Pineapple Popsicles

For Christmas, Axton got me this:


It's a Zoku popsicle maker. And I simply love seeing the reactions on people's faces when I tell them that he got me a 'popsicle maker' for Christmas because the first thing that comes to mind for them is some little children's deal where you pour in your orange juice or kool-aid and let them freeze over night. But nope! Not this one!

This popsicle maker is one that freezes popsicles in about 1o minutes, and there are some pretty fancy popsicle recipes from strawberry banana to cookies-n-creme ice cream to cheesecake. You can also add fresh fruits, make layers and swirls, and a different flavored center. And all of the pops are made from scratch! The possibilities are endless, it only depends on your creativity!

We decided to try it out for our New Year's party, so here is the first batch of pops: PINEAPPLE! :)

A Nerf-Fighting, Paso Doble-Dancing, Ham-Passing, Three Christmas Day

Christmas Day started off early (well, it seemed almost TOO early after a super late night before!) with our first of three Christmases that day in Ankeny. Lillyonna was more than excited to try on all her new clothes by immediately stripping down to try on her new Minnie Mouse pajamas and then her pretty Christmas dress! Cael was anxious to open his ginormous box to find a Nerf gun set, which quickly got put to use and there were Nerf bullets flying EVERYWHERE! We also enjoyed a tasty breakfast of pancakes and bacon before getting ready to head out to our next destination :)


Christmas number two was on the south side of Des Moines where Lilly found her Rockin Elmo from Santa and Kara found her electric drumsticks! So once all the presents were open and lunch was being prepared, all the new toys were put to use right away. Lilly spent the rest of the morning jamming out with Elmo and dancing the Paso Doble with anyone who would dance with her, and Kara was drumming on anything she could find :)


Our third and final destination was Grandma Krueger's house that afternoon. Dinner was almost ready, but everyone needed to sample the ham before we got started. Lilly thought this was a fun game, so she insisted a piece of ham be passed through the divider at least ten times :) We filled our tummies with more delicious food (not that we weren't already STUFFED from eating only a few hours prior!) After the gifts were open, we spent the remainder of the evening enjoying each others company as a family, and of course only picking on each other a few times :)

A Very Meinders Christmas

This year for our annual Meinders Christmas gathering we all met at Uncle Joel and Aunt Karen's house in Prairie City for the second year in a row. The late morning was filled with delicious 'brunch' food items and a crazy 'pass the present' game to the story of Jesus birth many years ago. But most importantly it was a time to get together as a family and enjoy each others company and catch up where we had left off the last time we had been together. Oh, and there was rock/tennis ball/football shooting to be done as well :)


Then we were off to the farm for yet another annual Meinders Christmas! The weather was absolutely beautiful with a temperature around 50, so the only thing the puppies wanted to do was run around outside all afternoon! After all the 'kids' arrived (minus Courtney and her husband Justin) we sat down to devour our Christmas meal of turkey, little smokies, 7-layer lettuce, corn & potatoes. After dinner was cleaned up we got the skype date with the Besteman's going and began the present-opening extravaganza together. It was a day filled with great memories and some amazing family :)

Christmas Painting

It has been forever ago that I was painting as many things as I was, but unfortunately our apartment only has so much wall space, so that has definitely been put on 'hold' for the time being. BUT thankfully my mother-in-law had requested me to paint her something for their apartment, and I decided it would make a great Christmas gift for her! She wanted something 'Zebra' with some kind of "lime green accent." So this is what I came up with! :)

A Minute-to-Win-It Christmas

The Christmas season as officially started, and we kicked off this season with a Christmas gathering with Grandpa Chuck, Grandma Linda, Mike, Dawn & Scotty. And of course, there had to be some kind of unusual twist! After our DELICIOUS Christmas dinner we started out with some trivia about Thanksgiving (since we didn't get together for that) and Christmas. Who ever got the most questions correct got to pick their choice of a 2-liter of soda and a candy bar. From there we moved on to a game where we had to try to bounce a ping-pong ball into a cup. Who ever got the most in out of the 3 rounds got a big bucket of popcorn with a $10 Wal-mart gift card attached to it. The next game was with spagetti and pop cans. You had a partner and had to use your mouth and the spaghetti stick to transfer the pop cans to the other end of the counter and stack them like a pyramid. If they fell or your spaghetti stick broke, you had to start over. Who ever finished this the quickest (averaging their 2 rounds) got a prize of a basket filled with goodies like cheese, summer sausage, crackers, jelly & candy bars. BUT if you didn't want the basket, you could trade it for a $20 bill (which my little brother did!) The last game used empty pop cans and plastic plates. You had to stack them as fast as you could starting with 1 can on the bottom, then a plate, then 2 cans, a plate, 3 cans, a plate, and then 4 cans. It had to stand for 3 seconds to count. AJ won this game and got a $25 Casey's gas card! After the crazy games, we opened our gifts and enjoyed some dessert before heading back home. Here are some photos of the madness! :)

