Easter 2012

Easter was a fun time...I was 1 day shy of 39 weeks pregnant. Everyone at church was "concerned" that I would have the baby Easter weekend, or even worse, have the baby Easter morning!! But, as always, God's timing is perfect and our sweet girl held out until we got through all of that. We spent Sunday after church with the Fergusons, again :) Before we headed to their house, we did a little egg hunt with Makaela. Her first one since last Easter she wasn't walking :) There are a few really funny pictures where I'm not in them, but my big ol' prego belly is! Enjoy the laughs :)

January Snow

Back in January Makaela LOVED playing in the snow. She didn't care how cold she was!! We sorta got stuck at our house as the hill we live on was pretty slippery :) We did walk to the Pattersons one day and played with them. Here's a few pictures :)

Christmas 2011

As promised, I'm continuing with the updates :) I should post about Christmas from last year before it comes around this year--which it will before we know it!! Christmas was SUPER fun for us :) A little crazy, but we loved it! After all of the business of Majesty and Splendor, we had a few "slower" weeks before Christmas. Earlier in the fall, my mom had found a great deal on tickets for us to come down. Flying down Christmas day, and returning home the following Saturday (so 6 days total). It was going to be a "whirlwind" trip, but we decided to make it a surprise to all our family so it was well worth it!

Christmas morning, we got up at our normal Sunday time and opened stockings and presents with Makaela! It was so much more fun with her this year as she was older and understood how opening presents worked. Granted, it was around 7 in the morning as we had church later in the morning, so she wasn't completely "with it". :) But we had fun anyway! Church was so much fun Christmas morning!! It was our church's very first Christmas Day service as any of the previous year when Christmas had fallen on Sunday something always prevented church from meeting (IE. no power, too much snow to safely get to church etc). We had a great turn out and enjoyed seeing so many "family" and friends on Christmas!! After church, we headed home, got our car loaded up, and headed to the Fergusons for lunch. I need to take a moment here and talk about the Fergusons. Papa Al and Grandma Sue both work at the church on staff with Nathan. Their son, Tom, and his wife, Gwyn, are good friends of ours with 2 little girls who Makaela LOVES to play with!! Tom is involved in music ministry. Papa Al and Grandma Sue's daughter, Kim, and her husband, Jeff are also good friends of ours! Kim co-leads the bible study I have been a part of and are our neighbors just up the street!! This entire family has become our "surrogate" family up here. We find ourselves fitting right in with them and spending holidays with them. Their family gets together almost every Friday night just to hang out, and we have joined them often--to the point that when they have other people over, we are part of the "family" who is served after the guests :) We love and are so thankful for this whole family and the way they have extended their love and friendship to us and taken us in under their wings while we are away from our family. I know that our families greatly appreciate them as well knowing that their kiddos are in good hands, especially during times of the year when families are together :) Anyway, we love the Fergusons!!

So, we headed to their house for lunch and to hang out before our flight left. They were gracious enough to take us to the airport Christmas day!! We chatted with some of our family and as the asked what we were doing, we were able to tell them that we were hanging out with the Fergusons!! They didn't need to know that we were only there for a short while :) So, we got to the airport, got on our flight, and landed in Sacramento around 8:30. From there, we hooked up with a rental car my dad had provided for us and drove down to my parents (about 3 1/2 hours). One stop for dinner at one of the few places open on Christmas day--Carls Junior :) Yummy Western Bacon Cheeseburger :)

We arrived at my parents just around midnight right after my brother and sister had gotten ready for bed. My sister "knew" (because she's sneaky like that) that we were coming but my brother had no idea!! So, we woke him from having just fallen asleep to surprise him and move his bed to a different room. haha!!

The next day, we hung out and then made ourselves scarce when my brother and sister in law showed up at my parents. Seems like it took them FOR-EVER to come back to the bedroom, only to find us in "their" room :) So all things considered, the surprise came off well!!

We did the same with Nathan's family. His sister's family and his Mom knew we were coming as a friend at church had mentioned that we were staying with them--not knowing it was a surprise. This actually worked in our favor as we had Nathan's sister, Alicia, orchestrate a dinner gathering at Red Robin. She wouldn't tell anyone why she needed them to be there, just that it was really important. So once everyone was gathered, we showed up and they were all SHOCKED!!! We had so much fun surprising our family and hanging out!! Here are some pictures from our time down there :) I'm always horrible about taking the camera out when we are with Nathan's family--I seriously need to get better about doing that!! Merry Christmas! :)

