Christmas 2010

Finally my friends, Christmas photos. There are 188 photos in the December 2010 album. Now, not all of those are of Christmas, but a lot are. Between my camera (which had like 3 from Christmas morning) and my Mom's and Richard's, there were an insane number of photos to sift through. I just don't have the energy to edit them down any more, so feel free to peruse or not. I know it's a lot!

Christmas was great, of course, just very busy! I had taken a few days off, it just wasn't enough! We love, love love singing for our Christmas Eve service, it is truly the most beautiful service I could imagine. Everyone should experience it at least once. But, that much music (we do lessons and carols plus a short concert the half hour before the service starts) results in a lot of long rehearsals, including two the week of Christmas. It's exhausting!

Meredith came into town on the 22nd so she could keep Emmy for our 2nd Christmas Eve rehearsal, so we had some sister time on Thursday. Charles' mom and dad got in late Thursday night so we actually didn't see them until Friday morning, and my parents arrived by lunchtime. The gang was all there!

The rest of the day was time for Emmy's grandparents to catch up with her and last minute errands to be run (Honey Baked Ham! The Butcher! The Grocery Store...on CHRISTMAS EVE!). We cooked supper and ate together, and then after Emmy went to bed and dishes were washed and the table reset for brunch the next morning, it was time to get dressed for church. Big Daddy stayed home while Emmy slept. He'd been sick the week before so a good night's sleep was good for him, and it was better not to wake her up and take her to church. She'd had a VERY short nap during the day, plus I'd found out that the nursery would have been short a sitter (which was the one sitter she knew) and a cranky, tired, slightly congested Emmy was only going to want to be with someone she knew and who would snuggle with her, so letting her sleep was the best option for everyone. We needed a well rested Christmas Pickle!

Meredith, and Charles and I went for soup and champagne after the service, as per usual, but everyone else headed to bed and we were not far behind them! Well, okay, we went to bed around 3 by the time we waited for Santa to come, but oh well!

Christmas morning was kind of crazy with presents from sooo many people! Emmy doesn't really "get" it yet, and she was a little sick and not 100% her happy self. She had fun, but after an hour of opening gifts, she was getting cranky and we had brunch to cook! So we hit the pause button for a while. DeeDee and she still opened a few more gifts while we cooked and got ready, and she had a few she unwrapped later after brunch. Charles and I even had her wait and open her presents from us the next day. It was just a little overwhelming! Every one had a good Christmas and we all were spoiled. Santa brought Emmy a beach bag and sprinkler for the summer, a set of musical instruments, a tea set, and in her stocking coloring books, a tumbler, and of course, fruit. She also received a toy piano, puzzles, a new baby doll, clothes, clothes for her baby, a kitchen, a Rody Horse,books, and other toys from Mama and Daddy, DeeDee and Granddaddy, Aunt Mer, Aunt Beth and Uncle Griffin, SuSu and Big Daddy, and Grandma. Lucky girl!

We had brunch as a family and with Mary Ann and Joel and Mary Ann's mom and Dad, Larry "Bear" and Marilyn. It was lots of fun and of course, our traditional Christmas morning breakfast...country ham biscuits, cream cheese braids, ambrosia, and cheese grits. Yum!

After brunch, Charles and I finished opening our presents and then we all took naps and rested. Ahhh, a nap was very, very good.

For dinner we had a delicious pancetta crusted beef tenderloin, twice baked potatoes, Not-yo-Momma's Green Bean casserole (try it, you'll never make green bean casserole with canned green beans and canned soup again!) and it was yummy! I suppose it sounds a bit arrogant since I was in the kitchen, but all weekend I had lots of cooking help, so I definitely do not take all the credit.

It was a good weekend! The next day we awoke to snow flurries. Richard and Mary Louise headed home mid morning so they could drive in the best weather possible...it snowed on Christmas Day in Rome so they were heading home to snow! Mer, Charles and I went to church, but Mom and Dad stayed home with the still slightly sick Emmy and packed so they could hit the road as soon as we got home because of the snow. Unfortunately the flurries didn't amount to much, but it was pretty to watch it fall all day! It stuck to the roofs and some of the grass. (Side note, the photo here is Christmas afternoon as Emmy helped SuSu snap green beans. We were amazed...she was good at it and she stood there and snapped beans for almost 20 minutes! It was hilarious!)

