Home at Last

Just to update everyone...Spencer is finally home. Yeah! He got home late Monday night. Jamin was a little weirded out at first, but all is well now. The boys finally opened their Christmas presents on Tuesday morning and LOVED it. My three kids have been having lots of fun bonding- so cute. I'll have lots of pictures later...we're also going home to visit for a while and I CAN'T WAIT to see my neices and nephews. I'll keep everyone updated. And don't worry, I won't forget the pictures- I know that's why everyone is here anyways!

Spencer Update!

I got an e-mail from Spencer this morning. He's sitting at a passenger terminal trying to get on a flight. If all goes well, hopefully he'll be at the next location tomorrow or the next day and then be able to catch his flight back into the wonderful US of A. We'll see what happens! As of right now, he should still be home on Monday. Jamin and I are hoping he looks more like this when he comes home, rather than his scary pictures a few posts back. Jamin doesn't even recognize him...and I'd rather not admit that I do either!

I was going through some pictures from when Spencer was in Afghanistan last time and found a few more good reasons to be a vegetarian. Spencer got sick from the food a few times...I think you'll see why (just so you know, the Afghans don't use TP, if you know what I mean) I will warn you though, if you have a weak stomach or want to continue to enjoy eating hamburgers...you might not want to look.

Where in the World is Spencer?

Well, Spencer still isn't home yet. Most of you know he was supposed to be home on the 5th (two days ago). But that didn't happen....I swear, these guys are worse than the Army! No communication whatsoever. We haven't had a phone call from Spencer for over three weeks (yes, that includes Christmas and New Years). So on Monday, when Spencer was scheduled to come home, I tried calling two different guys from his work....and nothing, neither one of them called back.
So, after a few hours of lying to myself...for some reason I thought he might just show up and surprise me, no such luck... I finally called the airline to see if he got on his flight. Turns out that his flight was changed to Monday, the 12th. A whole week later! That doesn't sound like a long time, but I've been sick since Saturday night so I was definitely ready for Spencer to be home. We still have a few days left...unless his flight gets changed again.....

when mommy is sick...

What do we do when mommy is sick?
-we stay in our pajamas for days and days
-we finally decide to play nicely together...
-while trashing the house as much as possible
-we find the chocolate stash
-and we count down the days until daddy comes home!

Cheesy Beards!

The beard is SOOOO bad it almost reaches the realm of awesome!

The Cheesy Beard.....an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

Here are a few of the weapons we have collected. Yes that is a live AT4 thank you very much!

One of my personal weapons, a Baretta 9mm.

This is a shot in my workshop. It may not seem like much, but it's probably one of the best in the entire country.

Well hello everybody! I happned to be checking my email this evening and saw I was getting a 2Kbs connection to the internet! I thought of all the cool things I could do with a  Dial-up modem speed and decided to upload a few pics! I should be back state side within a week(fingers crossed!) so I hope to see you all very soon.

Christmas

Christmas morning we went to the Thueson's for breakfast. We had fun and everything was yummy (even though the eggs had cinnamon & garlic in them). We also played their new game Buzz Word - lots of fun, I highly recommend it. And for dinner, we went over to Marla's. That was yummy too and we watched one of my many favorite Christmas movies - Elf. If you haven't seen it, you need to, it's hilarious! I'm glad we have such good friends to spend Christmas with! They did a good job of helping us forget we didn't get to open any presents yet!
Christmas morning, I also attempted to get pictures of my adorable kids, since I Always forget! I got pictures, but every one of them turned out silly. I even tried to get myself in one...that didn't work either.

Christmas Eve

As you can tell from my other posts, I forget to take pictures a lot...I either remember right before we finish something or leave somewhere or I don't remember at all. But I share what I have, and steal pictures when I can...so maybe I'll have more pictures of everything later.
For Christmas Eve we went to the Bush's house for dinner. They are some of our best friends here. I can't really describe them in a short post...Ann is pretty much crazy and, as you can see, her kids are too! Her husband, Chris, is pretty normal though. They invited a few other families too and we had lots of fun (and ate really well) We were going to go Christmas Caroling, but it ended up raining...I think the guys were actually relieved.

getting into Christmas

We decided to postpone Christmas until Spencer gets home (Jan 5th, I hope) so he can see the boys open their presents. But even without presents, we still did lots of fun Christmas stuff!
On Monday night we had a really fun family home evening with our friends. We did a board game gift exchange and attempted to make gingerbread houses. They may not have turned out the best, but it was entertaining...my friend took pictures of our "gingerbread village" but she didn't send them yet so here's just mine and Jamin's.....

On Tuesday, Jamin made cupcakes. He cracked the eggs, poured everything in, mixed it together, he did everything! He even smashed candy canes to put on top (that was his favorite part) They ended up tasting really good...even though he was licking his fingers the whole time.














Later that night, we went over to our friend's for dinner. That was lots of fun. It was the Halls, the ones I mentioned earlier who sing amazingly. Jamin always loves to go over there because Connor is into Thomas the train too and has lots of cool toys. And Kiersten and Kaylee are always great with the kids, they'll make good moms someday.

Wonderful Week!!

My horrible week transitioned into a pretty good next week. One of my new friends, Susana, got baptized (yeah!). I'm so glad I got to be there for it, it was a wonderful experience. And her new fiance got to be there too, they got married on Christmas Eve (Congratulations!)
And then, on Sunday, Church was wonderful. It was mostly music...everything sounded good, but my favorite was our friends Chris and Kiersten Hall. They sang and sounded amazing! Kiersten is only 12 but she's one of the best singers I've heard. They were the only ones who brought me to tears (and that's pretty hard to do)
And of course, this week was Christmas - also wonderful, but that will be a post of it's own!