The Week of Sickness + Merry Christmas!

The week of 12/12 started pretty calm. I began to take Devin and Luke on night walks so that Devin would be distracted by the lights while he was getting E-Stim. The kids did get sick this week and the boys and I missed the Drill Team holiday party. Justin and I did dress up and go to the Honor Guard holiday party. It was a very nice evening - definitely the best squadron holiday party I have been to. There were gift bags for everyone and it was just a classy evening all around compared to the AMMO parties we attended in the past.

 It seemed like Justin worked all the time this week - both weekends and late usually. Then with the kids sick and Luke skipping school, the days became very long. Devin was hit the worst. He woke up with his eyes crusted shut for 4 or 5 days in a row and I eventually whipped out the humidifier to make the boys comfortable enough to sleep. Long story short - we all felt like crap for over 7 days. Luckily, my Christmas shopping was done and we were ok to do nothing for awhile.

                                                           

When Saturday the 17th rolled around, Luke was all better so I took him to his friend Lily's 3rd birthday party and left a still-sick Devin home with Justin. The party was a great time to visit with friends and Lukas had a blast jamming with Lily and Julia. We ended up saying goodbye to Julia and her mom Shannon the next week as they are visiting folks on the way to their new base. I am very sad to see them leave, but I know we'll be visiting them soon!

Justin's parents and sister came to visit on the 18th for a few days. It was a nice opportunity to celebrate the holidays and Justin's drill team graduation. Justin took them for a tour of the Pentagon and we went out to eat at Ray's Hell Burger (one of my favorite places here!). Luke's holiday party for preschool was on Tuesday during Mike and Debbie's visit. Luke made a tambourine, had snacks and came home with alot of loot. I was pretty surprised at how much stuff they actually put together for the kids. We gave Miss Mia and Miss Caitland (yes, there is a 'd' at the end) their gifts - a bracelet with an apple charm and a nice chocolate bar.
Later that night Justin and I were able to go out to celebrate our 6th anniversary. We grabbed some sushi at a great place in Arlington and some Cold Stone for dessert. Great way to finish off the evening ;)

On Friday the 23rd, the UPS man came by with a special surprise - the kettle bells, rings, and jump rope that Justin ordered. Of course he tried to say that he was getting these things for me, but I know who they were really for. Nevertheless, the kettle bells are alot of fun and easy to swing around. You hardly know you are getting a workout from the light one.

The 24th was our 6th anniversary and we exchanged gifts bright and early. Justin started off by saying that he had been working on my present all year long. As I looked at him dumbly, waiting for him to hand me something wrapped, he pulled up his shirt and made a goofy face. It took me a second to figure out he was talking about his body and all the work he'd done at the gym. I laughed, but after a moment decided that this was a great present and far surpassed my previous best-ever anniversary present from Justin (the infamous bookmark and caribener clips). Anyway, I then handed a stack of envelopes labelled from January to December with one preplanned date in each. We will open the corresponding month's envelope on the first of each month and pick out a night or day to spend together. They range from at-home dates, to concerts, to other surprises I can't talk about yet. Yes, I stole this idea from pinterest. Justin seemed to like this surprise :)

OH MY GOSH!!!

My parents drove down for their annual Christmas visit on Christmas Eve and we all exchanged gifts. The highlight of my night was the awesome KEURIG! It is a pretty awesome machine that got a great workout while my parents were here. I love popping in a k-cup and having a cup of coffee or tea ready in 30 seconds or less. I also got a Miranda Lambert CD - which was another very unexpected gift because Justin dislikes the idea of using my Amazon wish list and this was on it.

Beautiful and amazing.. the Keurig.

Mom got some Poppycock and K-Cups and Dad got his yearly Sudoku Page-a-day Calendar (aka his Anti-Alzheimer's medication). I even threw in an extra surprise of roasted pistachios this year. I know, daughter of the year. I gave Justin a 'Buck Furpees' shirt, which he loved.

The highlight of the year for the boys were the legos: 4 sets and a gigantic box of miscellaneous blocks. Luke sat for hours just putting things together and Justin has been pretty cute helping. It's nice that the boys are getting old enough to start doing stuff that Justin thinks is fun besides wrestling.

Justin & Luke putting together a mini-lego Mater.

Proudly showing off his building project.

Enjoying the eisel from Nana & Grandpa.

