Anna's Two!!!

Hey Guys!

Yesterday was Anna's Second Birthday!  It was an absolutely wonderful day for all of us.  We took Anna out to some places around town to take her birthday pictures and to get the photographs to kick off our project, which we explained to you in our previous blog post.  Then, Anna was very lucky to have her Grandma and Papa Link and Aunt Dannylin visit her on her special day.  We loved having them here and enjoyed one of Anna's favorite meals for dinner...  pesto tortellini.  For dessert, I made cheesecake brownies and Anna got to devour a jumbo cupcake!  After the fam left, we all relaxed and Anna passed out very early at 9pm.  Overall, it was a very successful birthday and we are so happy to have had the opportunity to make it such a special day for Anna.  We will leave you with a preview from her day.  Many more pictures will come in our blog post Thursday!

With love,
Anna, Evan, and Gabby

A Photo A Day

Hey Guys!

Now, we have mentioned a project we will be doing for Anna and as of yesterday it has started.  If you didn't already notice, our blog has been revamped and we are excited to fill you guys in on our new undertaking!  Evan and I share many passions the two of which are most important and close to our hearts are Anna and photography.  While we have always been really good about documenting our beautiful daughter's life, we have decided to take it a step further with this project.  Our goal is to photograph Anna every single day until she turns three.  Each week will have a theme depending on events and milestones going on in her life.  Then every Thursday you can find us here on our blog with a set of photos and a little blurb about the week.  Ultimately, our goal is to have an archive of photos and stories to create a book for Anna.  We are really excited to construct such a beautiful collection of memories for our family to cherish forever.  We hope that you will enjoy this journey along with us!  Make sure to tune in on Thursdays to see what's new!

With love,
Anna, Evan, and Gabby

It's almost Friday!!

Hey guys!

We had a really nice weekend off together and now Evan is back to work until Anna's big birthday on Friday!  My mom, Dan, and Dannylin are coming to visit and we are really excited to have them here to celebrate Anna's day!  Then the following weekend we will have lots of family here to celebrate too.  Anna is a very special girl who is loved by so many!

Speaking of Anna, I decided it was time to clean her room today and this is what I found...

It took me about an hour to sort out this mess and then I decided we will start having a toy rotation.  So the first set of toys went into the toy box today and we will see them in a month or two.  I would say it's about time to teach Anna about putting things back where they belong when she is done with them.  But, without a doubt, she plays hard.

With love,
Anna, Evan, and Gabby

Baking Cookies with Anna

Hey guys!

Things have been really exciting around our house these days.  We are all very excited to move to Eau Claire and every time we take a trip there we feel more and more confident that we will be happy to call it home.  We signed our lease today and mailed it back to our new landlords.  We are still negotiating a move-in date in hopes that we can get moved a few days before the end of June.  Here is a photo of the proud head coach!!

We are really excited about the next set of photos.  Like we mentioned before, Evan got Anna and I matching aprons for Mother's day.  We put them to use for the first time a few days ago and baked some cookies.  Now with Anna being a week shy of two years old, I must say she was an interesting baking partner.  She was overly concerned that the dough tasted good enough.  However, at times, she was very helpful with sprinkling the dough with flour and using the cookie cutters.  Overall, I would call our first baking adventure a successful one.  We are very excited to keep baking new things and watching Anna grow into a little chef.

Like I mentioned above, Anna will be two a week from today!  Evan and I are kind of in denial that our little girl is growing up so fast.  It's been so fun watching her grow into an intelligent and beautiful girl.  Every day is exciting with Anna in our lives and we love every second of it.  She went to the dentist for the first time this week too.  I never realized that little kids go to the dentist unless something is wrong with their teeth, but apparently Anna will continue to see a dentist once every six months.  The trip was successful and her teeth are very healthy.  She even got a bracelet and a new toothbrush!  With the coming of Anna's second birthday you will see some changes to the blog.  We are going to revamp it and we are starting a very exciting project that we will go into detail about in the days to come.

With love,
Anna, Evan, and Gabby

Our Nature Princess

Hey guys!

We figured it was about time to post this blog since we left you with a preview a few days ago!  We had so much fun at a local park taking pictures and running around with our little AnnaBoo.  She's the perfect model.

