Christmas travels:)

Christmas with Ryan has been such a blessing. I love knowing that we will get to spend Christmas together for the rest of our lives:) and we never have to be seperated during the holidays! This Christmas, for our first one together, we spent it with my family in beaufort, SC. It was such fun introducing Ryan to all our family's traditions and church family and friends and all the usual parts of Christmas. I love having family friends drop by during the Christmas times, with yummy sweet treats and great conversation. I love the Christmas service at the church I grew up in, and the joyful community that I know and love here in my hometown. It was Ryan's first warm Christmas, and first time introducing him to the unique traditions and ways of the Gamboa household:).

Tomorrow we leave to have Christmas with his family. Although I always have a difficult time leaving my family, I look forward to being introduced to my new family's Christmas traditions and getting to know them more! Whoo for stretching out Christmas! I'll update more with pictures and stuff from our trip, but just a quick update on life here in gorgeous SC. love to all! more later.

Final cookie post:)

if you couldn't tell, i've been having alot of fun with my new love for sugar cookies. never thought i'd enjoy such a thing, but here i am baking dozens and dozens of yummy cookies. Here are some of the pics of the finished products.

these are most all of them together.

this one is my personal favorite.

here they are in a lil light:)

Merry Christmas!

goodies with our mentees:)

Ryan and I decided it'd be fun to decorate goodies with our mentees. I brought the cookies that I had baked and we made some icing and did some decorating:)

the kids decided the food coloring was cool and mixed all of them together...so ultimately it turned black:)

Ailyn's turned into a purple and light blue:) It was still fun, even though the icing was an interesting color.

Here's ailyn and i.

and ryan and aaron.

we wrapped the cookies up to give to their friends. ailyn was laughing at something when i took the picture of her and her treats:)

Our lil home is coming together!

Here's the newest addition to our humble abode. a huge comfy soft beautiful brande new couch! We had to give our dining room table back to its owners for the holidays, so in the attempt to find a new dining room table and chairs, we went into a furniture store looking for that, but came out with this gorgeous new couch! I have to say my favorite part of the couch is the price. We got this couch for 45% off because the furniture store is going out of business. So we got a full size sofa for almost half off:)

I love the cozy feel our home is getting each time we add something new to it.

Come see our cozy lil home! You won't have a table to eat dinner off of, but you'll have a comfy seat in our home:)

Sugary Treats

Ryan and I thought it'd be fun to decorate sugar cookies with the kids we mentor. So we prepared for our next day with our mentees by baking Sugar Cookies from scratch!:) I've never made sugar cookies ever in my life. It was alot of fun!

I rolled it out after mixing all the inggredients. that was my favorite part. It was such a great recipe!

Ryan helped out by using the cookie cutters and making the shapes:)

doesn't this look cool and yummy?:)

next we popped them in the oven...

and now we have beautiful perfect sugar cookies to decorate with our kids! We got some really neat writing icing, and we're going to use homemade icing too:) I think it'll be alot of fun doing with them.

Ta-dah! lots of yummy cookies to decorate. (although, my husband has been sneaking a cookie here and there, so the numbers are slowly dwindling...hopefully we'll have enough to decorate with the kids!:))

the sound of bells

Walking into a store during the Christmas season always feels even more Christmasy when you hear the bells of Salvation Army ringing away. I have to say in the past, I have not always thought of giving to Salvation Army, just for the simple fact of not knowing where the money was actually going to, but here in Storm Lake, all the money collected is kept LOCALLY, in our lil town! Which is really a huge deal because of the needs this town has for love.

Ryan and I were recommended to do the ringing, and it was a blessing to us. We were not expecting it to go so quickly (we had two hours to do ring the bell), but we made it fun for each other, singing, drumming on the buckets, and doing tricks with the bells. haha. I think we were the youngest pair of ringers in all of Storm Lake though (normally, its elderly men and women), and we had a couple comments about how young we were to be ringing. haha. We were greatly blessed to greet so many families and people in Storm lake with a "MERRY CHRISTMAS," and see so many people giving of themselves.

