reunion

she is too cute not to share! she grew so much (look at those ears!!) while we were away, but we are back and ready to love on her! hope everyone enjoyed their holiday! be back soon to share arizona pics.

enjoy!

hope you are enjoying this lovely, relaxing time of year!

happy holidays!

tomorrow we leave to meet my mom, step-dad, and brother in phoenix for christmas...we are really excited to see them and the sun, but i am SERIOUSLY sad about leaving Olive. i am so in love with her! i am sure it will be fine and we will both survive, but it is bringing on some serious anxiety! she is still going to remember me, right??

the bright side is that i will be getting some much needed sleep (finals + new puppy have made it rough!) and come back all refreshed...i am sure everyone in this household would appreciate that!

these are pictures from our walk yesterday...the missouri winter brown is coming on...oh joy! really though, we had fun...we thought we were taking olive for a walk, but she was more interested in a nap all bundled in my coat.

i am sure i will be poking in occasionally over the next few weeks, but if not Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!! how the heck is it almost 2010?!

can't get enough...

we've been just hangin' out with baby girl...napping or trying to get a little done when she naps and drinking lots of coffee to cure the constant sense of impending doom that is a result of puppy induced sleep deprivation.

she is sooo worth it though! we are trying to get as much of her as we can before we leave her for a week...its going to be SO HARD!

it snowed here a few days ago...it was her first experience and she seemed to like it.

after we got home from an evening out...i was exhausted!

sweet baby likes to play A LOT...she likes the rope toys the best.

when she isn't playing she is being a sweet angel. luckily my mom sent me some baby blankets she got from a garage sale a few months ago...she loves being all cuddled up.

then when her papa gets home she has a new play partner!

new duds!

Olive has some new duds!

our girl

Olive
born November 5th, 2009
today 6 weeks old . 4lb 11oz

we are head over heels!

we left at 6am to drive 5hours south to Corning, Arkansas to pick our girl up. it sounds far, but a full day with my husband, no school (finished finals yesterday!), coffee, a beautiful sunrise, and the pure anticipation made it SO.MUCH.FUN!

while driving through st. louis there was a sign for olive blvd. i thought it was serendipitous...

this is our girl.

she was SO good in the car. we were bracing for a long ride home, but she just slept and cuddled the whole way! not even one accident (until we got home...)

her favorite spot to curl up is on my shoulders - must be nice and warm and feel safe, because she goes for it every chance she gets! we found it especially cute when she decided it was most comfortable to sleep upside down up there.

sweet baby girl!

OMG...can i tell you how much i adore this? you can tell how small she really is when she is with him!

such a good girl...all curled up in her bed for a nap!

she does not like to be out in the cold. she does her business and then wines and climbs your legs until you take her in.

how the heck are we going to live without her next week when we are in arizona??

told you...she slept the WHOLE way back.

she is so much fun to play with! her legs are still really uncoordinated so its funny to see her try to get crazy on the slippery laminate floors!



after she explored and ate she was tired so we wrapped her all up for a nap.

if this wasn't enough you can see more pictures of our first day here!

pushing through

we are still alive...just barely. between my finals and G's 12+ hour days in the lab we are hanging on by a thread. the exciting news that is keeping us moving along?? we are, as G says, 'starting a family' by getting a puppy !!!

i am SOOOO excited. the quality of the pictures kind of stinks, but one of those little lovies will come home with us after they are weaned in a few weeks. i am partial to the one in the upper right...he/she looks so sweet! they are half boxer and the other half is a mystery. they were born to a stray mama so we will be giving one a good home. can you believe the cuteness???? i am already so in love...remind me of this when i am cursing while wiping dog **it off our new floors. no, but really it will be worth it!

we aren't sure which one will be ours or if it will be a boy or girl...kind of like having a baby the old fashioned way! any name suggestions?

UPDATE: puppy will be coming home THIS thursday!! yay!

christmas-ized

saturday we continued in the christmas spirit by decorating our house. it was SO.MUCH.FUN!

you see those clips? they are a lifesaver...best $3.50 we've ever spent. took us no time to hang the lights up and with minimal cussing!

so straight. i LOVE it!

sorry. there are a lot of pictures lately. i just LOVE it when we get to do this kind of stuff for the first time together! and with weather like that!

pretty blue missouri sky. now it might snow on wednesday...so weird!

late in the day we ran to home depot to get one more strand of lights and buy wood for my craft room "remodel". have i told you about this?? we are making my craft room into a craft room/guest room. i REALLY want somewhere for people to sleep when they come to visit and i think if we make me something like this plus a dresser/cabinet for my fabric i can totally make it work.

he is cute when we gets a project going and he is good at it...remember??

gettin' the last few up!

its so cute and cookie cutter, isn't it? i never thought i could love a house like this, but i SO do. there already are and there will be so many more good memories here.

he is good to me. he willingly lets me set up the camera balancing it on whatever i can find, set the timer and change all the settings and take 100s of pictures until i get the one i like. so so good.

time to trim the tree!

our fav ornament acting as a topper...i still haven't made/found the perfect one. any crafty suggestions??

with the furniture all re-arranged and a few strings of lights acting as a tree skirt... we're all ready for the holidays!

tis the season

hey! look at me blogging three days in a row...pretty impressive, huh?!

yesterday was beautiful - mid sixties and sunny...would have been nice to have had that instead of mid 30s and windy for our turkey day run, but whatever.

we took the opportunity to get our first missouri christmas tree! last year we were in the middle of uprooting our lives so we missed out on getting a tree, but the year before we had lots of fun at the tree farm.

we went to starr pines christmas tree farm and for a split second thought we could have been in Oregon. but then we looked at the horizon and saw brown. we knew then that we were still in missouri.

seriously! can you believe this weather?! the little tractor takes you out to the trees

all ready with the saw! he is so freakin' cute! i kind of love him. kind of.

ok so. it was a whole new world of christmas tress. no douglas fir or noble firs...kind of insane, right? we persevered, but it was hard. all the trees were either really small or really huge and they all had lots of holes!

this is the winner. he is kind of huge (over 8 feet), but we were getting tired of looking and he is almost perfect.

we had fun taking lots of pictures. it was so nice out! see that vest that i'm wearing...$10 at old navy! no. big. deal.

TIMBER!

i love him.

man woman and tree

all wrapped up and ready....

... to drive off into the sunset! (dang dirty windshield!)