'Tis the season

Well Thanksgiving has come and gone faster than the speed of light...this whole year has flown by that way! My Christmas skills are needing to be amped up a little bit now that Evelynn is getting older and she is so into decorations! I actually need to pull out more than stockings. 

This year I pulled out the boxes and Evelynn got so excited! So I pulled the totes out, put on the Sufjan Stevens Christmas album, and let Christmas explode all over our apartment. 

And with Christmas comes the tree. This year I wanted to do something different. I knew our apartment was too small to find some nook to put a tree for a few weeks. Then came Pinterest! I saw a picture of a tomato cage wrapped in lights. I fell in love and immediately decided that would be our tree this year. So I went to and called a couple stores with no luck - duh! if I gardened I'd know that now is not the time to be buying tomato cages and that they wouldn't be in stock! So I texted a gardening friend to see if she had one I could borrow. Score! I picked up the "tree", wrapped it in lights, and we hung our ornaments and topped it with the star. I love it and would almost do this every year!  

I also knew that I really wanted to do an Advent Calendar with our family. So after the dust settled from the decorations and the totes were stashed away, I started working on my Advent Calendar. This will come in another post...yes, it gets its very own post!

Lord willing, this is the beginning of a new start with the blog and I. 

the time has come...

i need to get back on this thing... 

so much is happening:

* evelynn is growing *

* we moved to WA *

* the Lord is moving in our new church *

* and some other things *

i am really trying to dust off my blog, revamp it, and get back to business.

bear with me...

- sweetwater

march in pictures

[reading to her kitty]

[just driving with mama]

[playing with the shaddix girls - basically her older sisters!]

<3

starting where i left off

so now that i have dusted off the blog, i'm going to sort of start where i left off when i posted our family pictures...in DEC!!!

we headed to cali for christmas again. and we were all excited for evelynn this year knowing that she would be more into presents and fun stuff since she was a year older. and boy were the presents waiting. tia and abue spared no expense! :] we dont spoil her too much at christmas since everyone else takes care of that for us. she even got this massive stocking that was taller than her...

[the said stocking]

[the family.]
[ love that we're all wearing similar colors. notice the little one slowly fading.]

[and she's faded! but we smile on.]

we stayed out there through christmas and into the new year. we weren't sure how evelynn was going to do or if we should have her stay up til midnight. so we went with it and just waiting to see how she would so. she lasted! stayed up, happy new year, blew horns, and ta-da, she made it! good times!

[happy 2011 from the dosers!]

we were able to drive out to san jacinto to visit steven's great aunt irene. she is the sweetest lady every...and makes the best fudge! evelynn loves to visit her too.

so yeah, after the holidays we made the trek back home to utah. in january we celebrated evelynn's half birthday. yeah we are those people. we've made her a little cake and get her a little present on her half birthday ever since she was born. it's something fun for us to do - one of those little traditions she'll always remember.

[licking the frosting that's colored orange and purple for dora]

and here is just some pure cuteness for you to enjoy...

[out like a light with her stuffed animals]

[loving her rain coat (and boots) from grammy dawn]

thanks for getting through this first installment of the great catch-up of 2011!
<3

loser...

yes, i'm talking about myself.

i finally got back on to blogger to catch up on some old blogs. and it just made me realize i have SOOO much to catch up on here...hopefully over the next week or so i can post a couple new things on here. there is so much going on in the mendonsa dungeon (dungeon cause we are currently living in a good friend's basement!).

<3

my, oh my... [TONS of pictures]

how time has flown. we recently took family pictures. it's become sort of a tradition to do our family pictures the weekend after thanksgiving when the leaves have turned yellow and are falling. so we hired our lovely friend shannon powmargo (her flickr site) to do our pictures again. we had done our first set of "family pictures" in november of 2008; here's the post with those pictures. we didnt do them in 2009 because we headed out to cali for thanksgiving, but we remembered to do them this year. probably cause i didn't want to be the bad mom and not take pictures of my child.

for just a quick comparison before the reveal...this boggles my mind! my, how pictures seem a little bit more difficult to take when there's a 16 month old involved!

[november 2008]
[november 2010]

now on to the pictures...

hope you enjoyed! don't blame the carpel tunnel on me! :]
xo

so lame...(lamer without pictures!)

so i havent blogged in about a month and a half...since sept 24th. what the heck! i feel so behind...

but a lot has happened since then. i wish i could type it all out and wiggle my nose to make pictures appear and be done with it. but thats not how it works in real life. so youll just have to be patient.
we moved in early september into a friends basement (to get caught up and get ahead in life) and our internet connection has been off and on...nothing real consistent. so needless to say, this is why blogging has been sparse. all our pictures and what nots are on our computer. and no internet means no blogging. the internet should be good to go (as it is right now) so i shall get caught up with things...like evelynn walking, birthday party details (yes, her party that was in JULY!), halloween, couponing fun and other random stuff.
miss you all!

xoxo