The end of a great 2008!

Jonathan and I didn't get the chance to send out Christmas cards this year so I thought i'd write a blog about the great things we did in 2008! As most of you know, many of my years past have been pretty routine, or not productive enough to blog about, but 2008 was different!! I flew by with so many great events and memories.
January~
We had planned a trip for a weekend in Denver for Jonathan's 29th birthday, which happened to fall the same week that Patrick was born. We got the wonderful experience of being an aunt and uncle for the first time, getting to hold PJ at 3 days old and spent a fun weekend in Denver. After Jonathan and I returned to Junction, Kirsta realized that doing it all on her own might not be the easiest thing, so I got to go back to Fort Collins for a week and bond with my handsome new nephew.
February~
Valentine's Day Jonathan and I got all dressed up and went out to a beautiful dinner where he proposed to me in the parking lot afterwards. YAY. It was amazing. On the 26th we were blessed again with another nephew Espen. We got to meet the mini-Eric on the day he was born.
March~
Jonathan's work had offered him the chance to transfer to the Pueblo, CO store, which is where the majority of his family lives. He decided, after I told him I would go with him, to take that opportunity. On the 3rd of March he packed up his life in Fruita and re-located to Pueblo. :( My mom, Kirsta, PJ and I made a trip out here to visit over Spring Break.
April~
Around the first, Aunt Ann was taking her Spring Break in Grand Junction, so Jonathan and I met in Denver to pick her up and she took our engagement picutures. So beautiful. Then I took her back to Junction for the week while Jonathan headed back to Pueblo. I had been working as an assistant manager at Wet Seal and wanted to give Jonathan a little time to get settled in before I moved. On the sixth of April, I too, packed up my life in Grand Junction and hauled it to Pueblo to live with Jonathan's mom until our wedding in June.
May~
Jonathan bought our house!!!! We closed on the 5th and began painting and looking forward to moving in together in June. I started working as a teller at Wells Fargo. On the 18th we were so thrilled to once again be an aunt and uncle to a beautiful niece!! My favorite little girl in the world, Missy Kalena. At the end of the month I turned 23. For my birthday, I was in Grand Junction for the weekend trying on my wedding dress.
June~
On June sixth we got married at the Denver Botanical Gardens. Everything went just as planned and we were so blessed to be surrounded by our close friends and family. Jonathan had surprised me at our rehersal dinner with tickets to Disneyland!! So after our wedding we got a couple hours of sleep before arriving at the airport at 6am. We spent 2 magical days at the Happiest Place on Earth before having to return home to reality. We got to move in to our new house and make it our home. We love it! At the end of the month we headed home to GJ where my parents had a wonderful reception for us in their newly landscaped yard.
July~
At the beginning of the month we took a trip to Fort Collins to see our nephew, I mean, help Kirsta and Joe move. :) They finally got to move out of the TINY apartment into something more comfortable for their new family. On the 15th we got to take a 10 day vacation to Hawaii! 480 pictures later, I think we enjoyed ourselves. It was Jonathan's first trip there, and hopefully not our last!
August~
The beginning of the month we spent adjusting to normal life again, no more sandy beaches or endless fun family activities :( At the end of the month Kirsta, Joe, PJ, and Aly came and stayed with us for the Colorado State Fair. One day the boys went and saw monster trucks, and one night Aly, Justin, Jonathan and I went and saw Sugarland in concert. What a great weekend!
September~
Once again we got to meet up with Kirsta and Joe for a Rockies game in Denver. A quick trip, but lots of fun! At the end of the month we took a road trip down to Midland, TX to visit Elsha, Brian, Missy and the dogs. We got to hang out with some of my cousins that I don't see too often, so that was nice. And lucky Elsha got to spend her Birthday with us!
October~
We went to Jeffrey's house for a Halloween party where we dressed up as Popeye and Olive Oyl. We looked pretty cute! Then we headed up to meet the family in Fort Collins for a BYU/CSU game, where there was some confusion about who we were cheering for! :)
November~
We were very excited to be able to host Thanksgiving at our house this year!! What a crazy, packed, competitive, mouth-watering weekend! It was so much fun having everyone at our house, even when things were a little tight.
December~
On the 10th we were thrilled to find out that I'm expecting! What a surprise!! Then we got to have many wonderful Christmases sharing the good news. My how this year has flown by!

