Tales from 2 weeks!!!

 What a whirlwind of adventure these last two weeks have been. We attended a squadron Thanksgiving lunch which was great because drill team members are only asked to donate money for plastic utensils and such rather than bring a dish. WOO!
Lukas had his holiday preschool party in which we made a craft and he ate some banana pudding and danced. His dancing basically consists of rolling his hands and doing side lunges. It's pretty comical.

 Justin passed his drill team eval on Monday the 21st. I was super nervous for him because I knew there was no way in h-e-double hockeysticks that he was going to voluntarily do 14 hour shifts for another 6-8 weeks. So now he is officially a member of drill team and has his dinner bib and issued rayban sunglasses to prove it. Yea, they issue them raybans. Justin will have to give his back, but for now he looks sexy in them and I will enjoy pictures of him. I have no actual pictures from the graduation because I only brought the little camera for filming and I was handling Lukas the lovely cheer-screaming preschooler. SO yea, no pictures. 

My mommy sent a lovely Happy Thanksgiving fruit basket on the 22nd. HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK. There were chocolate covered strawberries, pineapple and apples. I am not ashamed to say the chocolate covered things did not last 24 hours. Both the boys were very excited to pick up Nana's 'surprise' from the guard shack, but Lukas was a little disappointed that Nana wasn't delivering her surprise in person.

 I hosted a Thanksgiving potluck-style dinner that went super well. I made all gluten-free/low-sugar versions of all my dishes, got a couple compliments on my pumpkin pie and had a nice not-dry turkey. Very proud of meself after last year's cooking the turkey in a bag expirement. Plus, after watching Emeril the next day remake leftovers, I was inspired to make an awesome layered dish for breakfast. YUM. Stuffing, turkey, over-easy eggs and gravy.

The day after Thanksgiving Justin surprised the heck out of my by pulling out the tree to decorate. He is usually Mr. Scrooge and it totally melted my heart to see him set up the tree. I still decorated, but the boys helped with that :)

I did end up going Black Friday shopping, but only after checking all the sites to see that my things had sold out :( . Happily, I went in the afternoon and was able to score the last of one item and take advantage of Wal-Mart's price match policy.

The next day Justin let me sleep in and I woke up to breakfast next to me and hot coffee on the dresser. Justin suggested we go for a walk, so we did and we lazed around the house as a family :) Later, I got to pick up a new book at Barnes and Noble (with a 30% off coupon, of course) and we went out to Don Pablo's for shrimp tacos and sopapillas (fried tortillas covered in caramel sauce SUPER yum). It was one of those days you wished wouldn't end.

Today was a little bit of a sad day because I met up with three of my girlfriends for a good-bye picture. Two of the three will be moving in the next 3 months and this was our last opportunity for the four of us to be together. While I really enjoy the excitement of a new assignment and the new possibilities you have, I really hate leaving friends. Thankfully, we have social media and things like this blog to keep us all connected.

Tales from the Week 11/7-11/13

The weather is getting cooler around here, which means it's my favorite time of year - SWEATER TIME!! That's right. Time to hide the tummy jiggle I got from overindulging. Still haven't decided if I am going to throw healthy eating to the wind and just jump on the New Year's resolution bandwagon with everyone else.



We love transferring dirt from grow box to bike compartment!!

I have been getting the boys out as much as possible before it starts to get bitter cold out. They drive me crazy much less when we've had some time to play in nature. Lukas has been doing great getting to preschool, but Justin's training is starting to get to him. Some days (especially the Monday after a weekend) Lukas cries and gets really upset when Justin leaves. So I take him to the window to wave goodbye to Daddy and generally I can promise that he'll be home to eat dinner with him or tuck him into bed. Sometimes Justin just makes it in time to give Luke a kiss on the forehead before I shut out the lights. Luke is doing an awesome job listening and helping out lately and had a few funny phrases this week. He has started using the word "perhaps" and has been asking me where babies come from/if I have a baby in my tummy. Side note, HELL NO I DON'T. I'm not sure where the interest is coming from. 

