December Happenings

Merry Christmas! We pray that you truly enjoy your celebrations of Christ's birth! 

A's first dance recital 

J's first rice cereal

A. got to be an angel in our Christmas service. 

D. got to sit quietly during the service with some friends. She did a great job. :) But I love how excited she is to hold the baby Jesus. 

Do you see who Jesus is? (Popular kids' tv show)

Big straw, tiny drink 

4 months old

Ha. I still think this is so funny. This picture reminds me - the Marines' birthday was November 10th. Does anyone without an association to the Corps want to guess what number it is? (237). Did you know the Marines are older than our country, technically? Started in 1775. J. just ran 2 miles as part of a 237 mile relay around base. Took them a couple days to do. He signed up to run at 1:00 a.m. on Saturday morning since it wasn't a popular time slot. He figured he'd just stay up and do his school work and then go run it and come home. Which he did do. But then he ended up going to Jungle Warfare Training on Thursday and Friday and getting completely beat up, so I know he was feeling it on the run. Jungle Warfare is why I would never be a Marine. They were tying knots and learning how to repel down sheer cliffs, then carrying their buddies on stretchers made of rope up and down steep muddy hills. Then he said they swam through every consistency of muddy water, coming up at the end so you could only get your nose above water until you pushed the barbed wire out of the way. And this is water that they have to try their best to clear of the highly poisonous habu snake before they let all the guys in. I think that was part of the 5 hour endurance course they did. He said he tumbled down some extremely steep hills, almost broke his wrist. He was actually late getting back on Friday because a buddy who lives in our tower actually did break his foot at the training. Tough stuff, but it sounds like it was invaluable training for him, so that's exciting. 

D. and A. dressing up. They play so well together! I'm thankful for that, and for having 2 girls that both enjoy doing girl things together. I'm sure that has made it easier for their playtime at this young age. 

It's foot-finding month! I remember being so excited when A. found her feet at 4 months, just in time for her studio picture appointment. He found his fat feet a few weeks ago, but now he can get them past his thighs up to his mouth. 

Had to make this bigger so you could see the cutest little smile ever. 

Super baby!

Looks like Mommy's side of the family here, I think. 

Side profile of the chubbiness. 

"Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" 

"No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you sir; but I bite my thumb, sir." 

OK, this one had to be big too. 

                                                                      Now you can see how chubby JJ really is. 

Fall Party

So we forewent (?) Halloween this year in favor of a little "Fall Party" with the kids and a couple homeschooling friends. We took the girls last year in a neighborhood on base, and we just weren't impressed by all the horror all around them. Plus, they were aware of it too and were scared by some of it. I think it may have been fine in the towers since people just kind of congregate in the big room downstairs and kids trickle through, but all the over-decorated houses and adults last year were just a bit much for me. It was Daddy's idea to do a little fall party, but that was where his help ended, ha. Don't Dads always get the best ideas?! I'm glad we did something. It was a fun little thing to do. In the morning it was our homeschool co-op day so the girls gutted a pumpkin after we talked about its circumference. M's brother is a bit of a neat freak and didn't feel like touching the slimy insides. That's our $9 pumpkin, by the way. Last year I remember getting it for $13, so I guess the price went down! 
My main new experiment was to make caramel apples for the kids, but not just any caramel apples  - "gourmet" caramel apples. They actually ended up tasting pretty ridiculously good. I think it will become a fall tradition in our house. Unfortunately, the worst part of that treat were the not too sweet, mealy apples inside. I think when we get back to the states and can buy actual Granny Smiths, they will be that much more spectacular! 
Daddy bought J. a ridiculous tiger costume when he was back in the states (just got back right before Halloween and he's still jet-lagged), so J. was the only one in costume. It is pretty cute, but Daddy is convinced it's pajamas, even though the tag reads "costume." :) 
I let the kids paint some block pumpkins and little pumpkins out on the porch. It actually turned cold on us on the 31st - our first real cold day this year. I'll bet it was around 60, and it was raining. It feels great to be outside now and have to pull out jackets finally! 
We were going to bob for apples too in our little pool, but it got a little late for the 10 kiddos. So we all tried later that night. Daddy was the only one with a big enough mouth to get an apple, but the girls thought it was funny to try. 
I guess it's on to Thanksgiving traditions now! I have some craft plans in my head for Christmas, but none for Thanksgiving yet. I was thinking of doing some sort of month of thankfulness, but I guess I need to get on that since it's already the 2nd, huh? 

This was the caramel with white chocolate and oreos - "Cookies and cream" I thought it was really yummy! 

I might have liked this one even more. It was the s'mores apple, and the regular milk chocolate tasted better with the caramel, I think. 

What a scary, big tiger. :)

Walked in on this one afternoon after laying him down for a second. We thought it was funny. 

Took this on the 1st. His baseball outfit, compliments of Uncle Tim and Gr. and Gr. L. Super cute. 

I'm seeing A's fat baby face here. . . which means I can picture what he'll look like in a few years. :) We are so thankful that he's healthy. At his four month appointment the other day he was 21 lbs. 3 oz - 99%, and 26 3/4 inches - 95%. 

