Looking back on past Christmas photos...

I was looking through all of my MANY photo albums full of pictures and thought it would be cute to make a "christmas timeline" of me and Jared!!!

*Our first date was the Christmas Dance in December 1998, but I do not have a picture of us from it!!! :(

So this timeline of pictures starts December of 1999....


Christmas 1999 - at my parent's house (15 years old)



Christmas 2000 - downtown Richmond (16 years old)






Christmas 2001 - New York City trip with Evans family! (17 years old)



Christmas 2002 - at my parent's house (18 years old)



Christmas 2003 - at Jared's mom's house (19 years old)




Christmas 2004 - *just engaged 12/22/04* (20 years old)




Christmas 2005 - at Jared's mom's house (21 years old)




Christmas 2006 - on our honeymoon in Vegas! (22 years old)




Christmas 2007 - at our apartment in Fredericksburg (23 years old)





Christmas 2008 - at our apartment in Fredericksburg (24 years old)



Looking forward to many more Christmas together! I love you, Jared!!!

xoxoxo

Black Friday

It is one o'clock in the afternoon and my mom and I just got back from a busy morning of SHOPPING! It is our tradition that we wake up super early and hit the mall, as well as many other stores the day after Thanksgiving. I guess we just love the thrill of a good buy. Well, we actually did not really have a lot to buy, but it is still fun to look- and of course we found things to buy!!!

My mom is a very organized person...... perhaps a little too organized sometimes! This morning, I came downstairs at 5 am and she was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by all of her cut-out coupons and her lists of what we needed at what store. She was putting each coupon and list of things to check out or buy from each place in a labeled envelope. Then she put the envelopes in alphabetical order!!! haha It did turn out to be a big help because at the checkout register all we had to do was whip out the envelope from that particular store! :) It was easy to locate the correct envelope since she had carefully put them in ABC order! LOL

Sooo........ we ended up going to the mall first where we spent quite a bit of time at Macy's, JC Penneys, Sears, Bath and Body Works, and several other random stores. Then we went off to Target, Kohls, Pier One, Walmart, and finally came back home. I feel like a nap.

Anyway, here is a picture of my mom this morning as she was finishing labeling her envelopes! haha

*too funny*

Happy Thanksgiving!

There is so much to be thankful for!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

This is a cute picture Stacy sent me.... :)

Barsanti Christmas Photo Shoot

Jared and I always like to send Christmas cards with a picture of us and Fred. Since we already put our tree up, we decided to try to get a picture in front of it! This was not going to be an easy task because 1. we didn't have anyone here to TAKE the picture so I had to learn how to use the timer and 2. it was going to be difficult to position fred in the picture.

Here are the pictures from our little photo shoot!!!



haha we were like tugging on fred to stay sitting up! he kept wanting to LAY DOWN!!!



yay! we caught the corner of fred's head! :)




okay this one did not work!



i like this one! :)

this one did not work either!!!! hahaha

The next few I think turned out cute...

By the end of this whole thing, Fred and Jared had had enough!!! They were both ready for a nap.


nap time.....

Spicin' up the blog!

Do you like the new design?

It seems like every time I read someone's blog they have a new background design. I decided I did not like my old background and wanted to find something more colorful. There is an awesome site "cutest blog on the block" that has tons of free blog backgrounds! I was going to make a whole Christmas background, but then I would have to re-do it after December and I know I won't want to do that! I am happy with this one! :)

WOW... what a productive saturday!

I can't believe how much I have gotten accomplished today!

I woke up early... Jared was at work and I knew I wanted to get a lot done today. Since I will be in Richmond for Thanksgiving I thought this would be a good weekend to start getting my Christmas decorations out. Living in an apartment, we do not have a whole lot of storage space... So in order to maximize the space we really have to keep the closets organized to fit everything in! I pretty much had to take everything out and go through all these storage bins we have accumulated to get to all the decorations. In the process, I re-organized everything and put all Halloween into a bin, all of "fall stuff" into another bin, etc.

After organizing the "storage closet," I spent like 4 hours cleaning our apartment.... Then I decorated for Christmas!!! I did everything alone except for the tree. When Jared came home from work, he set up our tree and we decorated it together!!! It was so much fun. We even listened to Christmas music while we decorated it! Now I am really in the mood for Christmas!!!

