Wonderful Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas.

This was the best part....

I teared up when I saw his face and he did too.  My sweet boy.  We got to talk to him for about an hour and a half.  It was so fantastic.  He told us some stories and we all laughed together.  Saying goodbye was awful.  I cried and could barely tell him Merry Christmas and that I loved him.  I tried so hard not to cry.  I know that made things harder for him.  He is doing so great and looks good and sounds so happy.  We could not be more proud of him and all he is doing.  Love you HD.  Merry Christmas everyone. 

Fun day out with the girls

To celebrate Sierra being home and the first day of winter we headed into the city.  Where people were wearing shorts and flip flops because it was 73 degrees!  Record breaking highs today! I still need to wrap a ton of stuff but we simply could not pass up the weather!  We went to the Museum of Natural History.  One of our favorites.  Happened upon a really cool interactive screen that had dinosaurs that looked like they were right there with you.  It was really great. Then we wandered through insects and got to our favorite part of that which is the butterfly exhibit.  Sierra didn't want to go in so Haylee and I walked through. Haylee had three butterflies land on her. She was ecstatic and the butterfly lady told her she would have good luck all day.  :) after that we went onto gems and minerals -my favorite- we saw the hope diamond and tried to see the other crown jewels that are there but that part was crowded and it was near impossible to push Sierra through in her wheelchair.  We gave up after a few minutes and walked through the rest of the beautiful things. We are cheeseburgers from a street vendor for dinner.  So yummy! We ended the day at the National Christmas tree.  There were 8 million other people who decided to take advantage of the weather and it would have taken us hours to get through the crowd so we viewed it from a little further back and will see the state trees after Christmas.  We were best when we got home but we watched a couple of Christmas shows anyway.  Great end to our fun day!  Tomorrow will be church, football and wrapping! We are all missing HD so much.  Can't wait to talk to him in a few short days!  

It looks like the t-Rex ate Sierra jn this pic! :)

A little Dino by Sierra.

Butterfly whisperer

See the baby starfish?  It was so cute! 

Dinosaur bones.

In the fossil lab window.  Dinosaurs excavating people. lol 

Not a great pic because Haylee was laughing so hard but she is eating frozen lemonade; in December; outside; at 6:00 at night!  It was so warm!! 

It is still really warm. I was just outside unplugging the Christmas lights and it is warm enough to sleep out there!  

Tis the season to be BUSY

My last few posts seem to involve some type of busy-ness :) it's that time of year. On Sunday our gospel doctrine teacher said we needed to make more time for the Savior and having peace during this time of year and not get so caught up in the bustle and bustle.  While I strive to make time for the Savior always I just cannot commit to peace.  At least not this 10 days or so!  Saturday was the kids Christmas party at the hangar.  Always a huge hit!  Crazy to live somewhere for nine years and be able to see the littles of all your friends grow up right before your eyes.  -I suppose that is normal for non military people lol not so normal for is usually.  It is super cool to eat lunch under the wing of that beautiful plane. They turned the tug into Rudolph this year so cute! No pics allowed but they do have a photog for these shots. 

Super fun, I mean Santa comes off of Air Force One- that's awesome and can't be missed.  Saturday night we got to go to the White House and do the Christmas tour. So beautiful!  We have been blessed this year to attend a few functions at the White House and we are so thankful for each opportunity.  It is not usually like that. Here are some photos: 

Haylee with the fallen soldiers tree.

Stunning! 

Us in the green room :)

Beautiful red room fireplace all the fireplaces had real fires burning in them! So cozy. 

Love these two and I love that my hubby carried our coats. 

Us :) 

It was just beautiful we hadn't gone since Haylee was really little. Glad she is old enough to remember now. 

Tuesday we got snow!! Yahoo!  No school!! I spent the day getting D's Christmas ready to mail. Tonight we got to go see the Nutcracker ballet by the Washington Ballet Company courtesy of the USO.  Again, so thankful!! Haylee LOVED IT.  I mean LOVED!! So happy she has an appreciation of the arts.  The cherry on top of the Sunday was Haylee meeting the Vice Commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James A. Winnefeld, jr.  He is the second highest ranking military person in the nation!  Wow.  Super cool honor.  He was very nice and let us take a picture with him. 

Haylee and Gav thought it was pretty fancy to meet this guy.  He was fancy.  He had his own secret service agents!   

Tomorrow is a favorite things bday party for a fantastic friend and getting Haylee to a Girl Scout babysitting thing tomorrow from 5-10pm, Friday it's the adult PAG party.  It's always a great event and I look forward to dancing the night away with our amazing friends.  Pics to come later.... Saturday is the ward Christmas party and Sunday I am speaking at a young women's event at another ward.  That sounds major it's not  I am giving a five minute talk for their program :) Monday is a cookie exchange and the chaos of the week Friday I pick up Sierra and it's time for Christmas!!  CrAzY!  Super fun though!  Merry Christmas everyone!! 

