Christmas 2009

Here are some highlights of Christmas Day.. We were all spoiled and so very lucky to be able to celebrate together. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Cody's Home!!!

Cody came home on sunday evening and we have been so enjoying spending time together and just hanging out with him. My parents came on sunday afternoon right on time as well, thanks to the weather cooperating-ie: no fog or snow. On monday night all the Murphy's came for dinner along with Lindsay and Madi. We spent all day monday and tuesday in town doing last minute shopping and spent the day wednesday taking it easy. Madi spent the day with us on wednesday so we didnt totally take it easy ;)
Lindsay, Jake, Madi and Hailey are spending the day of Christmas Eve down in Seattle with their dad and then everyone will be here on Christmas day. Sadly grandma and grandpa will be leaving us on Christmas day to spend the rest of their time with the Murphy's. We love when they are here because they spoil us so much! I hope everyone is able to enjoy their holidays as much as we are enjoying ours! Pictures will follow, apparently blogger is not in the mood to load them right now, grrr....

A reoccuring theme....

This evening we took family pictures for Lindsay, Jake and Madi. Madi was well rested, fed, in a great mood and happy to be dressed up, however, she still does not want to sit and take a picture with her parents. We did two sessions with a break in between to help Madi live a little longer :)
During the break she willingly and sweetly sat up there and took a brilliant picture with her Auntie Hailey, needless to say her parents didn't find it nearly as funny as we did!
In the end we had some keepers, but as promised they are going to be a surprise for family so you'll have to wait...but in the mean time here are a few that were on the cutting room floor.

"Happy Birthday"

That was what Madi said when she first came in and saw the tree with lights and the snowmen and other decorations. That was the only obvious explanation she could come up with to explain the transformation of the living room. We explained to her that it was a "Christmas tree" and that it was "Merry Christmas", she was VERY interested in touching the lights and wanted to know what each and every decoration was. I was hoping to get a picture of Hailey and Madi in front of the tree, however she was not interested in my idea. Hailey tried holding her and wrestling her to stay in front of the tree and in the end just read her a book. That worked as long as you didnt want her smiling at the camera. Tomorrow is "family picture day", wish us luck :)

Cody sent us a picture!

This is him and his commander and no we have no idea what the piece of paper is he is holding...but it is so good to see he looks healthy anyway :)
Sidenote: apparently they had to retake the picture because the commander had no idea of the expression cody was wearing, he did it for a laugh.....

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

Yikes! It is almost the end of the year! We had a very quiet Thanksgiving day, the kids got here around 1:30 and we tried to take some pictures before everyone (madi) got dirty but didnt have a whole lot of luck. Madi refused to cooperate when it came to a family photo and didnt even mind when they traded her in for a willing substitute, she did however relent to having pictures by herself :)
After her nap we had dinner, then watched a movie and then made our Christmas candy calendars. All in all it was a great evening and we have tons of left overs for the next week or so. We did miss our family who wasnt with us and they were included in our prayers. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

(p.s. Madi didnt have her nap with the dogs on the dog bed, I just caught her laying there with them, in case you were thinking that was a picture of her nap...)

Good news or Bad news????

Yesterday morning Cody called again, 3 times in 3 days...I was a little nervous and warned him not to give me more bad news. He said it wasn't bad news it was interesting news. He found out yesterday that he had orders for Spokane Washington, reporting on March 30th! Of course he has to re-up to get this BOP, and he did, for an additional year. So the great part of this news, Cody will be in Washington state-just a mere 4+ hours away, the only down side of this is that now he can quite possibly be deployed yet again...(sigh)
Still don't know how Christmas is going to pan out but we will just have to be patient and hopeful.

well, that was short lived....

I just found out in an email from Cody that he will not be home in time for Christmas after all. Now he will not be leaving Afghanistan until December 12th. Apparently with the in-processing and required time to be on base after deployment he will not make it home until sometime in January. Dissapointed doesn't even come close to describing how I feel right now.

Two in one day! (don't get too used to it)

Since Madi spent the night last night Lindsay came over to hang out for a while when she picked her up. After Madi and Lindsay had their nap we played for a while and ate and basically killed time waiting for the weather to do something other than rain. We finally got a break sometime after 3:00 and bundled up to go outside and ride. Madi loves to ride now, she is no longer afraid of horses' heads. She really likes Buffy and luckily Buffy seems to like her too. We all took turns riding and you can see by the background we were definitely on borrowed time where the weather was concerned!

Sunday afternoon...

The best part of the day so far was that Cody called and said it looks like he may be heading back to the states on either Nov 30, or Dec 5th, which means he will be home for Christmas! I am so very happy and excited, I was realllllly wanting Cody to be home for the holidays. The last time he was home for Christmas was '05, I'd say it's about time. Anyway all the people who live with me can breathe a sigh of relief as I will surely be easier to live with now :)
As promised I had a few pictures on my camera of the dogs and Madi (shocker I know) so I am going to share them even though they have nothing to do with my news!