Dora Band-aids

When Jeff and I were dating I cut my finger and we were at his mom's
house so he ran upstairs to get me a band-aid, and came back down with a Dora one! I thought that it was so adorable and ever since I have always bought Dora band-aids. It's so cute because before he puts it on my ouchie he always says this phrase in Spanish. Just over the holidays I cut my thumb pretty bad so I had been wearing Dora band-aids for a couple of days and Jeff still puts them on me! I blogged about this just so that I can remember the sweet precious moments in life. Last night before we hit the sack I hit my head on the back board of the bed and of course started crying like a baby and Jeff said, "Elle, you have to stop hurting yourself cause we are running out of Dora band-aids!"

Yes, sometimes I still act like a little girl and one of Jeff's nicknames for me is Dora! He thinks that I look like her since I always cut my bangs short! Well, if I am Dora then he is my Diego! Thank you for taking care of me Jeff, I RUVV you!!

A Christmas Tree Adventure

So, here is the story about us chopping down our very own Christmas tree. Jeff's Aunt Char let us stay at her beautiful cabin in Forest Lakes, it's more like a house though cause it's so nice and clean (Jeff's hard drive on his lap top just crashed so we lost a lot of pics from this trip...sad.) or else there would have been a pic of her cabin.

We went up early with our friends Jenny and Mike Stephan and tried to stay up late the 1st night playing games, but nope we are old and married and ended up in bed pretty early. Here is a pic of Jenny and I when we first got to the cabin...brrrrrrr it was cold!!

Then here is one of the boys doing whatever needed to be done to turn the water on.  What cute hubbies they are!!! Jeff and Mike have been good friend for a while so it's fun to always double with them and hang out! :)

The weekend at the cabin was very relaxing and just what we needed to get away for a bit from work and school. The first morning Jeff woke up and made some delicious breakfast burrito mix, I was supposed to help him, but of course I didn't do much! He said that his hash browns turned out so tasty cause he put the grease from the sausage in them, whatever he did worked!! We then got ready for the day and decided to go out and explore for a bit while we were waiting for our other friends Jeremy and Liisa Sharp to come up with the trailer and saw to cut our trees. I had to take a pic of Jenny cause she looked oh so adorable in her beanie!

We drove around and found this look out place and the edge of one of the points at Woods Canyon lake and took some fun pics as couples, but once again I only have a few of them! :'(

We had to stop and get gas and luckily enough the Chevron we went to also had a Dairy Queen!! I love that place cause I'm hooked on one of their Blizzard's, it's called the Pecan Turtle Fudge Blizzard and you must try it sometime!! My husband is funny and always orders the LARGE Blizzard, and every time when he is done he complains that his tummy hurts! Here is proof of all the ice cream that he can eat! :)

Jenny loves peppermint anything and she was in luck cause they had peppermint ice cream. The employees were telling us not to get it cause most customers didn't like it, but she was determined to try it! Despite the bad reviews she ended up really liking it! I had to take a pic of her by the poster!

Jeremy and Liisa arrived and we all squeezed together in the back of his truck. Then we were off on our Christmas Tree Adventure!! :)

There was so much snow everywhere!! Here is one of my trying to imitate Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" and then one of us 3 girls freezing!

We drove around to a couple of different places trying to find the "perfect" tree, but we learned quick that there is no such thing, and that we were going to end up with one that was not exactly full but had character! I was told later that those full, nicely trimmed trees people sell in parking lots are grown somewhere else and that ours would not look like that! :(  It really burst my bubble cause that was what I had been imagining all along! :'(  We walked all over the place and would find one that we liked and then heard another couple say that they found one, and then realized that ours was not that nice compared to theirs so we kept looking. It was getting dark... so it came down to all of us chopping down 30 foot trees (not really legal) and just taking the top from them. (Sorry trees for ending your life a bit early...) Jeff and I have really high ceilings in our condo so our goal was to find the tallest tree that we could possibly chop down. We were successful and our tree ended up being at least 12 feet tall!!! Yay!! Here is a pic of Jeff working so hard at chopping the tree down.

Here is our tree!! I was even a trooper and helped carry it for a while before I started complaining and then Jeff carried it the rest of the way to the trailer! I think ours may have been the tallest out of the 3.  It was a wonderful weekend and our trees did make it safely back to Phoenix.

Here is the tree all dolled up! :) My plan was to only put white lights to match the red and gold decorations I had, but since this tree was so tall it required more, so we just put in those tacky colored ones too! When it was done it looked like it was ready to go to the Prom...it just didn't have a date!! Ha ha!

