Christmas Season

The Christmas season has begun! That statement sounds really out of date now! This family was such an adorable Crachit family at the festival downtown.
Don't you love kids all matchy matchy and cute?! I have not been taking pictures this year, so this picture is priceless by the way!!

One more before baby is totally screaming... this one, in front of the piano. I don't think I've even posted any pictures of the piano that I bought last June, and then had refinished and it was deliverd in November. I decided I had to paint the wall behind it, and of course had to be red. I fell in love with this color, but of course once it got all big, it's started to have a lot of purple in it, which I was bummed about. But, it's way fun!

Promotion!

Jeremy made his first promotion in the army! He's now a 1st Leiutenant (the step up from 2nd Leiutenant)! For non-army people, let me explain- this is an automatic promotion, you get it pretty much as long as you stick in the army for a couple years and don't do anything real stupid. lol! It's called the wife's promotion, because really it's more to tribute to the wife who made it thus far with her husband being gone with all kinds of training and she having to be trained and learn all the new-to-military-life kind of stuff. Okay, I made that up, but it should be called the Wife's Promotion. :)

Jeremy's first unit that we've been a part of for 6 months now, is quite fun. He's the lowest ranking officer and so he gets all the jokes and what not. It's actually kind of funny. You get to be the butt of all the jokes, not as a reflection on whether or not they like you, but it's just a matter of being the lowest/newest one there. Nothing personal. :) One of the office jokes is about how many kids he has. The joke was that he probably has a fat wife, because she's had so many kids, and they thought that was pretty funny he (Jeremy) being so skinny and his wife so fat. Well, I did get to prove them wrong :P and they all actually quite like us. So it's good.
And noone can deny what cute kids we have!

Party!

Let's go back to October for just a minute. Though it seemed almost impossible to get a picture of everyone in full costume, all at one time, here's the best we could do. Trick or treating was a bust. It rained so we went to the mall, which turned out had no candy, because everyone already had the same idea. So, we're driving home and the the older kids get dropped off with Dad to trick-or-treat their way home for about 10 houses. Still, it was definetly enough candy (there's still a half a bucket full in the pantry)!
Our FRG (Family Readiness Group) is pretty awesome and do a lot of activities and some big fun parties. Halloween is one of their big parties. This is Willie with the Magician's parrot. It was a great holiday!
October is also birthday month for Willie! We didn't do to much for his birthday though, :( I even signed up to have the missioanries over and I didn't even realize it! Haha, oh well, it's always fun to celebrate with Elder Nii and Elder Shirrod!

Well, it's been a long time, not even possible to catch up on everything. So, let's just talk about now.
Right now I'm sitting at the kitchen counter, which has become a makeshift computer room, it's midnight, baby is finally drifting off to sleep, the night air starting to feel more and more chilly. I have my warm robe over my pajamas, and resisting putting any of the yummy things near me in my mouth so don't feel like I need to go brush my teeth again! :)
I've been feeling so so so overwhelmed lately. Kids, friends, church, daily rubs, life careers, holidays, money, healthcare, homeschool, home maintenance, not enough knowing and not enough doing. And I hate telling people downer sorts of things, so that's all I'm going to say about that. It did feel good to put that down somewhere though.
I can't believe it's a week before Christmas! It's been a fun December actually even though Jeremy is not going to be able to take off a lot of time. He surprised us with Disney on Ice tickets last week, which was fun! The show included Tiana, Cinderella, and Rapunzel. I loved the skating, lots of "couples skating" with fun stunts and acrobatics.
We had a Christmas party last week. I have a few pictures, though there not good quailty, but i have them, so I will post a little bit about that. I love throwing parties. I do. I don't have party people around me though I don't think. I think I was the only on excited about it and everything that we did. Except my kids; my kids I can rely on to get just as excited about parties as I do! :)
well, I will close this short post so I can get some sleep tonight.
Thanks for all the Christmas cards so far, everyone that has sent them to me. They are so wonderful! I won't be getting cards out this year so I hope you forgive me!!
Happy Holidays!!

Baby Small

Just to update on my little Ivy.
She is a cute, personable little tyke. I can't believe these are the only pictures I have to put on here. Hmmm, that needs to change.
I get exhausted pretty often as these two little girls both feel like babies. Hallee is my Big Baby, and I call Ivy, Baby Small.
Ivy loves taking baths and I'm excited to get in the pool with her. I waited too long with Hallee and she's really anxious in water. Hopefully we can get Ivy in the pool this winter.



As long as I'm on here...because I haven't updated in a little while. Life is busy with parties, preschool, church stuff and everything in between. Here's a sentence on each of us-
Jeremy placed something like 100th (out of 30,000) in the Army 10-miler in Washington DC, a worse showing than last year due to tendonitis in his leg.
Courtney is enjoying having a piano, though it is a bit of a battle with the kids sometimes, Christmas music can be heard often.
Lucy is sad when brother goes off to preschool, but she's definetly making progress in her own school work. She also wants to learn more piano, so far she only knows Hot Cross Buns. ;)
Hallee, ah Hallee. She has hit something of a terrible two. "No" being her favorite word- wow, these days couldn't be shorter...lol.
Ivy cute and talkative, she has many friends at church and is often found being "stolen away" by admiring sisters.