We bought this tree last year... It is a pre-lit tree that fits into this box!

Fred helped, too!

There's Jared putting the three tree chunks together! :)

Then we just had to fluff out the branches!!!

Ta-da!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!!! :)

YAY! So not only is our apartment CLEAN, and all the laundry is DONE and put away, bed linens are clean and put back on beds, I also decided to write our Christmas cards! That process took about 2 more hours of my productive day! *Of course Jared came home and when I asked him to sign his name, he grumbled about having to do all this work!! The cards were already written and all he had to do was sign his name!!!! Oh well! Typical MALE I guess!

THENNNNNNNN I made turkey cupcakes for Jared to take to his work!!! They probably would have looked better with chocolate icing, but that's okay. I think they turned out pretty darn cute!!! :)

Now I need to go figure out what in the world we are doing for dinner...

more updates to come.......

Happy Birthday, Stacy!!!

Tomorrow, my little sister turns 20 years old!!! I can't believe it!

Hope you have a great day tomorrow, Stacy! Happy Birthday!!!


Stacy-- at our wedding... what a pretty maid of honor :)



at the beach last summer

we both had blonde hair in this picture...

at the top of a lighthouse

Stacy and her doggies

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STACY! Love you!!! xoxoxo

is it fall break yet?

I have been meaning to post a blog for the past couple weeks, but have just been so busy! I seriously do not like leaving work when it is dark outside! By the time I get home it feels so much later than it really is and it makes me so tired!!!

There's really nothing new going on to blog about... I am looking forward to the holidays!!! I have to teach tomorrow then it is the weekend! Jared has to work this weekend, but that's okay because I am going to relax. I finally have time to NOT be grading papers or doing report cards, etc. I have a doctor's appointment Monday morning so I only have to work a half day Monday then Tuesday will be a fun Turkey Day at school...... then it is FALL BREAK! :) And not too long after FALL BREAK comes WINTER BREAK! December is my favorite month. It always has been and always will be. Everything good seems to happen to me in December! Jared and I will celebrate our two year anniversary on December 23.... Stacy and I are going to TEXAS December 26.... can't wait!!!!

Court

Today I had the day off from work because I had to go to court from the car accident. Jared went with me and we had so much fun! haha NOT really!

We had to sit and listen to a bunch of juvenile traffic violations.... the judge pretty much just sent them all to driving school. The girl who hit me was sent to driving school, too.

I had to stand up on the police officer's side of the court and do the oath thing, then I had to explain how I was hit. It wasn't so bad and I had the rest of the day off! :) I got the whole apt. cleaned and washed about 10 loads of laundry. What a productive day!

This weekend I am working at the Fall Festival at my school on Saturday then I will be planted in my apartment grading papers and working on REPORT CARDS which are due to my principal on Monday and I have not even started. They take HOURS to do!!!!

I am such a procrastinator.... always have been and probably always will be!!!! :)

Misc. pictures from last weekend

me and Freddo



sisters!!!



my pretty mom :)




my pretty sister :)


Jared's mom, Rachel, and I took Andrew to a park on Saturday so he could play. He loved it! I got some really cute pictures of him at the park!


Rachel and Andrew

Andrew about to go down the slide!

PEEK A BOO!

There's Andrew!

Andrew and Grammy

he is so cute!

Andrew really liked playing with Henry (Grammy's dog) Here is a picture of him and Henry together!

Henry giving some sloppy doggy kisses to Andrew!!!

me and Rachel

Andrew and Uncle Jared- such a cutie pie!!!

Andrew was happy when Grandpa took him to play in the ditch! haha

Halloween 2K8

We had such a great weekend! It was really good to see family from Florida and Chicago! Jared's brother Justin, Justin's wife Rachel, and baby Andrew flew up to Richmond for a long weekend and Jared's dad drove over from Chicago. Jordan, Jared's other brother, lives in Richmond, too, so we all got to spend some time together. My arm is still recovering from playing the Wii so much! haha :)

Andrew dressed up as Dumbo and had a good time being pulled around in a wagon trick-or-treating. Here is a picture of him in his Dumbo costume!