It's Christmas!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Ours was very nice-and it was in the 60's! Today is a different story though.

We began our Christmas on Christmas Eve after Steph got home from work by the kids opening their choice of 1 gift. This is always quite a process of shaking & feeling out the packages to find the right one.

Jake wants in on the action!

Then Christmas morning, which in recent history would mean the parental units being woken up between 4 and 5 am! Im glad this year they seems to haven jumped over this hump!

Justin is very happy with his new jacket.

I think Im going to have to have a few glasses of hot chocolate with Steph! That chocolate mix is real chocolate shavings! YUM!

Zoe LOVES Christmas paper!

Justin's friend since 6th grade, Kevin, is home from college for the holidays & stopped by. It was good to see him!

And THEN!!!!!

Mes, Justin's girlfriend is home from boot camp finally!

The kids hanging out on the porch.

Then Uncle Larry, Tiffany & her Mom got here for dinner. Justins friends also stayed & we had a nice time.

And for the finale...Santa left Grandma Cherie a special present!

For the last 4 or so years there has been a certain crochet tree that has made itself around to all three of us girls (we have no idea who made it as it came with a lot of stuff I bought at an estate sale). So when Tiffany saw it thought it would be funny to give it to her Mom from her 'daughters'...well Rick came up with a new idea for the special tree...

Hahahaha!!

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Stephs Winter Concert & Change of Command

Wow we have been busy! Tonight was Stephs Winter Concert at school. This year they have a new teacher & he is awesome (much different than the 70+ old teacher she had the first 2 years) She is having a blast this year finally! This is where she is in the program-the first one lists the soloists.

Anyway-she is first chair again & had a few solo's tonight. Cant really see her though cause the new teacher likes to have his 1st chairs sit right down the middle in front of him so he doesn't have to look over to the side...lol...so she is front & center behind the music stand. Its not a Christmas song but sounds good! I edited it down to just her parts so its quite short so as not to bore everyone.

And the holiday grand finale!!! The orchestra, Choir & 1st chairs from the Concert band did Alleluia & I was blown away! You won't believe they are High School kids. They sounded like a professional orchestra & choir! Beautiful! (She is in the back in this one so you cant see her, plus I was standing at the back of the auditorium)

And now a few Change of Command pics from Friday...

Don't they look handsome? Rick is at the other end and I'm waiting for another wife to send me the pic she got from that angle.





The Captain





The new Captain





Us in front of the freshly painted boat.

The Christmas Lights are UP!

So we finally got it together & hung the lights outside. We thought we would be different this year & used our red & green strings. It looked ok when it was dusk but I had a shoot last night & came home after dark & it looked a bit tacky to me. Oh well I'm not doing it over!

He scares me sometimes! Im just glad we didnt put them on the upper roof!

Justin handing Rick a stand of lights

At dusk

At night...

The picture doesn't really do it justice-it really does look a little like overkill :)

Gonna have to come up with something else for next year. Im open to any suggestions!

Not retiring yet.....

We got some sad news today. Rick may not be able to retire when we were planning. If the situation were a normal "can't let you out yet" situation this wouldnt be a problem-we would just sit it out & do the time-but his boat is changing home ports very soon & very far away from Va. so that would mean 3-4 more months apart! And so soon after a deployment. Needless to say, today was a bit emotional. We will see what the next week or so brings, hopefully something else can be worked out & we can go back to the May retirement and only 1-2 months apart.

On a lighter note, someone left me this very nice comment & gave me a link to the fixed photo:

Our Castle Rock Farm said...
Hi there.I teach digital design at a university and happened upon your blog. I took the liberty of photoshopping out the boy behind your family's homecoming photo.

Thank you!