More puzzles!!

So after completing our last puzzle, we had ran out of puzzles. For a couple of days we thought that the puzzle was missing a piece but we weren't that bummed cause it meant that we could exchange it for a new one. Unfortunately my mom found the piece so we couldn't return it anymore. But it's okay cause it was a pretty puzzle.

Luckily I received a puzzle from my grandparents for Christmas. We sat down to start it tonight, putting itunes on shuffle, making hot chocolate, and eating Life Saver The puzzle is a picture of Neuschwanstein Castle, or as I know it, "the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Castle." And it's the most challenging on yet, with 2000 pieces. Phew! We just did the border and that took a couple of hours. We've got a system down it seems. Separate that border from the non-border, put those together, and then separate into different colors while looking for previously missed borders haha. So we've got a sky pile, a castle pile, and the rest are just kinda together. So I guess we'll see how long it takes this time. See if we ever get a dinner table back.

The completed border and the finished poster picture of what it's supposed to become

The other 1812 pieces or so to put together

Lucky for us some of the pieces came together! We were stoked cause it meant just a little less work

Another exciting thing is that today we shaved Doug clean! His choice, cause I like him both ways. But in case you were wondering what was beneath that gotee, this is it!

The Winter Break Update!

When I picture a winter's evening it usually consists of a puzzle half way done some where in the household. This new one took us a long time to finish, a few weeks or so. It was of a Thomas Kinkade painting of a Christmas town. Rochelle's dad tackled the sky part for us. We finished it not long after that.

Before

After

With the fall semester coming to a close we had a performance for our Ballroom Dance class that we took at Moorpark College. Rochelle and I were considered a "feature" couple as Papa explained because we were front and center for a good portion of dance. Nana, Papa, Greg, and Karen showed up and watched us dance. We ordered the video so hopefully we are able to post that as well.

Here is Rochelle's hair done for the performance. I thought it looked amazing.

Here we are after the performance. It was a lot of fun. We hope to take another dance class after the wedding.

Merry Christmas and I hope you guys have a great time with Friends and Family.

Tis the Season...

It's been a while since we've updated and I feel like a lot has happened.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving with my (Rochelle's) parents. Dad mostly cooked but Doug and I set the table. I took a picture so you could see how picture perfect it looked:

You know how usually someone gets up to take a picture of everyone, but then they themselves arne't in the picture? Well we put the camera in the china cabinet, but it came out a little dark. You get the gist though...

Doug and I had fun putting up the lights again this year. It took us almost 5 days because we started Sunday evening and ran out of light to finish and then were just too busy to finish them until Friday. Plus it doesn't help when some of the strand is broken and you have to check almost every bulb to find out which is the broken one. Or when a light tests fine, but when you actually put it on the house only half of it lights up. Oh the joys of Murphy's Law. We did get it finished though and I must say that it looks fantastic.

We're in our last week of school now. We finished two of our finals today (Doug only had one), but we have three on Thursday and then we're done! Phew! This semester's gone by fast, but then again, a lot has happened in the last semester.

We did get a lot of decorating done on the inside of the house, I just haven't had a chance to get pictures taken yet. Cause the house really makes it feel like Christmas

Good Bye Edelweiss

Doug here..

I'm sad to say that Edelweiss passed away this afternoon. She under went surgery to remove a 13 pound tumor. She made it through the surgery well and even was able to stand up and sneak out of her cage this morning and walk around (without the doctor knowing at first). As Karen, Rochelle, and I went to go pick her up this afternoon we spent some time in an exam room with her, she wasn't doing very well then. We were told that they would call us if her condition improved unfortunately it never did. She was a trooper and a very heart strong dog. at the age of 13 (113-118 in dog years) she was a good dog. She will be missed. I ask that keep the Wolfe's in your hearts and prayers.

My prayer is that all of you keep safe on the roads this Thanksgiving and have a great time with friends or family.

Doug

A gorgeous sunset and a sad day(s)

This past weekend Doug and I went up to Hume to work for Jordan in High Adventure. On the way up we saw this gorgeous sunset up at Cherry Gap. Earlier up the hill it was really pretty too cause we could see a bunch of fog in between some of the hills. The picture doesn't really do the sunset justice because you can't tell that the gray area right below the sun is fog.

The rest of the weekend was really good. We were paintball refs and then did the Screamer for a couple of hours. We got to see Hume people too and hang out with the staff we were working with at night.

We came home late Saturday night though cause Edelwesiss isn't doing too well. My parents took her to the vet on Saturday and found out she has a 10 pound tumor in her tummy. Surgery is too expensive and she might only get a couple more months of life out of it. She's just been laying around though because walking is hard for her now. She hasn't eaten since Thursday and has to be coaxed to drink water. So she's going to have to be put down in the next couple of days. Sad day. She's almost 13. On the charts at the vet's the highest age was 11, which is 100 in dog years (for large dog breeds). So she's almost 118. She's had a good, long life, it's just hard to say goodbye.

Winnie the Pooh

Doug and I both like puzzles. There's just something about a cold day, a fire in the fire place, comfy clothes, hot drinks, and a puzzle. A couple weeks ago when we were at Target we saw these cool Photomosaic puzzles. There were 1026 pieces to the puzzles, and each piece was comprised of many smaller pictures to make up the color of the picture. We thought that would be fun and challenging, so we picked out a Winnie the Pooh one. We started it last Friday and it took a whole week to complete. Although we found out that our puzzle only had 1025 pieces. So we took it back and got a Thomas Kinkade one for the holidays haha. But here's what the puzzle looked like when it was done:

Pieces of the puzzle, showing off the photomosaic-ness...

Neat, huh?

Welcome baby party

Last weekend just was a busy weekend for us. In addition to Doug's 2-day birthday (see blog below!), on that following Sunday Reagan had a Welcome Baby party! Doug and I came over earlier to help clean up and decorate the party. Doug was then able to go and have lunch and hang out with his mom who came down to visit him. Devonna and Joe had HiCee cater the party (at least I think that's how you spell it?) with really good barbecue meat balls, pork, potato salad, and a southwest bean salad. There were about 20 people there so we all just hung out, ate, held the baby (who was rather fussy that day), and they opened some presents. I didn't take any pictures during the party, but this was the atmosphere:

One wall of the apartment is just a mirror so I stuck balloons and banners all over them

The suckers say "It's a boy", of course

Dangling stuff across the windows

Reagan's cake! Poor kid couldn't have any, but it was really good.

That's it. I had just realized that I hadn't put anything up about it, so I thought I would. Now go enjoy the other recent posts!

Halloween and a very fun Birthday.

So for the past month or so Rochelle and I have been looking forward to Halloween. Because with it comes the classic, costumes, candy, carving pumpkins, scary movies, and of course my Birthday. So on Friday we decided to have a laid back day and stay home and watch scary movies. Since I've spent my last two birthday's working and going to six flags I figured it would be fun to stay back with my Fiancee and enjoy the night relaxing. She went out to the store to get dinner stuff and we met back up at her place to cook one of my favorite meals: steak, potatoes, bread, broccoli, and a nice dinner salad. She asked if i could help her out with preparing the steak, since she's never done it I figured it would be fun to teach her. So we had grill lessons and how to prepare the steak.

Chelle working the grill.

After all the food was done we set up the table with everything we had prepared and enjoyed an amazing meal. In the amidst of dinner we were lucky to have Reagan come over so Devonna and Joe could spend some quality time together out with out having to have the little guy tag along.

The set up! Yeah, it was that good

After dinner we decided to dress up the dog in a fun costume, be ware of bride-zilla!!!!

Bride-zilla! Comes complete with veil, garter belt, and blood stained teeth

for your viewing pleasure

On Saturday I was surprised to see that the gang had set up the house and surprised me with a party with a bunch of people. Here is the cake Rochelle made from scratch, it was soooo Good.

The sad news two days later it was attacked by ants so we ended up losing half of it.




The cake looks like its on fire, yes, I am that old. All in all it was a really good weekend.

I love being an Aunt!

I absolutely love being an aunt. I love just holding Reagan and taking a million pictures of all the faces that he makes. Doug and I got to babysit him on Halloween and I just held him for about 3 hours. He left with mommy and daddy though for Colorado for a couple of months. We'll miss all of them.

Reagan with his pumpkin shirt that Doug got him. He also has a matching hat and socks.

I got him the blanket. You can't really see it, but it says "Boo to you!"

Sometimes when he's really upset the only way you can really calm him down is to lay him down on his stomach against you. He falls asleep pretty quick. He's a snuggler

They had mini pumpkins at the pumpkin patch that they ended up just giving us. So Reagan got his own pumpkin

Pumpkin head

Reagan came over yesterday when Devonna came to grab some stuff to pack for Colorado and to hang out. I watched him so she could go through some stuff. He was a bit fussy but he liked my waterbed, as you can see below:

Pumpkin Guts

We finally were able to carve pumpkins last night. We were supposed to last weekend but I got sick. So on Saturday we went to the pumpkin patch and picked out our victims. The pickings were slim though. Doug found a really good one but it was heavy so he left it on a haystack while I looked for mine and it got taken. So he had to find one again.

We called our friends Kaity and James who were gonna carve pumpkins with us last weekend too. They hadn't carved theirs yet so they came over.

Before their demise

Us gutting the pumpkins. Kaity doesn't like to do it, so she had James do it for her. We saved the seeds and hopefully will be able to roast them tomorrow night. Yum!

Kaity and James with their pumpkin creations

All of us with our pumpkins

Lights on

Lights off

Now hopefully they'll last till Friday. We're looking forward to passing out candy to trick or treaters and watching movies. Aaaand....It'll be Doug's birthday!

Caramel Apples and Sick Days

The Caramel Apple Experiment

So Last week Chelle and I wanted to get in the Fall mood by making some Caramel apples. We tried using the old fashion cubed Caramel and the tiny ball sized Caramel on five apples each. We were afraid that the old fashion would be too hard or the tiny ball sized ones wouldn't work. So we tried both.

Before



Rochelle Dipping an Apple


Stirring the Caramel



After! Bam. They looked great



A few days before that we made some awesome halloweeny treats. Its all about the pumpkin bread and cookies and the Coco Pebbles rice crispy treats.

Sick Days....:^(

Last Saturday Rochelle wasn't feeling well at all. At first look it either looked like a flu or just really bad dehydration. We ended up not eating any of the apples because I didn't want to enjoy the experience with out her. It wasn't till later on this week when she went to the Doc's because her symptoms hadn't gone down. Ends up she had a stomach virus which would last till at least the end of the week. Unfortunately we missed a wedding and a Hume Trip. But it was ok because we can see Hume again. Plus side-we did get to visit her Uncle Keith while he was in town. Pray that Chelle feels better soon and that she is able to keep up on the missed school work. As for plans for the wedding nothing new yet. We'll keep you posted as soon as something pops up.

God Bless and take care.

Doug

Welcome baby!

On October 6, 2008 at 11:53 pm Reagan Warner Wolfe Giardiello was born. I, Rochelle, am an aunt! My sister went into labor around 5:30 that evening and had him six hours later. It was a fast labor, but it wasn't an easy labor. Doug and I got the call from Reagan's daddy, Joe, around 8:30 that night saying that it was time and that they'd meet us at the hospital. We had been at our ballroom dance class and I had left my phone at home on accident, so I didn't get the message till 10:30. So we quickly got ready to go and headed for the hospital. When we got there and went to the labor/delivery area they said that Devonna hadn't come in yet. That worried us a bit, especially neither she nor Joe answered their phones (Not that I blame them, I mean, she was in labor!) She had decided a while ago that she wanted to labor at home and then during a transition drive to the hospital. The problem was that she never really transitioned. I guess her doula had been worried that first she would have him at home, and then in the car, and then in the parking lot. Doug and I, meanwhile, waited in the waiting room, watching ESPN since we couldn't change the channel. We waited for about an hour and then called Joe again to see where they were. When Joe picked up the phone and we asked where they were he said, "Yeah...he was just born." Devonna had him 8 minutes after she arrived at the hospital! Completely natural too! After a little bit we got to go in and see Devonna and baby. He's a snuggler. Devonna was super tired though so we didn't stay for too long. We visited her twice while she was in the hospital and then they went home. I went to visit them yesterday and took a few pictures. He's so cute. You can just stare at him for hours...

He changes position a lot in his sleep!

Hi Reagan!

Stretch!

Half a smile

More smiles

Aunt Rochelle!

He does stuff like this in his sleep all the time. So adorable!