New Years!

This New Year's Eve we spent the day with a bunch of our college friends:

The Bernthals

Josh Hook...soon to be Dr. Hook!!! Here he is playing the guitar.

The Kinseys

TUNDE! He was trying to give me some of his camera knowledge. For example he said that when you have a nice camera, you're always the one taking pictures and you often forget about yourself! He also said that taking pictures can get adictive...I've noticed...

That's why I had Tunde take this picture of Dave and I. At least I got to be in one this time!

And our hosts, Steve and Christy. Here Christy is preparing the pizza dough. We made homemade pizzas and IT WAS FUN!

Here are some pictures of us making pizzas. Everyone had couple's pizza except Josh, he shared his pizza with Tunde. I would say their pizza was the funniest.

Here you can see that Josh has lumped a bunch of stuff on his side. He was trying to make a hook out of the peppers.

And here is Jenny holding up Dave and my beautiful, most perfect, most delicious pizza! wink. I do like to make a lot of homemade pizzas though so, I just think I have more practice than Josh and Tunde.

And I love this picture of my roomie Jenny and I. It is soooo much fun to have her around when the boys want to hang out. Since the Daves are such great friends it's always a joy when they want to hang out because then I get to see Jenny!!!

The rest of the night we spent playing games! We almost missed the count down, yikes. Here Jake and Dave play ping pong on a very tiny board. So tiny that I don't think they could play scar-pong! Thank goodness. I don't know why but Dave and his friends LOVE that game. That the ping-pong game where the loser get smacked really hard with the ping-pong ball by the opponent. Dave has had some serious red marks because of this silly man game!!

We also played a great game of Scene-It, Taboo and a very large game of Nertz. Jenny showed us all how to play it and luckily we had about 10-15 decks of cards so we played a giant round of Nertz. This has become Dave and I's new favorite game...which I would like to mention now that I have dominated him the last TWO times we've played at home!!

The Holidays Part 2

After the K-Dawg Gift Exchange, Dave and I headed down to Springfield to visit his Grandma and his other relatives. While we were down there we got to spend lots of time with his two cousins: JT and Danny. There are just two of the cutest kids ever...and so of course I had to have a photo shoot with them! JT worked the camera but Danny is very much a free spirit so I could only get a few shots of him. Here are a few of my favorite shots!

Here is JT in the tub!And here is Danny, one of the few good pictures I actually got of him!

JT has a great smile and a very kind spirit!

This is a picture of Dave and his grandma!
Big Danny spent some time reading a bed time story to little Danny and JT. I think they enjoyed it a LOT!
This is one of my favorite pictures because here Big Danny is trying to have a man to boy chat about using the potty in the morning!

The Holidays Part 1

What an eventful few weeks we have had! Dave and I have just been overwhelmed with God's grace and abundant love. He has given us the opportunity to visit with friends and family. We've gotten to take many many pictures, hence why this is only part 1! Here are a few highlights from early on in our vacation. Dave was fortunate enough to get some time home so we've been living like normal married couples for the past week and a half! It's great and I can't say that I'm tired of him yet...I don't know about him though! :) Dec. 21st we went down to Bloomington to meet up with several of my college friends...the "K-Dawgs". This has been a tradition every year since college. Each one of us gets a gift for someone and we meet at an Olive Garden and exchange. The price limit is $10 so we have to get creative.

Here are some of my favorite shots...you can see more from this exchange in my facebook photo album. This is a picture of the treats I made for Kelly and Christian. I had so much fun making these and then taking pictures of them!

We stopped on our way down to take this picture. It was sooo cold that week that everything froze. I just had to get a shot of all the frozen grass.

Here are all the K-Dawgs. As you can see all of our names start with K...except Laura but her middle name is Katherine with a K and her last name is Knox which also start with a K. It's probably a good thing that her first name doesn't start with a K because then her initials wouldn't be so nice! We were all music education majors and found great friendship in each other and God strengthened our relationships!

L to R: Katie V., Kati P. Keren (Me), Laura K., Kelly R., Kristina R.

Here is a picture of our wonderful husbands!
L to R: Jeremy (Kati P.'s husband), Christian R. (Kelly's husband and Kati's brother), Andrew K. (Laura's husband), Art (Kristina's husband) and Dave!

6 Month Anniversary

It's hard to believe how fast time goes by. Dave and I have been married for 6 months already! Now, for some of you veterans that may not seem like a lot but it just feels like we just tied the knot. I think this officially means I'm no longer a bride :( how sad. I suppose it is time for me to pass on the torch. For our 6 month anniversary, Dave planned the most wonderful date ever! First he woke me up to give me a present, the long awaited camera! We then got up, we to the Botanical Gardens to take some shots, visited my cousin's new apartment and had a very nice dinner at the Signature Room which is where he took me right after her proposed. We then spent the night at Marriott in Chicago, which I will say we got to stay for free! That's one of the only perks of Dave living in a hotel most of the time!! This morning we got up and walked around downtown and re-visited the place where Dave proposed! The last thing we did was stop by Dave's parent's and share with them about all of our fun adventures. This was definitely a weekend to remember. Here are some pictures from our wonderful adventure as well as some of my first shots with my new camera. I hope to gain much more knowledge on how to use it well!