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving 2011 was our first Thanksgiving "on our own". I cooked a Turkey, and we did the whole she-bang with some good friends of ours, the Larsens. We had so much fun!!  I tried doing a makeshift "deep pit" cooking the turkey in the oven for about 24 hours. That worked out great, except the oven turned off sometime in the middle of the night. But all turned out fine, and the turkey was done in plenty of time for dinner--actually a little on the dry side, but definitely not bad for my first one!! While there were only 4 of us (5 if we include Makaela, but her "portions" don't really count toward the meal) we did turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato souffle (a Board, and now Fogde family favorite), ambrosia, croissants, gravy...I mean we really did it up!! As expected, we had TONS of leftovers, but we had great fun prepping the meal and hanging out! After dinner, we headed to the Larsen's Parents for dessert--and thank goodness for another chocolate lover there, there was some chocolate dessert :) I've gotta say, Thanksgiving is my least favorite holiday FOR DESSERTS...pumpkin or pecan pie doesn't really tickle my fancy. I am a daughter after my mother's own heart and will take a chocolate dessert over those without even thinking about it!! So I had some delicious brownies, and some kind of chocolate peanut butter pie. Those are the kinds of thanksgiving desserts I'm talkin' about! :) Anyway, here are a few pictures. Ironically enough, there aren't any pictures with the 5 of us, but I'm sure you'll get the idea anyway :) Happy Thanksgiving (just 9 months late, or 3 months early for the next one!!)

Update--The Understatement of the Century!!

Well, after a long hiatus, and after many reminders that "it's been a LONG time since you've blogged", I decided to return to the blogging world. To call this an update would certainly be the understatement of the year, decade, century...maybe even millennium! So, in an effort to do a little "updating" I will do a few posts with pictures from various events in the last 9 months, and then I will make an effort to keep things up to date a little more. I'm sure our family and friends who are far away would appreciate a few more updates on the girly girls. Sorry for my lack in that!!
So, I will start back at Thanksgiving 2011, then Christmas 2011, some snow fun in January 2012, Easter 2012, BABY NORELLE 2012, and then a few recent summer outings we've taken (once I find the camera to download the pictures :)).

Project whirlwind update--commence!!

Awesome Giveaways

Well, here I am blogging again about some giveaways, but these are seriously awesome! If you ever read my blog, you seriously just have to check out MommyandMegiveaways. They review products sent to them and more often than not, the companies also sponsor giveaways for those products!! So, I was introduced to this by a friend of mine, and I've been relatively hooked! I've won a couple pretty awesome things, not the least of which was Microsoft Word 2010 for our MAC! So, if I haven't convinced you--go check them out! Right now they are doing a fun 12 days of Christmas giveaway (hence the button farther down on my blog). All of the giveaways for this event are A.W.E.S.O.M.E.!! Here are just a few:

Mobi is sponsoring a giveaway for their digital Mobi Cam baby monitoring system. This little trinket is valued at $229 and could be won for free!! (if you're not at least curious about this blog by now, you're crazy!!)

ZVOX is sponsoring a giveaway for a Z-base 555 Stereo System!! This is a $399.99 value!! It is a surround sound with no external wires or speakers etc. This is a huge offer!!

Angeles is sponsoring a giveaway for a their crib which has the following features:

1. It is fully compliant with the NEW December 2010 safety guidelines!!! That is the most important thing for you to know. This crib is safe for your children.

2. It has a 5 year warranty.

3. BONUS! It comes with a mattress.

4. It meets or even exceeds the 16CFR1632 and 16CFR1633 flammability standards! (I told you this crib was safe)

So cool!! They also did a giveaway a little while back for a little Trike and they have tons of other great looking products!!

Scentsy, which is not part of the 12 days of Christmas event is also doing a giveaway. I have a scentsy warmer and I LOVE IT! It has been a great way to make our house yummy without the danger of fire and without me having to bake something :) This consultant is giving away a warmer and a scented bar to go with it! This gives you an idea of their typical daily giveaways!

At any rate, I'm obviously hooked! Who doesn't love free useful things?? So one of the ways I can boost my entries is to blog about the giveaway, but even more than that I want to share this wonderful blog with those of you who read this! I'm sure we're all bargain shoppers and what better bargain than brand new and free?? So, check it out at your own risk of complete addiction :)

A Mighty Fortress is Our God

I've been wanting to post this for a while now, just didn't seem to find the time to sit down and do it. But, since I'm relaxing at grandma and grandpa's and Makaela is sleeping (yes, still sleeping at 5:30) I thought I'd take a quick minute to do this post. We sang an arrangement of this song last month in choir--correction--the choir sang an arrangement and I played piano. That whole accompaniment thing is still a stretching experience for me, so the Lord must still have more He wants to teach me through it. Anyway, as we were singing first service, I was completely overwhelmed (to the point of tears which is not necessarily the best thing when you're trying to play the piano) by the goodness and greatness of our God!! I wasn't the only one, and it is always so encouraging and convicting to my heart when the spirit moves so greatly within!! So, I wanted to share the words because they are so powerful and God used them to speak deeply to me.

"A Mighty Fortress"

Our God is a consuming fire, a burning holy flame, with glory and freedom;

Our God is the only righteous judge, ruling over us with kindness and wisdom;

And we will keep our eyes on You, we will keep our eyes on You.

A mighty fortress is our God;

A sacred refuge is Your Name.

Your kingdom is unshakeable;

And with you forever we will reign.

Our God is jealous for His own, none could comprehend His love and His mercy;

Our God is exalted on His throne, high above the heavens, forever He is worthy;

And we will keep our eyes on You, we will keep our eyes on You.

A mighty fortress is our God;

A sacred refuge is Your Name.

Your kingdom is unshakeable;

With you forever we will reign.

A Mighty Fortress is our God!!"