Stevenson: 2007

December 7, 2007

Holiday Joy!

Everyday it gets closer and closer to our Holiday Vacation! We are doing well over here on the East Coast. Both of us are getting excited to come visit, in a few short weeks! I will be flying in on Dec. 18th, and Brandon flies in on the 21st. I get to stay until the 31st(Whoo, Whoo!), but Brandon has to leave the day after Christmas on the 26th. So sad for him...apparently you can't just leave your business for two weeks or something!:)
So last weekend we went on an adventure to a Christmas Tree Farm not too far away, and we got to cut down our own tree to put up in our little apartment. It was really fun watching Brandon go at the tree with his little hand saw, I didn't do much:) And we had fun getting it all up and decorated.

I have to tell everyone that I made this wreath...I decided instead of spending $30 on one, I would try and make it myself, it saved me a lot of $money and I think it turned out ok:) I also did this table center peice it cost like $5, can't beat that!

I love Christmas because all I can think about is how Lucky I am to be a member of the church and have a great family and most of all a wonderful husband! He is working so hard to make his company successful, and we're finally starting to see the results. I'm so proud of him.:) Christmas time always makes me thankful for all the things that I usually take for granted. A warm place to sleep, food, and family & friends to celebrate the holidays with.

My Favorite Things about Christmas

1. Spending time with the people you LOVE.

2. Seeing people's reaction to the gifts you give them.

3. Realizing how BLESSED we are.

4. Making sure Christ is the center of Christmas.

5. Yummy TREATS that make the house smell good.
So that's my little schpeel about Christmas.:) Anyway, everything else is going good, I'm getting used to a fast paced life here. People don't slow down for anything, it was hard to adjust but I'm finally feeling more comfortable. We really like our ward, and are starting to make friends with the few young couples that are in the ward.:) For some reason I never thought I would see snow here but...to my surprise, it's freezing and it did **snow* the last two days. Not like a Utah snow of course, but it even stuck around for awhile. So now I know that if it snows two inches...school is shut down, that cracks me up. Us Utahns go to school in two feet of snow right?!!
I'm planning on getting my hair license after the Christmas break and getting a job doing hair, at least part-time. It should be a fun little adventure. Right now I've just been helping Brandon do office type stuff for the business. It's pretty easy, and I can stay if my PJ's all day:)
Well we can't wait to see everyone! Hope everyone has a great week!

Love Brandon & Sara:)

November 30, 2007

Elf Yourself??

Oh boy my friend Tea had this on her blog and I love it so I had to do it too!
I'm sure you'll enjoy it!
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1126487840

November 12, 2007

Stevenson's Adventures

Hey this is my husband Brandon Stevenson, he owns a company called Huntsman Wildlife Control. Cool!!!! This is Brandon's work truck, all decked out in logo's and what not

. He is so proud to drive it all over town, and he loves when people look at him weird after reading the truck. ? Don't ask. Business is picking which is a great thing when you start your own company.:) Brandon stays super busy, meeting with companies, and going out to leads. He's had everything from opposums, squirrels, Bats, and a huge Raccoon. He named the raccon 'Robert the Rabid Raccoon' he was a vicious little bugger, when Brandon was trying to let him go. He was also the biggest one that Brandon had seen, he took up about half of the trap(that's BIG) When he was releasing the raccoon, he kept trying to bite him through the cage, so has soon as he got it open Brandon jumped into the back of his truck:) Apparently he didn't want rabies or something.

This was our adventure to the National Zoo in D.C. We took the Metro into town so we wouldn't have to pay to park, actually getting into the Zoo itself was free so that was nice. Neither of us had been to the zoo in probably at least 5 years, so it was fun. The only bad part was when we sat down to eat lunch....Well we were sitting at a table that wasn't in the sun, it was a bit chilly so we decided to move to a different spot where we could warm up in the sun. *Note to self: If there is bird crap all over where you are about to sit...DON'T!* I thought this type of thing was rare, I guess you just need to be smarter than I was. Yup...bird CRAP in my hair, as funny as it is now, it was quite disgusting. Now I know:) The first picture is on the escalator in one of the Metro stations, it looked better in life, but is still looks cool. And Brandon in front of the Zoo with the big Lion. Then the orangatans, they were funny, I think it was feeding time because they were pushing each other to get into the house for lunch.

