Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We wish you all a very happy new year! We're excited as the new year means that Daddy will be home very soon. Love, Whitney and Maren

Hot fudge pudding cake....

We had some delicious hot fudge pudding cake for the family birthday celebration. I had a great time digging into it and the vanilla ice cream.

Mom had to empty the water from the bath and refill it because it was so brown after rinsing me off!

Happy Birthday to me!

M: Slacker sister, she forgot to mention that the best part of our travels so far is celebrating my birthday! I'm a big 1 year old now! I'm lucky as I get to celebrate twice! We had ice cream, presents, and a pool party in the hot tub on my actual birthday. Then we are celebrating again tonight with my cousin J that is two weeks younger than me! Happy Birthday to me....

Adventures....

W: Sorry we've been slacking in our posts as we've been off exploring new lands. We've enjoyed the warm temps in AZ spending our days swimming, golfing, and serving as Papa's chauffeur in the golf cart. The it was off to the land where dreams come true! The video shows my favorite part of the day. My favorite rides were the rocket ships, Buzz Lightyear, and the tea cups. Maren's favorite was It's a Small World. We also spent a day at the beach checking out the tide pools and playing in the sand. We had an unplanned stop in UT on the way to the land of rain. However it was cool as I got to see snow on the ground so I told Mom that it is now winter!

First steps...

Maren: I got brave today and took four steps from Mom to her friend today. Now if I could always get my feet to move as fast as the rest my body, I'll be on a roll. Watch out world, here I come!

Fall fun!

The other day Mom raked up all the fallen leaves in the backyard into a pile and let us jump in and play for awhile before she bagged them up. One of the great joys of autumn!

Thanksgiving...

W&M: OK, so we're a little late in posting this. We've been busy since then getting ready to go on our big trip. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with our friends. We spent the morning on a run and then headed to our friends beautiful home. Their house sits right on the water and it was a gorgeous afternoon. The D's daddy is in the Middle East with our Daddy so it was fun to spend the holiday with them and another family we know from Daddy's work. After dinner we got to make a gingerbread house!

W: On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving we learned about the pilgrims and made pilgrim outfits as part of the activities. Here is me in my outfit:

Tag, your it!

W&M:Well we've been tagged by our friend Ms. Cherie but we'll let mom have a guest appearance and share a few interesting things about herself.

I guess the instructions are to share 8 interesting things you may or may not know about me. Here it goes-

1. I grew up as the only girl with 5 brothers (it was amazing I survived!) Luckily I was the second oldest so I could hold my own most of the time. They were always jealous that I got my own room and they didn't. My older brother even resorted to sleeping in the closet under the stairs so he could have his own "room" if you want to call it that. I'm also lucky to have gained a lot of great sisters through my marriage to my husband and the spouses of my brothers.

2. After completing my college education, I took on the illustrious job of being a ski instructor. Really put that college education to good use! It didn't pay great monetarily but you can't beat doing what you love for work. There were also the great added benefits of season passes for my spouse and I and the fact that you rarely missed a powder day.

3. I met my husband while sitting in a hot tub. Actually the story is that he met me while sitting in the hot tub but since I took little notice of him that day, I didn't actually "meet" him until our first date. He knew he needed to plan a date to really catch my attention since his glowing white skin hadn't done the trick in the hot tub so he took me ice skating for our first date. This allowed him to lure me in with all of us skating finesse (he played college hockey).

4. I lived in Japan for 10 years. My dad was in the Air Force so we lived at three different bases there. The first three years were just after I was born and then we were there from the time I started 6th grade until I graduated from high school. For awhile it was where I had lived the longest with the nomadic lifestyle the military brings but people really would look at me funny when I would try to tell them I was from Japan!

5. I'm both a certified PE teacher (k-12, adapted and regular) and athletic trainer. I worked in both fields for awhile but now I have a much better and harder job of being a stay at home mom!

