New shoes, new body?

haha, or so we hope. Ryan and I each purchased new running shoes so we can run around our little town and get into shape. Each place I went, he talked me out of buying shoes that just looked good, he wanted me to get ones that were comfortable and help my lil ole knees from popping or aching. haha. I think his shoes are pretty sweet looking. mine are too, just not too good in the picture:)

good ole country food

Ryan asked me if I could cook him some country fried steak, which I have never had in my life, so i went searching for a recipe online, and went shopping for all the ingredients so i could make it from scratch:) It was fun to make, the white gravy was probably the best part, for me anyways:) I'm not a big ole country food kind of girl, but I actually really liked it!:) Ryan made some yummy pink lemonade to go with it.

so here we have Country fried steak with white gravy, buttery green beans, and au gratin potatoes.

I missed Ilene this evening, so I made salsa in honor of our Saturdays that we would eat the salsa she makes. I love it when she makes it for me, so I attempted to make some...I made ALOT of it though, and really spicy, so we'll see if it compares to Ilene's at all, cuz I loved hers. Thanks for the recipe, Ate!:)

the GPS is our friend

After two weeks in the small town of Storm Lake, I was starting to go a little crazy. my sweet and fabulous husband took me on a mini road trip yesterday to Omaha, Nebraska-a first time for me!:) It definitely gave me a little bit of a city fill-for a little while anyway:). It wasn't exactly Chicago, but it worked perfectly for shopping and for a GREAT day with each other.

the view leaving storm lake:) yay-goodbye fields for a day!:)

the beautiful view of driving into a city full of people!

Omaha:)

we had a nice little detour to Offutt Air Force Base to get cheaper things with no tax. AMAZING. We bulked up on good food for the month.

this is a pic from the end of the shopping day. Heres Ryan trying to fit the rest of the shopping bags into the full car:) SO much fun.

Here are some of the things we got!:) An area rug to add color and some color scheme into the living room. plus, cute pillows to feminize the living room!:)

I love our little place! It's so adorable!

baking pot roast...

Ryan moved his stuff into his office after we painted it. He officially has an office, and a quite cute one too! We still have some stuff we want to add to it, but for now here's what we got:)

Here's the color we used (on my hand), and theres the color on Ryan's cheek, with the smiley face:) haha.

and this is how it looks now!

He likes his books in categories, and for anyone that knows Ryan, he LOVES LOVES LOVES books. this office was perfect for him, because of all the shelves that it had:)

So while I'm waiting for the Pot Roast to come out of the oven, I took a few more pics so that mom and everyone can see what we've got here. I'm kinda enjoying uploading pics for ya'll to see, so hope you enjoy seeing it. if you don't, oh well, i'm liking this:)

So here's the living room-my husband is enjoying ESPN while on his laptop!:) (thats right we have cable and internet now! whoo!) Here's also some of the dining area...we haven't gotten pics developed for the frames we want to put up on the wall, but those blank spots will have picture frames to fill in all the empty spots:)

Here's the other side of the kitchen. the laundry area is in the kitchen on the other side. thats the door with the curtain i'd like to get rid of as soon as we can buy new ones:) they came with the apt. oh well, it covers up the glass window for now.

here are the sushi dishes that I got from my 6West girls! I LOVE them and can't wait to make sushi and serve it on these:)

Here's a pic of all the Caphalon pots and pans that I've got! I LOVE them. Caphalone proves to be the best brand for cookware-seriously. amazing stuff.

The plates, bowls, glasses, and mugs are the dishes that we purchased with some giftcards from our wedding. we love them:) the square glasses are fun to drink out of, and the dishes are really cute!

just because i'm behind on the pics:)

Here are some pics from Universal Studios on our honeymoon...sooooo much fun. Ryan got us the Express Plus Pass, and we got to go in and do 16 different rides and activities in like 9 hours because we skipped all the lines! it was AWESOME.

we did both the Universal Studios Islands of Adventure AND Universal Studios.

((yep, thats right, we totally caught the shark! actually, we rode the ride i've wanted to ride since i was a lil kid!)

universal studios looked like a tv set:)

heres universal studios at night. it's known as the City Walk:) lotsa fun.

Learning the married life ways:)

So being a wife is a story in itself. I knew going into marriage, I was going to have to feed my man some how. Well, God gave me a mom that I can call at any given time, to ask her how to cook anything. Here's my first REAL meal that I cooked for Ryan! (real as in, not pizza, pasta, or sandwiches:)).

Chicken, veggies, and rice, with a yummy broth!

And just to show that storm lake isn't just corn and wheat fields, here are some pics that we took on our bike ride around the town:)

First week of life in Storm Lake

Ryan and I thought it would be a neat opportunity to blog about our life together in Storm Lake, and keep ya'll updated on how you can be praying for as a newly married couple and as we serve in Iowa for the first time. There is so much that we could share about so far in life together, but we'll let pictures tell the story for you:).

here is our kitchen when we first moved in...

(before)

(after)

the living room when we first moved in. see the mattress on the floor? yep, thats our twin size bed. we moved it from the living room to the bedroom of course:)

(before)

this is how it looks after my sweet sweet husband put assembled everything and put our living room together:). with a few pillows, a rug, and a bit of a feminine touch that will come furthur on in the future (ahem, paydays ahead;)), it will be so cozy and cute, and high tech:)

(after) (notice no twin mattress in the living room;))

Here are some pics of us putting our lil home together:)

our kitchen had 24 freaky looking roosters in the kitchen on every single drawer and cupboard that we had. I took care of that within the first three days of living in the apt. no more freaky roosters staring at me from all over the kitchen!

I replaced the roosters with these sweet looking knobs. I 'm happy with our kitchen now:)

here's ryan assembling our futon. we got a sweet deal on it, tipped on by my mom. got the futon for $99 bucks, and its a cozy lil addition to our living room!

we also bought a tv stand to put our brand new 40'' flat screen LCD HDTV 1080mp. (pretty much Ryan's pride and joy right now.lol). it's got a sweet picture and sound. we're pretty thrilled with it, cuz movies and video games will be like non other. sooo great. thank you to his mom for it!:)