Merry Christmas Newsletter

We weren't able to get our Christmas cards out to all those who we wanted to. But if you're able to forgive us, here it is in digital form.

Christmas Newsletter 2011
This year has been the busiest one yet for our family. Here’s what we’ve been up to:
Eric has had a monumental year as he graduated from the University of Southern California’s dental school in June. Like the three years previous, he worked very hard the last year to meet all of his requirements, studied hard to pass the second part of his dental board exam, and consequentially, celebrated hard on graduation day. He and I took a week’s vacation to Kauai to celebrate his accomplishments and our eighth wedding anniversary…awesome vacation. In July, Eric finally left us in Washington and headed down to the Air Force officer’s training in Alabama. It was a miserable 5 weeks for him and us, and made us wonder what we’d gotten ourselves into. He survived, thankfully, and we traveled to our new home in the south, where we’ll be til next August, while Eric completes an Advanced Education in General Dentistry residency.

I have had the fastest year of my life thus far. The first part of the year was spent in survival mode as Eric spent many long hours at school and I was left to figure out how to keep my kids entertained and fed day in and day out. The second part of the year was spent living out of a suitcase. We enjoyed the month spent in Utah and Idaho visiting Eric’s family and the almost two months spent at my parent’s house in Washington. And although I was a little less than excited about moving to Mississippi, I really love it here. We are enjoying our time in the Air Force. We are fortunate to live in a house for the first time in our marriage. It’s so nice to have the extra space, backyard, and quiet. We live on the base, so our little housing community is very close knit. We love all of the people in Eric’s residency program. We’ve made great friends. I love living on the gulf coast, we’re only a couple minutes to the beach. Plus, we’re only two hours from Florida and have made a couple trips on long weekends to visit their beautiful beaches.

Lillie enjoys being a Mississippi girl. Her birthday is in January, so she is very excited to almost be four years old. Some friends and I put together a co-op preschool three days a week, so she is learning a lot. Her coloring, writing, and reading have come a long way since we’ve started it. Lillie is a very sweet, smart and confident little girl. Her favorite things are princesses and trains, and she loves to be in charge and definitely runs the show around our house.

Henry has changed dramatically over the past year, there’s a big difference between being 6 months last December and being 18 months now. He is all boy. He loves cars, trucks, trains and airplanes and is always carrying one around in his hands. Henry’s vocabulary is growing every day. It’s so nice being able to communicate with him and understand his wants. He is only about 5 pounds less than his big sis and only a couple inches shorter. Henry is a busy little guy who loves to make messes but has the sweetest smile.

We feel so blessed at this time of the year. We are so grateful for our families and friends, many of whom have become surrogate family members while we live so far away. Lastly, we are also grateful this Christmas season for the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, for His life and example.
We hope this letter finds you safe and well. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

A Visit to Santa

Santa Claus came to the base! He was such a nice guy and look at his awesome beard. Best Santa I've ever seen. The kids liked him too.

Family Photos

My seriously awesome friend, Krista, took some photos of my family last weekend. Although we had rain and wind, there are so many that turned out good. She's amazing. Here's a goodie, not my Christmas card photo, not ready to unleash that yet, but I love this one. Such sweet kids.

www.kristaadamsphotography.com

Pensacola Air Show

Like I said in past posts, we went to Pensacola, FL for Veteran's Day this year. There was a Blue Angels air show at the Navy base there. I thought there'd be a few people there, but it was packed with thousands of people. And as we were driving in, we just happened to see our friends crossing the road right then. What are the odds? So they were nice enough to help us park and wait for us so that we could sit together. I also thought that there'd be a couple of planes flying around, but it was so much more than that. Loud jets, crazy trick planes, fireworks, skydivers, etc, all in addition to the Blue Angels. It was seriously cool. Like jaw-dropping, covering your eyes but peeking through your fingers, shaking the ground cool. Both of my kids were in heaven. After the sun went down, they had a special night show with planes that shot off fireworks, tons of regular fireworks and a grand finale of "the wall of fire". It was the most fireworks that I'd ever seen at one time. Seriously, I was thinking, man, are these ever going to end? I wonder what it's like on the Fourth of July?!?