You'll Be Missed

Well, that day finally came. I honestly thought I would end up killing him while AJ was deployed, but he managed to stay part of our little family for nearly 2 years! But it was his time to go, and we'll miss him. It was fun to watch him grow, listen to him chirp and sing (rather loudly sometimes!!), watch him transform from a blob on the window during the day to a frog at night, and watching him hunt his crickets. Alfie, you will be missed! You were pretty much the coolest frog around :)

Potato Salad

WELL, now that it's been basically forever since I've posted about a new recipe I've tried, I figured I should get back on track! I have 4-5 new recipes I'm going to try out this week, so hopefully it will be positive and delicious!

To the potato salad. I've made potato salad before, but it was literally me throwing together what I believe belonged in a potato salad and just completely made it up. But it always seemed like a little something was always missing no matter how many times I changed things up. So, in deciding that perhaps my cooking skills aren't as creative as I would like, I was on the hunt for a recipe to try! Prior to picking this recipe I looked through all the ingredients to be sure it was something we would even like, obviously! I used THIS recipe.

And now for the results: the chopped goods, the mixed sauce, and the final product!


Final verdict: successfully delicious :)

Vikings-Raiders

Axton was selected to represent his deployment Unit at the Vikings-Raiders game on November 20th. He had to report to Camp Dodge by 0415 to get on a bus and ride up to Minnesota, so it was a pretty early morning which made for a VERY long day! He returned home around 9pm that night completely exhausted.

Of course, I watched the game on tv to look for him. And after a lot of squinting at the what seemed like microscopic soldiers across the field desperately trying to find him and even texting him asking where exactly he was sitting we were about to give up on seeing him clearly. He and the other soldiers marched out onto the field during halftime where they were recognized, but of course halftime isn't televised! I was beginning to think I was watching this game for no reason! :) But with 51 seconds left in the 3rd quarter of the game the camera zoomed in and panned across the soldiers and suddenly there he was! It was pretty neat, and his uncle was able to record it so that he could watch it once he returned as well :)

Here are some photos from the game:

Christmas Season

And so it begins! The day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas music is everywhere! But this song, "His Favorite Christmas Story" by Capitol Lights is one of my absolute favorites! :)

Thanksgiving

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving has already come and gone and now we are patiently waiting for the Christmas season to arrive as well as the new year. It just doesn't seem like it should be this time of year already! Perhaps it's the fact that it hasn't been unbearably cold just yet and we don't exactly have any snow yet. Either way, time always seems to go by too quickly!

With the holidays comes crazy schedules and trying to figure out which family gatherings we will be able to attend. Being that we have quite the interesting family dynamics between Axton and I, we try to keep things fair as well as see what we can manage between attending Thanksgiving and/or Christmas gatherings. This year we made it to a total of 5 Thanksgiving get-togethers, so we felt we did pretty well! :)

We headed to Prairie City to have lunch with my step-mother's side of the family. It had been quite a while since Axton and I had seen this side of the family, so we felt it was a good idea to make it down for that one that day! That same afternoon we headed back to Des Moines to Grandma Krueger's to have a late lunch/early dinner with the Krueger side of the family. It was an eventful afternoon full of delicious food and Grandma trying to play football...definitely a memory we won't soon forget! We ended the evening by traveling up to Ames to visit Uncle Frank and enjoy some desert!

On Friday Axton and I packed up Tilly and Charlie and headed down to the farm in Leighton. The Van Gorp dinner wasn't until that evening, but we decided to head down early to help out with anything that still needed to be done, try to enjoy some outdoor time (even though it was quit cold and windy!), and plus the dogs LOVE going to the farm since they can run FREE from their leashes...until they started chasing the chickens of course! :) The Van Gorp Thanksgiving was at the Leighton Town Hall and we were able to enjoy getting together as a family and also having some 'out of town' cousins (Andrew, JT, & Kristen) there with us as well!

After getting to sleep in a little on Saturday morning, we headed to Grandma and Grandpa Van Gorp's to watch the Iowa State football game on tv while also enjoying some leftover Thanksgiving goodness and family as well. Even though ISU ended up losing, they did play some great defense! Saturday evening we headed to Oskaloosa for the Meinder's Thanksgiving at Oskaloosa Christian Grade. It was an evening of great food, great family, and some basketball as well.