There's me in front of the sleeping seals. They didn't budge once. Hungry Hungry Hippo!!! Well this was just the litte pigmy hippo, but his teeth are still ginormous.

And then you have this little guy. He's a real Prarie Dog, I promise. He was like a statue, and there were like 30 kids all around just banging on the glass of course. He had great concentration I guess.

Well that's the start of our fun adventures here in Virginia. It's getting really cold here but no **snow* yet, I don't think it's very often they get snow, but maybe.:) We can't wait to come home and see everyone over the Holidays! Have a great week!

Love The Stevensons

November 1, 2007

Welcome to Virginia! Well I finally got most the house put togethere so I will now take you along the virtual house tour:) Here is the front door and the entry way into our home. The laundry room is off the enrty way I didn't take a picture of that I figured you all have seen what a washer and dryer look like. There is also a coat closet where we keep games and random things...no coats:)

Here we have the dining room, which perfectly fits our really nice table! It's actually a really perfect fit and I like it. That's a great shot of Brandon, he got in the way but I thought it would be funny to put it in.:) Then we have the living room, of course our HUGE flat screen tv...well maybe not. Yes we still have the Monster and we love it! Then I will have you know that the ginormous book shelf you see I built myself. You heard me, put it together and everything! The funny thing is when I bought it I didn't really add up how BIG it was(the box said it was 72 in.) I just thought 'oh yeah that looks like a nice one'. I started putting it together then realized it was 6 ft tall. I thought it was just going to be like a little movie shelf, because that was my intention when I bought it. Oh well it worked out fine:)

Next is our lovely little kitchen. It is quite compact, but surprisingly I fit all of the kitchen 'stuff' that we have. Which happens to be quite a bit.....ok we have TONS of kitchen stuff.

I am so glad to have all my cooking things again though. And I'm sure that Brandon is as well, now I actually take time to cook dinner.

Then we have our guest bathroom. The odd thing about it is the shower/tub is one of those huge garden tubs and in the Master bedroom the shower/tub is tiny! Whats up with that? It's still nice to have two bathrooms for sure!

And now we are moving on to our bedroom! I like the setup of this room it's just the right amount of space for us. Don't worry the closet is packed to the raffters! I guess I underestimated how many clothes we both have. You can't really see it by the window but my Grandma Joy's cedar chest is there and it looks great. I love it. The only complaint I have about the apartment is that in the bedrooms there aren't any installed lights, you have to light it all with lamps which is just plain rediculous.

Here is my board that I finished, so I had to take another picture of it because I thought it was just so darn cute!

Well that completes the virtual tour, but we are still missing the office/guest bedroom which is still needs a little bit of work so once I get it all sorted out I will post some pics of it as well! I hope you enjoyed that. And I've been working on this post for about three days now so I'm just going to post it and then I will start another one with the pictures of the National Zoo that we went to in DC on Saturday. Anyway hope you all are doing well! We are liking it more and more out here, so everyone should come visit us!!!!

October 21, 2007

These are pictures we took of the gorgeous colors of the trees

October 17, 2007

On The Road Again

Well we are FINALLY in Virginia! Our new home for the next little while. Who knows, we like moving so much maybe in 4 months we'll want to move again. But...I doubt it. The drive up here was beautiful and the trees are changing up here a lot more than North Carolina, so I finally feel like it's fall. It took about 6 hours to drive, and luckily we didn't hit any traffic.

We were sad to say goodbye to our primary class, because we loved to teach them. Like my Mom would say..."you even miss the ones who were little STINKERS" and it's true. We are also going to really miss all the great friends that we made. We had a bonfire and cooked tinfoil dinners with everyone on Saturday night and it was so fun. I'll post those pictures when my friend sends them to me. We took this picture on our last Sunday in our N.C. ward.

