The End of 2009.....The Beginning of 2010

Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and safe traveling. Let me try to catch you all up on what's been going on without writing a novel!

Thanksgiving turned out fantastic. Michael had to work Thanksgiving day but had the whole weekend off, so we celebrated Friday instead. A friend of ours came over with Michael after work Thursday and he spent the weekend with us as well. For dinner we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn, green bean casserole, applesauce, and bread with butter. For dessert we had homemade apple turnovers, pumpkin pie, chocolate rum cake, rice crispy treats, and cupcakes. Our friend (Jeremy) brought over the game Mario Kart for Caleb to play, along with the steering wheel, so he had such a great time playing games with us! We spent all weekend stuffing our faces, playing games together, and just hanging out and enjoying ourselves...it was such a wonderful weekend.

The base had a tree lighting ceremony for the big Christmas tree they had set up. Caleb's teacher set it up so that the class all met up at the library and walked over to the ceremony together. Caleb also gets so excited when he sees his friends outside of school! The Navy band was there playing music, there were various groups of children singing Christmas carols for the crowd, and they had refreshments. I'm not sure how many grades participated, but Caleb's class was one of the classes that made a "Christmas card" that was set up on display at the ceremony. It was a huge poster with all of their hand prints and presents with a child's name on each one. Apparently it was a contest as well, and his class won second place (which was the same prize as first place)...so all of the children and parents get to take an ITT trip together! We haven't found out where or when yet, but Caleb asks about it all the time he's so excited!

Jenna came December 18th and stayed with us until the 30th. For those of you who don't know who Jenna is...she's my best friend that I have known since preschool. It was so great to see her and have company from home for the holidays! Unfortunately we ran into a lot of problems when it came to making plans and getting off the base to explore with her because the Navy picked that week and a half to screw with Michael's schedule and call him in for unexpected meetings and work...but we still had a wonderful visit and got to spend a lot of quality time together! The weekend she got here we took her to Pompeii to explore, got harassed by a scary old lady trying to sell us stuff, and then had her experience true Italian pizza at a little restaurant. Because of all the unexpected switching around and shit the Navy was pulling, that ended up being the only trip we got to take while she was here. We spent a wonderful Christmas together, and then Monday night we went out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant to let her experience a real Italian dinner. We all tried a dinner and dessert we'd never tried before (mostly because we didn't know what it was when we ordered it...being that it was in Italian haha) and had a phenomenal night! Tuesday was Jenna's last night here, so we got a babysitter and us grownups went to see Avatar, which we all thought was a really good movie. All-in-all it was a great visit and we really enjoyed having her here!

Seeing as how Michael's schedule got switched, he ended up having to work Christmas day and the whole weekend. So we celebrated our Christmas Eve on the 23rd, and did our Christmas day traditions on the real Christmas Eve. Our friend Jeremy managed to get Christmas Eve off so he came over to spend the holiday with us as well. Our Christmas Eve tradition is a big seafood dinner...so we had fried calamari (I actually had to clean and prepare the fresh stuff...so that was a new experience!), fried shrimp, baked clams, gnocchi, green beans, corn, applesauce, and we baked up a ham. It was SOOO yummy! For dessert we had mississippi mud and Christmas cookies. I let everyone else pick what kind of cookies they wanted and we ended up with chocolate chip, peanut butter, cut outs, and peanut butter blossoms. Next year I think we'll shoot for something new! Caleb went nuts over all of his gifts...he definitely made out really good this year! He got lots of toys like cars/trucks/tractors, action figures and transformers, a pirate ship, games, kitchen playdough set, etc. He also got lots of new clothes, two pair of sneakers, art easel, football, baseball bat/glove/teeball kit, and a bike. He got a really neat clock from my friend Jenna that not only shows the time but will also say the time for you when you press a button. It also glows red or green depending on how you set it up...so that your child will know when it's time for them to get up and when it's time to sleep. There is also a game that helps them learn time, but we haven't tried out that feature yet. This was a great idea considering the fact that Caleb asks what time it is about every 10 minutes throughout the day...now instead of asking us we'll just hear his clock telling him all day long! The couple that I babysit for also bought a vtech camera for Caleb that takes over 400 pictures, lets you do fun little edits, and also has games. We can hook it up to the computer and upload the pictures, so I'll have to get to that one of these days so you can all see the world through the eyes of Caleb! I know there are other things he got, but I can't remember it all to list right at this moment!

We had a very quiet, alcohol-free New Years by ourselves this year. Not that we don't love and appreciate having company over, but we decided to take a little break and have some "us" time! The Italians out in town started shooting off fireworks in the afternoon. Around 11pm New Years Eve they kicked it into high gear! Michael and I have never seen anything like it in our lives, not even on tv. It was a grand-finale that was spread across the entire horizon in a 365 degree circle around the base....miles and miles in every direction...and it lasted nonstop until close to 2am. There's no way I can describe how awesome it was.

Not much else has been going on. The past couple months we've been busy with the holidays and lots of company over all the time, so things are just slowing down and going back to normal now. Caleb has been out of school for 2 weeks, but he finally goes back tomorrow. Michael is getting switched back to working nights the middle of January unfortunately...but hopefully that means he'll be switching back to days not long after the baby is born. Keep your fingers crossed for us. I'm 29 weeks pregnant and feeling pretty large and uncomfortable already! The baby is quite the feisty one, always kicking and punching and rolling around. Lately it's taken to shoving it's arms and legs so far down and to the side it feels like it's almost sitting on my hip bones! We are starting to get pretty excited for the big day and can't believe how fast it's all going by. I also spend a lot of time playing piano again, thanks to my amazing husband! It's so funny because I'll be practicing piano and Caleb will go play his drums at the same time and he will get all excited that we're playing music together!

We have decided to take a little family vacation for the last time before the baby is born. The 15th we'll be driving up north and staying at Camp Darby. The 16th we're going to a ski resort but just plan on spending the day sledding with Caleb and playing in the snow together and having fun. The 17th we're going to go to Florence and experience everything we can there, and then we'll come home on the 18th. We are SO excited for this trip...it has been long overdue!

I uploaded what pictures I have right now onto snapfish and am sending them out. We apologize that a lot of the Christmas pictures came out blurry, but we've been fighting with our camera because it seems to have a mind of it's own sometimes. It's not the best but it gets the job done most of the time. We love and miss all of you, and we hope you are all doing well and keeping healthy! We will send more pictures and update again after our trip up north. Ciao!