In conclusion to our tree story I had to share the moment when I put on the dazzling tree skirt!  Sorry to talk about it so much but I really do just love it so much!! 

My Dazzling Christmas Tree Skirt

My oh so very very very talented Mom who is capable of doing everything put her skills to work and made me a Christmas tree skirt over Thanksgiving while we were in Sierra Vista. I found this cute sparklie snow man material at Wal-Mart and it was pretty cheap.

My Mom is the most energetic 58 year old that I know, she can still tough it out and stay up til 2:00 a.m all the time! My plan was to help her sew, but of course I didn't do much and my Mom just took over and without a pattern created the most perfect tree skirt that I could ever ask for. I did make all the little red bows you see on there though! During Christmas time my Mom's house is like a Winter Wonderland and she has been collecting decorations for years...it's really beautiful to see actually. I don't have much to decorate with yet for Christmas, but we are getting there. Our condo will be more festive when our tree is all set up this weekend. I can't wait and I'm determined to make our house more "Christmas-ey" looking! Not to mention my mom didn't even use a pattern, and came up with everything for this skirt on her own. Please give a round of applause for my new tree skirt...

Here is a close up view just in case you didn't get enough from the first pic...

You guys...I was so in love with my tree skirt that I even debated on wearing it to a holiday party! What do you think? Whoops....one problem though...my waist is definitely NOT that tiny!!

My mom busted out with a whole entire box full of Christmas crafts that she hasn't completed yet and so she also made me this wreath!! My house will be a Winter Wonderland in no time!!

I have to give one more shout out to my mom again--THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU MOM!! I LOVE THE DECORATIONS!! :)

I don't think I could triple post today so I'm also going to squeeze in some more pics from Turkey day! Jeff is really good at hiding his talents (I guess you could say he is humble) but he pretty much can hear a song once and then play it again by ear. So, him and my sis Joc sat down and were playing together.

This was a first, but my brother Phil brought his girlfriend Nicki home as well. We were happy to have her there, she is super sweet and has the best laugh! I love my brother Phillip, he is so generous and fun to be around...he always has something humourous to say.

Thanks Dad for making such a delicious turkey! It was funny cause my Dad makes this really yummy dessert with cranberries, and my fam is famous for picking on the food before we actually sit down to eat dinner, so my dad and I got creative and labeled his dessert "Green Bean Casserole" and for the most part it kept the fingers away. Dad we are funny! :)

My sister Amber came all the way down from Texas to spend Thanksgiving with us. I'm so happy she did cause I just love her to peices. She is going back to U of A in Jan.

Last but not least it was my little brother Jarom's 18th birthday! We went out to this really tasty mexican restaurant in SV and instead of giving him ice cream or some other dessert he got a cheese quesadilla! How odd. Happy Birthday Jarom...P.S. you and Joc are never supposed to grow up. Isn't he cute?!?

Top 12 Things I am Thankful For...

The holiday season seems to just point out all of your blessings directly that you should be thankful for. I know that Heavenly Father has so many blessings in store for all of us and I have a testimony that if we are living righteously we will be worthy to receive them. I often feel like Heavenly Father is testing me and saying "Come on Elisa...just give and do a little more and endure through your trials and there will be endless amounts of blessings for you!" So, here is what my lil' heart is thankful for:

1. Of course the top one on my list is that I am ever so thankful for my sweet husband Jeff who can handle my baby tantrums and still love me. We are 10 days away from our 1 year anniversary! :) :)

2. I'm thankful that last night Jeff went quietly into the kitchen and made me some yummy hot chocolate with whip cream on top. The funny thing is that I was sitting on the couch wanting some since it was cold, but I was to lazy to make my own. Jeff makes it perfect anyways, because he actually measures the water.

3. I'm thankful for my loving and hard working Mother who makes numerous sacrifices for us 8 kids constantly. My mom is incredible and one of the most thoughtful people I know. I only hope to have some of her qualities one day. My mom is a soldier and can get through any trial with the largest amount of faith I have ever seen. Mom, I love you.

4. I'm thankful for my sweet, supportive father who honestly has never missed anything important in my life. I'm thankful for his example that he has always set for me to be a better person. Dad, it meant so much to me when I was at EA with no car and you would come and pick me up at the drop of a coin whenever I was homesick to take me back to Sierra Vista. I love you so much Daddy!

5. I'm thankful for my 4 brothers and 3 sisters who keep me laughing all the time. Now that I am older I can definitely say I enjoy being in a large family. My mom would always tell me, "Blood is thicker than water Elisa."

