Happy Birthday!

Friday night we celebrated Trever and Mom's Birthday! We started out at Dos Reales where they were required to wear some stunning sombrero's before they could eat their fried tortilla with whipped cream on top!

Christmas 2007

First of all, let me post a small disclaimer for my side of the family. You may notice that there are ZERO pictures from the Builta Christmas gatherings. For round one (Grandma Builta's on December 15th) my battery was dead. And, on Christmas Eve with the immediate family, Kirk was taking pictures so I didn't. So, if I ever get copies from my family, I'll post them at a later date. I'll also appologize for some of the dark pictures to come, but enjoy nonetheless!

Christmas Round 1 was with the Builta's on December 15th. Since my Aunt Carol, Uncle Kenneth, Aunt Kathi and cousin Kara all decided to spend Christmas in Florida, we gathered a little early. We tried a gift exchange this year and I think it went pretty weel.

Round 2 was the Saturday before Christmas with the immediate Kuipers family. Of course we overate and opened gobs of presents. The only picture I have from that night is of Kyla with her new undies and I didn't figure she would appreciate that being posted on the world wide web!

Round 3 was brunch with Grandpa Kuipers, Dee and Marshall. Again, mass quantites of food! No wonder the scale never stopped when I worked out today!

I actually have some pictures of Round 4! The extended Ficklin family met at Aunt Sue's house in Onarga. Here is a picture of Grandma and Grandpa Ficklin and all of their descendants! They even let me in the picture...that wouldn't happen in the Builta family. Maybe next year Trever will no longer be a "guest".

Trever and Kyla with cousin Kelly!

Neela got a Christmas toy from Grandma and Grandpa (aka Kathy and Greg). She loves playing in her new tent.

Round 5 was with my family...those pictures will come eventually!

Round 6 was just Trever, Neela and I. This is my present from Neela! A few weeks ago I came home from work and 3 of our Christmas ornaments had been destroyed and spread throughout the kitchen. So, Neela "made" me an ornament that says "I'm Sorry" and has paw prints on it. She has 5 more back ups if she breaks any next year!

Round 7 was at Grandma and Grandpa Ficklin's house. There were so many presents! I have tons of pictures of this one. Here are just a few of them.

The DeOrnellas family! Check out Caisey's cool pink Illini shirt!

Ava is Trever's 1st cousin once removed (I think that's right). She belongs to his cousin Kent and his wife Kelly. What a cutie!

And finally Round 8! Caisey got her very own Christmas on Christmas night. What a lucky girl!

Santa was awfully good for us! Part of it might have been the gift registry that he had as suggestions! We have a ton of great stuff for our new home, but best of all was being able to spend time with our families! Merry Christmas!

Update

It's been quite a while since we've updated our friends on our whereabouts. We've been keeping ourselves busy with the new house, Christmas shopping, work and trying to squeeze all of our friends and family in over the holidays. Since our last post we've celebrated a birthday in Illinois, traveled to Ohio for another birthday and some antiquing, had Christmas Round 1, and survived our first snowstorm at the new place.

The first weekend in December I fought the ice and made my way to visit with some of my LeRoy friends. It was great to spend some time with them and see Jenna's new house. That Sunday we headed to a 5th grade basketball game and off for pizza and cake to celebrate Caisey's birthday. I'm hoping she brings the gift we gave her back at Christmas. I bought it so I could play with it!




The next weekend Trever and I headed to Ohio to celebrate Kyla's birthday. It just so happened that some other relatives were visiting Ohio the same weekend. We spent all day looking for the perfect antique cabinet to put in our kitchen before hitting the mall and meeting Aunt Sue, Beth and Jerry for dinner.

This last weekend was the first big snow. We made it to Grandma Builta's house Saturday night for Christmas Round 1. This is the first time we have done what I call a "white elephant" exchange. I'm surprised with how well it came off. I came home with a fleece blanket made by grandma and Trever came home with the game 1 vs 100. I think we faired pretty well.

