Jump Around

Some shots of our Home visitors jumping on the trampoline (before it was hastily taken away)...

Ian & Connor

David Douglas

Keri Allard

Memories...

Just some of my favorite pictures from the past year that were found on the "uncharged" camera. Enjoy!

My Patio furniture...I was so excited to have a backyard of our own that we purchased it before we even closed on the house! This nice weather we've been having lately is getting me anxious to put out the furniture again so we can once again enjoy our backyard!

Jeremy's parents replicating a picture from our wedding--in the "I've Won" pose that is their trademark! This was in August 2009.

Jeremy was happy to have finally finished changing out the chandelier in the dining room...and the result was well worth it. It's scary to see the mess that we once lived in!

Erin's Baby shower in July, 2009. This is back when we first moved into the house, and I was running on hardly any sleep...now Erin's baby Raegan is here, and SHE is the one getting hardly any sleep!

Our first meal in the new house...Burger King!

Kim and Adam brought Paige (only a couple of months old at that point) to Wisconsin from California! I got to meet her and enjoy time with Kim and Adam back in June, 2009.

The weekend before we moved into our house, we took a "belated birthday dinner cruise" on Laken Monona. It was a birthday gift for my 30th birthday in 2008, however, we just never found the time until a year later! Here is a view of Monona Terrace and the Capit0l skyline from the cruise.

What a great picture of Jeremy on our relaxing cruise!

Connor's 2nd Birthday party in June, 2009...what a cutie pie!

Ian at Connor's birthday party...he looks so grown-up, and that was a year ago! Now he seems even older! :)

My parents and us gave a combined birthday gift to Connor...a Cadillac Escalade! And it even comes with my Mom as a chaffeur!

Jeni brough Katelyn (then 5 months old) to visit in June, 2009. This was my second time meeting her. I just recently saw her again, and the baby that I am holding in this picture is now a little girl!!!

Our friend Terri was an MC for the Wisconsin Women's Health Foundation's Spring Gala at the Capitol, and invited us as her guest. We had such a great time dancing and enjoying the music in the Capitol Rotunda!

April, 2009...for Angie's birthday, we had a fun-filled day in the Wisconsin Dells. We all combined efforts to win enough tickets for Angie to get the "Tiger Rug" (really--more of a blanket)!

Jeremy and I celebrated our 1st Annniversary in Chicago--the site of our engagement. We had some great Wedding Giftcards to spend at Wildfire and Second City, and had a wonderful weekend!

Outside of Second City

We'll be Home for Christmas

So, while the family Christmas celebration wasn't at our house, we still were able to make a lot of Holiday memories this year in our new Home. Here are some pictures of how we dressed up our house to bring Christmas joy to the Nichols' new home in 2009! Our tree in 2009...we had a small snafu where it fell over, but got it back up just in time for our annual "St. Nichol's Holiday party"

Our Stockings were hung by the chimney with care....

And the cookies were ready for Santa...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We were able to get our Christmas decorations up just in the nick of time! The last bit of garland was placed on Monday night--less than 24 hours before the Blizzard of 2009 started!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures taken before the storm, and some of my decorations are now covered by snow. I have big plans to finish un-burying them in the coming days.

I nixed my plan to put lighted garland around all of the columns, because it was looking to be a bit "much"...however, now that some of my decorations are covered, I'm thinking that it might be a good addition!

My only mishap came while putting up the snowflakes on the garage door. I squished my fingers in between two of the doors, and have a lovely black fingernail to show for it...but the outcome of the snowflakes was great! :)

Thanks to my mom for lending us her homemade elves! They are the perfect addition! We didn't have time to make anything of our own, this year, but have big plans for next year.

Please notice the lightbulbs sticking out of the ground infront of the house...

And here is what was left of those lightbulbs after the snow!

Our Candy canes seem to have lost their "Cane" status!

Halloween at our House

This was our first Halloween in our new house! We were so excited to decorate and to hand out candy to all of the kids in the neighborhood!

Trick or Treat!

Some pictures of our house all decorated!

Jeremy with 1/2 of our 2009 Pumpkin Family! We went a little overboard with the candy this year... ...but the kids didn't seem to mind!!! Here is a pictures of my Mom's house this year... someday I hope that our house will look just as cool! Hope that you all had a Hauntingly Happy Halloween!!!

Another new Addition!

On September 11, our good friends Erin and Kevin welcomed their new daughter, Raegan, to the world! Erin is one of my wonderful college roommates, and we are so excited for their family! On October 25, we were finally able to make it to Arlington Heights to meet Reagan. She is quite adorable, and we look forward to watching and sharing in the excitment as she grows up!

Congratulations Kevin and Erin!!!

Fall Foliage? Trip 2009

This year's Annual Fall Foliage Drive was a little different than year's past...mainly, it was missing the "Fall Foliage" part! We went on our drive on Saturday, October 17. We drove up to Steven's Point, WI, before heading West and then back down to Madison. We saw some small pockets of color, but unfortunately, most of Wisconsin didn't change colors until the following week. We still managed to make the best of the drive, though. Here we are at a pretty lake we found on our drive!

We also came across a corn maze and pumpkin patch that we visited last year. While we had picked a bunch of pumpkins in Sun Prairie the weekend earlier, we still managed to find a few more to add to our pumpkin family this year.

Here is Jeremy by a scarecrow. He actually didn't know that this was what a scarecrow was until this autumn! I actually had to explain to a 34-year-old how the "scarecrow" came about!

Our Blog-cation

You may have noticed we've taken a bit of a hiatus from the blog....we've been busy with life and trying to settle into our new home. We hope to better keep up with the blog as we continue to navigate all of the ins and outs of being homeowners!