January stuff

I admit, I really want to be working on my travel blog right now.  But one of my rules is that I can't work on that blog when more than one child is awake.  I made that rule so I don't ignore my kids while I do "professional" work. Instead I'll ignore my kids while I work on this blog.  This is more like journal/family history work so I don't feel as bad parking the kids in front of Curious George for a couple hours.

So far January has been nice and relaxing compared to how busy we were with Christmas and travelling during December.  We've been enjoying these last few weeks with Brandon.  He's trying to spend lots of time with the kids.  They are all going to change so much during the 9 months that he is gone.  The only thing that makes me really sad about this deployment is how much of Veronica's first year Brandon will miss out on.  She'll be a year old when he comes home.  Freedom isn't free people.  

We took down the Christmas tree and boxed up the decorations after we got home from Utah.  We've had Christmas stuff in our living room since the first week of November.  It's nice to have everything back to normal.  Everything feels a lot calmer.  Charlotte played with the tree skirt.  She pretended to be a "Christmas Bird."  Lydia joined in.

Charlotte and Lydia love to play together.  They like to dance around together.  Lydia says she is the Princess and Charlotte is the Prince.  They both like to dress up in the princess costumes that I gave the for Christmas.  They run around calling each other Tiana and Cinderella.  It's the cutest thing ever.

I think my favorite part of all of Christmas was when the girls introduced their barbies to the nativity scene people.  They had Mary talk to the barbies and she said things like, "I ride on donkey, I have Baby Jesus in my tummy, this is Joseph."  It was really cute.  I felt like everything I'd been teaching the kids about Christmas had sunk in.

Here is Charlotte in the Tiana dress.  I thought she was so pretty sleeping on the window seat.

Thursday the 9th was the Ball for Brandon's Battalion.  I found my dress at a thrift store for $15 when we were in Mesa.  Finding a dress is hard when you are nursing.  So I was really excited when I tried on this dress and I could zip it up.  The only problem was it didn't have sleeves.  But that's not a big problem when you know how to sew and happen to already have black satin fabric.  I kind of wish I'd taken more time to tailor the sleeves because they kind of look like floaties to me.  But they also look like something that Taylor Swift or my sister Hillary would wear so that means they must be high fashion.  I thought about putting my hair into a fancy updo, but then I decided that I haven't been growing my hair out for the past 3 years for nothing so I better wear it down.  I curled it for probably the second time since having kids.  I can't believe I used to have time to curl my hair every day in college.

Our neighbors, Ange and Jason, watched all 4 kids at their house.  I'm so glad they were willing to do that.  Brandon and I were so excited to get away and have a night to ourselves.  Aside from when we were at my parents' house this was the first time we left Veronica with a baby sister.

The Ball was also a fancy dinner.  I kept thinking back to all the etiquette dinners that my leaders put together when I was a teenager in the Young Women's program.  Thank goodness I knew how to eat and behave properly.

My favorite part about being affiliated with the Army is the official stuff.  I like the ceremonies because they help remind me of how important our military is.  The Ball had lots of cool parts to it.  It started and ended with a prayer (why is it that Army things are the only place besides church that I've participated in public prayer?)

I loved when everyone stood to honor the flag.  All the military guys are trained to face the flag.  It was amazing to stand in the middle of all these men in uniform who were ever so slightly moving so they could fully face the flag as it was carried to the front of the room.  It made me think about how these men have dedicated their lives to serving the country that the flag represents.

My other favorite part was when we all sang the Army Song  I didn't even know Brandon knew the words, but he was singing it super loud next to me.  That was cool. There were also toasts, special awards, a speaker, and other dignified things.  

And then there was the grog.  I first heard about Grog Ceremonies from my sister Lindsey.  She and John went to one back when John was a member of the Texas National Guard.  I'm glad she told me about it otherwise this Utah-Mormon girl would have been really surprised.  The Captain and First Sergeant from each company contributed an alcoholic drink to a large metal trough.  They'd drink a lot from the bottle first and then pour the rest in.  Each drink represented some part of the battalion's history.  The DJ played a song while each drink was added.  It was a really fun atmosphere.          

