The Knitted Viking Beard Cap

Loretta is the master of all things knitting. When we announced our "WEGE '09" (white elephant gift exchange '09) party, Loretta knew exactly what would melt my heart. A full-on viking beard cap. Lucky for me, through all the chaos and fist fights, I walked away as the winner of this marvelous gift. Before keeping it for myself, I let everybody take a picture with it once (and only once) because I am such a nice guy. Here are the pictures of the cap in all its glory.

- James

Salvation Mountain!!!

We finally went to Salvation Mountain. We have been talking about going for like a year now. Peanut, Donna, Aaron and my sister Virginia went with us. I can't wait to take Crystal when she comes out this summer. :)

The mountain was spectacular. These pictures really don't do it justice. Isn't it great to be able to use the gift God gave you to spread His word?

Click on the pictures and they will enlarge for your viewing pleasure.

♥ Michelle

We changed our link!

our NEW link to our blog is

James-Michelle.blogspot.com

I don't know if if matters if you subscribe to our blog via blogger, if it does, make sure you change it :)

We Almost Died

I know that the "We almost died" phrase is used quite often and not always to be taken literally. But this time it totally is. We really did, literally, almost die!

We were driving on our way to work. James driving, crossing the trolly tracks on Petree and Marshall. It was a green means go light. As we were driving through the interesection, a white van that was driving perpendicular to us ran a red light. I look up and see the van coming straight toward me. It's not like the van was stopped at the light and decided to go, he was coming from a distance and gunned it, acting as if we were not there and his light was green instead of ours.

Thank goodness God decided it was not our time to go. The van missed us by a couple inches. I thought for sure he was going to t-bone us. The thing is, he didn't even touch his brakes, not even after he almost hit us. It all seemed to go in slow motion.

We were so shocked and startled that we pulled over immediately to calm down and thank God for watching over us.



Things like this really make you appreciate life. And make me not want to drive.

Well here it goes...

Getting a lot of stuff done around the house this week. Some good while some other experiences are almost depressing for me. . . I need to sell some of my music gear! WHY?!??!!? I guess this day had to come eventually though. I really had too much stuff than I actually needed. . . not that possessing about 6 guitars is a bad or selfish thing at all. . . we just really need more room round here, nah mean?
Anyways, I'm excited because Michelle is getting to know her new sewing machine really well. Learning this all by herself, not even with the help of some YouTube video like we normally do for EVERYTHING! What would we do without YouTube? Probably all die in 7 days. She is making curtains out of a duvet cover (thinking outside the box) which totally makes sense because there is a ton of material in it and IKEA always has them on sale. $20 for the duvet cover vs $60 for curtains. . . hmmm
Oooh, and big news came this week! My brother and his wife, Melissa, just had their baby! A month early, but a beautiful and healthy baby girl named Sidnee. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jason and Melissa right now as they begin to experience the rest of their lives with their daughter. Love you!


- James

PartyLite Party Soon...

We are having a Candle Party soon. So excited! We came up with the Marie Antoinette theme and made the invites ourselves! And I did it all on PAINT. Can you believe it?

LOW COST food for $30 or less

Our friends have told us about two wonderful websites in which you can get at least a weeks worth of food for $30 or less. They even have fresh veggies and fruit sets.
Take a look at these two websites, they have pickup locations all over and would save a TON on money. You can pick the different "sets" that you want.

www.treasurebox.org
www.angelfoodministries.org

♥ Michelle

NEW BLOG!

James and I will be sharing this blog from now on to keep up with family and Friends! We will try to update it often. :)

Enjoy!

♥ the Schmitz's

Peanut. Our little love child.

OKay, one last picture post....

Here is to our baby, or little nutface. He is the cutest, sweetest thing and we smother him too much...... But we know he loves it.

Christmas time in the Schmitz Residence

I was playing with my camera today, snapping tons of pictures of our christmas decorations and our tree.

I would have to say I love our sparse, tall and lanky tree... It's totally us! And we have all these old ornaments from when James and I were kids that our parents gave us. They are so precious and have so many warm and fuzzy memories behind them. I put a few of my favorites here. I think the tree and the ornaments are my favorite Christmas things in our house, hands down. Tonight, Rachel came over and was telling us a story about a bunny ornament we had on our tree, the nostalgia it brings is wonderful. <3