Us! ...Our Place

Hello to everyone! First and foremost - thank you for traveling to Austin over your Thanksgiving Day weekend to help us celebrate our marriage. We will never forget it!


So our blog post comes at a time of settling into our new apartment. We're not quite ready to share pictures of it as we're still working on finding everything a place. Instead we thought it would be fun to play a little game. We've taken photos of things in our apartment in macro mode. You get to guess what you think it is and we'll take pictures of the rooms these items are in once we get everything presentable :-).

Oh yeah,and we went on our honeymoon cruise in the Caribbean (Bahamas, Curacao, and Aruba). Hannah was thankful for the motion sick medicine they had on board when the captain came over the intercom and said that we would be under a gale force wind warning. In fact, the ship ran out of motion sick medicine during the cruise due to a rather windy ride. On the cruise, service was the name of the game. The ratio was 1 service person to every 3 passengers. Needless to say our meals were regularly four courses and full of silverware we'd never seen. The highlights were the excursions we took on the islands (kayaking in the Bahamas, touring the distillery and caves in Curacao, and snorkeling in Aruba), the 24/7 pizzeria and international cafe with warm yummy cookies before bed, and the Crown Grill where we had the best Fillet Mignon ever topped with salts from around the world! Here are a few pictures. First is a picture of the cruise ship as we rode the tender to Princess Cays in the Bahamas.


(Princess Cays, Bahamas)










(Curacao)










(Pic of the newlyweds in Curacao)








(Aruba, yes we snorkeled in the rain)










Here is the game. Let's put your guesses in the comments and that way we can see who gets the answers correct!

Picture #1












Picture #2












Picture #3
















Picture #4












Picture #5













Know that we think of you often and pray that you enjoy health in this new year!

Love,
Hannah and James

When last we left our intrepid NYC adventurers (Mary and Kurtis) they were headed for some troubling busy times…but now the continuation of our saga. 

Wow it’s hard to believe that almost six weeks have passed since we last posted on the blog.  In that time our household has seen some crazy stuff.  Mary has been working for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular as a Rockette dresser as well as working for Jersey Boy as both day crew and as a wardrobe swing(a person who fills in for a full time crew member when they are out sick or on vacation).  This time lead to a wealth of new experiences, friends and opportunities.  Several of the new “friends” are the camels at Radio City which she can name and provide an excerpt of their inner monologue at a glance.  

Kurtis is also keeping rather busy with his job as Technical Director at the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet.  Since taking over the position in August he has been to Germany twice for tours built several new shows and had lots of new growing experiences.  However with this new job also comes with several weeks of assigned vacation time which he was able to take off both Thanksgiving week and Christmas week.  He was able to do this mainly because both of those holidays followed tours and or tech weeks.  However in typical Kurtis fashion he ended up working over hire gigs during those weeks to help out friends or supplement their income. 

Christmas found our heroic pair starting new traditions of their own.  With Mary working at Radio City and Kurtis working up until the 23^rd, going home was not a realistic option.  To top off the long hours, opposite schedules plagued the dynamic duo.  But still they found time to walk the paths of the Rockfellar Center with the large NYC Christmas Tree, share a hot coco and enjoy great food together. They were able to spread out the opening of presents and make Christmas last around work and the urge to open all of them on the 13^th of Dec when they arrived from Kansas. 

 

This year has also given rise to a new hobby, brewing beer.  At first this seemed like a daunting endeavor so in typical Kurtis and Mary fashion they dove head first into bubbling depth of malty goodness with zeal and gusto.  So far they have brew three successful batches of beer, a Robust Honey Porter, an India Pale Ale and an Irish stout.  The results are in the beer seems to be a wild success. 

This ends our installment on location in NYC.  Stay tuned next time for more updates from those two crazy kids.

Who had Who for Christmas 2011

Hello all:
I thought everyone might enjoy (especially those who couldn't be with us) seeing the list of who had who for the sock exchange.  If you have not opened your sock gifts yet you may not want to read any further.   Here it is, I think it is correct.

Grandpa     Chris shopped
Grandma    Kurtis shopped
Randy        Samuel shopped
Pam            Grandpa shopped
Sarah         Dave shopped
Dan            Grandma shopped
Olivia         Vicki shopped
Mary          Cassi shopped
Kurtis         Tim G shopped
Charles       Hannah shopped
Dave           Andrew shopped
Cassi           Randy shopped
Adelynn     Sarah shopped
Tim S           Olivia shopped
Vicki            Pam shopped
Hannah       Kate shopped
James          Charles shopped
Andrew       Auntie shopped
Erik               Dan shopped
Samuel         Adelynn shopped
Tim G            James shopped
Auntie          Mary shopped
Kate              Tim S shopped
Chris             Erik shopped

Happy New Year
Love
Auntie

Merry Christmas from the Givan House
This post was inspired by Kate.  She recently read an article about family Christmas trees and ornaments.  It said that ornaments can tell a families history.  Here is some of our history.  Enjoy.

This year Chris had a tree at his Eco House.  It is pretty cool and just decorated with whatever they could find.  Have fun looking for common household items (and not so common) in the pictures below.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Love Auntie