house, and doing things like deep cleaning/organization that will probably fall by the wayside once I have someone else depending on me. I have been keeping myself busy! Not that I don't appreciate time to myself every now and then, life had begun to get a little bit lonely and depressing. Of course there is the daily grind of work, my constant "projects" working around the house, and dinners with friends. But, daily life had gotten a bit stale. Staying in this town too long by yourself can quite possibly make you crazy. (thank goodness I haven't been snowed in yet) It was time to get out. So, I took a roadtrip with yours truly for company and trucked it across Minnesota into Minocqua, Wisconsin to see some friends. Best friends really. Dale and I had some wonderful friends when he was stationed in Columbus that we hung out with all the time. We were all newlyweds together and had so much fun cooking out and going out. Amber and Nate were SO much fun. Dale and I roadtripped across the United States to go to their wedding. Anyhow, they are living in Italy now, and we haven't seen them for 2 years! They had chosen Dale and me to be the Godparents and brought the baby to the states for a baptism. So, I packed up my cooler of snacks, filled up the tank, brought tons of books on CDs, and armed with my atlas, drove east. I had SUCH a great time. It was wonderful to get out of the rut of working daily and the usual blah blah. The trip wasn't even that bad, I hadn't seen that side of the US, and its really pretty around Lake Superior. It was so refreshing to catch up with some of our best friends and meet their precious daughter Brynn. Nate has a really big family who were all there in addition to siblings girlfriends, etc. It was one big house party all weekend. I spent the weekend there before heading back west to minot. Here are some of the pics from my fabulous weekend!

This is our Goddaughter, Brynn Isabella (she isn't too fond of her life jacket

Part of the crew my first night there. We ate dinner at a fish house on the Lake!

And this is Nate's Parent's view. They live on the most beautiful lake in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. This is their backyard

The restaurant on the water we ate at. You just drive your boat up to the dock, get out and eat. It was a delicious menu of fried goodies that me and the baby just LOVED

Me and AMBER!!!!! Reunited after 2 long years!

Nate's sweet family: Sister Kylie on the left, Roling (Ben's girlfriend) and Ben

Day 2 - all of us on the boat again. It was kind of chilly and I didn't want to water ski, so I'm wearing regular clothes. (well, that and I don't actually fit into my swim suit, and I was afraid to wipe out on my belly while water skiing, since I do that frequently, so we just watched from the safety of the boat!)

Nate, however, braved the water. This is a picture of him BAREFOOTING! He was pretty pumped with himself for still being able to do that

The fearless Boat captain, Kylie

Nate and Liza, right before Liza nailed Nate pushing him into the water

Amber's entire family came to Wisconsin on Saturday as well for a big cook-out and celebration of Brynn's baptism. This is a cute pic of Amber's mom making brynn laugh

The Girls!

Spending quality time with my god daughter who is looking at the dog sophie (who is beside us) and deciding she is much more interesting than me!

Everyone fishing off the dock where we set up for the bonfire and cookout (can you believe they LIVE here!)

Proud dad feeding his little Brynn Bug before dinner




The campsite before we cooked out - please look at the gorgeous scenery as the sun sets

The girls around the campfire (can you tell with all the smoke!) Suzie (amber's brother's wife), Roling, Amber, then Kylie, Eliza, and me

Everyone talking and eating watching the sunset

Mr. Greg, Nate's dad who prepared most of the delicious feast for us on Saturday Night's cook-out

Cute Roling catching up a storm of fish. Most of the fish were as big as she was, and this was her first time to ever fish!

Giving Brynn a bath - she LOVED it - splashed water all over the kitchen and made a colossal mess!

Saturday was Roling's birthday, so Ben made her a dirt cake

The boy's around the campfire smoking and doing men things. Ben (amber's brother), Nate, and Mr. Dykstra. Mr. Greg in the chair

The girls again


The baptism took place at Holy Family Catholic Church outside! It was GORGEOUS! It was also a beautiful day.

