O Christmas tree O Christmas why are you leaning???

The Puigs officially got their first Christmas tree. It's beautiful looking! Although John and I do seem to have different ideas of what a "full" Christmas tree looks like. John thinks the tree is completely full of ornaments while Danielle see's it as only 50%. One of them obviously didn't grow up with Schmidts in their family.

Mom and Dad Davidson had given us the 'utltimate Christmas tree stand' promising it would save our marriage and prevent many fights. The put there stamp of approval on it as the best thing around. Well about a week after putting the tree up Danielle noticed it was heavily slanted to the front and falling! Yeah what is so ultimate about this Christmas tree stand Mom and Dad? Ha ha. Luckily John with his ' guns' was able to unscrew the tree, twist it around and screw it back in saving our beautiful first tree. O what a wonderful hubby.

Black Friday

2:20 am
Beep Beep Beep

[Groggy Voices]" eh, erhh...Bang(the hitting of the alarm)"

2:45 am Out The Door


As our first year as a married couple we of course had to begin the staple tradition of Black Friday. That is a key tradition to have. Can we count this year and John's first outing on Black Friday as a success? Well that depends on which part you look at and who you ask....

Did we wait in line for two hours to be one of the first 20 people into Toys R us...most definitely.
Did we eagerly rush inside to claim one of the top must haves from the ad ( 30gig video MP3)....heck yes!
Did Danielle make it to the tickets for the item as the second person...duh, years of shopping experience.
Did we than come out empty handed because the first guy there took ALL the tickets...hey let's not talk about the sore spot.
Did we save hundreds of dollars by switching to Geico? Nah.
Did we succesfully spend 8 hours out and come home with 75% of all our Christmas shopping done...yes.

So worth it all? Well are you asking John or Danielle??? ;-)

If you give a Puig a roadtrip.....

.....they're gonna want adventure!!!


Seriosuly what is life without adventure, much more a roadtrip without adventure. Danielle love's adventure but didn't realize that roadtrips were gonna become so much a part of our routine. Since the very beginning of marriage....a week from being back from our honeymoon to be exact ( that was the time when the 12 year totaled John's car all while Danielle watched thinking she had only been married for 3 weeks and already her husband was dead) roadtrips have made adventure.

The last 5 weeks straight the Puigs have traveled. Charlotte, West Virginia, Roanoke, Charlottesville, Deleware and Maryland. John got his CDL so he can now drive the bus...wahoo. So last weekend he convinced the team that they should be fully confident in his driving by praying before hand. It went something like this.......

" Dear God please help me to be ' Awert and 'Alake' as I drive....." It was about that time the team roared in nervous laughter that he was about to take them home on the 4 hour drive. Never the less he did great...his honey kept him 'awert and alake' .

This weekend Danielle and John were seperated as John drove the team to Deleware and directed them there while Danielle traveled to Maryland. On the way to Maryland Danielle realized she was carsick ( yes she was the one driving) and she realized this when she was in the fifth lane over. Luckily she had a plastic walmart bag, which she didn't have to use, luckily. Whew, close one there. Could have been a long road trip with a bag of ...well you know what in the car.

On our way to Charlottesville we watched the near death of an old man as he walked across the road, purposefully in front of a truck while leaving his wife behind on the sidewalk. Then we watched as he did some not so nice things to to the truck that he walked in front of. Whew again!

Really the list can go on. Cause you know the story all winds up at the beginning...if give a Puig a roadtrip, they're gonna want ADVENTURE.

5 little dice

Lately our evenings have consisted of many MANY sports games. Danielle has won John over to being a big Red Sox fan and John has won Danielle over to being a VIRGINIA TECH fan. Between the two teams quite a # of games are played and with the world series there has been many late nights recently. So many that the other night Danielle woke up and couldn't even remember where she was or how she got up into that bed, a fright at first indeed. This past Thursday VT suffered a very unfortunte loss, the Puigs were not to happy. But the bright side looks like BO SOX are gonna win the World Series tonight, keeping the fingers crossed.


Passed on from the Davidson family the Puigs have also become HUGE game people. Yahtzee has recently become our favorite game. Not really sure why as we just sit there and roll dice over and over and over and over and over ( so you get the picture) again. Maybe its that rising anxiety that crawls up your stomach as you feel like you almost have some power over what the dice are gonna come out as, as you slowly drop 1..than 2....3. than 4 & 5 dice out and get to yell "YAHTZEE" oh the excitment. Who knows it could be the feeling you get as you total up your top half scores hoping that you get the extra 35 bonus points or the decisions you have to make when you roll nothing and have to ZERO something. Yes the tragedy in putting a big fat round ZERO in one of the boxes....never the less we are admitting to being Addicted. So if you are ever in town be prepared for some hard core dice rolling battles.

Sad news on the homefront, little Chance died. He was a good lil gipper. I asked John to bury him, he did. Rolled him inside a sheet and tossed him in the woods,I guesss thats kinda burying him. ;-\

We also went on a group date this weekend. Funny enough it was with people from the LIGHT team. Even when we have off for the weekend we still ended up traveling an hour away for a date with a bunch of them, oh the irony.

Once again we are overdue for bedtime. Unfortunetly Red Sox take priorty over sleep today. As my mother would say....

"Its time for B-E-D, its time for B-E-D........"

John caught me a pet squirrel.......

