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 That statement sounds really out of date now!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!!