"The best way to spread Christmas Cheer is singing loudly for all to hear!" - The Elf:) (edited because of correction of Rachel "Rdawg" Thomas:))

Family Greetings!:)

Our first Christmas cards as a little family are being sent out! We chose a few of our wedding pictures that we had yet to send out, and put it together for our first Christmas greeting:) It was kinda fun making a photo Christmas card.

Blizzard in Storm Lake

Our Window-we've been snowed in!!!!:) Buried alive, we like to say:)

My first blizzard ever-i find it so very exciting:) much different than the usual snow fall i've become used to:)

heres one of the snow drifts in front of the house:)

Our blizzard activities- coloring Christmas pages, drinking Peppermint Mocha Coffee, and listening to Bing and Frank do their Christmas thing.

I'm dreaming...of a white Christmas!!:) (or not, i kinda prefer the whole palm tree and sand Christmas that I know and love:) Which i will get to have when we go home to SC for Christmas!:)) But i do however, enjoy this snow we are getting here for Pre-Christmas enjoyment:)

First Christmas

Ryan and I got our first Christmas tree and decorations. its kinda a mini tree, just enough for us to enjoy and put together with each other:). We love it. Its just right for us. We're starting our own Christmas traditions with each other!:)

Our first ornament together:)

Dancing in the Kitchen...

I was feeling rushed. I rushed from room to room trying to get stuff done.

My husband walked past and reached out to give me a quick hug, but I brushed past him quickly, asking him to wait as I entered the bathroom.

I was busy cleaning the bathroom, straightening things up and I walked out as quickly as i had rushed in. My sweet husband was standing outside the door, waiting on me, as I rushed past him once again. I stopped in surprise, "You're still here waiting?"

He reached for my hand and pulled me close to him. He hummed quietly and with one hand on my back, and the other hand holding my hand, he danced me around slowly in the kitchen.

"I love you," he told me.

Little things like this make me fall in love with him even more.

Deep-fried turkey, old friends, and family!

We have guests here for thanksgiving! yay! Sisters and friends!

We took the drive out to the Cerrillos to visit them for Thanksgiving. We had an amazing yummy meal with deep friend turkey!

after lunch, we drove out into the country to a nearby pond to shoot Ryan's gun.

here's Ryan with his gun!

yep, we shot the gun too-here's ilene. gotta love her bright red nailpolish:)

it was alot of fun, shooting a real gun!

the gun was loud!

stevo climbing up everything!

it's his birthday this week! we got him a nerf gun:)

old friends in Iowa:) we used to babysit the boys and lock ilene out of the house:)

Mr. Lou, Ms. Sue, ilene, and I!! I bet anything we have a pic exactly like this from like 8 years ago:)

oh yes, and Stevo, with all the ladies:)

Going Crazy as I wait

these three crazy women are coming for Thanksgiving!!!

I'm waiting, somewhat impatiently, for them to arrive! Ryan's got them in the car (picked up Katie from Omaha two hours away, and Ilene and Sarah in Des Moine two hours away) and they're on their way here!!! I can't figure out what to do with myself while I wait...haha, I've been waiting for like 6 hours!!!:) EEE can't wait to see them all!!

100 days

Last Monday(November 16th), Ryan and I celebrated our 100th day of marriage! We went out of town for a dinner at a steak house and tried out the midwest steak:). It was fun to reminisce about the past four years of our relationship and our 100 days of marriage!:)

(honestly, i wish i weren't wearing glasses on our date out, but my contacts were out of sorts, so i had to see somehow!:)).

Christmas in a box

Ryan's been working hard all week on the Operation Christmas Child boxes:). This is what the church looked like on the very first day. all those brown boxes lined up in the back are full of christmas boxes for children overseas!

we brought some boxes for the ZAO kids to fill up. They were really excited to be a part of it:)

here are the boxes from that first day.

we went on a fun outing with Beauna, skyve and their cousin aysia to fill up some boxes:) it was pretty fun!