On Friday I was able to visit a friend that had her second baby a few weeks ago and bring them a meal. It was great to chat and catch up because she moved to a base that is close by a few months ago. Devin also said his longest sentence to date that day: "NO TOUCH THE POOP!" I think that's an important phrase for all children to understand.

Justin worked on Saturday, so I took the boys out for a fall photo session. Devin was mostly uncooperative, but it's the age. I'm so happy that Luke seems to be moving past the age 2/3 hell that Devin has dove headfirst into. Later in the day we did some crafts with the kids and chillaxed. Saturday evening Justin and I went out solo while a very nice guy from drill team training stayed home with the kids. We ate at Ray's Hell Burger and it was excellent. I can't wait to go back - supposedly it's the Prez's favorite burger place, too. That's it for this week!

Tales from the week 10/31-11/6

Can I just say, wow it's almost Thanksgiving!? Okay, so this year for Halloween Justin was working and I was on a solo trick-or-treat mission. I dressed the boys in their ninja turtles costumes (which I was very pleased with) and walked over to the baseball field parking lot for the annual parade. It was a little march from the parking lot to the youth center, where they had free candy, cupcakes and games set up for the kids. After about 10 minutes inside the PACKED gym, I decided that it was about time to get out!!! And save my sanity. The boys both got a respectable bag of candy, some cotton candy, a tooth brush and Luke even pulled out a marked lollipop from one of those trees and won a prize (the candy corn wand thing he is holding).

On my 100 yard walk from the youth center to my house, I decided that I didn't really want to walk around with a million other kids, rushing Luke and trying to keep a squirming Devin inside the stroller for the sake of getting candy that I was going to end up stealing from the children and eating while they slept. SO, we stayed home, turned off all the lights, and watched shows. I think I fell asleep on the living room floor, because one moment I was watching Thomas and the next Lukas was shushing Devin and covering me with blankets. Every time I opened my eyes he told me to "go back to sleep, mom."

Monday really was an awesome day, mostly because Devin started walking on his cast. This ended the span of time from Friday-Sunday that Devin was crying and crawling up my legs for me to carry him around. He has since been the normal Devin - stomping his feet, running and dancing like a fool.

Justin's schedule was the same - way too long after he worked through the weekend and I was starting to get frazzled. Devin became sick again, this time with a runny nose and cough. Every single evening he would wake up around 10-12 crying and demand to be with me. As soon as I held him he quieted down and it was all sweet and stuff until I decided I wanted to put him down and go back to sleep. Then he screamed bloody murder. Forever. And clung to me like I was about to drop him into an acid bath. Nothing calmed him and eventually I just stopped trying to get him to sleep in his own room and took him in mine to sleep. This was a really sweet time and surprisingly, Justin never demanded that I remove Devin from our room or suggested that I was forming a bad habit.

Lukas doing some browsing for Christmas

The kids have begun to fight with each other pretty much non-stop and Justin pointed out that it is probably Devin's age. Devin is now trying to mark his territory and has absolutely no concept of sharing. He's begun to hit and happily for me, the cast inspires no sympathy from me so I can put him into time-out and frap his face to my heart's content. I remember Thursday of this week being one of those days where you wonder if you should be on xanax or something and call supernanny to come fix everything. But, then it got better and Saturday came and I had the most wonderful haircut experience of my life. And I went shopping, spending forever and about $70 in the makeup section at Target.

Devin has started coming up behind people, grabbing onto them and yelling "UBBIE UP HO-SIE!" It took me a long time to figure out what he was saying - "Giddy up, horsie!" When I did, I laughed hard. This was an untaught behavior, which made it more hilarious to me. Lukas has been putting things on his 'Christmas list,' but hasn't yet caught onto the fact that Christmas isn't always today. Devin has seen Lukas looking at the pictures and asking please for different toys and now will come up to me with brochure in hand going "motorcycle/car/toy please!"

This week I learned that: The kids will be getting duplicate toys at Christmas this year since they are incapable of sharing and I am incapable of listening patiently to bickering, I will be getting haircuts from Wendy at Color Touch Hair and Nails from now on, AAAAaand International Delights Almond Joy creamer tastes kind of like chemicals.. and Justin has been drinking it straight from the bottle, EWWW! OH, and LMFAO is my new favorite band.

The end.