6. I love all things outdoors whether it is hiking and climbing the high peaks, kayaking the waterways, biking the roads and hills, or playing in a game of soccer. In fact, I even prefer doing the outside chores over the inside ones.

7. I'm a avid follower of list therapy. Each week I make my lists of things to do, meals to cook, items to buy. I feel a great sense of accomplishment each time I scratch something off my list. It also helps me to remember what I need to do because if it doesn't get written down it is often forgotten. If I'm having trouble getting motivated to do a certain task I'll break it down into parts and list each separately so I can see the progress that is happening and continue to the end.

8. I taught my husband how to replace the brakes on our car. When I was in high school I took auto mechanics and also did a semester as a teacher's aide in the auto mechanics class. It is been very handy to have some basic repair skills. One of Jim's reasons for wanting to go to medical school was so that he could afford to pay somebody to repair his car for him. However we're still too cheap to take it in for basic maintenance we can do ourselves.

We tag the Silcox, Baker, and Remke families!

One of those days...

I'm really looking forward to going out to dinner with some friends tonight without the girls in tow. We had a bit of a rough start this morning. I woke this morning and noticed it was cooler than normal. I checked the thermostat and it showed the heat pump should be on but it wasn't. The compressor was running outside but the heat pump/ fan was just buzzing and not blowing the air. Finally get the number of the Heat/AC guys that helped us out this summer and call them. They can't make it out until Monday. Granted I could call somebody else but these guys were really helpful last time. Just have to dress warmer! We then headed out to go for a run. We got to the running trail and I got the girls all bundled up in the jogging stroller. Lock up and get ready to head out. Just as I closed the last door I realized my keys were inside the car. Ugh! Had to call a locksmith to come pop the lock. It's one of those days when I really miss Jim being gone!

Halfway there....

Whitney: Daddy said he had "hump day" last week. I don't know what that means but Mom says that it means that Daddy is halfway through his deployment. I've gotten to eat a lot of chocolate but there still seems to be a lot left (I get a "Daddy Kiss" each night). Mommy says that Daddy will come home after our trip to visit family for the holidays. I was asking Mommy if tomorrow was the day we get on the airplane. Not yet she said but soon which means Daddy will be home soon too!

Monticello and Shenandoah National Park

Whitney: A week ago we headed up towards Charlottesville on a weekend adventure to enjoy the blessings of autumn. The first stop was Michie Tavern to enjoy some good ol' Southern cooking. This tavern was founded in the 1720's and they try to maintain the ambiance as close to the original as possible (though we were seated in the more modern addition). Here's a picture of me eating my lunch of fried chicken, green beans, and biscuits:

Afterwards we headed to Monticello to see the cool house that Thomas Jefferson built. Mom thought the huge garden was pretty cool but I thought the little pepper I tried to eat was "spicy". Here's Maren and I in front of the house:

After the tour there we headed to a nearby apple orchard. Unfortunately you park at the top of a hill and the only apples to be picked were a long ways away at the bottom of the hill. So we walked down a few rows of trees towards the top of the hill and were able to find a few good apples still on the tree. Here's me with my find:

The next day we headed to Shenandoah NP. The central attraction of this park is a road called Skyline Drive (only in the East). However this road does have some spectacular views. We stopped for a short hike and then headed to a picnic area where we built a campfire. We roast edhot dogs and marshmallows for lunch. We enjoyed seeing all the beautiful fall colors stretching across the rolling hills and saw a lot of deer on our drive.

Petting zoo...

Whitney: We've gotten behind on our posts the last few weeks so we'll try to bring you up to date on a few of the things we've been up to. A couple of weeks ago we were learning about farm animals in preschool. On one of of preschool days we took a trip to a local petting zoo to check out the animals. We saw a tiger, jaguar, kangaroo, and lemur (not your typical "farm" animals. We got to pet sheep, goats, deer, chicken, and a llama. Here are a few of the pictures:

New bike...

