This is the ice that Scott scraped off of his car the other morning. As you can see, it was between 1 and 2 inches thick!My niece Hannah came over last Friday for a slumber party, and to make Christmas goodies. On Friday night we ate pizza and watched "Bridge to Terabithia," and tried to make toffee but failed because we didn't cook it long enough. On Saturday morning we made cream filled cupcakes and kolaches. Yum!
Sunday we had the Evenhouse family Christmas time at Mom & Dad's house.

Jim, you are the horse! Giddy-up!

Dad got a lovely Braves jacket from Carrie. Go Braves!

Lynn & Doug celebrated their 10th anniversary on Saturday. They said they didn't have a lot of nice pictures of the two of them, so we took a couple. Aren't they a handsome couple!

Rhea wanted Tim & Carrie to wear the bows.

Rhea put on all her new Dora clothes right away, and then put all her other presents into her new backpack and wore that for the rest of the present opening time.

Tim, Carrie, Maggie, & Jim take a snooze on Carrie's new Braves body pillow that I made for her. Tim wasn't sure if he could really sleep on a Braves pillow, but I think he managed. He will just have to learn to like them.

Carrie, Abby, Tim, and Abby's new horse.

Cold & Windows

Starting this afternoon we are supposed to have snow in Des Moines, and horrible ice storms here in Oskaloosa. The forecast said to be prepared for downed power lines, falling tree limbs, and really bad driving. I decided to work from home today. All the schools are letting out early.

It is now almost 1pm, and the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and it is above 10 degrees, which is pretty warm compared to the last few days. I just heard that the snow is starting in Des Moines. It is coming!

Earlier this week I woke up to find that my boiler had quit working! It was -1 degree outside and 40 degrees inside the house! BRRRRR! I got it working again without major repairs, but that thing is so old and inefficient, I will have to make a decision about replacing it some day. I was hoping my house would sell before winter and it wouldn't be my problem any more. That didn't happen. Now I can't really fix it as it would mean being without heat for a few days, and as I'm still living in my house, that is not very convenient. I could do it after we get married, but then I wonder what the point is, as I won't be living in the house to benefit from a new boiler any more. It is just inefficient, expensive to run, and my windows are old and leak.

This is how we generally look when doing anything in the living room:That chair also has a heating pad on it, and seems to be a favorite with my friends.

Yesterday I decided to move some furniture around in the living room...because of the fire place and radiator, it is not really possible to change around the layout of the furniture very much, so I just switched the couch and the chair. I thought maybe the couch would stop some of the air leaking in from the windows. Today I put plastic over the windows as well. I am hoping my house will be warm and toast from now on, without busting the bank!

Party Weekend

Last weekend was a very busy weekend for me party wise. On Friday night we have a "Girl's Night" at Sara Statema's apartment, ate some yummy food, and they surprised me with some fun wedding presents.

"Ooh, massage oil!"

This should fit (note: I let Scott look at all the presents in their boxes and bags, and let him look at one...this is the one he chose to open, so it is safe posting it on my blog. It is the tame one.)



Lorraine got into the spirit of the game as well.

We thought it might be fun to squirt whipped cream into my mouth. It made for a nice picture, and tasted good, but isn't really all that exciting, folks.

On Saturday night I had my annual "A Christmas Story" party. I invite a bunch of people over, we have snacks, and then we watch the movie "A Christmas Story" (it's the one with Ralphie and the bb gun, and perhaps the best movie ever). I made luminaries out of ice and cranberries. It has been freezing for weeks, but unfortunately Saturday was a balmy 45 degrees, so by the end of the night the luminaries were just a pile of cranberries.


On Sunday evening the church had a bridal shower for me. I don't have any pictures from that night, but it was nice to get to know people from church outside of actually being at church. I am going to Scott's church now, and I like it, but I don't know that many people yet. It was wonderful to be part of the group and to get to know people better. Thanks!

Christmas Decorations

A big snow storm rolled through last night. Unlike last year, though, Oskaloosa got very little snow, and Des Moines got way more! Scott and I had driven to Melanie's choir concert last night over near Council Bluffs, but fortunately south of I-80 the temperature stayed above freezing, so we drove back in rain and fog but not snow and ice and sleet.
This morning schools were delayed and cancelled, and I thought it was a good day to work from home. I like working from home because it saves me 2 hours on the road and gas money, but also because I can get a lot done at home while I am doing work. For instance, today I am doing laundry, running the dishwasher, and cleaning up while I am working! I also put up my meager Christmas decorations. Now that Sara no longer lives here, I don't even have a Christmas tree. Here is my effort at creating a tree: so beautiful!

