Strike A Pose

...in your new Christmas Eve pajamas!

 

 

 

 

 

 Merry Christmas!!!!

Is it over yet?

Remember how I mentioned Ryan's 17-hour workday this past Sunday?  Let's make that 76.5 hours and counting.  Maybe he'll come home today!  Not holding my breath.

I need this semester to end right now, but somehow I have to survive and keep everyone thriving through Saturday.  I've learned that I cannot do it all well at the same time.  Let me show you what I mean.

When I do this really well:

 

The house looks like this:

 



I think every flat surface has piles of stuff that need to be sorted and put away.  It is driving me crazy.  You know what else is driving me crazy?  That stupid picture on its side -- not enough to do anything about it though.

Let's all cross our fingers that I manage to put together a relatively healthy dinner for the boys tonight.  I plan on having red wine for dinner.

Never A Dull Moment

This is how you know Ryan is home:

These pictures are old, but at the same time they are current.  We always take on crazy house projects when Ryan is home for extended periods of time.  Mind you, to us, three months at home is an extended period of time.  Ryan should be home rather consistently for THREE YEARS.  It's about time!  Of course, as I type this he is working a 17-hour day on a Sunday flying all day and night for carrier qualifications. 

We thought it was finally time to gut and remodel not one, but two of our bathrooms simultaneously.  We had been putting off these two bathrooms for years, but it finally seemed like a good time to tackle the boys' bathroom as well as our master bathroom.  The boys' bathroom shouldn't be too hard since Ryan has some experience with these types of projects...

Uh oh.  You never want a SERVPRO van at your house.  Trust us.  Our "simple" swap bathroom remodel resulted in a bit of a flood...on the second floor of our house...that the boys may or may not have been aware of for about four hours before mentioning it to Ryan.

 

"You had seven gallons of water pour out of this hole in your ceiling?"  Yup.  Thank goodness in his panic, Ryan had the genius instinct to shove a screw driver in the ceiling and throw a 5-gallon bucket under it.

 

"We'll set you up with some huge, loud fans that you need to run for the next 72 hours and an awesome hole in your ceiling."  Okay, I paraphrase.

 



This hole doubled in size a day or two later when the inspector agreed with Ryan that the water damaged more than the original crew thought.  Fun, fun.

It all looks lovely now, upstairs and downstairs...oh, wait...our master bathroom is still completely gutted.  And, yes, we have given up and hired a contractor to do the majority of that major remodel for us.  I'll post "after" pics and some lovely before photos of the bathroom Ryan completed soon.  By soon, I mean, after my finals for this semester are over and I've finally put up a Christmas tree.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ian:  "I am thankful for the life I live."

Mom:  "What does that mean?"

Ian:  "I am glad that I am free in the USA."

 

Nathan:  "I am thankful for the freedom I live in."

Mom:  "What else are you thankful for?"

Nathan:  "For our good health and that we live in America."

Neglectful Parenting At Its Best!

Turns out our boys are quite creative when neglected for rather long periods of time.  While I worked on chemistry and Ryan worked on yet another home project, the boys made good use of craft supplies and Legos.

A monster truck and its ramp.

A Pokemon battle (I think).

 

School -- quite an interesting group of students and teachers.  Note the dress up box in the upper left corner.  I like the lunch room in the lower right.

Nathan wanted me to take a picture of the student raising his hand.

Busy, Busy, Busy

My apologies for neglecting the blog for so very long.  To say that we have been busy is an understatement.  I'll save sharing some of our "fun" projects for a future post.  For now I will share pictures of the boys since that's all anyone really cares about anyway.

 

Ian entered second grade and Nathan began first grade this September.  They are very happy to be attending the same school again and both love riding the bus together each day.  Here's a snapshot from the first day of school.

 

 

All of the local school and community events ask that costumes not include masks or weapons for Halloween.  Do you know how difficult it can be to find a costume for boys that meets both of those requirements?  Thank you Target for carrying these Super Mario Bros. costumes so I could avoid making costumes yet again this year.

Yesterday we suffered through family photos yet again.  We love Amanda of Kimberlin Gray Photography, but the boys always act so crazy and goofy for her.  Thank goodness she is supremely talented and always manages to get these excellent shots that give the impression that we are all calmly smiling at the camera.  I can't wait to see the rest of the photos!

Home Again

Guess who is home again?  Yup, Ryan is back from deployment again!  It's only a couple weeks shy of last year's deployment homecoming.  Ah, such a weird life.

I was not convinced of the date of this homecoming until I received an email at 3am sent from Frankfurt, Germany.  That email meant that Ryan made it off the ship and on his flight out of Bahrain.  I still didn't get us ready until 40 minutes prior to leaving for the Norfolk airport...including deciding what we'd all wear.  Most last-minute homecoming ever!

The boys and I were lucky enough to be joined by my good friend, Denae, a fellow Screwtop wife.  She took off from work early to act as our "photographer" and help us welcome Ryan home.  She waited patiently with us on this miserably hot day (yes, it was even hot inside the airport terminal).

I held the boys back as long as possible so they wouldn't completely disturb the other passengers as they headed toward baggage claim.  Turns out about 1/3 of the plane was made up of guys returning from the ship and other military-related places.  Ian and Nathan were absolutely thrilled to see Ryan, as you can tell from this picture.

Another photo with Daddy.  I could NEVER get them to smile like this no matter what I did...unless maybe I regularly left the state/country for months on end.  Hmmm...that doesn't sound like such a bad idea.