We had a blast. Definitely the best moment of Lillie and Henry's lives.

Latest Happenings

Holy cow, I am totally behind on posts. I thought that I better put something down before Thanksgiving, tomorrow. Because I'm sure it'll be a while before I post that. In the last little while, we have been crazy busy. We took another trip to FL for veteran's day, which was super cool and fun. I'll have to post about our adventures with alligators and the blue angels air show later.

Today I just want to talk about some of the funny things that my kids do, what's new with them.

Lillie has really loved our co-op preschool and we're hoping to get into an actual preschool in January. Fingers crossed, we're second on the waiting list. She has improved dramatically over the last couple months. She can write her name, color in the lines, cuts much better, and has started to read and spell. She recently has spelled words like "seven" and "spoon" all by herself! (She can spell words that sound like they are spelled). Except for sometimes she says the words wrong, like the other day she spelled "apple" "abl". I think she's always said "apple" with B's and I've just never noticed. She even spelled "violn" one day on the fridge, when she was trying to spell "violin", pretty close! She's getting really good at sounding out words too. She read the word "lunch" yesterday. Sunday night I was out visit teaching and Eric put the kids to bed, and before she went to bed, she wanted to write me a note. And it said "Mom" Dad" "Lillie" "Iluvu". I thought it was the best thing ever!

Henry's vocabulary has improved by leaps and bounds. Every day he's got a new word. I love how he says "Lillie", it sounds like yeeyee. He can say words like "chair" and "pizza" perfectly, but then he also has other words like "airplane" that only I can understand. It sounds like airpuhtay. And it's his favorite word to say. That boy is crazy about planes, trains, and automobiles. He flies his planes all over the place, making them do cool tricks like we saw at the air show. He is most crazy about cars and drives them all over the place, on walls, tables, and especially on the window sills. We've got quite long windows and the sills are a good height for him to play on. He knows how to climb onto the couch and our coffee table and loves to run around on them and often falls off. Drives me crazy, I know we're going to be going to the ER soon.

Eric has been really busy at work. He was on call this past weekend and had to work on 5 different patients, so I didn't see him at all. Thank goodness this is a short week and I'm so glad that he's not on call this weekend. He is determined to make the perfect turkey for Thanksgiving. We've got to start brining when he gets home for lunch. He doesn't want me to help him... this is stressing me out.

I've been busy making clothes for the American Girl doll Lillie is getting for Christmas. It's really fun. I was in charge of preschool last week, so it was filled with cleaning for preschool, planning activities, and cleaning up after preschool. But it's been really fun doing our own co-op, I think I'm going to miss it... a little. I've decided that I want to make Henry a train table for Christmas, so I need to go scour some thrift stores to find a good coffee table to convert. I've always got to have a project. I started taking piano lessons again, and wow, am I rusty. This will be good for me, it's just hard to find time to practice.

That's kind of a synopsis of what we've been up to recently.

Destin Gator

While we were on vacation in Destin, we got to hold an alligator! Henry was FREAKING OUT, he was so excited. And we were seriously worried for the little reptile because Henry kept trying to wrestle it out of our hands, so that he could have it for himself. Henry was squeezing the poor guy. The alligator was dry and warm and wiggly. It was weird. I also tried a bite of alligator on this same trip, but at the airshow in Pensacola. It tasted good but because I knew what it was, I couldn't possibly take more than one bite. Good times.

Dental Resident Halloween Party

There were so many hilarious photos to choose from that expressed the serious fun that was had that night, but because they often weren't just of me making a fool of myself, I don't think it's right to post them on my blog without approval of the others in the photos. The exception being the group photos. They're tame enough. Good times!

28

Maybe if I had known that Eric was taking a picture and if I'd known that this would be the only picture from my bday, I would have smiled. Oh well, it's all I got. So, although it may not look like it, I had a really wonderful birthday. A big shout out to my awesome friend, Laura, who watched my kids in the morning while I got ready, went with us to the children's museum, and then watched my kids again so that I could go out to dinner with my husband. She's the best. Eric and I went to a fancy restaurant called Mary Mahoney's and ate some really good food. I can't say I'm that happy about turning a year older, but because it was such a fun day, I didn't mind too much.

