Ending the Year

Ok....So it's been like six months since I blogged. I WANT to be better at this, I really do. So I'm going to just post about the last three months of 2011, then make a new post about 2012.
So here we go.
OCTOBER!!
On the 2nd of October (the day before my little baby girl turned FIVE), we woke up to the house being FLOODED. True Story. My CAT flooded the house. We had a mouse in the cabinet where his food was, so we put his food in the laundry room sink while we dealt with that problem. The cat finished his food and went looking for more, and turned on the sink (cause it has a long handle) and it flooded. In the middle of the night.

Thanks Maxx cat. For the next month, people were in and out of our house, tearing out the floorboards, huge fans in the house, dehumidifiers, ripping up carpet, drilling holes in the wall to air them out, fixing the holes, new floorboards, taking out the ruined hutch...not so awesome.

Needless to say, poor Celeste's birthday was not the GREATEST one, but we went to a neighbors house and had a very small celebration.

So Celestes Aunt Lissa made her a beautiful Repunzel dress...

Celeste raced in a 1K race (with me) while Daddy ran in a 10K...

We carved pumpkins with our friends....

Greg made a spartan costume for himself while I made Caleb into a doctor, and Celeste into a pirate.

And now....we get to NOVEMBER.

I started taking care of a baby boy named Noah in November (well, I actually started on Halloween). To start out the month, Greg and I got to go to the Marine Corps Ball!

We got to visit my mommy for Thanksgiving!! It was AWESOME.....except I wanted to go see amazing national trasures like Jamestown, Williamsburg, DC, or something, and all Greg wanted to do was go fishing in the lake and go to work (true story....we traveld cross country so Greg could go work). Other than that, we got to play with baby turtles, fish, go to Smithfield, fish, eat Thanksgiving dinner, fish, play in leaves, fish, see my brother, fish, go black friday shopping at 10pm Thanksgiving night, fish....you get my point. heehee

Did I mention the pillow pets from Uncle Chris saved the day on the plane ride home??
Anyways, when we got home, it was time DECORATE the TREE!!

Then we taught Celeste how to ride her bike with no training wheels. She's so awesome and picked it up so fast....she even started jumping ramps with boys under her.

And that brings us to...DECEMBER!

Grandma Di-di (Greg's mom) came down for a visit. There was much spoiling going on, including awesome Christmas gifts, date night, even going to Legoland. It was only a few days, but we sure did do a lot! Of course....first we had some fun seeing Santa at Trees for Troops...

Did I mention our new table came? You know....to replace the ruined set Maxx cat left us with a few months ago? I looooOOOooove it!!

And just in case you needed some holiday spirit....

Yes. My son is super silly. Anyways, moving on. Gregs brother Uncle Matt came down for a visit a few days after Grandma Di-di left. Celeste LOVED playing with her uncle!! Our surogate family, the Ivanovs, also came down and took us all to Disneyland!! We had such an amazing time! We got to take Celeste on all the super fast rides and she LOVED them! Her favorite was Space Mountain cause it was "so so FAST!" while Came got to go on all the slow rides with Aunt Nanny and Baba (because they don't like the fast rides). It was a perfect arrangement. We also got to watch the parade while sitting on Main Street. It was so fun because all the performers were very interactive! There were funny snowmen who wiggled at us, reindeer who actually gave Caleb high fives and tickled him, many characters on floats who waved........and Mickey Mouse himself was ice skating, and STOPPED when he saw my baby boy wearing Mickey ears, POINTED at Caleb, waved, blew a kiss, and giggled all at him. Even if it wasn't quite the magical experience for Caleb yet, I had to wipe away a tear or two. At the end of the evening, Baba and Diado took the babies to the hotel so Greg, Matt and I could run around like wild children at California Adventures. We stayed out till the last shuttle left at midnight. What a great time!! Thank you Ivanovs!!

We decided to spend Christmas with our Phoenix family. Before we left, we opened a few of our gifts, just the big ones.

We packed up and headed to the Ivanovs first, and I got to meet my new 'sister in law' Brittany! We spent Christmas Eve with my sister, and headed to Jami's house for Christmas. My sister had her baby on the 26th, and while she was having a c-section, I put the older girls to work cleaning the house. We had to leave before I could meet my newest niece, which was utterly heartbreaking to me. I was so sad they wouldn't let anyone see my sister for a few hours after the delivery. But it was a seven hour drive and I had to work at 5am the next day. It was a pleasant trip besides that.

Of course....Santa ALSO made a special trip to our house and gave us a WAGON!! He must have known we were out of town and didn't have room in the car for a wagon. What a saint!



Our New Years was exceptionally fun. Every year, military families get a free day at usch Gardens and Sea World. Our friends the Farmers really love going, but hadn't used their free day for the year yet, and neither did we, so we went together. On New Years Eve. It was awesome!! We saw a few shows, went to most of the exibits, played in snow, and even rode Atlantis, the water ride!! Seriously...we rode the water ride in December.

We rang in the new year with our friends on the street. We played games and gave the kids sparklers. We passed out champaign with only 10seconds left before midnight. I spilled my champaign (NO, I was NOT drunk, thank you) and promptly said goodnight and went to bed. Thus ended our year. What does 2012 bring? Gregs deployment, ALL of my friends moving away DURING the deployment, and the apocolypse. True story. OK, maybe not the apocolypse. But everyone IS leaving. Aah well. That just means I'll have to take trips to Arizona.

Cheers and congrats for making it to the end of this post.