The Updike's

As we mentioned before, we weren't abl e to go to either of our homes for Christmas, so we wanted to make it special for just the two of us. And since we both like food - alot! - we decided what better way to celebrate than to have a huge, Christmas Eve dinner together. Now you might be asking yourself - "So which restaurant did you go to since neither of you can cook?" And two months ago, you would have been right - We would have been happy to allow the Outback to provide us with a nice "home cooked" meal. But oh, how times have changed! Christina put together an unbelievable meal that left us both very satisfied. There was sooo much food! We had a 4 pound roast (yeah, I said 4 pounds), tons of mashed potatoes, corn, really big and soft rolls and even home-made gravy (we might not do home-made next time... it may have left a little to be desired), and even a candle to set the mood. And as surprising as it may seem, we ate it all by ourselves... OK, there are to...

Because we are not able to go home for Christmas this year, we decided that we needed to make our Christmas here a special one. So we ventured out into the snowy, cold weather and got ourselves a tree. Luckily, there are a few big forests near by and Garrett wanted to try out his new chainsaw. We searched high and low for hours and hours until finally... there it was! This tree was 10x's bigger and better than anything Clark Griswold ever had. It was perfect! We were soooo excited and knew that it would be the best tree in South Bend. Immediately we began to envision something like this... Unfortunately, reality soon struck - Our 7 foot high ceilings would not be able to contain this majestic wonder, and Garrett really doesn't have a chainsaw. So instead, we went down the street and paid a guy 35 bucks for our first tree. And we really do love it! There are a whopping 300 lights on this bad boy! Talk about getting the Chris tmas spirit in our home. And yes, that's popco...

South Bend Bound We arrived in South Bend, Indiana on October 25, 2007. Garrett is attending the University of Notre Dame. He just started a two year MBA program. Here's our "Love Shack" - A one bedroom apartment that we love! Please note our living room furniture. Yep, you guessed it - Camp chairs! One day our kids will appreciate how "hard we had it." But lucky for us, our heater works, which is really important in the cold and windy Midwest winters.

“Life is all about timing... the unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable become available, the unattainable... attainable. Have the patience, wait it out - It's all about timing.” - -Stacey Charter Timing is certainly everything. We first met in the winter of 2005. We went out 3 times and for various reasons, things did not click with us. We both went our separate ways . . . Little did we know that we would end up getting married a year and a half later.