Post Christmas Reality

So here we are, blog number 2. We're really hoping that this can be a way to keep our friends and family abreast on what we have going on in our life. It's not our proudest fact but we don't stay in contact as well as we should. Life here in Washington gets going and it's easy to lose track and lose touch but then we get to come home to Oregon for a couple of days and it feels like there is so much catching up to do with parents and such that there is never enough time to see all those people we wish so much, that we could or we just don't see them as long as we'd like. So while this blog won't fix this and certainly doesn't feel the same as being there first hand, here's hoping it's a start! We do feel very blessed to have gotten to spend time with the family that we did and had a really great time with them. So many little ones running around nowadays, it really reminds you who Christmas is for, the kids. Seeing the excitement and all those smiles was truly wonderful. Two of those little ones were our new nephew Parker and our niece Cambrie that Angel got to meet last Christmas but Ryan was still deployed so it was nice for him to get to see her for the holiday too.Those little ones are so beautiful and just grip your heart. The day before the holidays we got a chance to see Parker for a few minutes since Peter & Anne needed to stop by and my goodness, seeing how big he is really reminds us how long it had been since we'd been home. Hopefully we can try and fix that this coming year. We were able to get a quick snapshot of Ryan with Parker, isn't it precious! We have many more photos to add later but those were with Ryan's fancy camera that Angel can't work so these one's off of her point & shoot will do for now! ;)

It was also great to get to Angel's family's house to visit and to introduce Juniper to her parent's new dog, Goldie. They were just two peas in a pod right away. June is a quite a bit more rambuncious than Goldie but it was a good pair with her more mellow demeanor. They play fought and ran and then would sit and chewed bones together. It was hard come time to separate them and we sure hope we can get them together again soon.

So to continue on, we just got home from our festivities down in OR late on Saturday evening. We had towed a trailer down to pick up a bed set, dining table and also a hutch. Towing that thing was quite the adventure and then unloading it was an even bigger one. Not only did we get the expected items but of course came back with other things as well. Ryan's dad gave him some of his fishing gear as well as all of our Christmas "loot", which is always fun but finding room to store it tends to be another story. After getting it all unloaded it looked like a cyclone hit this house! But the next morning we got the table set up and our other one broken down and then came into our spare room, which up to now has been the office/catch all room. We decided to move the desk and scrap booking table over, just remove all of the misc junk we had in there and then set up the new bed.. And we love it! Now admittedly, this room is still a work in progress and our "misc" stuff is now out in the living room and needs to sorted but it feels a little more like a home in here now. The bed, the linens for it and everything else came from Ryan's brother Michael and his wife so we were very appreciative of them giving them to us. We now wait for the day that we get word that we can move into a 3 bedroom when one comes open here on base. Since Ryan's much deserved promotion we qualify for them and are so ecstatic but are pretty impatient about it getting here. But until then we have to make the best of what we do have and remember that we are blessed that we have today and all the rest is just icing on the cake.

Well we'll close this up for now and I'm sure there will be plenty more to come when one of us is more talkative so stay tuned!