I also put a few decorations above the mantel. And that is all the Christmas decorations for this year! I am not being a scrooge or anything. I just don't want to have to take a whole bunch of decorations down in between Christmas and the wedding.

Thanksgiving 2008

On Thanksgiving, we went to Creston, IA, to spend the day with Scott's Grandma, who is in an assisted living facility there. We had soup and salad and pie in the facilities little cafe/meeting room, and I met some of Scott's family for the first time! Here we all are:

These are Scott's nieces, Esther and Hannah. They will be ringing bells at our wedding along with my nieces.

On Saturday night we had turkey dinner with my family in Pella. We took a family picture there as well.

We thought we would take a silly one as well, and obviously my family had no problem with that!
Rhea and I told each other "Knock-Knock" jokes through the tube to each other for about 30 minutes. Since she really only knows 3 jokes, and i only know 3 additional jokes, we ended up telling each other the same ones over and over again. She thought they were funny every time, though! That is why I love telling jokes to 3-year-olds. :)

Post Thanksgiving...

I haven't had an opportunity to post anything for a while. Really, nothing very exciting is going on. We have been busy getting wedding plans together, going to see Melanie in "The Wizard of Oz," and cleaning houses. No pictures to show how busy we are.

Scott has some pictures from Thanksgiving. We spent a couple days with his family in Western Iowa, then spent some time with my family in Pella. I will get some pictures from him and post them later this week.

No bites on my house yet. I had an open house a couple weeks ago, and NOT A SINGLE PERSON CAME. In a way, it's a blessing because I am not worrying about moving or where I will live before the wedding. On the other hand, we don't want to be paying two mortgages indefinitely, and can find better things to spend money on, like paying for a wedding. :) Please keep this in your prayers, that the house will sell and I will at least break even, and not lose money.

Wedding Shower!

My mom and my sisters threw a wedding shower for me last Saturday. We had it at Third Church in one of the rooms in the basement. The people that came were most of my friends, and then my mom, sisters, and 3 nieces. Here I am with my family members:

And here is the whole group. Sarah Williams couldn't make it but sent a picture, so we were sure to include the framed photo in the group picture!

We had some yummy harvest food--pumpkin whoopie pies, apple cake, cider, coffee, etc. and then played some games.

Scott had told me he had an "appointment" on Saturday morning, and I had a feeling it was something to do with the shower. I was right! He went to my parent's house on Saturday morning, and they filmed him answering some questions. Then they asked me the same questions, and if I didn't say the same answer, I had to put a piece of gum in my mouth. For every wrong answer. And they had bubblicious gum. Those are big pieces of gum!

Here I am, grabbing my first piece of gum. This isn't so bad...


But then we got to a series of questions where Scott did not give serious answers! For example, they asked what we were going to name our first son and our first daughter. We have talked about that a little, and haven't decided firmly on names, but did say that we didn't want to name our kids bisexual names that could go either way, just to avoid confusion. What does Scott answer!?!? "Well, I think if we have a son we will name him Taylor. And if we have a daughter we will name her Taylor." Of course I got that one wrong! And he gave silly answers for a couple other ones as well! I think I ended up with 7 pieces of Bubblicious in my mouth!

All in all, I thought (when Scott was being serious) that we had very similar answers and have a good relationship. :) Although I don't know what his favorite Bible verse is...
I managed to blow a bubble without drooling all over. This is only about 1/3 of the gum--i didn't want to make the bubble any bigger just in case it popped in my hair! I spit the fist sized piece of gum into the garbage can. In hindsight, we should have spit it onto a napkin and taken a pictures to truly understand the size of the wad of gum in my mouth!

I have an open house this week on Thursday, so on Sunday we had a cleaning blitz at my house. Scott picked up all the little branches in the yard, which was a huge task!

Mom, Lynn, Hannah, Carrie, and Tim came over and helped clean also. Boy, you can really do a deep clean in a short amount of time with this many people! I think we got all the stuff done on my list. A special thanks to Mom for cleaning the bathrooms (my least favorite job) and to Lynn for doing the basement (my second least favorite job).

I finished making Carrie's Christmas present Saturday evening, and wrapped it. Here it is sitting on the sofa. Carrie touched it and felt that it was soft and fluffy, and immediately guessed that it was a body pillow. Boy, is she smart. Bet she doesn't know the pattern, though!

Snow!

Last weekend it was record high temperatures in Iowa. Saturday and Sunday it was about 75 degrees, and I actually wore capris for a while. On Monday night, Nov. 2, I went to a football game in my jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt and I was easily warm enough. It was about 70 degrees on Wednesday. Yesterday the temperature started to drop...