This is the tree guy at the botanical gardens. He reminds me of something out of the Never Ending Story.

Berries!

We got pretty cold almost right away, so we went into the green house. Well, my camera lens began to fog up but I thought it made a cool effect. So here is Dave with the fog!

Here are some random flowers in the green room. I have no idea what they are!

This one's my favorite, because it's fuzzy and it looks like it belongs on Sesame Street!

This is a picture of my cousin, Melinda and her roommate who is Sudanese! Dave had a great time talking with her and she complimented him on his Arabic. Apparently he has not lost his touch! Way to go!!

Meli's other roommate had a little dog named "Taco". He was way too cute and he even winked for the camera!

At the hotel we stayed at they had a giant gingerbread castle all made out of real things! It was enormous. This was probably may favorite little part of the castle.

I decided Dave need some glamor shots! Hopefully he'll get the hint that he needs to change his profile pic. Maybe one of these will do?

This picture is of the statue in front of the fountain where Dave proposed. He asked me to look up and instead I looked all the way up and stared at the Hancock building. Dave wanted me to notice this because it said "of the glory of the Lord". Much cooler than that building!

This is a picture of the Chookaszian Christmas card. We helped Dave's parents fold and stuff several envelopes today. I had a lot of fun!

And that is a little glimpse into our anniversary weekend! If 6 months is this awesome I wonder how much more amazing 1 year will be!!!

Our first Christmas tree and fire!

Last Friday was the day we decided to set up our Christmas tree. Dave was a little reluctant to get one at first but after some convincing he finally gave in! We have a beautiful 6ft. tree and hardly any ornaments on it! I told Dave we weren't going to buy any because I'm sure people will end up giving us some over the years. So, right now we have a total of 8!!!! I think it looks precious even though some of Dave's friends laughed at how bare it looked. Here are some pictures of us putting our tree together.

Here is Dave with our star!

Dave had the honor of putting our tree together

I got the honor of putting up our star!

Here Dave hugs the tree...as he is so overwhelmed by its beauty!

Our first tree! So...it's a little bare what can I say....it's still pretty to me! Notice the lack of presents under the tree. I'm expecting a nice BIG golden box ...:) and hopefully I'll be able to share with you what Dave got me! :) :)

Here are a few of my favorite ornaments:

OUR STAR

This one is actually one of my favorites. My friend Jess gave me this last year when Dave and I got engaged. See the man frog has a huge diamond ring behind his back! It's soo cute.

The Angel of Peace

And a shiny red ornament! It's pretty.

On top of putting our Christmas tree together, Dave and I have found some new things to enjoy our time together. Since we have limited time, we've had to be creative. There is some pressure in trying to make every date extra special but we have so much fun! One of our dates we put together a fire, drank some wine and had fruit, crackers and cheese on the floor. I think we also rented a movie to watch! Lots of fun!!! We've done this a few times and on one of the occasions I told Dave not to poke the log to get it to go out (it's not a normal log). Well he poked it anyway and the log was burning pretty intensely. We poured some water on the log only to cause lots of smoke. Our entire apartment smelled like burning wood. Well, we decided to go to bed and I woke up in the middle of the night trying to tell Dave that I thought it smelled terrible but he didn't pay too much attention to me. THEN! at 2 in the morning the smoke detector and carbon monoxide alarm goes off and Dave and I wake up in a panic. We opened the windows, went online to read about what to do. In the end , we were fine but boy was it a fun evening with an early wake up the next day.

Here are some pictures of our fire before the big incident!

I don't know that I'm supposed to give this away but Dave didn't actually build that fire. It was a special log that sets itself on fire after you light it. He was a little disappointed but I'm a huge fan of these logs...they even crackel!

Wine, Cheese and fruits

Here is a close up of what was on our plate!

Even though Dave and I don't get to spend to much time together, we really try to make the best of the time we do have together. Some of my favorite things we've done so far are:

1. We volunteered with our church to pass out meals for the Angel Food Network Ministry.

2. Last night Dave and I played Monopoly for 3 hours because I kept begging him to play with me until I won! He's such a great sport!!

3. Dave and I went to the Muvico Theatres to watch a movie and we ended up seeing a bunch of exotic animals. We got to hold a crocidile, monkey, snake, parrott, fox and Dave held a roach!!

4. We've had a few dinner dates where we will either go out or I will make a nice meal at home.

5. Sometimes the best dates are just when you're in the room together doing nothing!!!