Our Unofficial Christmas Eve

Well, once again I had to work on the holdiay so we had an unofficial Christmas Eve with Dab & Debs family on Saturday December 22nd. We had a very delicious dinner that had a little bit of everybodies traditional Christmas dinner. My contribution, that Steven actually ended up making, was Grandma Wilsons cranberry salad. (Thanks Grandma for the recipe, it was great!)

After dinner it was time to open gifts....


Pictured: Satchel & Preston trying to get Satchels present open.
Steven sitting on Dylans new bean bag.
We have to say Thank You to Dan, Deb, & the boys for always having us on the holidays, what would we do without you?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

This is the first year since we've been married that we have a house to put lights on and a full size Christmas tree, it's a whole new experience for us! However, for some silly reason we decided to put up our Christmas lights outside in the middle of a snow storm. Granted not the smartest idea we have ever had, but it wasn't to bad. Of course I started the process, but Steven soon took over to correct my mistakes and my sagging lights. In the end it all turned out ok, and even looks decent.

Thanksgiving

I apologize for not posting our Thanksgiving pictures sooner, it's been busy. Anyhow, I had to work Thanksgiving night, but Dan & Deb were kind enough to have a late dinner so that I could attend. Although we missed being home, we had a pretty good Thanksgiving celebrated with our family and friends here in South Dakota.

Halloween!

Aren't we just the sexiest couple you've ever seen! We can only hope we'll be this cute 60 years from now. Well as you can tell we had some fun dressing up this year for Halloween. Our small little branch here in Vermillion had a Halloween costume party & we thought we'd show our support! Of course the other costumes there were no match for this get-up & we walked away with 1st place for best costume!

It was about a 2 1/2 hour process of applying liquid latex and theater makeup to get us to look this good. Steven's theater makeup class really paid off. It was my first and last experience applying latex all over my face and neck. It was very uncomfortable, and I imagined it felt something like having glue poured all over your face and letting it harden. We endured our humorious, misery for close to 6 hours before the true torture of taking it off occured, which we won't go into.

The adorable Workman boys in costume! From left-to-right: Preston-hobo clown, Dylan-zombie, Satchel-currently spiderman (he was also a ninja turtle earlier in the day).

Halloween Dinner & Carving Pumpkins

We had a Halloween dinner with Dan & Deb's family that included everything from pumpkin casserole, mummy dogs, and witches brew! The dry ice was a huge hit with the kids!


Let the carving....and eating raw pumpkin begin. Yuck!

Steven is a little scary when he's got a knife in his hand!

Aren't they cute! Satchel & Preston showing off their parent's...I mean their handywork.
Everyone's pumpkins lit up.

I have to admit that I like my carving the best, how can you not like Dracula after reading the Twilight series. Steven's pirate ship turned out pretty cool too though.

Last Weeks Tornados

On October 17th Steven & I babysat Dan & Deb's boys for the evening. Steven had been promising them for awhile that he would make "Tornados" with them & it turned out this was the night. For those of you who don't have a clue what "Tornados" I'm talking about, here's an explanation. You create a "Tornado" by taking two empty 2-liter bottles, fill one with water and add food coloring to make it look cool, then make a hole through the center of each lid, put the empy bottle upside down on the filled one, tape together where the lids meet, and when you flip the bottles over you will see a "Tornado" when the water leaves one bottle and fills the other bottle. There you have it, now you can all make one of your own. It was a pretty simple project, but full of entertainment and the boys loved it!

Above from left-to-right: Satchel, Preston, Steven, & Dylan

It's always a good idea to do this over the sink.......in case you aren't as good of an engineer as you thought you were. :)

Dakota Days

October 13th was the Universtiy of South Dakota's annual Dakota Days. It is centered around the homecoming game. We realized that living on Main street has its perks because we didn't even have to leave our front porch in order to watch the parade!

Waiting for parade to start.

ROTC carrying the American flag & the USD marching band.

The army marching band & another school marching band.

The theme for the parade was "Life's a Beach" and it had to be incorporated with the homecoming floats.

While our neighbors had a big kegger next door, Steven & I cuddled up and drank our hot chocolate. I think we had the better time. :)

School & Work

It seems as though our life is very repetitive at times. Steven goes to school and I go to work, and so it goes day after day. Not that it is a bad thing, but it does get old after awhile. Midterms are coming around for Steven and he has not enjoyed studying for them, nor am I fond of constantly quizzing him. However, if it's a way for us to spend time together and helps him pass his classes I can't complain to much. As for work it is starting to pick up a little more now that it is getting colder, all our little respiratory kids are coming back. Although this means I'll actually get to start working most of my shifts, I am not thrilled about going through another winter here. I spent way to many nights stuck at the hospital with no way to get home. For this reason I wouldn't mind living in Arizona or Texas next year. Anyhow, that's life for us right now.

Tonsillectomy?

Well it's official, Steven will be getting his tonsils out. On Monday he went to see an ENT specialist to see if his symptoms were bad enough that he'd need them taken out. They told him that it would just keep getting worse so he might as well just get them out now. His surgery is scheduled for December 24th, yep we are going to have a fun Christmas! It'll be my first Christmas off in 3 years, and my poor husband will be recovering from surgery.

Our Vacation to the Blackhills

Before Steven had to start back to school we decided to take a little trip out to the western side of South Dakota, or as I now call it...the pretty side of South Dakota. On the way out there we made a few stops that included the Corn Palace, Wall Drug, and the Badlands.

Our first night we had planned to camp at the Badlands, but we arrived there earlier than planned so we decided just to go straight out to the Blackhills. By the time we got to the Hills it had begun to storm, so instead of setting up our tent in the pouring rain Steven's aunt & uncle were kind enough to let us camp out on their floor. The pictures above show the Blackhills Playhouse and our campsite.

Everyday was filled with places to go and things to see. We visited the Crazy Horse monument, Mount Rushmore (which was my favorite), Jewel Cave-the 2nd largest cave in the world, Bear Country, Reptile Gardens, the wildlife loop, and we even got to watch a play at the Playhouse.

We spent our last day in the Blackhills hanging out at Center Lake, and at our campsite by the fire. It was a really packed trip, but it was a ton of fun. Plus, after living in South Dakota for a year I finally got to see some of it's historical sites!