...this morning when I left for work it was snowing in Oskaloosa! It wasn't sticking, as it is waaaaay to windy right now, but it was definitely snowing. Once I got on the highway, the snow stopped, and it is just a littly rainy in Des Moines. I hope that we don't have a foot of snow in Osky when I get home! Last year there were a number of times that we got 15" of snow in Osky, while Des Moines and even Pella only got 4"!

My Maple Tree

Monday I got home from work at 6:30, and had to leave for the PC football game at 7pm. The Osky street dept. comes and takes all the leaves that are in the gutter, and my area is scheduled for this week, so I decided to quick rake up as much as i could. With daylight savings time, it is very dark already at 6:30, so I raked in the dark until it was time to leave.
Tuesday I went to eat lunch and do some work at Smokey Row. It was about 75 degrees, so I walked there. When I got home, I saw that one of the giant branches on my maple tree had cracked off and was lying in the yard!

I had been raking directly under the maple tree the night before. I'm glad it didn't fall off on my head!

I have an open house next week, so I needed to get the wood out of my yard as soon as possible! I called a friend that heats his house with wood, and he came and cut it up and took it home in his truck the next day. Thanks, Dan & Nikki, for helping out, and I hope the wood burns well!

Corn Maze 2008

Last weekend we went out on annual trip to Kinfolk and the Corn Maze. We didn't get to go last year, as they did not make a corn maze (the farmer's wife was battling cancer). So we were very excited to go this year! We always go with a group of adults, and we seem to have more fun than any of the high school kids there. We also got to go through the haunted maze section, which is the most fun part. Kinfolk's is a little restaurant in Attica, which is a town that basically consists of 20 houses and Kinfolk's. They have goooooooood braised beef, and I always enjoy the catfish. The restaurant is nicely decorated with antiques and class pictures from Attica High School in the 1930's. There used to be a fountain in one of the dining rooms, but they have apparently removed that some time in the last 2 years. We also have an ongoing joke about the supposed "2 way mirror" between the men's and the ladies' restrooms.

Above: Here we are waiting to go into the haunted maze. We have record high's last weekend, so even though it was at night on November 1 in Iowa, it was a balmy 65 degrees at the corn maze.

Below: Lorraine had taken a funny picture of Sara, and was showing it to Sara and Chris. Scott caught them in the "reveal" moment, and I think that Sara's facial expression is priceless!

Melanie decided she was too scared to go through the haunted maze section, so Scott and I waited it out with her and caught up with everyone at the beginning of the regular maze. In this picture we have scary eyes...maybe we should have gone into the haunted maze and scared the workers!


Lorraine and I take a self-portrait.

When Scott tried to take a funny picture with the cow, Melanie was very embarrassed. But when I laid down to drink milk, she didn't say a thing. Guess that means I'm COOL.

We all took a turn on the slide. It isn't a regular slide--it is a bunch of pvc pipes on rollers, so it's a bit of a butt massage going down.

Scott, Melanie, and Jacob decided to do a train. You get some good speed, so this was a little difficult on the dismount.

Olivia is One!

Last weekend we celebrated my niece Olivia's 1st birthday. Her favorite part was climbing into the bag to pull the presents out.
She knew she was supposed to lean toward the candle to do something, but didn't quite get the "blowing it out" thing, so Lynn had to help her do that.

Olivia then decided that she wanted to share Scott's cake and ice cream. So she stood right next to him and made him feed her. It was very cute.

Colorado Springs & Pike's Peak

This past weekend I was in Colorado Springs for USA Volleyball annual meetings. I spent most of the time in meetings or eating lunch at local restaurants. On Sunday afternoon after the meetings were over we took the Cog Railroad up to Pike's Peak. Here's our train:

I took a bunch of pictures out the window of the train, so there is a little reflection. Since I was sitting backward on the way up, it was hard to know exactly when to take the pictures!

This is a Ponderosa Pine (the scraggly one that looks half dead). Scientists have determined that this tree is approximately 2400 years old, so it was around when the Romans were conquering the world. That is pretty cool.
Here we are on the back side of Pike's Peak. You can only get to this area of the mountain on the train or in a helicopter, as there aren't any roads or trails here.
Unfortunately, winds at the top of Pike's Peak were over 70 mph, so they were not able to take the train all the way up to the top. We stopped at Windy Point, which is at 12, 129 feet. We were not able to get out here because of the high winds, but could walk around and take pictures. Apparently at one time, 2 families lived in this little cabin right here.
The train stopped at Four Mile on the way back down the mountain and let us all off to wander around. I saw some sap coming out of this tree, and tried to get a picture of the sun glistening through it. I of course took a couple self portraits.In this one the camera fell off the branch at the very last second, so all I got was sky with a few aspen branches...

A nice couple walking by offered to take the picture for me instead, so I did get the real picture.