Happy Birthday Spencer!

Spencer's 31st birthday was the first time in his entire life that he had to work on his birthday! Not too shabby, eh?

He tried to eat his whole carrot cake all by himself, but I made him share with the rest of us.

While I was able to wrap up a few gifts for him, several still hadn't come in the mail. I had to print out the pictures of a few things I ordered for him and wrap those up instead-ha! Such is life living overseas. I am so grateful to be married to this funny, patient, hard-working man!

Advent Activities

One of Sydney's favorite Christmas traditions is counting down the days to Christmas with our advent calendar. It has lots of little drawers, and she loves opening one up each morning to see what cool activity we'd get to do that day. Unfortunately, sometimes I read the paper inside and she'd decide she didn't want to do it (e.g. read Christmas books), but other times she'd be giddy at the prospect of doing something fun (e.g. decorating the tree, going to the 3rd MEF band's Christmas concert).

Instead of doing gingerbread houses this year, we made Christmas trees using ice cream cones. It turned out to be Sugarfest 2013, as the kids snitched candy and licked frosting like it was going out of style. Shawn decorated his and then ate the whole thing within 5 minutes… all before 11am.

Sydney was a little more deliberate with her decorating, but still did her fair share of snitching.

Sydney showing off her new favorite skill- winking! Now she winks at me like 500 times a day :)

Before winter break from preschool, Sydney's class did a Christmas program. She did a great job singing "Must be Santa" and the Alvin and the Chipmunks song "Please Christmas Don't Be Late."

At the end of the program, Santa came to visit the kids to see what they wanted for Christmas. Shawn was pretty mesmerized by Santa and was asking, "Where Santa go?" for the rest of the day.

Santa gave each kid a present, and Sydney got a Jake and the Neverland Pirates matching game. That would have been awesome had we not bought the exact same game for Shawn for Christmas. I ended up buying it from her so she could get something else from the store.

Since Shawn was so excited about Santa, we thought it would be fun for him to get a turn on Santa's lap. We took the kids to Family Fun Night at the Ocean Breeze restaurant on base and got our chance to meet him.

Turns out Shawn did not like sitting on Santa's lap.

He told Santa he wanted a drum, but since Sydney had gotten a present from Santa right after she talked to him after her school program, he thought he'd get his drum right away. As he recovered from sitting on Santa's lap he kept saying, "I want my drum right now."

We were floored when we got to go into a room at the restaurant that was loaded with toys, and each kid got to pick one for free! The gift Sydney chose at the restaurant was an easy bake donut kit. She was soooo excited to make the donuts the next day.

They were "no bake" donuts, the consistency was chocolate pudding-esque, but more firm. She loaded them up with lots of frosting and they dug in. I don't think either kid finished eating theirs.

I had a doctor's visit on the 20th that indicated I wasn't progressing much in the baby arena. We tried to help things along on my due date (the 21st) by going for a loooonnnng walk to see the Christmas lights in American Village. It was around 60 degrees and windy, and we were freezing! After coming out the gate, we stopped at Starbucks for some hot chocolate, then continued on to walk around on the seawall.

Enjoying the view at Sunset beach.

Afterwards we cruised through American Village to see their light displays, shouting "Yay, Christmas!" as we passed by.

Despite walking several miles, I didn't have a single contraction. But we had a great time, so it was an evening well spent!

Chest Candy

Shortly after we arrived in Okinawa, Spencer started working toward receiving his Fleet Marine Force qualified officer pin. Although not required, achieving this award is looked upon highly because he's attached to a Marine unit. To earn his FMF pin, he had to attend classes to learn certain skills, do a six mile hike in full gear (about 40 lbs.), qualify at the pistol range, participate in a gas chamber training (which involved being exposed to mustard gas), do the Marine fitness test (slightly different than his usual Navy one), and pass an oral exam.

He came home from a stand down in early December and was excited to show me his new "chest candy," as he called it, that he was awarded during the meeting. 

Eye candy… oh yeah, and the big, shiny, gold pin looks nice too.

Congrats to Spencer!

Trimming the Tree

The day after Thanksgiving, we broke out the Christmas stuff and started decorating for the holidays. Sydney and Shawn were so excited to help put the ornaments on the tree.

My little reindeer helper liked the "ball" ornaments best.

Admiring his work.

Sydney was very serious about where she put all the ornaments.

The finished product.

As expected, it was a little bottom heavy, so I may or may not have done a little rearranging after they went to bed that night :)

Thanksgiving

This year we volunteered to host Thanksgiving at our place. The Perrins', Heaton's, Hurst's, and Marine friend Eamon all came over to celebrate with us, and we had quite the delicious spread of food!

Getting things ready.

I borrowed lots of cute decor from Stacey to decorate the adult table.

The crew.

For a while we weren't sure if the Heaton's were going to make it because Stacey's due date was super close to Thanksgiving day. Lucky for her (and us!), baby Taylor decided to come early so they were able to join us. After dinner we were all chatting, and I looked behind me to see this cute sight:

Shawn holding baby Taylor.

We've had so much to be thankful for this year- fun travels, a healthy family, a baby on the way, a good job, and on and on it goes. I'm still amazed when we hang out with our friends that we are somehow lucky enough to be on this island together.

Happy Birthday Sydney!

Sydney asked for a Minnie Mouse party for her 5th birthday. Her actual birthday fell on a Monday, and her party was scheduled for the following Saturday, which meant we celebrated twice. I was so excited that she requested brownies with mint ice cream for the day-of celebration. Doesn't get any easier than that!

Such a goofball :)

Not yet Shawn!

She was so excited to be a big 5 year old!

For presents, she got a new two-wheeler bike and lots of washi tape. Her love of tape started this summer when one of our new neighbors showed her her collection of duct tape and all the stuff she made with it. Now Sydney is constantly asking to buy tape.

Syd with her lifetime supply of decorative tape.

I wasn't very good about taking pictures at her party, but she requested carrot cake Minnie Mouse cupcakes (a Pinterest find- Minnie was made with Oreos). We also had pizza, fruit, and veggies. We rented a bounce house, which almost took up our entire backyard! Everything went great, and the kiddos seemed to have a good time.

Jack, Colton, and airborne Sydney having a blast in the bounce house.

Hailey, Sydney, and Anderson

We love our sweet 5 year old Sydney!

Halloween 2013

We had a great Halloween this year. The whole pumpkin buying thing almost didn't happen, as our commissary seemed to run out of them really quickly. Then they got another shipment just a few days before Halloween (phew!), so I was able to pick up a few for the kids to carve.

Sydney cleaned out her whole pumpkin by herself!

Shawn got about 5 seeds out of his, then I did the rest. He did, however, enjoy eating the seeds that Daddy cooked.

Our pumpkins were cleaned and carved 4 days before Halloween, and I left them inside on our washer to keep them from getting moldy outside. FAIL!! They were totally moldy inside and had spots of rot on them before they even made it out to the porch. Sick! That being said, I stuck candles in them and lit them anyway.

Getting ready to trick-or-treat!

Shawn was Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and Sydney chose to be Belle for the 2nd year in a row.

Sydney made sure to throw out an, "I sure love Starbursts," every time she saw them offered in someone's candy bowl. She ended up with about a million. Shortly into our trick-or-treating, Shawn got a big sucker in his bag. After that he could have cared less about knocking on more doors, he just kept asking if he could eat it. About 45 minutes later, it started pouring outside. While some of the adults in our group of neighbors were wearing rain gear, none of the kids were. We all got soaked making our way back up the hill! We enjoyed sneaking all of the good candy out of their treat buckets after they went to bed :)