Dad stirring the wine-reduction sauce. YUMMY!!

 My favorite part of Christmas is the delicious dinner that we always have. Dad brought a wine-reduction sauce for the roast that a friend made him and it was excellent! I have enjoyed the sauce over leftovers on roast beef sandwiches. Crab legs were amazing as well, but I am not very good at getting the meat out of the shells. There was also a pecan pie that a friend made fresh for us that day that didn't make it past dinner. It was very very good.


I think if delicious had a picture next to it in the dictionary, this would be it.

 We spent Christmas day watching the Muppet's Christmas Carol and playing on the playground. The day after we all went out to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and took a driving tour of the city. Lunch was an excellent seared tuna salad followed by a piece of Hershey's cheesecake. It was a nice, relaxing trip with the folks and I was very sad to see them leave this morning :(



It's now the afternoon on Tuesday. The tree is down and I think we'll spend the rest of the week reflecting on 2011 and making plans for 2012.

Our Week 12/5-12/11

Justin's crossfit cert arrived!

 This week was a pretty busy week, but after working the whole weekend Justin had Monday and Tuesday pretty much off. Because of this and the pain of having an empty fridge/absolutely no motivation to go to the commissary, I took the opportunity to stock my pantry and fridge. Enjoy the pictures of my pantry.
 
Monday was a day of PT for Devin - the first one in about 2 months. It will probably sound terrible, but I was really happy to have a break from physical therapy. Not only was I saving $10 a week in gas/$9-12 a week in childcare, I was also not having the headache of trying to actually DO exercises on Devin. Please, try to to get a rambunctious almost-two-year old to sit for 16-20 minutes a day for stretching, then endure an hour of pins-and-needles sensation (E-stim) without ripping off the sticky pads, and THEN get him to fall asleep with a night brace on that is clunky, tight, and forces his foot into a flexed position. It sucks. And really, it's not fully do-able 100% of the time. Every time I go to PT I wonder if I've done enough and leave feeling bad if I haven't met the prescribed amount of stretching/E-stim time or if I took the night brace off because I just needed Devin to sleep.

When we got in for the appointment, we weren't able to do much with Devin because I needed to discuss what had happened and what I had noticed since the cast came off. The newest development with Devin is he is now telling me "OW, hurts mom" whenever I try to do E-Stim on him and then "No bwace!" when it is time to put the night brace on. We talked and decided to just continue with the pre-casting therapy plan for now since the cast was only newly off.

 Justin started working on his programming for January on Monday. He and the other trainers at the gym switch off months to pick which workouts to do. Justin will be writing the schedule for January. So far Justin really likes working at the gym and keeps trying to talk me into opening a gym someday.



Justin hard at work

On Wednesday we dropped the Swagger Wagon off for a front-end alignment and in the afternoon we went to a parent-teacher conference for Lukas as the preschool. In the informal meeting they told us that Lukas is a class leader and one of their go-to guys when they need help instructing the other children. He helps a lot, shares well and is very independent (i.e. he washes his hands by himself and puts his coat on by himself). I was a proud mother duck for sure and trying not to smile tooooo big.

Friday was another PT day for Devin. This time we met with the Orthotist (the guy who makes the braces) and physical therapist at the same time. Pretty much the entire appointment was spent watching how Devin walks, runs and squats shoe-less, with shoes, and with the brace in shoes. The surgery did so much for Devin. He was walking and running so well that the PT was at a loss for words! It was decided that as a precautionary measure, Devin will wear the day brace for 3 hours daily to help prevent him from starting to walk on his toes again. During this appointment the orthotist also took the day brace and heated the plastic to mold it to fit Devin's leg a little better since it seemed to be digging into his scar tissue. 

SNACK TIME!

Shining their boots together.

Devin loves to "help" empty the dish washer.

 On Saturday we went to the mall, picked up some Christmas presents, and stopped by Chick-fil-A for lunch. If you haven't gone to one, you should! They have the best customer service of any fast food restaurant. Love it there. After we got home, Justin decided he would hang up the Christmas lights. This WAS AMAZING, because it was the first time ever that he has hung the lights! He had Lukas go upstairs to get me and surprised me with the "Griswold Christmas light" reveal. Dream big, Justin!
Today (Sunday) Justin is working at a drill team fundraiser all day and I'm chilling with the kids. Luke is feeling a little under the weather, so Santa buddies and cookies are filling our day.