Sunday was suppose to be a Christmas party at our house, but it turned in to a small intimate gathering instead. After our first big snow, Trever spent the morning scooping the drive with his brand new snow shovel while I got the soup and sandwhiches ready. Between the poor weather and a kid that was under the weather, the only ones that made it up were the Brucker's. It was a lot of fun to catch up with Kate, Eric and Alyson. We'll have to have everyone up again sometime after the holidays.

We've got a slow week this week, but we're gearing up for a lot of driving, eating and gift giving next weekend! It's nice to be wanted at so many different places over the holidays, but it gets difficult to please everyone. I'm sure we'll have many more pictures and updates after Christmas!

Gift Registry

Since many family members have been hounding us for christmas gift ideas, Krista and I decided to register for wedding gifts already. After some minor arguing, we decided to register at Bed, Bath and Beyond. They were great to work with. Krista pretty much just handed me items, and I scanned them. I had Much more fun registering at Lowes, but they did not have a fun scanning gun.

We will continue to add to our registries, but if anyone wants to check them out, here are the links

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/regGiftRegistry.asp?order_num=-1&wrn=%2D1421819470&

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/GRHome.do

Carpet

I am currently sitting in our NEW house, playing on our NEW internet, while Jose and his two amigos put in our NEW carpet!

It's official!

The big news we've been waiting to share is finally official! We are homeowners! We've been working on the house for about a month now, but didn't want to share the news until we were 100% sure the house was ours. We signed the papers yesterday and are indebted to the bank for the next 30 years. The American dream!

The house is a 3 bedroom ranch style house with a full basement. There are just over 2 acres, and a barn, which Trever is anxious to fill with black cows. Below are some before pictures of the house we started with. The carpet comes in next Wednesday and then we'll be able to post some after pictures.

If you would like our new address, feel free to e-mail us at treverandkrista@hotmail.com

Go Illini!

I apologize to all of our adoring fans out there for slacking with the blog updates. We've been very busy lately, and I look forward to sharing more pictures of what has been keeping us so busy very soon.

One of the highlights of our fall has been watching the Illini win a few games! We have purchased season tickets to the football games with 3 other couples an have really enjoyed sharing a (somewhat) successful season with them. Hopefully we will have a good bowl game to watch this winter and we can enjoy ourselves like we did when they hit the Sugar Bowl a few years back (I believe it has been 5 years...wow, those were the days).

Enjoy some pictures of our group, proving there is more to Illini football than just the tailgating!

Jeremiah is definitely the cutest Illini fan at Memorial stadium!

We're awfully dressed up for a football game.

John is my football question go-to guy. I'm surprised he hasn't traded his ticket in to get away from my stupid questions!

The picture is a little blurry of the Rademaker's, but I couldn't leave them out. By the way, Josh and Maggie missed the picture taking game...I've got one more shot to get their picture.

Greg and Kathy (Trever's parents) joined us for the homecoming game. I think they decided it was their first Illini game since about 1983! At least they got to see a win!

By the way...keep the comments coming! I love reading your thoughts!

Any Requests?

Thank you to all of you that are loyal readers of our blog. I know I haven't posted in a long time but I promise we'll have more to share soon. For now, I'm looking for song requests ! If there is something special you would like to hear at our reception, leave us a comment and we'll do our best to get it on the play list!

Another trivia question

Well, both mom and Marla got the answer right (even though my mom didn't want to ruin it by posting it on here). Trever and I were both Section FFA Presidents, just for different sections in different years. Ok, so maybe that was a difficult one. Let's see if this one is any easier.

Where did we go on our first "date"?

Time for Trivia!

Since there hasn't been much to report in the last few days...and since I'm sure some of you stalk this blog as much as I do, I thought I'd begin a bit of an audience participation activity for our regular readers. (Note: these random facts may come in handy at a later date)

Question #1

What officer position did both Krista and Trever serve as...just in different years?

What a beautiful day!

We promised another update following the big Kuipers/DeOrnellas wedding and here it is! It was an absolutely beautiful day! My pictures didn't turn out too well, but hopefully you'll get an idea about how wonderful everything was. I know Trever is excited to have a new brother-in-law and niece and I'm excited to make it official myself in May!

Mr. and Mrs. DeOrnellas!