As I'm reading this blog it is such a re-cap of everything I've blogged about in the past :) We just wanted to brag one more time about what a great year 2008 was for us. We can only hope that 2009 has as many wonderful things for us to look forward too. We've got some pretty exciting things planned, so keep reading our blog to see what the future holds for us!

We hope you all have a WONDERFUL new years this evening, and if you make a resolution, that you may stick to it! :) We love you all 9x9

Christmas 2008

Jonathan and I got to have many Christmases this year! The first one was celebrated with Jonathan's dad and stepmom, and younger brother and his girlfriend Whitney. The second one was celebrated with Jonathan's mom and stepdad, and older brother Justin. Here is Jonathan opening his new table saw from Justin:

Here is Jonathan's mom and I:

Then on the 22nd Jonathan and I did stockings for eachother and opened two gifts and had decided to take the rest to Grand Junction. Here I am opening my beautiful red coat from Jonathan:

Unfortunately, we weren't able to get to Grand Junction for our 4th Christmas until Christmas Eve because our annoying retail jobs got in the way, but we made it in good time, and with good roads. Here are some pictures at my parents house:





I am so thankful that we were able to get to spend time with everyone in each family! We are so grateful for all the wonderful gifts we recieved this year. We hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year 2009!! We love you 9x9

Venting

You know, every job I've ever had, I think that the customers I encounter there every day are the stupidest people I've ever met. Nothings changed with banking. On a daily basis, I want to ask about 60% of my customers, "Have you EVER been to a bank before?" No, you cannot cash a $500 check without sending me any forms of ID. It might be little worse because I work in the drive-though so I can't just say to their face, "Do you have your ID on you?" but we have to play the game of how many times can we send the tube back and forth to each other because you're an idiot. Fun game.
Anyway~ the point of this rant is because a lady came through tonight at about 5:45 and asked for a withdrawal slip for her daughter. She filled it out for $200. When I pulled up her account it showed that she had $34 and some odd cents in her account. I pulled up her account history and saw that she had made a deposit with a check today for $380. So, I buzzed back to her and told her that I was sorry but that she would have to wait until the check cleared in her account to withdraw the $200 because it wasn't available. I even explained that the time of day you make the deposit matters.. If it was before 3 pm it would clear tonight at midnight, if after 3, tomorrow night at midnight, and we would be happy to give her her money then. Of course, she proceeded to argue with me, like she was the ONLY person in the entire world that has to wait for their checks to clear at the bank. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO THE BANK BEFORE?? So, I took the time to explain very nicely what other options she had. When she deposited the check she could've gotten $200 cash back, or she could've looked to see if the check was drawn off Wells Fargo and asked us to cash it before depositing it so the funds were immediately available. Then she tried to tell me that they actually had wanted the check cashed but that the person deposited it! And I said, "So you're telling me that you brought the check to the bank and when the teller deposited it instead of cashing it, which is what you wanted, that you didn't say anything??" LIAR!! What was more frustrating is that it was her daughters business, not even hers!!
Finally she asked to talk to a supervisor, who then told her everything I had JUST told her (another one of my pet peeves)! After her whole sob story about how her daughter waits ALL week for her paycheck from Target and then doesn't even get to use the money, boohoo, she backed down, hopefully realizing that she is and IDIOT, not me, and said in a huff that she would just lend her daughter the money that she needed TONIGHT and her daughter was signing up for direct deposit tomorrow.
People are dumb, and I hope all you guys have more common sense when at the bank. :)

Here's a Christmas picture for you:

Happy Birthday Kirsta!!