So that was Christmas 2010 in our house! The 27th we were thrilled to have our friends Jason and Jocelyn come stay the night on their way through town and sadly, I have no photos, but it was so great to catch up with them. Jason and Charles served together and Jocelyn and I "met" over email during their deployment. J&J were newly engaged when Jason arrived mid-deployment to take command of one of the companies while I was FRG leader. He gave me his fiancee's email and asked if I would keep her in the loop, and so she and I started talking by email and found we had so much in common. I invited her to come and stay with me when the unit came home (in Jan. 2006) and since they were delayed a couple of days, we ended up spending three days getting to know each other better, anxiously awaiting news, decorating the gym, and nervously grabbing onto each others arms at some un-Godly hour of the night while we waited on them to walk into the gym. As a side note, if you've never been to a departure and arrival ceremony for a deploying Military unit, you should. Everyone should see (and hopefully appreciate) the heartache, the pride, and ultimately the joy, that Military Members and their Families experience.

But I digress. We had a great visit with J&J and we hope that next year we all may wind up together again for a few months while Jason and Charles go to "Major School."

After the Christmas craziness, we packed up the car and headed to SC for more family time and to get ready for New Year's 2011. More on that later. Lots of photos in the Picasa album I linked at the top of the page, so enjoy!

Some Fall Photos

I've been spending the evening editing photos...again. Y'all, we have a lot of photos between our camera, my mom's camera, and Charles' dad's camera. And as with most digital cameras these days, the bad photo to good photo ratio is quite high, so it takes a lot of time to weed through photos, plus edit, fix red eye, crop, etc. My eyes are a bit cross-eyed tonight, and I've already worked on photos a few other times the last couple of weeks!

Finally, I've uploaded a few photos from the end of October and November, primarily photos from Mom and Richard, although a few we'd been hanging on to. You can view them in a new Picasa Album. I promise I will finish working on the December and Christmas photos soon, but it's almost midnight and definitely time for bed! Charles just sent me a text message from the bedroom and asked if I was going to go to sleep anytime soon. Haha...ahhh, communication in 2011.

Snow Day 2011: The Snow Pickle

Emmy had SO much fun "sledding" down the driveway today. Our driveway has just enough of a good slope that when you combine it with 2 inches of slow plus a layer of ice, it's the best for sledding on a cookie sheet!

Here are a few photos Mary Ann took. There were 188, but I picked a few to post and I whittled down the rest to about 90 I uploaded here in Picasa. Hope everyone had fun in the snow today!

Here we go!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

I know, I know, it's January 9th and my handful of regular readers are anxiously awaiting Christmas photos, updates, and news from our corner of the world. I promise, I'm spending the evening uploading photos and editing them (which totally takes forever by the way) and I promise to try to spend more time updating the blog. Charles' cousin (hi Sue Nell!) sent word that she thinks I need to quit my job so I can go back to blogging and our friend Nancy thinks the same thing. I wish! But, one of my resolutions is to try and do better.

There is so much I have wanted to say, I'm certain I've forgotten most of it. Emmy is hilarious these days. She was 20 months yesterday, so only 4 more months and then we stop counting in months, right? Ha! She talks all the time. I'd say that mostly she is still speaking one word at a time, not a lot of sentences, but she does have some phrases she repeats, and she does put things together. Tonight Charles offered her a toy while she was in the tub and she said "no, thanks." This is even funnier because "thank you" is not a phrase she repeats. Still when we tell her to say "thank you" it's usually a wave of the hand that only slightly resembles the sign, but we know that's what she means. Probably because most of the time when we ask her to say thank you she's too busy eating or drinking whatever it is she'd just asked for.

One of our favorite Emmyisms is her "yes" response. When we ask a questions and the answer is yes, she says, with a big grin of excitement, "n-kay!"
Us: "Emmy, do you want go to get some milk?"
Emmy: "N-kay!"
Us: "Do you want to go to church?"
E: "N-kay!"
Us: "Are you ready for a bath?"
E: "N-kay!"

And on and on. She also tells us "I'm okay" sometimes. We think it's because if something happens like she falls or she gets upset when her milk does get to her fast enough we tell her "you're okay."

The last two days she has started saying "hold you" when she wants us to hold her instead of "hold me", and of course we love that.