Caisey with Uncle Trever and Kathy!

What a good lookin' couple!

Another goood lookin' couple!

Maid-of-Honor Kae Siebring and Bride Kyla DeOrnellas

Trever and Kyla

Ron and Caisey

Krista, Kae and Kyla in the honeymoon suite!

It's not a very good picture, but I think that's the best man helping Caisey decorate the car...proving that Krista and Trever had nothing to do with it!

Pre-Wedding party...not for us of course!

This weekend we road tripped to Ohio to visit Trever's sister, Kyla, and his soon-to-be brother-in-law. They threw a wonderful pre-wedding bash for their friends in Ohio before getting hitched in Illinois next weekend. Here are some pictures from our weekend.

Trever and I...duh!

Trever, Kyla and Kathy

The whole gang...Greg, Kathy, Krista, Trever, Ron and Kyla.

Look for more updates next weekend following the Kuipers/DeOrnellas nuptials.

Wedding Nightmare

My alarm clock was a welcome interruption to my sleep this morning. It didn't take me long to wake up and thank God that my dream wasn't really happening. If any of you are dream doctors, please tell me that this is a sign our wedding will be wonderful, not the nightmare I had last night. I don't remember everything, but enough to know it was bad.

My wedding was a disaster. It was in the church in Bellflower and we didn't have flowers. Following the ceremony, they took the pews out of the church and we had the reception right there. The DJ set up her things up in the pulpit (yeah, she was a woman who was having a blast making my life difficult). She didn't have our first dance song, we didn't have a father/daughter/mother/son dance and everyone left early. Trever was wearing a white t-shirt and workout shorts. Before long he completely disappeared. I remember looking through every nook and cranny in the church for a bottle of wine, hoping to make my reception more enjoyable. Then the few of us that were left (mainly just my bridesmaids) sat on the floor. Eventually, one of my former students showed up. He called me "Miss Builta" and everyone corrected him that I was married now and he couldn't call me that anymore. The last thing I remember was finding Trever. He hugged me, I was sobbing and my alarm clock went off...thank goodness!

Hopefully this is no indication of what our wedding day will be like!

The Wedding Party

We finally have a complete wedding party and I'm excited to introduce each of them to you. We have both been blessed with many friends, unfortunately we can't have all of them standing at the front of the church with us. So, here are the chosen few who will be walking down the aisle with us.

Best Man - Seth McIntyre - Friend of the Couple
Seth and Trever have been great friends since about 6th grade. No matter how much time passes between their visits they can always pick up right where they left off. Seth and his wife, Brianna, are the parents of Eden and Gavin and are expecting a new baby girl any day (or maybe she's already here and I just don't know it).

Groomsman - Ron DeOrenellas - Brother-in-Law of the Groom
Ron is Trever's soon-to-be brother-in-law. He will be marrying Trever's sister, Kyla, on September 8th. Ron and Trever both share a passion for the livestock industry although I'm pretty sure Ron prefers the pigs to the cows. We enjoy frequent visits with Ron, Kyla and his daughter Caisey on their trips back from their home in Ohio.

Groomsman - Kirk Builta - Brother of the Bride
Kirk is blessed to be the brother of the bride. A recent graduate of the University of Illinois, Kirk is employed by the Champaign County Farm Bureau as their Information Director (a position that one of the bridesmaids also held a few years back). Although he is officially in the working world, Kirk's involvement in the University of Illinois and his support for Chief Illiniwek will continue. We've also decided that Kirk and Trever were at FFA Camp together quite a few years ago, even though they didn't know each other at the time.

Groomsman - Josh St. Peters - Friend of the Couple
Josh and I first met at the Illinois State Fair several years ago after being introduced by one of my now bridesmaids. It turns out that Josh and Trever actually knew each other even earlier than that when they both were named Stars Over Illinois within the Illinois FFA. And, Josh ended up marrying my cousin, Maggie, making him part of the family too! We enjoy spending time with Josh and Maggie in a variety of settings.

