Whirlwind

The last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind of busyness.  Between Sarge testing for his first Dan black belt, a Christmas party, getting everything ready to travel over Christmas...  Yup, December was a busy month.

Sarge tested for his first Dan ranking.  This was the breaking portion of the test.  

First were the boards.  A rising elbow and a downward chop.

Second were the bricks.  He broke four with his forearm and then, for his *second break,* 5 with a downward palm strike.

Yeah, he rocks =)

The day after his test, his unit had their family Christmas party.  He had to show up with black eyes and bruises.  But he still looked really good in his dress blues.

The next week was spent getting everything ready to head up to my parents' house for Christmas.  Had to make sure we had everything a family of 6 needs to travel, plus Christmas presents.  

After dropping the mutt off with my in- laws, we finished the drive to WI.  It was long, but thankfully the roads were clear and there was no bad weather.

A couple days before we got there, my parents got 15" of snow.  There was definitely plenty of snow for us to play =)

  

 

  

 I even managed to get out and run in the snow.  Four miles of soul satisfying snow and quiet =) 

We had Christmas brunch with Grand Papa Bill...

The kids were entertained by watching the deer running across the tennis courts in the background.

We made the traditional sweet cream cut out cookies.

And after a few fun packed days, we headed back to OK to spend some time with my in- laws.

And saw that we had left snowy WI to come to snowy OK.  But that didn't stop us from climbing to the peak of our mountain.

Gorgeous views out across the valley...

I did manage to finish Squish's cross stitch.  Only took me 5 years.  Wonder how long Sweet Pea's will take...

It's been a busy few weeks, but I completely enjoyed all of them.  I'm looking forward to everything that 2013 has to offer us =)

So apparently...

I'm really bad with posting updates.

I texted a picture of the grandkids to my mother- in- love and I got a text back saying she was going through cute picture withdrawal =)

Sweet Pea is 8 months now and has started to get the hang of sitting by herself.  She's up to about a minute before she tries to fling herself backwards.

And she's talking all the time now.  Which is really cute when we're all awake.  But at 2:30AM, it's not quite as cute.

And she's had her first taste of real food.

We went with avocados.  She *loved* them =)  Hardly got any on herself and tried to help me get the spoon to her mouth as fast as she could.  Next I think we'll try bananas or maybe sweet potatoes.

Here's all of them...  I'm so glad Sweet Pea outgrew the toy stroller so quickly.  Now that she's able to sit up, she's too big for Girly- girl to push her around in it.

Here she is...  Cute, chubby checks and all.  Wearing Girly- girl's hat...  Shhh.  Don't tell her Sweet Pea's already *borrowing* her clothes.

And I have nothing better to do than to play around with photo editing software.

In other, kid related news...

Junior is flying through his 2nd grade curriculum.  Some days a little too fast to completely grasp what he's suppose to be doing lol!  And he will be testing for his purple belt in a couple more weeks.  So hopefully I'll actually find my camera, remember to take pictures and write a post about the =)

Girly- girl has started running with me.  She's aiming for running a race (1k) in April.  I'm pretty sure she'll do great.  She's also flying through her schoolwork as well.  She's really starting to pick up on the reading and loves math.  

And Squish Bear is just adorable and knows how to use it to his advantage lol!

Now that grandma has gotten a full update, I can go back to trying to keep up with the kids =)

So Precious!

 

Only missing one set of little toes, but she's still too little to be standing on her own =)

My boys can sell some Wrangler's lol!

She was so excited to have her picture taken with her sister.

If you have not had the chance to work with Mae, you're missing out =)  

Once again I am completely blown away with Mae's work.  I'm already plotting how I can work with her again!