With Love,

Anna, Evan, and Gabby

Vacation

Hey Guys!

We have been surprisingly bad at blogging lately judging Evan is in the middle of nine day stretch of vacation.  But we will really try to get better and we will warn you now, this one will be long...

Because we are so behind in posting, we have some pictures from Easter that were shot on film to share with you all.  We both love shooting film, but the downside of it is that we have to be patient to get the pictures developed.  Take a peek.....

Like we mentioned in our last blog, we headed to Eau Claire last week and once again this week to view some apartments.  We finally found a few worth applying for and actually got accepted at all three of them.  We opted for the one that best fits our price range and that had all the amenities we were looking for.  The really cool thing about it is that it is out of town/in the country.  There will be a lot of room for Anna to run around and enjoy the summer!  We got the call today that our lease is on its way in the mail so we are really looking forward to locking it down.  We will move towards the end of June/July 1st.  And since we found our new home, the movers will be here any minute to give us an estimate!  We are very blessed to have Pawn America taking such good care of us!

Of course, Mother's day has come and gone.  It was a really wonderful day!  Evan and Anna made it so special for me (and so did the Gap with a great sale!).  My loves got me matching aprons for Anna and I and today we are going to bake some sugar cookies.  You should definitely look forward to some cute pictures in the future of Anna and I's baking adventures!!

A few days ago, we took Anna to the park to play.  She is a really funny girl and would rather collect sticks and dig in the dirt or sand than swing or slide.  But we have so much and here's the proof.  For Valentine's day this year Evan got me a really great Nikon film camera and this was my first outing with it where I actually had good film in my camera.  Needless to say, I have really missed shooting film and manual focus.

Every once in a while, Evan and I decide it is time to order some prints from all the thousands of pictures we take.  This time, we ordered over fifty prints along with three nice sized canvases.  We are really excited to decorate our new place with these.  They all turned out better than we could have imagined.

With the prospect of moving ahead of us, Evan and I have been brainstorming like crazy about the decor we would like at our new home.  We decided we really want to make it our own so we have selected themes for some of our rooms.  The other day, we ran to Hobby Lobby for the wood to mount our canvases and came across a 50% sale on all of this stuff...

Sneak Peak from our outdoor adventure ;) - full blog to come!!

Wow folks! If you made it this far you all deserve a very hardy pat on the back! We thank you all for tuning in and hope you check in often!

With love,

Anna, Evan, and Gabby

Busy. Busy. Busy.

Hey Guys!

Wow... We have been so busy these past few weeks.

Evan is finally using his vacation he's been unintentionally saving up for the past year and it has been really nice to have the chance to relax, as well as accomplish many necessary tasks.

We are heading back to Eau Claire tomorrow to look at a few more apartments, track down Super Target (I cannot even express to you how excited I am about this!!!), and explore the downtown area of the city.  Evan may also be hiring his first Eau Claire employee.  And we will hopefully get to eat at Noodles, unlike our last unsuccessful attempt.

Now we need to recap a little.  A few weekends ago, we made a trip to Waupun/Mayville to see my niece, Zoe, dance in her recital.  Let me tell you, she stole the show.  It was a very quick, but very nice trip.  Here are some photos from our adventure:

Then of course, Easter has come and gone.  We traveled down to Boscobel to join the gang for a nice celebratory shindig.  Great food, good people, and a very messy Anna.  She had a ton of fun enjoying the beautiful weather that we were so lucky to have for the holiday.  Also while we were enjoying the company of family, Evan took some great pictures of baby Graham, Blake, and Natalie.  Here a few photos from our Boscobel adventure:

We are also very excited to announce that we have booked our trip to Walt Disney World.  We are not 100% sure that all the details of the trip will work out, but we are hoping that we get the chance to take a little vacation and let Anna enjoy her childhood at one of the most magical places on earth.  (Yes, that is cheesy, but people who have been there will agree...)

We are also very excited about our wedding ideas coming together.  As they begin to fall together we will start posting some ideas on here.  We want everyone close to us to be involved in the development of the celebration of our special day!!  And if anyone is super crafty and wants to get in on our DIY projects, let us know!

Well, we will update again after our trip tomorrow and let you all know what we found on our adventure to Eau Claire.

With love,
Anna, Evan, and Gabby