Maid-of-Honor - Kara Builta - Cousin of the Bride
Kara is my yonger cousin, although she has been mistaken for her niece or sister on several occasions (mostly by her dad). Kara will be a junior at Mahomet-Seymour High School next year and will be heading for Hawaii with the chorus shortly after the wedding. She enjoys water skiing and ice skating when they fit in to her tight social schedule. Trever and I enjoy trips to her family's lake house when we find the time.

Bridesmaid - Kyla Kuipers - Sister of the Groom
Kyla is my future sister-in-law and, of course, Trever's sister. She and Ron (see above) will be getting married September 8th in Onarga. Thanks to a dress fitting trip with Kyla a couple of weeks ago I ended up finding my dress at the same store. We enjoy having Kyla back from Ohio every couple of weeks and are very excited to be part of her wedding one month from today!

Bridesmaid - Marla Todd - Friend of the Couple
Marla was one of the first people I met when I moved in to Armory House my freshman year of college. We both joined Sigma Alpha and eventually lived together for a year in the coolest appartment ever! Marla and Trever also share a passion for purebred cattle, although Marla prefers the white ones to the black ones. Marla, her husband, John, and son, Jeremiah, live in Fisher.

Bridesmaid - Amy Rademaker - Friend of the Couple
I was honored to stand up with Amy during her wedding in March and I'm honored that she will be standing up with me next May! When I joined Sigma Alpha, Amy picked me to be her little sister. We became very close very quickly and I'm blessed that the relationship continued after graduation. Amy works in Rural Health and Farm Safety at Carle Hospital and resides outside of Rantoul with her husband Ryan.

The Life and Times...

I know there are a few of you out there complaining that we haven't updated in a while...some of you have even told me about it. Although there aren't many wedding updates to fill you in on (hopefully there will be more soon), here's what we have been up to.

In July we were on the road more than we were home. The first week we took off for 8 hours on the road together. The quality bonding time didn't kill us but a short bout with food poisoning about did Trever in. Besides that, we enjoyed a couple of days in Tulsa at Angus Junior Nationals where I got to meet more of Trever's cow friends. We headed back to a wedding on Saturday, a night at the lake and back to pick up the kid (cat) from grandma and grandpa's (Kathy and Greg).

We worked for 4 days before getting back on the road for a float trip in Missouri. As aprehensive as I was, It was a perfect weekend for camping. We floated down the Huzzah River all day Saturday with some of Trever's high school friends. He is pictured here with Nicole and April.

Another 4 days of work (I'm really liking all of this time off) and I headed to Milwaukee for a Sigma Alpha reunion. I had a great time hanging out by Dani's pool Friday night with college friends. After an early morning trip to O'Hare on Saturday morning, Trever joined us for a tour of Miller Brewing Company and Sprecher Brewery and dinner at Rock Bottom Brewery (Trever claims he has to drink to spend time with my friends:). We headed back early Sunday for a family reunion in Leroy.

The final weekend in July we "stayed home" although we were busy. Friday night was a family outing to a visitation. Saturday we met with a banker with the hope of buying a house in the near future (I'm pretty sure we'll be broke forever) and then I went dress shopping. Sunday I headed to a conference for work (Yeah for overtime).

We've been very busy but that's how we like it. Look for more wedding updates soon!

How we met

For those who may not know all the details, here is a little history on everything leading up to the engagement.....(well, at least how I remember it)

I first met Krista in the Fall of 2002. She was in her Senior year at the University of Illinois, and I had just transfered there as a Junior. My roomate, Jeff Clifton, was also a Senior and had the same major as Krista (Ag Education). After meeting Krista, I decided that her and Jeff would make a GREAT couple. Every time I would see Krista, I would try to talk her into dating Jeff....but she never gave in.

In the spring semester,Krista left Champaign-Urbana to do her Student-teaching. Therefore, I never got the opportunity to get to know her very well.

Krista graduated from UIUC in May 2003 and accepted a teaching position at Iroquois West High School, which just happened to be MY home high school that I had graduated from just 3 years earlier. I completed my degree in May 04, and shortly afterwards moved to Chrisman, IL.