Yes it's true I got a pet....a new one. Second to our first pet that we got on our honeymoon, Kermit Clark Puig. That's our pet turtle. My new pet is Chance, John caught him for me and it's a baby squirrel. A very cute gipper I must say! I wanted a skunk but John isn't really as big on exotic pets as I am. He says I can pretend....
Puppy faces are hard to resist though so I think I will have a skunk in the future...( see this is more of Aunt Ruth in me.)

Besides my new pet John and I traveled to W.Virginia this past weekend with the LIGHT team. We almost had to sing the national anthem and believe me the church wouldn't have invited us back after that, whew. Luckily we got all that straightened out and didn't have to actually sing. The ministry went extremely well. On Friday night we did what is called "5th Quarter". It is where a local church opens up after a public highschool's football game and just invites all the kids from the game to come over have food, play games and hang out. It's kind of like an alternative place they can go on a Friday night and its a really neat ministry. The team did a Youth Concert that night and hung out with all the kids there, there was a total of 110 kids! Saturday we got to go to National Bridge day. Oh bessie sue it was sooooo sweet! We watched 450 jumpers as they took the plunge off a 897 ft. bridge. To clarify they had parachutes on. It was pretty awesome...pics and videos to come, promise.


Kyle came over for dinner tonight. We kind of spoil him. Homecooked meals on Tuesday and Nell does his laundry for him...yeah she loves her brother. And she loves being a wifey and getting to cook and keep up home, she earned her M.R.S. degree and is putting it to full use.

Well 10:38 so it is way past our bedtime. We aren't cool anymore. At least that's what Johanna said one night when she called at 8:30 and we were already in bed....that said from a 14 year old we kinda realized we weren't cool anymore. *sigh* the things you give up for marriage....... being cool.

Demented Bunnies and Meeting Switchfoot

CFAW, that stands for "College for a Weekend". Liberty has this thing where high schoolers come for the weekend to have a college 'experience'. Well as one of Kyle's professors said....
"College is NOTING like this weekend"

Johanna and our neighbor Greg came up for the weekend and it was a blast.

Weekend Highlights:
1. Pounding on glass as Hockey players were smashed up in front of us and pucks came whizzing by.

2. Getting chased by men with chainsaws,gigantic bunnies, and getting trapped in a haunted house.

3. Johanna and Greg experiencing the "ROT" aka Liberty's cafeteria

4. Putt-Putt golf where our balls seemed to be going in the holes and bouncing out more than staying in.

5. Being slammed by hundreds of girls as they stretched out there hands for the lead singer of SWITCHFOOT as he ran through the crowd.

6. Waiting at the tour bus and meeting SWITCFOOT, autographs and pictures with them!

7. Flying, or at least giving the illusion of on top of the mountain.

8. Climbing through the gigantic LU letters on the mountain instead of going on the trail around it.

9. ROAD TRIP

10. Sleeping with my baby sister again and it felt like sleeping with my husband because she too STOLE ALL THE COVERS.

11. $5 Hot and Ready Little Caesar Pizza

12. CAMPUS CHURCH with none other than our ADD campus pastor JOHNNIE MOORE

Basically Amazing weekend ( except that my honey was out of town, and it was our first time being separated since being married *tear*)

DO you think my immune system is working????

This is the story......

If you give Danielle a job with kids, she's gonna love it;but if one of those kids has germs ( which they do, and LOTS of), she's gonna catch it. Apparently Danielle's immune system has decided it wants to take a rest from working, ha now isn't that something we would all like to do!!! So her last battle has been with pink eye, how fun. Pairing a lack of immune system and Danielle's 'klutziness'(for lack of better words) together really turns out to a whole lot of battle wounds. Last week she had it down to a pretty minimal amount, 2 burns and 1 nice slice from a can worthy enough for stitches( but married people can't afford stitches, so 3 butterflys and a splint, did that one in.) Needless to say Danielle is quite ready for her immune system to kick back in to HIGH gear........

On another note John will be traveling to Roanoke, VA this weekend with the team. And everyone hold the tears please, but this will be the first Danielle and John will have been apart since being married *SIGH*. Yes we know this is going to be quite hard to make it through an entire 24 hours without being with eachother, but we feel that we will have enough strength to last. Pinky (Johanna in case someone has missed out on that nickname) and Greg the Davidsons neighbor are coming up this weekend for reinforcement for Danielle. They will be having all sorts of fun at Liberty..seeing the college, hockey games,Scaremare, Campus serve, Switchfoot concert so Danielle is very excited to have them here. Please be praying for John and the team as the travel, for safety and than as they are down there ministering and to the congregation at this church and as they encourage them in missions.


On the homefront The Puigs have been doing quite well in the newly married life. Danielle would like to find a time to where her wedding dress again, and has been caught playing dress up in it ;-) Danielle would like to inform any ladies who think its a grand idea to have a wedding dress party to email her....*almost all sarcasm there* . Married life has brought many new things into our lives and we have found out many new quirks about eachother. John is still trying to cope with really how much Danielle eats applesauce with everything, and the odd fact that she doesn't actually like it by itself. Still trying to work on the whole Sharing the bed....Danielle Hogs the bed, John hogs the covers....trying to find the middle of both. Overall marriage is amazing neither of us would trade it for the world. God has blessed us abundantly with wonderful spouses, a beautiful home, great jobs and the opportunity to lead a missions trip together in December and January!