To my favorite 25 year old sister: Happy Birthday!!
"If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child."
~Linda Sunshine~


"To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time." ~Clara Ortega~

Our First Christmas!!!

We got busy on our holiday decorating this week, (we were sad you all didn't get to help us last week.) Jonathan spent 4 painstaking hours in the freezing cold putting up our new lights which consisted of 3 hours of checking for burned out bulbs and fuses, and replacing 40+ lights! Then he meticulously placed all of the strands on the house, linking them together to create the wonder you see on film here! Oh, and Kari helped by making cocoa :-P
This post was written by Jonathan.

Happy Birthday Joe!

The big 25!!!!!!!! Happy birthday bro! :)

The Holidays

I know I am way behind the other girls at posting this blog but I just wanted to say how much fun we had over Thanksgiving and how grateful we were that everyone (almost) was able to come! It was a little hectic at times trying to fit everyone into our house but the holiday spirit was definitely around all the time!! I thought, in my true nature, that I'd post some of my favorite pictures from the weekend!
The whole gang:

The "Gustavsons"

The "Phelps"

Missy and I:

Teaching Missy how to breakdance:

Mr. Man doing his favorite thing.. Climbing the stairs!!

Grandpa and Grandma with Kalena:

The girls:

Missy Kalenas in my new tote!!

And my very favorite picture of this little boy ever:

Bottom's up!

There's really no good way to blog this, or any story behind these pictures, I just thought I'd show off Kirsta's naked baby for all of you. I love baby butts, they are so cute!! So after PJ made a get-away while getting his diaper changed Jonathan and I saw that as a Kodak moment. Here he is :

Bedtime Bliss :)

Jonathan and I love to watch movies as we fall asleep. We always said that we would never have a tv in our room, but we have a laptop in there, as if there's a difference. We are both the kind of people that like to fall asleep to light or noise. So almost every night we go pick a good "falling asleep to" movie. The other night he went and picked "50 first dates." Great movie. We were lauging though because after going to Hawaii this summer we recognized a lot of the places in the movie! Apparently it was filmed on Oahu around where we stayed! (North Shore-ish.) Then we noticed something that both of us thought was SOO cool. Here it is:


We looked and looked for this pic on the internet without sucess, so Jonathan played the movie on our computer, paused on the scene and copied the pic. Haha. Now you all should go watch that movie because it's just so cute!

Jonathan Dan Phelps

Elsha tagged me to do this survey about my husband so here it is:


1) Where did you meet? He was my manager at BB&B. Sneaky sneaky
2) How long til you got married? Since the day I met him- almost exactly 2 years
3) How long have you been married? 5 months 8 days
4) Your favorite feature of his? His arms
5) Your favorite quality of his? His calmness (is that a word?)
6) Does he have a nickname for you? No but he should get one!
7) His favorite food? He's a meat lover. Any kind. Any way
8) What is his favorite sport to watch? Definitely Football
9) When was your first kiss? At his house the day after homegirl got the boot :)
10) What's your favorite thing to do as a couple? We like to go to Wal Mart and by a couple of things like: stickers, baked beans, a $5 movie, a hole punch, and alfredo sauce.
11) Do you have kids? Not yet but we both really want one ASAP please!!
12) Does he have a hidden talent? If you haven't read my blog he's an awsome woodworker. So far he's built a cd tower, DVD shelves and a pantry for us!
13) How old is he? 29. aka Old.
14) Who said I love you first? I did :)
15) What do you admire most about him? His willingness to always apologize. Because we all know that is NOT a quality I aquired
16) What is his favorite type of music? I would say Hip-hop is his favorite, but we have a whole cd tower to prove that he listens to EVERYTHING. it's crazy
17) Do you think he will read this? Nope.
18) What is his favorite article of clothing? I think his black zip up sweater with the stars on it
19) What is his favorite hobby? He's loves to do projects. Build stuff for the house.
20) How did you decide he was the one for you? At the time it wasn't so much realizing he was the one I wanted to spend forever with, it was realizing I didn't want to spend any time without him. Ever. Does that make sense? In other words, I thought I lost him and I just couldn't take it..