In February 2006 I accepted a new job and moved to Piper City, IL, which is just 10 miles from Gilman, where Krista was living. I decided to attend a fundraising auction for the Iroquois West FFA. Krista saw me, and quickly asked if I would be a volunteer judge for an upcomming proficiency contest--I agreed.

On the van ride to the contest, Krista and I talked non-stop. Krista and I started seeing more and more of each other. She invited me to an Illini party at her house, and to help her with the local park the FFA was working on. One day I recieved a phone call from Jace McGehee, the Iroquois West FFA president. He asked if I would donate blood at the blood drive they were hosting. He then proceeded to say, "I think my ag teacher wants to date you"--or something to that effect.

Krista and I never really "dated", we just started hanging out more and more, and our friendship evolved into a deep love that neither one of us could ever have planned. Our first date, if you can call it that, was to the High School performance of Oklahoma!.

Krista and I have been through many things, and experienced lots of changes in the past 16 months, but we our relationship seems to become stronger through it all....hopefully it will continue to do so for years to come.

Just Kidding!

I really don't have much to add to what my "fiance" already posted. She has made me very happy over the past 16 months, and I look forward to a lifetime of happiness (providing I survive the planning stages!). Keep May 31, 2008 open on your calendar, it should be a great day!

Trever's story

Yes, it is true, Krista's complaining and begging FINALLY paid off and I asked her to marry me......against my better judgement. However, her family has agreed to pay me one million dollars to marry her, and her dad will continue to give me $250,000 for every year I stick with it. Rumor has it, her mother will chip in an extra million for each grandchild. Dang, I hope its worth it!!!!

May 31, 2008

It's official (or at least it will be once the contract is signed), we have a location for our reception. We've been waiting to share this site with our friends and family until we were 100% sure on the date. So, here's what we know...

We will be married at the Onarga United Methodist Church in Onarga, IL. This is the church that Trever and his family attend and also shares a preacher with the United Methodist Church in Piper City which Trever and I attend together.

The reception will be at The Linden in Rantoul. http://www.lindenbanquetcenter.com/ It is about 30 minutes from the church and located on the old Air Force Base.

Now that the important decisions have been made, we can all relax a little bit and start thinking about the fun stuff!

The ring!

Trever did an excellent job picking out my ring! She has some beautiful friends that will join her on our wedding day!

June 15, 2007 - Krista's story

I'm pretty sure everyone that reads this already knows most of the story, but here it goes again...WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!

Friday , June 15, 2007 Trever "surprised" me with an amazing proposal, a beautiful ring, and a party filled with friends and family. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect proposal! A few weeks ago, Trever told me to keep Friday night free. I didn't ask too many questions because I had a feeling that he was going to propose. Then things got a little too obviously suspicious. My friends would change the subject, or make comments regarding my weekend plans. I'd try to pry just enough to figure out that something was going on, but not enough to figure out what was going on. Anyway, Friday night I was suppose to be ready at 7:15. I could tell that Trever had been home when I got there because the dryer was running. I figured he had gone back to work and would be home at a decent time. When I text messaged him, he said be ready at 7:15. At 7:15 my phone rang and it was Trever asking me to meet him at the church, telling me that he needed help with some faxes and copies for work (yeah right). When I got there, there was a note on the front door telling me to meet him at the front of the church. When I walked in he had music playing and was standing at the front. After a long walk down the aisle, he asked if I knew why I was there. He told me that the first time I went to church with him, he knew that he wanted to marry me. He did get down on one knee but I really don't remember what else he said. The ring was beautiful but I didn't even take it from him!! Even though I knew it was coming I was still shocked!THEN....we went up town to "have dinnner" or "get a drink". I noticed his parent's car sitting across the street from the bar so I figured our parents knew what was going on. When I walked in, there were probably 30 of our friends and family there to celebrate with us! Most of them knew (or at least had an idea) what was going on, but hadn't been told exactly what was going on. What a perfect night!All weekend was spent sharing our news with anyone who would listen!

Welcome!

As we begin to plan our wedding, we have created this website to keep our family and friends informed of the decisions we make and share the events of our life together. Make sure to save this site to your favorites and check back often to read our stories!