We had a GREAT Thanksgiving and it's times like these that we are reminded how incredibly blessed we truly are. We have great wonderful families, and so many things to be thankful for! And it was definitely an AWESOME blessing to be able to have Axton HOME this year for Thanksgiving and to enjoy these holidays WITH him :)

Keeping Warm

The temperatures are slowing falling and the seasons are slowly changing. The leaves have lost nearly all their leaves from the crazy wind, and the snow has even fallen. We turned our clocks back and now it is dark at 5pm. The desire to be outdoors has turned into a desire to wrap up in a blanket and just stay inside. This all only means one thing:

Winter is coming.

And with winter comes the cold. And I'm not just talking about the cold outside, I'm talking about the cold inside. I'm wondering and what point I need to put the plastic up on the windows here in our lovely home before I have to shiver at the thought of watching the blinds blowing in the breeze so easily flowing through our horrible windows.

The other fun part is keeping the little dogs warm. Tilly tends to get cold easier than Charlie has she doesn't have quite as thick of hair as he does. But we try to help this problem by keeping the blinds open during the day so she can nap in the sun (which she LOVES to do) and we also let them style their awesome sweaters. Last year I made camo sweatshirts for the dogs to support AJ while he was deployed, but this year they are sporting some sweaters as they (aka Charlie) out-grew their sweatshirts! I'll have to make some new ones for them sometime, but not until after I actually have a sewing machine and don't have to make them completely by hand! Until then, these will do :)

The First Snow!

Well, as much as we were denying it would actually happen, it finally did. It snowed. And while it wasn't unbearably cold outside, the snow did somehow manage to stick on the ground. We got about 1.5-2 inches, but it will all disappear as temperatures are still supposed to be in the 50's this week :)
I obviously had to catch the dogs and their reactions to snow because they are quite different from each other and it's pretty funny to watch. Tilly absolutely hates the snow. She never wants to go outside and she just stands there (thus the reason why her picture is clear).
And then there is Charlie. He LOVES the snow. It's basically like giving catnip to a cat-he goes NUTS (and this is why his pictures are blurry and/or he's flying in the air). The second picture is my favorite :)

Trick-or-Treat

For Trick-or-Treat night, AJ and I went to Grandma Krueger's to help pass out candy to the kids while our little brother went from house to house telling his joke. This year's joke:

What do ghosts put in their cereal? Boo-berries :)

And since everyone else was all dressed up, we didn't think it would be fair if the dogs couldn't have a little fun too. SO, they had their own costumes! One might think dressing dogs up is pure torture. But they sit quite still when you are dressing them, and when I get their costumes or sweaters [[in winter of course]] out, they want them on! So yes, it was FUN for them too :)

Tilly was a frog.And Charlie, he was Batman.They were hilarious.And they LOVED getting to hang out with Cael :)

Pumpkin Carving

Being this year is the first year Axton and I are actually TOGETHER for all the holidays and changing of seasons, we are taking full advantage of such! We decided to carve a couple pumpkins this year to bring with us to Grandma Krueger's to put on her front porch as decoration while all the trick-or-treaters came to visit.

The ooey-gooey pumpkin guts! We saved the seeds and baked them in the oven afterward. They were delicious :)Tilly and Charlie were extra curious about what was going on in the kitchen. They had fun watching, but I think they had more fun sneaking in and stealing whatever pieces they could and running away to eat them where they couldn't be seen!AJ decided to be creative with the top of his pumpkin. He definitely started to regret that idea when trying to actually get the top off!The final products: a frog (obviously Kayla's) and a face without any skin and a few stitches.
They looked pretty awesome all lit up too :)

Homemade Wall Art

Well, it's official. Pinterest has ruined me. I now have more ideas for Do-It-Yourself home decor than I really need or have room for! But I did have an empty wall that really needed to be filled and a free evening, so I decided I could do this one project...for now :)

I started out with 4 empty canvases (12in x 12in)

I picked out 4 sheets of scrapbook paper while at the store that I wanted to use for my project as well. From there, I used Mod Podge to adhere the scrapbook paper to the canvas, and also to give it that 'glazed' finish.

While the paper liked to move around a bit and some of the edges took a bit more effort to keep down than others, I was very happy with the finished product. I hung the 4 canvas together spaced about an inch apart. The whole project took only about 1 1/2 hours to complete, and it is definitely something I will do again but with other themes for different rooms :)

A Besteman Wedding

On October 8, 2011 my little sister, Courtney, married Justin Besteman. The wedding took place down in Bradenton, Florida and it was a wonderful day to be able to participate in and be present for my little sister marrying the love of her life. The theme of the day: Gears of War.

Here is a glimpse of the big day: