Christmas in Virginia

Merry Christmas everyone!!! Matt and I hope that everyone had a great Christmas. Ours was nice we missed everyone but we still were at least fortunate to be able to spend it together. We weren't sure until about a week before Christmas if Matt was going to have to go back to Mississippi but luckily he doesn't have to go back until after the new year. This year it was strange not running back and forth between our families on Christmas, so it defiantly was a new experience for both of us. On Christmas Eve WE cooked a big dinner, which you can see in the picture below. I know what you are thinking Matt and I cooked!?!?! Well it's true and we have the pictures to prove it. :)

After dinner we went to Mass, it was a Childrens' Mass and the children put on a pagent, it was adorable. We then came home and opened a present, Matt wanted to open more but got over it after some whining.
On Christmas Day Matt made us get up at 5:00 am to open presents!! You would think we had children. :) Especially, since he tried to trick me and set the clock a hour ahead so the alarm actually went off at 4! Thank you for everything we recieved we are very grateful to have such great family and friends. We miss all of you and wish we could have spent the holidays with family and friends but hopefully next year. Here's some pictures of our tree and our decorations around the house. Love you all. :)

Thanksgiving at the Beavers.
This year we had Thanksgiving at our friends, Amber and Josh's home; as you can see we had quite a feast. Matt and I brought the rolls, my grandma's jell-o salad and pumpkin pie. Believe it or not but I baked them all, with constant calls back home to make sure I was doing things right.
The picture below and to the left is of me making the jell-o salad. The one below is the *men* doing the dishes after dinner. Josh was trying to conceal the evidence but he wasn't fast enough.



The pictures below are pics of our apartment. The one on the left is our living room. The picture to the right is our dining room, as you can see we ran out of room to stick furniture so our papazun ended up in the dining room. Last but not least our second bedroom that Matt finally finished.*I know I was quick about it*




Well I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and we'll chat later.


*change made by Matt*

This weekend we went out to Newport News Park, it is about 8,000 acres and is supposed to be the one of the largest municpal park in the states. Here's some pictures of our walk. Below is the bridge we walked over to get to our trail. This is Warwick River, I know now why they say the rivers out in Utah are creeks! The Civil War Battle of Dam #1 was fought here. Supposedly there are five miles of Civil War earthworks but Matt and I didn't see anything.

The picture to the left is going into the park. The colors aren't as brillant as they were a couple weeks ago but at least you get the picture of how many trees are out here. As we were walking on the trail we came across the HUGE spiderweb you see below. Luckily we didn't see the spider that belonged to the web or we probably would have been lunch. :) Last but not least the picture below and to the right is not in the park it's acutally just on one of the roads out here. Most of the roads have huge trees on either side, alot of the time you don't even see the oncoming traffic because they are hidden behind all of the trees.

Well that's all for now as you can see we didn't get to our apartment so hopefully one of these days we will put some pics up of that. Well we'll talk with you all later.

We decided we better go buy a digital camera so you guys can actually see what we are up to these days. So here's our first picture!! I wanted to take some pictures of our apartment but well, it's a diaster so hopefully this weekend we will clean a bit and take some pictures. I also am hoping to get some pictures of the local area so everyone can see how beautiful Virginia is during the fall. Well we will try to keep our blog a bit more updated than we have been. :)

Well we haven't posted for a while now and just wanted to drop a line saying we are alive and chilling. We are 90% Settled into our new apartment, just one more room to complete and then get rid a pile of junk. Oddly enough it happens to be the room that Amanda assigned me to do... She did the other rooms and I had one and failed miserably... We are looking at buying a digital Camera so we can post some pictures but we have to wait for some $$ first. I like some of the cannons so I think we will go with one of those. Hopefully soon after Amanda starts getting paid regularly... So what ever she is doing it is free so far :) Other then that things are good and if they aren't I don't know about it and Amanda will have to update this blog later :)

-Matt

Thanks for coming to Amanda and Matt Adventure! We are almost settled into our new apartment. We are going to get all of our stuff on thursday and we cant wait. I will miss our simple life with a cardtable to type/dine/and stack stuff on, I will miss our air mattress to ... sleep on and most of all I will miss the peace of no TV. Ok, I wont miss much but I tried.
Amanda got into school already and is going to start on monday! She doesnt have to pay out of state tuition so our bank account will be just a poor as it has been. I am going to go hopefully next semester but we will see how that works out.
Other then getting settled there isnt much new going on. I am busy at work, and learning alot of new stuff each day but it is stressful and a lot of work. I am sure we will have more stuff to say as this is our first entry and our first time ever doing a blog...