6. I'm thankful for the opportunities I have had to hear my Primary kids sing "I am a Child of God" and how it always gives me goose bumps.

7. I think I have been tremendously blessed with amazing friends. People always ask me how I am so good at keeping in touch with all of them and it's honestly because you guys have all made an effective mark on my life, how could I not want to keep in touch with you?!?

8. I'm thankful for the perfect love and outreaching hands that my Heavenly Father always offers me.

9. With how the world is right now I am extremely grateful to have a job, our own home, 2 cars and food on the table.

10. I'm thankful for my generous and humble in-laws the Schaubs. Just the other day they thanked me for being in their family, and I thought..."Thank you for letting us always eat your food and for raising such a thoughtful boy that I got to marry."

11. I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to work in the temple cafeteria for a bit last year. My most fav thing about being there was that I would run the cash register and all the little old people would come through the line dressed in white and I felt like I was in heaven cause they reminded me of angels.

12. This is silly, but I am thankful for Jeff cause he loves my little "Ellie Elf Ears" that I have, and always wants me to put my hair in a pony tail to show them off. I always want to hide them.

If you haven't yet, take some time and write your blessings down. I promise you that afterwards you will appreciate more of what you have and the trials in your life won't seem as BIG.

Monkeying around...with the Monkey!!!

So quite a few comments on the last post were geared towards our new camera.  This time around we (yes boys and girls, this is actually Jeff) thought we would just post some really fun pics of what we have been doing lately, along with some snappy little photos taken with our new camera, and try to answer some of the questions we received.

The camera is a Canon 450D, more commonly known as the Rebel xSi.  It is a 12.2 megapixel digital SLR.  A nice camera has been on our wishlist for several months, but only a few months ago had we actually started shopping around.  We chose the Canon because of 

reputability in the SLR market, the mid price range of the camera, and ease of use and huge LCD display.  The camera is very easy to use, just turn on and click for the novice.  Yet, being like most other SLRs, you can be very creative and use some of the advanced modes/features to get some really cool looking photos.  We purchased the Canon from dell.com after scrounging the internet for a discount code. :)  We paid roughly $700 for the camera, which was about middle ground for SLRs these days.  Compared to the lesser priced Nikon D40, it seemed much sturdier and had many more features.  You won't find a whole lot better until you get into the $1000 range.  We're happy about it, and no regrets!  Here are just 2 examples of some neat pics we took of our cute little nativity scene.  The lens that came with the body isn't too spectacular, but does allow for some creativity.

We spent this Thanksgiving down in Sierra Vista with the Shaver family.  It was a beautiful weekend, and just a few degrees cooler than it normally is in the valley.  We also got quite a bit of rain which was fantastic.  Most of the family was able to come eat dinner on Thanksgiving day, and our new friend!

 Ellie's sister Amber recently got a new dog; Zoe, and she is adorable. She is a Jack Russel Terrier and Chihuahua mix.  She likes to lick people. We're hoping that Zoe will come stay with us while Amber finishes her last year at school. Dinner was fantastic, and as any good hearted American would do, we ate way too much.  We spent most of the weekend talking with family, eating, playing cards, eating, wasting $15 on the Twilight movie, and eating.  Yeah, we ate a lot.  I had to leave Thursday evening to come back to work, but Elisa was able to stay until Saturday morning and do some

Christmas crafting with her mother.  We now have a pretty little tree skirt ready for our tree to be cut down this weekend, as well as lots of other Christmas decorations made by Ellie and her mom.  We really tried to get a nice picture of Ellie and all of her brothers and sisters (those present), but honestly it was like trying to keep a bunch of sugar-craved 3 years olds out of the cookie jar; nearly impossible.  We took the spray-and-pray approach and this was the best shot we got.

We haven't done anything else real exciting in the last few weeks, but the coming weeks are sure to be full of excitement.  This weekend we'll be cutting down our giant Christmas tree, and next week (after numerous final exams...) we'll be at Disneyland celebrating our anniversary. We're so excited to get away from "normal" life for a few days and just have fun with each other, just like we did on our honeymoon!  Well, that's about it for me this week folks.  Did I mention how adorable Ellie is?

P.S. Santa, can you please bring Ellie a really cute pink bicycle for Christmas?  She really wants one, and I guess she has been pretty good this year.  And do you think you could get one with a basket on the front?  She wants to carry around her treats when she goes on a bike ride. Thanks!

P.P.S. I apologize for the funny layout of this post. After formatting and typing everything, I hit the "preview button" and it looked beautiful.  However, after publishing, it looks nothing like it did under "preview."  What is the point of having a "preview" function if it looks nothing like the real thing?  Dumb... 