Then one person from each table went up to the trough and filled up a whole pitcher of grog and brought it back to the table.  Brandon and I didn't drink it of course, but here's a picture of the two guys from our table who did drink it.  Apparently there was as bunch of fruit punch in the trough to begin with so the grog didn't taste as awful as it should have.

There was dancing after the official part of the Ball.  Brandon and I had fun dancing some slow dances together.  We vowed that we will finally get around to taking ballroom dancing lessons when he comes home.  The DJ took requests and so he played a lot of songs that the younger guys in the battalion liked.  This was the first time Brandon and I have really felt old.  Half the songs we didn't even know.  I can't believe it'd been almost 4 years since the last time we went to a dance.

The whole Ball felt a little bittersweet to me.  Everyone was happy to be there, but we all knew our guys would be leaving in a few weeks.  Still I'm glad we got to spend time together without the kids.

Then it was back to spending time as a family.  Brandon didn't have to work the day after the Ball (because everyone else was probably hung over.)  We had a nice lazy day.  Here are Brandon and Derrick hanging out.

The other day I overheard Lydia "reading" books to Veronica.  She has a lot of our books memorized fairly well.

A few days ago I found Veronica on her tummy.  I asked Brandon if he had put her like that.  He said, "no she must have done it herself."  I thought it was more likely that the girls had turned her over.  But a little later I saw her turn over from her back to her front.  I've never seen a baby roll that way first.  All my other kids went from front to back at around 4 months.  But Veronica went the other way at only 3 1/2 months.  We say she wanted to do it so Brandon could see it before he left.  Here is a video so you can see too.

She spends a lot of her time like this now.

A few weeks ago our neighbors had a little tikes car out on the grass by their garbage can. The girls were terrified that it would get smashed by the garbage truck.  I told them it was safe because it was on the grass.  Well the next week I saw it in the gutter next to the garbage can.  And it was my turn to be afraid that it would get smashed.  I knew the garbage truck would come get it if no one took it. So I grabbed it and brought it home.  It was covered with dried weeds and dirt so I know the neighbors were done with it.  The girls were so happy to have the "carriage."

It was a nice day outside so we all went out and played on the back porch.

The kids played for hours with the carriage and the sand table.

And then they talked me into letting it into the house.  Lydia loves to put on her Cinderella dress and ride around in her carriage.

Brandon got a 4 day weekend for Human Rights Day.  We went down to Houston and Lindsey took family pictures for us.  This is my favorite one.

The cousins had lots of fun playing together as usual.

Knoxx was especially interested in Veronica.  He'd cover her with blankets and smother her with love.

Lindsey watched all 4 of our kids on Saturday so we could have an all day date.  We went to Galveston Island so we could see the ocean.

I was able to wear my hat that I bought myself for Christmas.

The beach wasn't that crowded because it's not exactly swimming weather.

But it was still warm enough to put our feet in the water.

We had a lot of fun walking up and down the beach together.  This day together was sort of a pre-birthday/anniversary/mothers day/fathers day/everything else celebration.

The water was so pretty.

We were near NASA, but we didn't have enough time to go there to make it worth the cost.  Instead we went to a Fry's Electronics to buy a case for Brandon's computer.  That ended up being almost as good as NASA because it was all space themed.

After that we went to the Houston Port Authority where we had reserved a spot on a boat tour of the shipping lanes.  We were a little early so we waited on a balcony area.  The sun was setting and there was a slight breeze.  It was really romantic and we got to play the part of "the really in love couple" instead of our usual role of "crazy parents who try to take their kids everywhere."

My review of the boat tour will be my first blog post over on my new blog.  So I wont talk about it here.  Check out www.51centadventures.com in a few days so you can see how cool it was.