The Jesse and Erin Experience

Monday, December 28, 2009

Family...

Us after the services.

Grandma Rita and me.

Me, Grandma Rita, and her sister NeNe (Norine).

The 6 of us. Dave, Chelsey, Jesse, Me, Dad, and Mom.

The 4 of us.

Jesse and me in front of the stained glass window.

Another picture of the 6 of us.

Jesse @ lunch following the services.

Me & Chels.

Me & Dave. Note that I am wearing heals and he is slouching. I'm not that tall.

Me and Jesse again.

It's not often that everyone gets together and we're all dressed nice, so we took this opportunity to take pictures of everyone. There are tons more, but they tend to get a bit repetitive. I think you get the picture by now.

Christmas Day...

Me and Miss Piggy. Probably the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. This picture doesn't really demonstrate how emotional I was. It was an already emotional Christmas and this nearly put me over the edge.
Thank you so much to Brittani, Jared, and Aiden!

Jesse and Kermit. Strangely enough he guessed what it was before he opened it, but I think that was only because I had opened Miss Piggy 1st. We open presents in age order, so I always went before him.

Lucy giving Kermit the stare down.

Opening my other gift from Jesse. It's a really cool flexible tripod for my camera. Check the link to see what I'm talking about.

Jesse and I with our biggest surprise gift this year a new printer and laptop with carrying case from my parents. They said it was for us to use to skype with everyone. Now we just need to learn how to Skype.
*Side note: We actually did our first skype-ing tonight with Jesse's mom, sisters, brother-in-law, and nieces. It was pretty cool. If any of you have skype feel free to give us a call sometime. I think you can find us under Jesse Hunsaker or erinandjesse.

Merry Christmas Everyone!
Hope you all had a nice time with your loved ones over the holiday.

Candles, Flashlights, and Oil lamps...

Our car being buried in a snow drift.

Lucy, Chels, and Dave opening presents in the dark. The flash from the camera makes things seem a lot brighter than they were.

Opening my new camera from Jesse.

Jesse trying on his new robe.

On Christmas Eve as the snow continued to come down the power went out in Stuart and Church was canceled. We knew it wouldn't be much longer before our power went out and thankfully we were prepared. We had buckets and pitcher of water filled, the gas range going full blast, and we'd collected all the candles, oil lamps, and flashlights in the house. Good thing too, because as predicted the power went out and stayed out until sometime in the early afternoon on Christmas. As a tradition in our family we all get to open 1 present on Christmas Eve night just before bed. I made sure Jesse opened the big fluffy soft robe I got him, because I figured he would need it to keep warm. As pictured above Jesse got me a new digital camera. It's the step up from the one I already had and I love it. It's a 10mgp instead of 6mgp like the old one. The rechargeable battery wasn't holding a very long charge on my old camera and I have been complaining about it for some time now. I just couldn't bring myself to pay $60 for a new battery. Luckily Jesse got me the new camera and I passed off the old one to my brother. He got a memory card from my mom and found a replacement rechargeable battery for less than $40, so we both won big.

Wilson Christmas...

Grandpa & Cody.

Jesse and the slightly portly Boo.

Sydney enjoying the bouncing ball toy she got from Grandma Rita.

Logan, Dave, Jesse, and Ken. This is post tickle attack upon Jesse. Little Miss Sydney was leading people to the trap on the couch where the unsuspecting victims were tickle tortured by David and Paul. I know Jesse is a sucker for kids, so I made sure she asked him.

Grandpa Bob wanted us to have 1 last family Christmas on Christmas Eve @ their house, so we did. Someone brought his urn, so that he could be with us in spirit. Things were a little different this year, so instead of heading up to grandma's in the evening we spent most of the day there. It was nice to get to spend so much time with everyone. I only wish it were under better circumstances, but you know us we had a great time together no matter what. Sharing stories, telling jokes, enjoying good food, and watching the kids open presents. I only wish Grandpa was there to try some wasabi peas with the rest of us. He would have been the only one who could have stomached them and I just know he would have loved them.

IOWA...

Standing in front of the broken branches in my grandma's front yard.

David & Chelsey in front of the branches in grandma's yard.

Jesse & Dave checking out the broken branches.

The trees were thick with ice. Everything was thick with ice.

One of the bigger branches that broke of the tree in my parent's front yard right near the driveway. We made sure to park as far from the tree as possible. The branches breaking off sounded like thunder.

The aftermath of the ice storm.

As most if not all of you know already Jesse and I drove back to Iowa last week and we made it just in time before the storms hit. There was a bit of an ice storm as seen in the pictures and then a bit of a blizzard that buried our car, took out the power at my parents house, and drifted us in for a while. My parents have a picture of the 2 of them standing in front of a broken down ice covered branch taken in the 70's when they were dating, so my mom requested pictures of us in front of a branch similar to theirs. I think they turned out nice.

Presents...

* Note: We realize his hand is on backwards, but he's a monster so anything goes.

For Christmas I was decorating my own wrapping paper and for the 1st round of presents I went all out, but soon I realized that hand painting all that detail was a little bit more work than I was willing to put in and more time consuming than I had originally thought. Thus I went for a more subtle holly berry theme. Jesse took my example and made a mockery of my simple designs. He definitely one upped me on this one. Well I'll get him. I'm going to start planning my Christmas paper designs for next year right now. We'll see who has the better paper next year. ;)

and yes... yes it is a competition.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Baby Jesse...

As most of you already know I don't have many baby pictures of myself and when I met Jesse he only had one of himself. This bothered me for several reasons... 1) I love pictures, especially old ones. 2) What if we had kids some day and they wanted to see what our childhoods were like? Well Luckily for me my grandparents and other family members have graciously sent me copies of pictures over the years. I've been putting them in order in an album and loving reminiscing as I go through them. After going to Texas in September and looking through Jesse's sister's album I thought Ah ha! I will make copies of her pictures and start a Jesse album too. Little did I know that Jesse's mom would suprise me with way more pictures than I could have ever imagined, old report cards, poems & papers, certificates, awards, and even a self portrait (see below). I was so thrilled. It was supposed to be a Christmas present for him, but I couldn't wait to show him. We've been looking through the album and all the paper work over the last week. It's pretty funny. We thought we'd share some of our favorites with all of you. Big thanks to Bobbi for the pictures and to Brendon for helping attempt to put them in some sort of an order. He loves them! It probably would have been more impactful @ Christmas, but I just couldn't wait to share them with him.