The most wonderful time of the year

I LOVE Christmas!!  LOVE IT!  The music, the decorations, the shows...all of it!  I want it to be Christmas all the time! Guess I need to move to Whoville.  The thing I miss about Christmases at "home" is the snow.  We have had decent winters here and then the snowmageddon winter which ROCKED but the last two winters we have had 5 inches of snow--TOTAL. Over two years! Two entire seasons -five inches and that's it! Lame.  So it was a happy surprise when snow was predicted on Sunday and sure enough by the time church let out there was snow on the ground and big fluffy white flakes falling from the sky.  It looked like a Christmas card.  It also started an impromtu snowball fight :) so fun to see the littles playing and laughing.  We almost never get snow in December.  Nine Decembers and only one with snow that stuck around for a day or two.  So it is even more surprising that we are getting snow again tomorrow!!!!!  Woo hoo!! 2-4" that is a ton compared to the last two years.  I am so excited!!!  Praying they cancel school and we can just play in all the white fluffy stuff.  :) here are some pics from Sunday:

I love the photo below. There is a snowball whizzing past Haylee's leg thrown by Brother Ellison he is an orthopedic surgeon and it turns out he has pretty good aim :)

Twirling :)

On top of the snow we had a little ice storm eventing looked just beautiful this morning 

Each branch and individual pine needle were coated in ice.  So beautiful!  

There was a 2 hour delay and we slept in and had a lazy morning.  Perfection!  

Keeping up

Trying to keep up with life these days has been overwhelming.  I am hanging in there and trying to balance it all without inflicting too much emotional damage to my family when I have less patience than usual and am more stressed than usual.  We had a nice Thanksgiving and the in-laws came for a visit.  Sierra was home so all six chairs at our table were full.  I almost started the house on fire twice but we made it and so did the food.

The holiday seemed to make me miss HD 10x more than usual.  I thought about him all day and hoped somewhere in the wild land of Salt Lake City some nice person took them in and fed them a proper dinner.  Got a nice surprise when I recieved a text from the nice family that fed him.  Sweet words that he was wonderful and that we would be proud of how he is serving accompanied this picture 

This has happened three times since he has been gone and I just can't put into words how thankful I have been each time.  It's so hard to only communicate with him once a week.  Ordered the rest of his Christmas today.  Praying it all arrives in record time so I can send it to him. 

We got all the Christmas decorations up. The house just seems cozy and warm with all the beautiful things all around.  The ornaments on the tree bring back so many memories.  Definitely my favorite part of decorating. 

One more small thing to note Haylee asked Joe to say the prayer at dinner tongint.  He always says no.  Tonight he said yes!!  :) it was great and we told him he is officially in the rotation :) 

Busy days!

This screenshot from today sums up my life these days. Origami Owl, Origami Owl, and ORIGAMI OWL! :) the holidays are certainly a busy time for gift giving so my Origami business is booming :) I love the product and it is a lot of fun to she the joy people get when the receive their lockets.  The Origami Owl system has also just gone through a major overhaul and is glitching up a storm so I spend a lot more hours entering orders and setting up parties. If you look close at my screenshot you see pandora so I can listen to music while I work, Facebook -I set up my events on there and keep up with my peeps, yahoo to check my OO email and the other there screens are OO.  :) 'tis the season!  :) 

Birthdays, babies, and the honor roll :

Lots going on lately -honestly when isn't there a lot going on! But busy means healthy and mostly happy- so on we go.

Last week, on the 6th Haylee turned 12.  The last two years I am pretty sure I paid her not to have a birthday party.  When the kids were all young I loved it.  I loved

having a houseful of kids hopped up on sugar, as I get older -or as they do- I could really live without the whole formal party where I have to plan things and entertain Tweens for a lot of hours.  Well this year Haylee really wanted a party and as you only get to have really super fun invite all your friends eat as much cake and junk as you want kind of birthdays I said "ok". She chose an art theme and we had a couple of little crafts and one big craft which was to paint a 20x24 canvas. The girls had SO MUCH FUN.  

The ginormous cake.  It was six layers! 

Haylee really wanted a rainbow cake so that's what we did.  It was so fun to cut into! 

Five girls became six when Daisy joined the sleepover. 

The next morning was a little chaotic in the house so I suggested they go out and play in the leaves. 

Ready....

Set....

Go! 

The girls had so much fun! 

Now onto the babies...

I am "working" these days.  I put that in quotation marks because I watch a sweet little cutie a couple days a week.  It is work she is 18 months and there are diapers and messes to clean up but she is so stinking cute and fun and so so so good that it doesn't really seem like work a lot of the time.  

Her name is Mia and she is so much fun! 

I watched another cutie tonight so his parents could go to a church activity his name is Eli and he is one of my favorite babies ever!!! He is so so happy! 

Love getting to play with the littles but not having to keep them!  Ha! :) 

Last but not least Haylee made the honor roll for the first quarter at school.  Today was the awards assembly she also won the character award for September the character trait was trustworthiness. She is a member of the student counsel again this year and enjoyed her role at the assembly of helping to keep order during the festivities.  

In other fantastic news Joe got accepted to his masters program today!!!  Now the question will he go.....????  He is still undecided.  Either way it was great news!

I am so glad he is finishing his bachelors now wonder if they would let him wear one of these hats to walk at graduation? 

Lol he is a goof!