CSU/BYU game

As Kirsta mentioned, it's was an AWSOME game. I cheerd for BYU even though I was wearing CSU gear, haha. If you want details, read her post (I don't know how to link them), but here are some good pics!! You can always rely on me for that. :)
Pj and Grandpa G.

The fam

Jonathan and I

Espen and I

Jacob's

Parents and I

Babies!

Halloween

Here is me on Halloween by day:

And us by night:

I love Halloween!

Kitchen project

As most of you know, all of my kitchen appliances are pink. Before I married Jonathan I already had the stand mixer, the blender and a lot of smaller miscellaneous items, in pink. Then for our wedding we got TONS more pink stuff, like the hand mixer, the stand up ice cream maker, the toaster, and more small items. Jonathan knew this of course, and he said it was fine that my kitchen be pink, as long as we could paint the walls brown. :) We were noticing a couple weeks ago that the wall in our basement and the wall border above our kitchen cabinets had grooves in them that would make it perfect to stripe the walls because the lines are already there for you!! Here's an example :

(I hope that's not really hard to see!) So Jonathan got this BRILLIANT idea to stripe the kitchen pink and brown.. I love his ideas sometimes!! Here are the before and afters! Tell me HONESTLY what you think. I'm sure I'll hear a lot of, "well, I never would have done it in my house, but it's cute in yours!!" :)
Before:

After:


Close up:

Recipe help

Ever since we got married, cooking has been a whole new adventure for me. No longer can I just cook whatever I like, whenever I want it. I have to figure out what Jonathan likes, and have them prepared in a timely manner when we get home from work. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE doing this, it's just new. I find myself spending a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table just looking through different cook books for things that look delicious, and realistic, for me to prepare. For the past couple weeks I have only made things that I've never made before. It's definitely an adventure. You never really know how your food will turn out. There have been some really good things, (keepers, as we call them), and some things that we might never wanna try again :) I was actually just getting on the computer to find a good pasta salad recipe on BHG.com (love that site), and I thought I'd check the blog while I was on here, and now here I am writing to you guys to seek some thoughts from all of you! Of course, we all have our favorites from Mom: chicken enchiladas, beef stroganof, roast and potatoes, chili, well, you all know. But I was wondering what other favorite recipes you guys have that I have been missing out on! Kirsta has given me a few that we tried and LOVED! Although, I made one of them wrong so we'll have to try it again, we didn't give up on it! So, fill me in on your favorite dinners so I can try them Please!! If you don't wanna write down a whole recipe on here you can email it to me at Karigustav@aol.com. Thanks!

Kirsta "tagged" me to do her post, so that means I HAVE to do it!! :) It's gonna be a tricky one because you have to answer all the question with only ONE word. Here goes..

1. Where is your cell phone? Idk (abreviations are one word)
2. Where is your significant other? office
3. Your hair color? blondish
4. Your mother? Inspiring
5. Your father? Calm
6. Your favorite thing? Jonathan
7. Your dream last night? Vegas...
8. Your dream/goal? Motherhood
9. The room you're in? Bedroom
10. Your hobby? Scrapbooking
11. Your fear? Death (of loved ones before I'm ready)
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Outtahere
13. Where were you last night? Home
14. What you're not? Pregnant :(
15. One of your wish-list items? Tiffany's
16. Where you grew up? Junction!
17. The last thing you ate? Stir-fry
18. What are you wearing? Pink
19. Your TV? Lame
20. Your pet? None
21. Your computer? Favorite
22. Your mood? Content
23. Missing someone? Parents
24. Your car? Clean
25. Something you're not wearing? Ring
26. Favorite store? Shoes
27. Your summer? Packed!
28. Love someone? Duh
29. Your favorite color? Pink.. And Kirsta, I can't believe yours is PINK! What happened to you??
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Jonathan