Halloween 2011

Wow, can I say how glad I am for Halloween to be over?? Man, it was seriously fun but A LOT of work. Definitely worth all the work, but very overwhelming at times. Lillie and Henry had a play group party on Friday morning, a base party that night, then I threw a dental resident party on Saturday night, and Monday night was trick or treating on the base.
The playgroup party was laid back and fun for the kids, where they decorated sugar cookies, played together and ate too much candy. Lillie went as Rapunzel and Henry was Spiderman. I took a large costume that would probably fit a 10 year old and sized it down to fit my 1 year old. It worked surprisingly well, although it took up a whole morning and stressed me out.
I spent pretty much the whole month of October in preparation for the party that I threw, but it was a total success. I hadn't laughed that hard in months! We ate lots of yummy food, played minute to win it games, backwards charades, and even squeezed in some oink piggy oink. Because I was the host, I did not get any pictures, so I'm waiting to get some from my awesome friend, who did take lots of pics. I'm so glad that we are here with such great people. I cannot say that enough.
Halloween night was especially fun because of how much Lillie loved trick or treating. She was an adorable Tooth Fairy and was in love with all the different costumes that the kids had on and how each house was decorated. We walked around to quite a few houses and she still wanted more, so I sent Eric out to take her around to the Colonels' houses. Because she did so much trick or treating, she had SO MUCH candy. Ugh. So now I have to tell her no 20 times a day, so that she can stick to eating one piece a day... if she eats her meals. I know we're going to throw away 2/3rds of it.

Playgroup Picture

Decorating Halloween cookies

Eric and Lillie's Pumpkin



This is a recycled set of costumes from two years ago. Except we added a tooth fairy and made Henry the tooth.

Lillie and her best bud, Jack

Family Pic on the Hay Ride

Another recycled costume because I didn't want her getting her tooth fairy get up dirty before Halloween. She loves dressing up as Jessie, I love how she insisted on adding the mustache.

Lillie really wanted to show my mom our Halloween decorations.

I'm thankful for...

These two kids! I cannot tell you how irresistably adorable they are, especially right before church when they're all spiffed up.

Pumpkin Patch

This year we took the kids to a local pumpkin patch a couple weeks before Halloween. They were in heaven! Henry had to be pried off the big tractor, he loved being up there. Lillie loved the hay ride and horsey swing. It was a small farm, but had everything we could possibly want to do. Eric and I even managed to get lost in their corn maze before forging our own trail to get out of there. Oops. We had a blast and the weather was perfect, couldn't have asked for a better outing.

First Primary Program

Lillie had her first primary program this last Sunday. We had been practicing her part all week and she knew it well, but I was still interested in how it would go. She went and sat up with her class in the front row and spent most of the time chatting it up with her friends, waving out to the audience and turning around to see what was going on behind her. She and her pal Jack were the stars of their own show up there. Ha! So when it was time for her class to go up there and say their part in unison, Lillie said loudly, "the scriptures are the word of God," before the rest of her class had gathered, so she was able to say her part twice. :) Eric and I were cracking up the whole time, it was proof that she really does run the show around here. I love how bold and sassy she is. Love it!

FL trip

Being in the military, Eric gets some awesome extra days off, like Columbus Day! On a whim, my friend Laura and I, planned a little weekend getaway for our families to Panama City. We stayed in a four bedroom house on the local air force base during the night and spent our days on the beach! We had an absolute blast, their son, Jack is close in age to Lillie and they get along so well. We also squeezed in an evening of bowling and another at this neat playground. The parents played lots of games after the kids went to bed too. It was a blast. I wish we could do that every weekend. The beaches there have sugar white sand and clear, turquoise water. So beautiful. I'm so glad we did it, I was proud of my spontaneity, ok, Laura's spontaneity. On Monday, we stopped in Pensacola on the way home to check out the National Naval Museum. It was full of awesome planes. Henry's favorite word to say is airplane, so he was in heaven. And I'm happy to check off another state that I've visited.