On the back row: Brandon, Me, Kelsi, Emily, Brandon, Front row Morgan, Jasmine, Kiah, Brittany, Camille, Maddie, & Mckenzie. We are missing a few kids in the pictures, we have 16 kids in our class total. It was quite an adventure.:) We are just trying to get our lives up and running here. Brandon is stressed out of his mind trying to get the business going. But things are coming together. I on the other hand have to take a break every so often from unpacking so I don't lose my mind and quit completely. The new apartment is nice, well I think it is I can hardly see the floor with all the boxes that I haven't unloaded yet. The apartment complex itself is HUGE, and it seems like there are quite a few students who live here as well. We're not really sure if there is a college that is really close or what. So once I get the apartment put together I'll take some pictures and post them.
Well hope that everyone is doing well and enjoying the FALL weather! We love ya'll!

The Stevensons

September 25, 2007

Happy 25th Brandon!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to Brandon!
Happy Birthday to you!

Well Saturday was Brandon's Birthday and he turned a quarter of a century. That's right he's now an old man at 25. :) It was a great weekend. On Friday Brandon got a really embarassing display of flowers...well kind of flowers. At first glance it looks like a bouquet of flowers.

However it is an arrangment of fruit that looks like flowers! Pretty sweet huh?

And it tastes great, cause lets be honest at least you can eat this and get something out of it right? I took this one apart to see how they made it and I think I'll try to make on someday. It could be fun.

Then Saturday morning Brandon got breakfast in bed, that was fun. We had our primary program practice that morning as well. Oh boy what fun.:) Then we went furniture shopping for fun, we wanted to see a movie but of course when you have time to go to a movie there wasn't one out that we wanted to see. So we just relaxed in the afternoon. We invited a bunch of couples in the ward to come with us to Texas Road House for dinner. I didn't think all four couples we invited would come but they all did, and we had a good time. You can't beat the rolls at Texas Road House! Then we went over to a friends and all of us played our newest game, Killer Bunnies. It was really fun. We aren't looking forward to leaving all the friends we've made out here.

Brandon got some pretty great presents from me...:) I got a GPS thing for our car, so it might be for both of us. But it will be really helpful especially since we will be living in a whole new area pretty soon.

And he also got this great looking new golf bag! I didn't even notice when I bought it but it has Brandon's initials on it (BPS). How funny.

On Sunday we had our Primary Program in Sacrament. It went well and we're glad it's over with. It was a little bit of primary overload having the for all three hours. But we love them. We broke the news of our move to them as well, they weren't too happy about it. They said we are the only teachers who give candy and have parties. So pretty much we're really cool! Jk but we will miss them a lot.

Well Brandon is staying busy with trying to get all of the stuff done so we can start the business up there in Virginia. It's quite the project getting it all sorted out. Things are going well, hope everyone is doing ok. We love and miss you!

September 17, 2007

Home Again...Not Quite!

Hello!!!! Gosh We've been so busy since we got back to North Carolina that I haven't had anytime to post, not to mention our internet was out for a few days. But I wanted to tell everyone that it was so good to see you! I already miss you! Don't worry I still have brown hair...it looks quite red in this picture for some odd reason, but it has faded a lot since the initial color, & I like it so much better a little bit lighter. I have to admit I miss my blonde hair, but this was a fun change.

Well after driving for four days across the country...we loved it so much that we decided we want to drive more. Not really but we are going to be moving yet again to Fairfax, Virginia to start our new business in a month. Moving three times in 6 months isn't that fun, but we are really excited to finally get settled somewhere and be there for longer than 3 weeks.:) Brandon and his boss went up last week to scope out the area, and he said he loved it up there. He is really excited and motivated to get going on this new business, which makes it easier for me to follow right along behind him.:)

I thought that North Carolina never got a break from the hot hot hot weather, but one morning I woke up and is was a bit chilly outside, it totally reminded me of good ole Utah, which I love. So we'll have to see how different Virginia will be. Shane & Jamie you better visit us when you are there for Thanksgiving!:) It would be so fun.

Well everything is going good(& busy) for us. Hope everyone is doing well!

-The Stevensons