NOT camera shy

In case any of you are wondering what that picture is of, it's all the pictures we just developed at Sam's club of Hawaii!! That's right folks, all 606 of them!! I got this really great idea that instead of trying to plan out every scrapbook page i wanted to do, and what pictures to put on them, I would just print EVERY pic that Jonathan, me, Kirsta and Elsha took, and just scrapbook whatever I wanted! Well, if you also have that same great idea, you might wanna look through them all first. There are a lot of just scenery pictures, about 200 of Pearl Harbor and 200 more of PCC. It was really funny when I got home and they were all laying on the table. I couldn't believe just how many pictures I actually just developed. :) So, I organized them all in piles by event. Here's a side view of the piles:

From top left: Turtle bay, Temple, PCC, sporting events (golf, volleyball, tennis, water polo), condos, random baby pics, Dole factory, duplicates, International Market Place, swap meet, Waimea Falls, random pool or beach pics, Pearl Harbor, the Ranch, scenery pics, family pics (JEEZ there are lots), shave ice, and last Pali lookout.

Wow, I'll be scrapbooking for a year with all this!!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday, I just wanted to send a little "shout out" to him. He is the best Dad in the world, and I don't care what anyone says :) I love you Daddy, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

My favorite Neice in the whole world!

Just to let you guys know, Kalena is definitely my favorite neice. That means you all better start having more girls so I can't pick just one!! Here's some of my photos of her in Texas.








There's my tribute to Missy Kalenas. I love her. :)

Texas Trip

Jonathan and I just got back from a wonderful long weekend in the great state of Texas! We left on Friday night after work about 6:00, to arrive at Elsha and Brian's house around 4:00 am. Although it was actually the middle of the night, or morning, you wouldn't know it showing up to their house. Elsha and the baby greeted us with smiles at the front door, Brian was chillin on the couch with "Friends" playing on the big screen tv, it was like it was 4:00 in the afternoon! I guess life changes when you have a baby that wants to start her day at 4 am. We got the grand tour of the house because we'd never been there and then Jonathan and I crashed out til about 10 the next morning.

Saturday was Elsha's birthday. Happy 26th Elsha!! We hung around the house and opened gifts and then went out to lunch at the classic Midland favorite Rosa's. I just love that place!


That night Brian cooked Elsha's requested birthday dinner of steaks, baked potatoes, shrimp with cocktail sauce, and artichokes. Yum Yum. It was a feast!! After, or before, during, AND after that we played a game of 90's edition trivial pursuit. Elsha and Brian came back on the last pie and beat us! grrrr.
Sunday morning we went to church and then Lisa and her family came over for Double Dave's pizza. It was good to see them and introduce Jonathan to the other side of the family. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of anyone :( We'll have to store that memory in our head. :) That night we played Phase 10. Pretty sure Elsha won. Surprise, surprise.


Monday we kicked it around the house for a while and then I took Jonathan up to the Bed Bath and Beyond that I used to work at. We ran into lots of associates and managers that I worked with while I was there so we had a good chat with them. That night we took the 4 of us out to a Mexican restaurant called Abuleo's. It was really good food and atmosphere. That night Elsha introduced us to a game called Blokus. It was awesome. We had a great time, and by the I mean we all hated each other and the end of the game. We'll have to play again sometime soon!!

Tuesday it was time to leave :( We got up early and left for Lubbock, where we picked up Brian and took a mini tour of the Texas Tech campus. Then we met up with cousin Jason and went to go see his new house. OH MAN it is pretty!! We hung out there for a couple hours with he and his wife and kids who happened to have the day off school. We had a great time catching up! It's really good to get to see family that you haven't seen in a while!

A picture with Vanessa and kids


A picture with Jason and kids

After that we continued our long, boring journey home. We were so grateful for the opportunity to go!! Love you guys!!