Homecoming News Story Link

I haven't gotten around to uploading our pictures from Josh's homecoming yet, but I promise to soon.  We have just been holed up, trying to spend lots of family time together...transitioning back to being all together again.  But, if you'd like to watch, we were on the local news:

Click here to watch!

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!!
:-)

BEST.CHRISTMAS.PRESENT.EVER.

HE IS HOME!!!!!  Sorry about the image quality (took this with my phone).  I promise to post more photos of his homecoming soon...it was awesome!!!  Hope everyone has as good a Christmas as we will have!!!

:-)   :-)   :-)

Yummy, Yummy!

When I was little, my mom always did fun, crafty things with us...especially during the holidays!  Josh and I want our kids to have memories of us doing fun things with them too.  So, this year, we are starting our annual gingerbread-house-making tradition.  We had so much fun making these that the boys decided we would make more when daddy gets home!

Ty is ready to get started!

Caellum is too...although I think he is more ready to eat the candy than decorate the house! :-)

Proud of his gingerbread house

Is there more icing on the house, or on his mouth?

Their finished products!

Believe it or not, Caellum was more into this than Ty was.  Ty kept running off to watch TV, or use the potty.  But Caellum sat there the entire time putting candy on his house.  Of course he enjoyed eating a lot of it too!  Our little Chunk!  One thing is for sure...we all had a messy blast and can't wait to do it again when daddy comes home!  :-)

We are still here...

Sorry it's been a while.  We have been very busy lately!  Preparations have begun for our brigade's homecoming, and between that and getting ready for the holidays, things have been a little hectic!  I will try to catch up a little on what has been going on with us.  For Thanksgiving, we traveled back to Cincinnati to spend time with our families.  We had a great trip, even though we didn't get to visit everyone we would have liked to. Here are some photos from our trip:

I ran a 10K on Thanksgiving morning, and when I got back this is how I found Caellum...fast asleep on the floor, passed out in the middle of playing with all Meemaw's toys!

The kiddos enjoying their Thanksgiving dessert...they all chose chocolate cake over pumpkin pie!

Ty driving Papaw's boat...he is a little obsessed with Papaw's garage and always loves to play in it when we're there!

The boys got some early Christmas presents from some of our family that we won't get to see at Christmas.  Ty got a Lightening McQueen remote control car.... 

and Caellum got a Little People car set!

We put up our Christmas tree, and decorated the house for Christmas:

Caellum in his cowboy boots and diaper playing with Ty's car! :-)

Ty helping decorate our patriotic Christmas tree!

Caellum helped too...if you count throwing ornaments across the room as helping, lol!

And the most important thing that is to come....JOSH'S HOMECOMING!  Yay!!!!

I can't divulge too much information, but we are in the home stretch of this deployment.  That's all I will say for now.  I haven't posted much about the deployment in fear of giving out too much information, but I am hoping to post a bit more about our year-long journey when everyone is safely home. For now, please say prayers that our brave men and women continue to stay focused while they are still "in country," and pray that they all have a safe trip home, whenever that may be.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Aunt Kathy for giving me a car full of donated items to help welcome our single soldiers home!  Also, thank you to those who donated white towels for our soldiers!  Thanks to all of you, these guys (and gals) are coming home to a room full of nice things to get them through a few days until they can get their own personal belongings and vehicles back.

So, that is what has been going on...a LOT of exciting things to look forward to! :-)