3 Months Old

These pictures are a month old already! Though I guess it's true that the moment you take a picture, it's already outdated. But it seems especially so with babies, where they change right before your eyes every single day. 

Baby J. has some pretty strong neck muscles from always craning to see his sisters standing right above him. 

Actually got them all together in a picture!

Workin' the Vest

Had to take a few of J. after church the other week. When we were back in the states, we had about 3 minutes to shop at Burlington Coat Factory before closing time, and I was hustling to grab him a wedding outfit. The pink and grey were the cutest on their overcrowded racks. He ended up wearing a Cuban shirt that I found randomly the next day at Target to match the groomsmen, but I still really like the vest look. 

I see some of both of us in these pics. Maybe more like Daddy in this one? 

A. was getting him to smile for me. Yes, I realize he's on the "chubby" side with his lack of a neck. He'll start thinning out soon enough. . . for now it's just fun not being able to pull his shorts up over his massive thighs.

Six Years

We recently (a month ago almost) celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Last year, unfortunately, I don't think we did much. Other years we've been apart on that day. And the other ones. . . I guess we just do low-key. So THIS year, I decided that we would actually do something different! So I decided to plan it all out and surprise my wonderful husband. I started looking around for a nice hotel on the island for an over-nighter and found a few that met my criteria. The only problem I was having on the booking site were the apparent lack of queen and king sized beds. All the pictures of all the rooms at all the hotels had what looked like slightly-larger than twin-sized beds, and the description of the rooms read "Standard with breakfast." Eventually I gave up trying to find a room that said it had a bigger bed. I thought, "Maybe all hotels here just have smaller beds." So after I booked a room at a hotel right on the beach in the middle of the island, I called to try and resolve the issue. In my broken Japanese, the front desk clerk understood I had a reservation, but when I said words for "beds - move?" (thinking we could just push two tiny beds together) we just went around and around in circles. Eventually, he said the words "double" and "King", I said "hai!" and he said ok. I hung up hoping we'd have a room with just one bed! 
I did manage to surprise hubby that day. He thought we might be heading off to some adventure zip-lining park in the area. Thankfully for me, we ended up at the hotel, where we both proceeded to try and nap in our (individual, twin-sized) beds while baby J. kept us awake. The moms from my English class paid for our 5 course, 6 course? dinner that night at the hotel restaurant. It was really, really kind of them. It's so nice to eat without toddlers. It almost makes us giddy when it's so quiet at the table. J. slept on Daddy during dinner, so it really was quiet. And there were only 2 other groups in the restaurant. As we sat down to dinner, a familiar tune floated our way. . . "Wait a minute, is that. . . is that Pocahontas?" Why indeed it was, a more subdued version, in English still. Over the course of dinner, we were serenaded with Pocahontas, "Under the Sea" with a reggae beat, "It's a Small World" on steel drums, Snow White, "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah" with picked guitar, and "When you wish upon a star." We could have easily been dining at one of Disney's upscale resort hotel restaurants. :) 
I picked the hotel because it had free breakfast, because if you know me, I could eat a day's worth of calories at breakfast and still not be full. So we went down for breakfast expecting loaded plates of waffles and sausages. We did find a few American type foods for breakfast - some thick potato fries, scrambled eggs cut into blocks, and 3-inch diameter pancakes. Sitting next to the pancakes was a miniscule little syrup pitcher that probably held all of 4 tablespoons of syrup. You know, the size they give you at IHOP for each person's pancakes. We laughed about that as we each poured about 3 drops of syrup on our pancakes, trying to ration the rest for the other 50 people there. We supplemented the pancakes with some fresh fish, some fresh stir-fried vegetables and what big J. thought were cheesy potatoes but were really just onions. 
Overall, it was probably the best anniversary we've had, since we actually did something this time. :) We couldn't have done it without our good friends, Ingrid and Nic, watching the girls for us though. You know you're family when you can trust your kids with friends like that. 

Here's our breakfast food. It was yummy food, even if we didn't leave stuffed. 

Loved their smooth tile floors. It left us wondering why all hotels don't do tile after walking on so many dirty, nasty black carpets at hotels. I guess carpet feels homier. . . So I'll admit the beds were closer to the size of doubles, but not quite there. Maybe like a twin and a half. One of my moms in English class works at a hotel and she said her hotel only has this size of bed, so it does seem like that's standard here. I think they would expect 2 people to be able to share a bed this size, too. It'd be pretty cozy for people of our stature, though. Oh, and the beds did happen to be on rollers. :)

The view from our window. I actually booked this one for the 2 jacuzzis they had here, but they were covered. Bummer. When we finally get a house, a jacuzzi would totally be my house splurge. :) We toed the water in the morning. There was a couple who were taking a dip, but the water had started to cool already by that time of year. 

We decided once a year isn't too much to ask in getting away from the kids for a night. 

Now if next time we can just go without a baby in tow so we can sleep right up until check-out. :)