We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

Since Scott and I have been a family we have always spent the holidays with either his family or my family. In fact we had a rotation, if we spent Thanksgiving with the Hooglands, then we would spend Christmas with the Youngs, and the next year we would switch. Well being 20+ hours away from either of our family, we were forced to have our own little Christmas. We wanted to make it special this year, Scott had the time off so we tried to play as much as we could with the kids to ease the transition of moving. We mostly got everything unpacked, my "craft corner" (as you can see in the picture below) still needs to be put together, we are trying to find the right kind of shelf, and our living room is still bare because we can't decide on furniture. Oh well, here we are making a gingerbread house. . . We asked Grandma Young to read us a Christmas story on Skype, because she is the best children's book reader ever. She does voices, and knows all the right places to use t...

It all started when this handsome captain graduated on December 8th from his Captain's Career Course. He was put on the Commandant's List which means that he was in the top 5% academically of his class. I was with the packers all day Thursday, then the movers came and loaded up our house on Friday, we cleaned as they cleared out each room, loaded up my car on the trailer so it could be pulled by Scott's truck, and we left Friday night around 5 thinking that we could drive a couple hours before bedtime. Then we realized that the running lights on the trailer were not working, so we got dinner and stayed at a hotel about 3 miles from our apt! We drove about 6-8 hours on Saturday and Sunday and were able to get to our new city Sunday night. We got the keys Monday morning from our landlords who are a couple from India. He is an ER doctor and his wife was so sweet, she held Ian for me and gave us some moving-in essentials like paper towels, hand soap, and a nice welcome bouquet...

For Thanksgiving we went to Oma & Opa's house. We have been so thankful to have them close by (6 hours) to visit while we were in South Carolina. Uncle Brian was so kind to let Ian get close to the tree and magical train. He was so excited and wanted to jump right on it. We had a marvelous time hanging out and playing. Oma put on quite the Thanksgiving dinner spread with everything imaginable even some great company. On the day after I ventured out at about 6 in the morning to tackle on some black Friday sales. I was successful, and I got a full night's sleep the night before. I am so glad that I didn't go out in the middle of the night. I later went out with Oma where she spoiled me with my early birthday present: a quilters table and chair! Uncle Brian took our family pictures that we sent with our Christmas card, they will make their i nternet debut in a couple days. The next day Scott and Brian went out to put up the Christmas lights for the house. Well let...