Precious Primary Pizza Party

Maybe some of you can relate to being a newlywed and having your first calling in the ward being PRIMARY! Yup, it happened to us, and although we have had a lot of fun it can be hard at times as well not to get that adult spiritual boost that we often times need. Our favorite is when we go to ward activities and still get the..."So, are you guys new in the ward...what is your name again!?!" and we have been in there for 11 months already! It's kinda difficult to get to know other members of the ward when you are in Primary the whole time, and even harder when the people you visit teach are all in Primary as well.

Don't get me wrong cause there's nothing like hearing them sing those sweet Primary hymns and getting goose bumps while listening, or hearing them bear testimony of something you taught them, and you can't forget all the warm free hugs they give you every Sunday! It's truly been a blessing to see children at such a young age know so much about the gospel and they honestly amaze me. Being a primary teacher you kinda have to get creative in ways to try and trick them to be more reverent so Jeff and I came up with this idea where every time they were being quiet and reading from the scriptures or listening to us in class we would put jelly beans in a jar. The goal was to have them fill up the jar and the prize was a PIZZA PARTY AT THE SCHAUB'S with Rock Band included!! Doesn't sound to exciting, but trust me it really really worked. If they were naughty then they would have to sit there and watch us eat some of the jelly beans. It took them about 3 months to fill the jar, but they earned the pizza party so I wanted to share some funny pics from it.

This last one has to be my favorite...Ryan a boy in our class told me that his tooth was loose and I thought no big deal, but then I turn my head to see him and what had he done?!? Oh, he sure did pull it out! He didn't act like it hurt him or anything and just continued to eat pizza and play. From what I remember as a little kid...it hurts pulling a tooth out, but being the caring Sis. Schaub that I am I put it in a zip bloc baggie for him to take home to the Tooth Fairy.

A couple things we learned from our Pizza Party: #1. Why did I put 2 hours on the invite? We barely lasted...if there is a next time it will only be 1 hour! #2. Having eight 9 year olds at your house can be very very overwhelming! #3. After that party we knew that we could wait a bit longer for kids...it was like a different form of birth control. #4. Poor kids were so short and could not reach the peddle for the drums and were stomping the heck out of it, so next time an adult can do the peddle. #5. I think we won the title of being the coolest primary teachers ever because none of them wanted to leave the party!

Since I like squishing the updates of our life all in one post the most recent exciting thing for us is that we just got a new camera!! It's super nice and definitely worth the money.

Jeff is cute and has been studying up on how to use it and is now an official photographer, so if you want a free photo shoot come on over! We figured we needed a new camera, cause mine was getting super old and not functioning right, plus we wanted one for the holidays and for our vacation to Cali for our 1 year anniversary. Here are just a couple of pics he has taken.

Did I mention before that Jeff loves mustang's? This is his current one...doesn't she look like a beauty? I personally think that he loves them cause he likes playing the game where his exhaust is so loud he can make other car alarms go off! Ha ha! It's really really fast and most of the time he won't let me drive it! :'( It's probably best cause I don't need another speeding ticket on my record.

7 Random Facts About ME!!

I have never done this before but my cute friends April and Rindsey tagged me so here it is:

1. I'm out of control about having a trash bag in every single trash can in the house, I think it's so gross when trash can's don't have a liner just because of the random things that people put in there that can stick to the bottom and not come out. There must be trash bags!

2. So, I'm a firm believer that dish washers don't have additional hands to scrub off that food that you didn't want to take time to wash off. My husband makes fun of me because I literally wash the dish before I put it in the dish washer and he asks, "Why do you even bother Elle?" well because once again I am anal and they have to be organized and squeaky clean.

3. I'm sure most people who know me could have figured this one out, but I wish I would have gone to beauty school. I love love love doing hair and makeup! Thanks to all those friends who let me practice on them when I really didn't know what I was doing! :)

4. I secretly want to work at the Oprah magazing as a graphic designer, no joke. That's my dream job...I want to do layout design actually for any magazine, but the Oprah one would be my prefrence. You know how fanatics will write Oprah letters begging to do anything just to get on her show? Sometimes I am tempted to write her weekly telling her a sob story of how I work at dumb U of P and maybe she will feel pitty on me and hire me on as an intern or something? If this worked out then we would be rich and Jeffy wouldn't even have to finish school!

5. I HATE HATE driving...it could be from the fact that I have been in 3 major accidents. I totaled on of my cars and have been very blessed to walk away from each accident not hurt. I guess the positive thing from this is that I am a more cautious driver. It makes it worse that I live in Phx as well and am always stuck in rush hour traffic.