Olympians

Willie is now a toddler "olympian." It was a cute program where they met at the rec center for "practice" and then had the olympics at the end of the month. Willie had so much fun. Didn't make a single basket in the basketball free throws (how do they expect little kids to make that, even when the rim is lowered?). They gave medals out to all the kids which completely thrilled Willie! Even though they tried to call every child up on the stage, there were a couple kids that really did win most the events. They had long jump, sit ups, push ups, basketball free throw, weight run, and the obstacle course. It was Willie's turn to shine, as this was "his" class that the family supported him in, though Lucy got to participate in the practices. Lucy had her shining moment with dance last June. It's funny to compare the two- Willie didn't care about being in the spotlight, just as long as he got to do something, unlike Lucy who loves all eyes on her. And after the 'awards ceremony' where Willie got his two medals, what was the first thing he did? Give one to Lucy. Willie's a bit more sensitive and caring in that way than Lucy is naturally.

A House a Home

Since we purchased this home in February, we've made some big purchases that I guess you could say have made it feel like home...kinda. Actually, these purchases didn't tranform the house, they're just the kind of things that we've always said, "someday when we have our own home..." kind of things. :) We bought a big trampoline for the kids, a treadmill for Dad, and a piano for Mom.
The trampoline was definetly worth it's weight. We jump almost everyday. I'm trying to decide what we'll do with it in the winter. It will be sad to not see it out in the yard, but no reason to keep it out in the weather. I wonder if Jeremy will let me keep it in the garage...which would mean kicking out the car...? haha, probably not.
The treadmill was purchased as a "need," according to Jeremy. Which it really has been great for encouraging to get some workouts in. I was able to start running again (no excuses left for this SAHM), and Jeremy has used it in some of his fast interval workouts to push himself, and when he has to run at times that don't let him get out on the road. Jeremy is into some really hardcore training for the marathon. He's still figuring out if he'll run the Charlotte marathon in November or the Cal International Marathon in December. He wants to run in California, but everything still has to come together for that one. He runs close to 100 miles a week right now. The man is a machine. I have no idea how he keeps up with it all- work, lots of kids, volunteering at church (calling), and running that many miles. Most people don't realize the time committment it takes to get that many miles in. Which for Jeremy, bless his heart, he'll get up at like 4:30am and do a lot of running while everyone is asleep. We made the mistake of putting the treadmill upstairs in the rec room. I think it was a mistake, but then, there was really no where else to put it. Anyhow, the house is quite shook up when Dad is pounding the rubber upstairs at top speed.
The piano...well, it has it's story that doesn't have an ending yet. I've been searching for a cheap (free) piano ever since we moved in. I would always respond to all the giveaway pianos but none of them worked out for various reasons. All this work left me feeling a little impulsive, or maybe a little too impulsive, and on a first name basis with a local piano moving service. So, this creagslist ad goes up for a baby grand piano for $100obo. I jump on it, of course. So, my piano guy, Ken, also does restorations and will give a free estimate. I arrange to come look at the piano right away, and Ken can come too (did I mention we're tight like that? ;) so he said he'll take a look first and if it's "fixable" then he would suggest buying it because grand pianos tend to fix better, resell better, yahyah. I think, I'm just waiting there with $100, I'm definetly doing it. Also, Ken offers to move the piano for nothing (and he'll keep it) if I decide not to keep it. So I don't really have to make a decision right now anyway, right? Well, in a dimly lit cramped house of the cutest little family and all their cousins or neighbors or something, Ken makes the decision it's "fixable" and starts loading it up. I say 'see ya later' to the piano and he transports the piano to his garage. I get a call later that week to come look at the piano- oh, and this is all when I'm super pregnant, the week before I ended up having baby #4. :) We have mom-in-law watch the kids and go to Ken's garage where he gives us the run down of what the piano needs and the work to be done and an estimate of the cost. It's a lot of money, I won't say it gently. I know we could have easily said no and he would have just kept the piano, but it was like I needed that baby grand to be born as much as I needed baby small to be born, right then! We had already decided we wanted it, in other words, and jumped in it for the long haul. So, this was almost 3 months ago. The piano is almost done being refinished. There has been snags and long waiting, but we're excited to see the piano and hope it will be beautiful. Now, if it will fit in our house...we will yet see... lol, sigh, that's another bad thing about my impulsive purchases. I really probably should have stuck with a small upright piano. Well, I'm sure it will be beautiful, and fun for sure. I'm already scheming my Christmas tea party this year.
And that's how we're making this house a home...someday, we'll go through and take a picture or two to show you these and other projects in action. Living the home owners dream. (there's a little bit of nervous chuckling in that last part.)