Funny stuff/interesting things: Every time I ask Devin a question, he whisper-yells the response to me. Luke used to do this and it makes me chuckle. 3 out of 7 nights each week I have to snuggle Devin to sleep he hates his brace so much. During this time he goes through a process of falling asleep that is just like Justin's. He starts deep breathing and his little legs and arms jerk :) It makes me smile thinking about how much he's like his dad - especially his mischievous nature.

Tales from the Week 11/28-12/4

Lost pictures from my Ipod of graduation last week:

This week was incredibly eventful! It started off slowly since the boys and I had gotten some kind of cold/cough thing, so we were resting. Justin went to a lunch meeting for his new job as a Crossfit instructor on base on Monday.

I got up around 5:30 Tuesday morning to take some friends to the airport for their month-long trip to Jamaica. My friend is from Jamaica and she and her family recently got orders to move to Idaho - probably one of the coldest assignments you can get. I am glad she is spending a month down their to soak up some sun before she leaves, but still a little envious of her tropical trip :)

Tuesday night I got a call from another friend that needed to take her little girl to the ER. She asked if I could come over to watch the baby while she left with her preschooler. The boys were already down and I was pleasantly surprised when I came over to find out that the baby was pretty much ready to go to sleep for the night! And happily, while the little girl was very sick (she had just coughed up blood and was on antibiotics for suspected whooping cough), she didn't need to be admitted. It was nice to have an opportunity to help these friends out who have been such wonderful friends to me before they ALSO leave for their new base later this month.

 Wednesday was kind of a blur and the weather had been crummy, so I was probably inside trying to get the boys not to kill each other. Devin had taken to kicking Lukas with his cast while Luke was quietly minding his own business. Devin is also in a not-sharing kind of age, which makes things really painfully screamy around here.

Here Lukas is showing off his reindeer ornament craft. He's been really into crafting things. Note: I tried the same craft with Devin, but he decapitated the reindeer after ripping off its antlers. It was gruesome. Lukas has been telling me lately that he isn't big enough for certain things, but then right away tell me is is "Half-Big" and will someday be big enough. Devin's favorite new words are "Punkerpain" and "Punkerdoodle." Devin is also very dancy and singy. He loves "Twinkle Star" and forces me to sing this to him often. And before I forget this, Devin also insists on saying the blessing with us at dinner time and mumbles "heavenly father amen" over and over while Justin is talking.

My stack of Christmas cards!

I filled out Christmas cards this week. Like every year before, this was a solo activity. I requested help from Justin with addressing or signing them, but he was quick to tell me how he needed to leave shortly for work. For the next fifteen minutes, Justin sat like this at the dinner table: (yes, that's him playing on his iphone, probably checking Facebook)

Bad, bad lazy bad husband!!

The leg cleaning kit! Packed for our Dr. trip.

 Thursday we had the cast removed!!! It was pretty disgusting on the inside (did I mention Devin soaked his cast 3 or 4 times?) and stunk, but I inquired as to whether or not the tech had seen gross-er casts and she said YES, definitely. And that made me feel better. Devin's foot was super-sensitive to the touch and he kept telling me "No mama. Hurts." while I was trying to clean and inspect it. The doctor didn't have much to say other than that we will watch and aggressively do physical therapy to slow or hopefully stop and regression. On the way back from the Dr. I got a call that Justin had to work until about 9:30 that night, so I went home and spent the rest of the day playing with the boys and procrastinating on stuff I needed to do.

Lukas building a road.

 Justin got home that night and I went out to get some last-minute sale things for the boys at Toys R Us. Did you know they don't close until 11pm!? That's crazy and made me feel a little bit like a nutso consumer to be shopping so late at night, but I really do like to save money and all this junk is sold out online.

Friday night we checked out the latest Harry Potter from the quickflix kiosk and that was freaking incredibly hard to follow. There were all these references to the earlier movies that I couldn't remember and I really felt my lack of actually reading the series int his movie. I may have to go to the library and check them out..

                                                                                   Saturday and Sunday Justin left around 11 to go to work and got home around 10 on Saturday and 7 on Sunday. It was a little sad to lose our weekend, but I tried to make the best of it and took the boys to Target to pick out a movie - Santa Buddies. It was cute. Until next week!!