Christmas

Christmas Eve was a busy day. I cleaned house and Monte took the last of the boxes to our storage shed. After he dropped the boxes off, he did yard work. He was happy as a clam being back on his riding lawn mower. Our good friends the Fisher's stopped by later in the afternoon and brought us a goodie plate. Thank you Barb...the cookies and pretzels were yummy, but the divinity was awesome! Its been a long time since I've had some divinity. That evening, we followed the Smith family tradition of eating pizza for dinner and watching "Christmas Vacation" before opening presents. The boys mostly got clothes this year as they, especially Nate, have grown out of just about everything. Brady was happy to get his gifts, but Nate was a bit ungrateful and complained about it. Apparently he should have gotten nothing but toys, but hey, as the song goes..."you can't always get what you want". It was quite funny watching him complain and I just had to take a picture of it so I could post it on the blog.

Christmas morning was great. The boys actually let Monte and I sleep until 8 am. It was amazing, usually if we get to sleep to 6:30 am we're doing good. Anyway, Nate was quite happy with the gift from Santa. The whole family got a Wii this year! Along with an accessories kit (i.e. gold club attachment, baseball bat attachment etc), the Guitar Hero World Tour game and a guitar. We played the Wii most of the morning and then had to get ready for the day. Our good friend Mark, his sons Luke and Lance and Mark's dad came over for dinner. Oh, and Mark brought his dog Gator too. He's the beautiful chocolate lab I talked about in a previous post. We all talked, laughed and reminisced, ate a great Christmas dinner and watched "A Christmas Story" on TV. That movie is on every year and it never gets old for me. Mark and his family left around 5 pm that night and we hooked up the Wii and played it the rest of the evening. We've played it quite a lot since then too, as you can imagine. I'm not really coordinated to play the Guitar Hero game, but according to Monte and Brady, I just need to practice. I think we should save up for the Rock Band game. Brady and Monte can play guitar, Nate can play the drums and I'll sing. We could be a modern day Partridge Family....ha ha.

Well, take care and have a great New Year's everyone! God Bless! :)

Elf' Yourself

I first saw this last year when Devrea did it for her, Brandon and the kids. I had a great time doing one for us and was excited to get this new version this year from Ann, Darron and the girls. Check it out at the link below and send me one of your family if you do one for yourselves.

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/4ZFtOscVfqXOpRrT2dsc

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone! God Bless! :)

Christmas Party

We went to Monte's unit Christmas party on Friday and had a lot of fun. Santa showed up in the Marine Corps hummer, the boys talked to him and made gingerbread houses and trees. There was ham and turkey with all the trimmings for dinner, a raffle and a DJ and karaoke for entertainment. We won a $25 gift certificate, which was cool, but the best part was watching the karaoke. It was great seeing those who were brave enough to do it, get on the stage and sing. After the party was over, we drove around town and looked at Christmas lights for a couple hours. Then we went home and watched the second to last episode of Lost, Season 4.



I finally convinced Monte to watch the show, so we've been playing catch up for the past few weeks. He's hooked just like me now and I love it. Now I have somebody close who I can talk to about the show. You know, speculate and hypothesize. Brady's been watching it with us too and is just as hooked. We're watching the second part of the season 4 finale tonight and are anxiously awaiting the premier of season 5 on January 21st.

Well, I better sign off. Monte needs help peeling the shrimp he's making for dinner. Have a great evening everyone. God Bless! :)

Thanksgiving? Its December 19th for Goodness Sakes!

Hey everybody. Once again, I've been slacking off when it comes to the blog. Sorry about that.

We had a very nice Thanksgiving this year. I think it was especially wonderful because we were not living in the camper. After dinner, Nate wanted to get out of the house, so we went for a walk over by the river on Camp Lejeune. We were pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of hiking and biking trails in the area. They also have boardwalks that weave in and out of the trees along the water with information plaques every so often telling you about the different trees and birds etc that you might see. We're planning on going back to ride bikes when the weather isn't so wet.

Monte and Brady went fishing with our good friend Mark the weekend before Thanksgiving. They had to get up really early to meet him at the pier so they could get to his favorite fishing spot before everyone else. You can see from the pictures that there were several boats near each other. They caught a few fish and they brought home a trout and a drum. The trout was the best tasting one. Not as good as the brookies from Montana, but not bad either. The lighthouse you see in the background is the Cape Lookout lighthouse. Brady had a great time, fishing as well as playing with Marks dog Gator (Mark's a Florida Gator's fan). Isn't he a beautiful dog? We can't get one now, but Monte and I are determined to have our own chocolate lab someday.



Well, that's about it for now everyone. Take care and have a great weekend. God Bless! :)