6. All throughout high school I had a crush on Richie from Happy Days, not even kidding you...I thought that he was so cute and dorky and would be the sweetest boyfriend! Trust me, I'm not attracted to him anymore cause he is super bald! It must have been the freckles and red hair! :) Jeff, you are my hottie now! ;)

7. I will NOT eat pickles, they smell so gross and I don't like the juice that comes out of them. If I order a hamburger and they accidently put pickles on it, I just can't take them off and eat the hamburger cause it still has the pickle juice. YUCKY!!! I don't even like being around when people open a jar of pickles cause I can smell them.

8. I'm really only supposed to do 7 but I couldn't leave this one off...There were 3 things that I always wanted in a boy. #1- I love it when boys have a good wink! Jeff always would wink at me in our old singles ward and didn't even know how much I LOVED it. Once when I was giving a talk he winked at me from the congregation! Soooooo cute! ;) ;) ;) #2- I wanted them to know how much I LOVE strawberry lemonade. #3- I LOVE it when guys wear suspenders, so adorable...Jeff you are lucky I didn't make you wear them on our wedding day, but there is still time for you to fulfill that dream for me! #4- I think it would be so fun just to run through sprinklers with a boy, Jeff we still have to do this one as well!


Tag, YOU'RE IT: (Sorry, if you have done this before!)

Cherylee

Righteous Rustin

Caryn Jones

Jen Mullenaux

Kimmerita Howard

Megan Schaub

Shannon

A Schaub-Ka-Bob Update

Lately I have been such a Crafty Mc Crafterson!  My good friend Abbey and I decided to go to As You Wish (it's this really cute place where you can paint pottery) last week and now we are both hooked, and decided that it is very relaxing just to sit there and paint while forgetting about all the stressful things in our lives.  I wish I had a pic of Abbey's platter and bowl that she made cause they were adorable...hopefully she will blog about them! :)  I decided to go with a typical frame which I didn't really like how it turned out because of the colors, but oh well. Then yesterday Abbey had this Super Saturday thing with her ward and I stopped by so that she could show me how to make this cool magnetic message board! Thanks Abs...I'm glad that being crafty has brought us back together! 

Recently I had time to decorate our shelves in our living room and so here is a pic of that as well.  So, maybe it looks like Jeff and Ellie mania, but what else was I supposed to do with the millions of frames and pics from our wedding?  When you guys first were married did you have millions of wedding pics around as well?  Maybe, I will grow out of it but for now I am still in newlywed world!

 

Last weekend we had a wonderful opportunity to do a Walk for Autism at the Phoenix Zoo for our cute nephew Ethan!  We call ourselves "Ethan's Superheros" and hope to have our own t-shirt one day!  My amazing sister in law Megan organized most of it and also raised a lot of money for the Autism Research Center through her scrapbooking crop that she had, thanks Megan!  This was the first time that I got to walk with the Schaub family and it was so very fun, even if the Phoenix Zoo does not have the most exciting animals to look at.  Jeff said, "Since we didn't have to pay to get in they hid all the animals from us!" I thought that was pretty funny cause they were all hibernating or something!!  Have I mentioned before that all my nieces and nephews are so cute?  The Schaub family is awesome, and I'm so very blessed to have the best in-laws. 

This is random, but I'm so so so excited this year to decorate for Christmas!  Last year we were lame and didn't even put up our christmas tree because we were so caught up in all the wedding bliss and had just got home from our honeymoon in Disneyworld that we didn't have time to do anything except sip hot chocolate from our cute christmas mugs that someone gave us!  We even got a permit to chop down our own tree this year, we have a really high ceiling and thought that it would be pretty funny to get a tree that was super super tall! A while back I found these cute tree decorations at Costco and we finally bought them!  It's great cause there are 84 of them and the best part is that they have glitter on them too!

Jeffy Updates: Yes, this is a pic of Jeff when he was little and I found it in my I-photo so I had to post it.  He is doing great and is such a smarty pants when it comes to school. Seriously, he has to be one of the most intelligent people I have ever met and I admire that about him.  I can ask him any question about an animal, car, a random history fact, or any math problem, and he always has an answer for me.  He has been doing really well at school too, and getting the highest grades in his Calc 3 class.  I told him that I want to put his tests on the fridge but he won't let me.  Thanks for working so hard in school Jeff, I really appreciate it! :) I don't understand half the things he studies. :(  Well, that's all for now...I promised Jeff that we would not be late for church again and have to hurry and get ready!