It's amazing how fast the vocabulary keeps coming. By the time Christmas was over she could tell us that Santa says "Ho", which cracks us up. She's also at that perfect age where she repeats things, but doesn't always retain it, so my slip up with a 4 letter word when I dropped the computer one day and she repeated what I said hasn't seemed to cause any concern...meaning she hasn't repeated that word again. :) Time to be even more careful about what we say in front of her! Of course there are the appropriate words that come out inappropriately and because we are immature, it is hilarious. Glasses are "asses". That one still hasn't gotten old.

Emmy's favorite game right now is "Where'd it Go?" She will hide something in her hand, under a cup, wherever and say "where'd it go?" Sometimes it sounds just like that, other times it's more like "go go go?", but the inflection is always the same. When the object reappears, she'll say "here/there she is". That's right, "here she is". I think because when we play peak-a-boo with her and she's hiding herself we say "there" she is" and so it's mostly coming out that way. Sometimes it sounds more like it, but it's really adorable.

It's hard to believe that it's already 2011. Christmas was very busy. We had both sets of grandparents and Aunt Mer here. It was great to have everyone here, but it was hectic with our Christmas Eve service and everything going on, not to mention a ridiculous number of presents. We didn't have Emmy open her presents from Charles and I until the day after Christmas. They were first under the tree, so last out, and she was a bit overstimulated Christmas Day (not to mention a bit under the weather with a cold resurgence) so it was better that way. She was a lucky girl! Photos to come soon!

We spent New Year's at our annual getaway while Emmy enjoyed some time with her grandparents. After the busy holiday, it was super nice to have some time away, although of course we missed our girl and she THREW herself into Charles' arms when she ran in the door Sunday after church. It was one of those movie moments and I'm glad I caught a glimpse as she came around the corner. I managed to snag one of those big hugs next. :)

One thing about New Year's is we end and begin each year with the same people...very dear people. Because we don't always get to see each other very often, there's a lot of catching up, and thus in a sense reflection that goes on, whether we mean to or not.

The last few months have been hectic. I like working again, it does give me a sense of accomplishment, but the job is stressful. I like the people I work with, and that's what keeps me going. I've made a commitment through June and I intend to honor it, but there are many days when I wonder if I can make it that long!

One of my primary reasons for going back to work was so to help pay off some debt. We have accumulated more credit card debt than we should (well any at all is not good) in part due to my time out of work and in the hospital (not from bills...from other expenses). We both still have some student loans, Charles' car, etc. We've made a bit of a dent, but we've also made some home improvements this fall (new storm doors!) and had some unexpected repairs to do (our furnace broke). And, we've been on the go a lot. So, we've decided that if we want get close to our goal, we need to make some changes, so we have committed to staying home the next few months. We have one trip we'd already committed to, so we'll honor that commitment, but otherwise until April (when we have a wedding out of town to attend) we plan to stay home. We had hoped to take a trip over Charles' Spring Break, but unless we can find a way to do it super on the cheap, we may have to forgo that as well. We'll see.

So, if you want to see us the next few months, feel free to come visit! The guest room is open!

There are lots of other changes we need to make (or make again) but I think the travel one has been the most significant, and the hardest.

All of this is moving towards another goal...having another baby (and me staying home again for a while). We were very open about the fact after Emmy was born that we would try again when she turned a year. Unfortunately, as you can guess, that isn't going so well again this time and we have been working on fertility treatments for a few months. This is not going to become a infertility blog...I don't feel comfortable putting that out there publicly but suffice to say when we have good news, we will share. We are disappointed, but hopeful.

All of this is also moving towards a move. In all likelihood 2011 will be our last one in this house. We don't know anything for sure and we won't for a while now, but Charles will graduate in December 2011 from his Masters program and then it will be time for his next assignment. That may be the next "Army school" required for his rank, or it may be a new unit, but either way it's very unlikely that we will be staying here. It's time for him professionally to move on, as hard for us as this will be personally.

So, we enter this new year a bit bittersweet and trying not to get bogged down in "one last times". This will be the last Winter, our last Spring planting a garden, our last Easter here, etc. Plus, we have work to do on the house in preparation for putting it on the market in the fall, which is not the ideal time to sell a house, particularly in this market (although our area has fared far better than many others).

Bear with us this year. While we know it may be crazy, we know it will be a year full of great things a new memories! Happy New Year to you and yours.