Brynn getting baptised

Far away picture of us at the alter so you can see what the background looked like

Getting brynn dressed up in her special christening dress from Florence, Italy. I'm not sure how she feels about me putting her clothes on

Parents and Godparents, Sans Dale :( I wish so badly he could have been there and he was missed by all, but it was still a wonderful weekend

Thought you needed some updates on the grass front! Pretty impressive huh! Thats me with the grass distributer thingy being a good wife and laying out more seed in the patchy places

Summer Projects

It has been QUITE the busy summer. We were looking forward to lazy summer days, camping on the weekends, roadtrips to Canada - forget that! Both Dale and I have had a whirlwind of a summer! Dale has been so busy with trips in and out of Minot for work, I've been busy working and went to MS for a week, and we've been busy on the yard trying to get things squared away before winter. Yes, for some of you who might be wishing for cooler temperatures and relief from the August sweltering heat, we here in Minot enjoyed a mere week of warm temperatures only to be followed by the usual temps of 60s with strong winds. So while it may be much to warm for some, winter is always in the back of our minds here. Against all obstacles of mother nature to ensure we would not have a yard, we are finally starting to have grass!!! Our attempts to grow a yard have been an entire summerlong process. (I say the word summer lightly, when in reality I am referring to the months, not the temperatures) There were the many attempts to self grade the yard, loads and loads of dumptrucks carrying dirt, a very eventful and painful installation of sprinklers involving a weekend without power and the frying of our garage door opener, as well as having the yard sprayed with grass seed only to have a torrential down pour come the very same day and wash away have the grass seed. This yard has been a thorn in our side for quite some time but finally, FINALLY, I am seeing the beginnings of grass in our yard!!!! Its amazing. We know so much about what NOT to do with a yard full of dirt now. If you find yourself in the same predicament without grass or a graded yard, please see Dale for instructions of how to proceed and you will save yourself alot of money and time!

These were all pictures a few days ago when we finally had things in order, had the grass seed rooted and sprinklers going

Thought you might enjoy seeing the sprinklers in full action.

This is what I came home to the other day!!!! Look really closely at the color of the yard from the before pictures and after - its green!

As you can see, close up its hard to tell its grass, but far away, its definately the beginning of green!

I made another trip to MS as well! My scheduled had gotten messed up and I ended up having a few days off in a row, so even though I had just been to MS to see Micah, I booked a ticket faster than you can imagine and headed back home! It was wonderful of course, with warm sunshine weather, seeing friends and family, and just being off from work in general. Dale had been away from home doing some training in Shreveport, so while I was in MS and so close to LA, he came to see me. We had a fabulous time and I think you can guess by the pictures who I spent most of my time with.

Dinner With Allyn Ann before she leaves Clinton for big-time California!

Taking my main man out for some sunshine

He is the sweetest sleeper

I love his belly!

He's even adorable when he's mad!

In addition to working on the yard, Dale has been busy in the house doing more projects for me. The latests project he tackled was the garage. He built a work bench table and a nice contraption for getting all his tools and shovels and things off the floor. We have a pretty big garage, so previously all of these things were strewn about on the floor and in my walking path. I didn't take a before, but I have an after! Like I said, we have been busy!

Of course with all the projects and being busy at work, we haven't forgotten to take the time to enjoy life. Girls night out is always guarantee for good times, good food, and good drinks (although for me that entailed cranberry juice) We hit up some new places in Minot and other bars we hadn't been too to celebrate my friend Holly's 30th b-day.

Drinks at the Martini Bar

Dinner at 10 North Main - YUM!

After Dinner cocktails at the Wine Bar

2 Pink Lines!

And so we had two pink lines!

The news is out! Dale and I are going to have a baby in February! We were so excited to see the two pink lines, and even more excited when I went to the doctor, who confirmed it, and sent me home with ultrasound pictures of our little gummi bear! I don't know how I feel about having a blizzard baby - I'm sure the baby will be born in a snowstorm. Although, this is probably inevitiable in Minot, because it is snowy at least 8 months out of the year anyway. I feel pretty blessed because I haven't been too terribly sick the first trimester. I have had my weeks where the laundry sat in the hamper for a days without being touched, dirty dishes remained in the sink, and I did nothing but go to work and come home to sleep. However, today I am 11 weeks and I officially felt no nausea today, and haven't lost any digested food in 3 days! Dale has been wonderful at picking up where I left off with cleaning and cooking, and he's been a wonderful strong arm when I feel pukey or dizzy. We feel so blessed with the miracle God has given us and we ask for your prayers for the next 7 months or so for God to be with our gummi bear and keep it safely growing!

Our attempt at capturing the moment when we first found out. Pretty pitiful. Its my phone with the time and date, June 14. It was a Sunday night

Our First baby gift! My sweet Godparents sent us the first official baby gift! It was so fun to have baby things lying around that actually belong to us! Thanks Aunt Sandra and Uncle Terry for ALWAYS remembering us during our special times, even when we can't be close to ya'll!


Dale and I went to the air show this past weekend that he had to work at. I finally got to see the inside of his plane! I also got to see all the amo he carries in the belly. There are a TON of bombs and stuff. This is a picture of us next to 1 of the engines. There are 8 total. The day was gorgeous, 80 degrees, sunny, and not too windy. It was the perfect day to be outside!