Dec the Halls

I did my first and last Black Friday shopping today at 5:00a.m. I am pretty Scroogy about Christmas especially since Jared isn't here. So I bought a Black Friday 6 foot tall already lighted Christmas tree for $25 dollars! The boys decorated it this morning. It was really nice this year because I didn't have to do anything! They were old enough to coordinate the whole thing.






Usually you can see the mountains from our back window. Not today! It's snowing like crazy! I love that we always have a white Christmas here. It's so storybook.

A Very Lego Thanksgiving

The orange banner says: Thanksgiving Day with turkey and cranberry sauce to everyone.

Here is Darth Vader enjoying the festivities.

It's finally Halloween!!!!!

I seriously didn't think Corbin was going to make it. That kid was so excited! My men went out on Halloween day and got donuts and brought me back flowers.



Here is Jared doing his face painting magic.

And here are the scary children.




Well this guy is kind of funny.


I loved our Halloween moon. It was so creepy.


We finished off the night watching Edward Scissorhands and then I couldn't go to bed because I knew if I did I would wake up and it would be my last day with Jared. So we played cards until 2:00 a.m. We went to church the next day, took family pictures in the afternoon and then that night we took him to the airport. And that was the end of R and R. Three and a half months and counting and we'll be a family again.

Asher said to Jared while he was here, "Dad, why do we have so much more fun when you're here?"

Jared said, "I don't know. Why do you think?"

Asher, "Because you make our family complete."

Halloween Special

Before cartoons were on 24/7 we lived for the holiday special nights when NBC would run a special cartoon just for kids. Even though my kids can watch whatever they want whenever they want I still got excited for the Monsters vs. Aliens Halloween special on t.v. Here are the kids eating dinner while glued to the tube.

Halloween Decorating

Our Aunt Tammy sent us a box in the mail with Halloween decorations. Here's what the boys created. We made cupcakes and left plates of goodies on people's doorsteps while we dashed away into the night.






The kids are finally old enough to play games with us. We bought the Settlers of Catan and played by the fireside. It was a blast.

This was our big H2Oasis day. We promised the kids for a year that we would go to the indoor water park in Anchorage when Jared came home for R and R. We started the big day at Jalapenos. We fueled up on Mexican food including fried ice cream, my personal favorite.




Here we are on the lazy river. We look lazy don't we? Don't let that fool you. We did the Master Blaster at least 20 times, literally. First, you have to get a double person innertube and hike it up three flights of stairs to the top of the slide. You wait in line and when it's your turn you get in your tube and shoot off on a waterslide rollercoaster. Corbin and I were Master Blaster buddies. I couldn't stop laughing and screaming every time we went down. Finally Corbin said, "Mom, stop screaming."

So, Jared went on a date with each boy on three separate nights. Corbin went to Chucky Cheese and Subway, Gavin went bowling and ate at Applebees, and Asher played baseball and ate at Applebees. We only got this one picture of Corbin at Chucky Cheese.



Jared wanted to find shirts for his Afghani interpreters. We went downtown to all of the shops and Corbin was a dream child. I bought him a stuffed moose for being the perfect shopping buddy. That by the way wasn't the stuffed moose I bought him. His was much smaller.

And we went to Starbucks to get pumpkin hot cocoa and cookies. We ended up at the Captain Cook hotel. Inside the walls are made of rough rocks. Jared was teaching Corbin how to rock climb on this fancy hotel's walls. That will always be a favorite memory of mine.

Alyeska

Somehow this is the only picture that we got of us at the Alyeska hotel. Here's us getting room service the first night. The trip was kind of disappointing because everything was closed, the tram, the restaurant, the bike shop....Jared got sick. We did swim a lot in the saltwater pool and watched a lot of t.v.



Oh, and we did go to Whittier.
Here's a nice description I got off the internet of Whittier.

Whittier AK, a quaint seaside town some 50 miles southeast of Anchorage along the Seward Highway. The town is accessed from the Portage Glacier road and connected to main highway system through the 2½ mile long combined access tunnel shared by vehicles and the Alaska Railroad. This route connects this picturesque seaside town located on the shores of Prince William Sound to the Kenai Peninsula and the rest of Alaska.

Sounds nice huh? Not really. We paid $12 to go through the tunnel. It was a pretty cool tunnel. There's a schedule because the trains run through the same tunnel as the cars. We got to Whittier, stayed 20 minutes and left. Saw a nice boat.


I will say that Alyeska treats their military very well. They gave us over $100 in food vouchers. We ate well.

Random Sampler

Gavin's 2nd grade class sent Jared a bunch of cards. This is the one that Gavin sent. Jared and I were cracking up at the little guy screaming in the bats clutches. While Jared was here he went into Gavin's class and thanked the kids for the cards.


Gotta wrestle with Dad while he's home. What are dads for, I mean really?


Jared brought home this really crazy light to torture our cat with. Much to his delight the cat had left home a few weeks earlier and never came back. :o) So we no longer have a kitty.


I love this picture of Corbin and Jared just hanging out.


I have no idea where we were at when we took this.

Here's Jared's laundry all hung up to dry in Afghanistan.

R and R

R and R: Rest and Relaxation. That's what they call it in the Army when you get to come home for two weeks from war. Mid-tour leave is another name. When Jared was first getting deployed we both had said that we didn't want him to come home for mid-tour because it just seemed so torturous. But we changed our minds and I am glad we did. It was some of the best weeks of my life.

We went to Hatcher's Pass because Jared had never been there.







Then we went to Chili's for dinner. I love Chili's.