Whitney: Here's a video of me riding my new two wheeler bike. It's just like Mom and Dad's bikes (well mine still has training wheels for now). What's even better was that I was able to buy it with my own money. It only cost $5 at the thrift store! Now I don't have to wait for Santa to bring me one.

Park days...

We sure love going to the park to play. Each Wednesday we meet our friends at a different park to play. Mom also takes us to the parks on the base a couple times a week at the end of her run. Here are a few pictures of us having fun at the park.

Nana and Papa....

Our Nana and Papa (our great grandparents) came to visit us a few weeks ago. We had fun going to Chicka-FilA, shopping for clothes and toys, and eating chocolate. We even went an overnight trip to North Carolina with them to see where our ancestors lived and were buried. Mom says we saw the grave of our eighth great grandfather! We're excited to go see Nana and Papa in a few weeks at their house in Arizona. We sure love our Nana and Papa and miss seeing them as often as we did when we lived in Arizona. We took the above picture before they got on the train to go to New York City.

Happy Halloween!

Maren: Sorry we've been lazy about blogging, mostly because we can't get mom to do the typing for us. Something about too much to do lately. We hope you had a very Happy Halloween! We sure did. We started the day off with a Halloween party at our house with our park day friends. We got to decorate pumpkin cookies and play with our friends. I actually had two different costumes to wear for Halloween. I was a piglet for the party and a little fairy for the evening festivities. Our pumpkin did have a Cinderella design in it until I decided her face looked yummy to try to eat. Sister wasn't very happy with me.
Maren: This is what it looked like until I got a hold of it. Whitney: I was Sleeping Beauty for Halloween this year. We had a lot of fun celebrating. In the evening we went to the church to play some games and then go trunk or treating. Afterwards we went to the base housing area to do a little trick or treating and to go to the fall festival they were having. I really enjoyed the big slide and the cotton candy.
Maren: My favorite thing of the night was eating two lollipops!
Whitney: Here's me cheesing it with my princess pals!

Preschool...

Whitney: I've been attending preschool for a couple of weeks now. I go to preschool with 2 other friends and we rotate whose house it is at each week. We have it two mornings each week and our moms are the teachers. Each week we learn about a different letter and have a different theme for each day. Last week we learned about the letter D, eating healthy food, and good hygiene. Here are some pictures from my first day of preschool!

Sprechen sie deutsche?

Guten tag! No sprechen sie deutsche, but we better learn some soon. Daddy says we're moving to Germany next summer! You will have to come visit us! The first picture shows on the map the town where we are moving (Landstuhl), the second a picture of that town (notice the remains of the Nanstein castle on the hill), and third is a cool castle in Bavaria, Germany that we'll have to visit.

Neptune festival...

So we went to the beach again yesterday. Did we mention how great it is living so close to the beach? There was a big festival going on down at the boardwalk at Virginia beach so Mom took us down there with some friends. It also meant there was a lot of traffic and it took a long time to find a place to park. I kept asking Mommy why we couldn't just park where we'd been stopped for awhile and she said something about how parking in the middle of the street was not allowed. We walked around the festival for awhile but then headed down to the beach to play in the sand. The coolest thing we saw were these huge sand castles. (Mom will post a picture once she gets them developed this week.)Maybe one day I can make a sandcastle that big!

The missionaries..

Whitney: The other night Mom was going out on an exchange with the sister missionaries. While getting in the car to take us to our friends house, I took the opportunity to teach the missionaries about repentance. I told them, "My friend hits me and that's not nice so...then Jesus does his thing."

Dolphin watching...

Whitney: On Saturday, we headed down to Virginia Beach with some friends we've met through Daddy's work. We headed out on a boat tour to see Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins swimming in the ocean. It was really cool as some of them swam right next to the boat. Afterwards we walked over to the beach to play in the sand and waves. My favorite part at the beach was swimming and floating in my life jacket out in the big waves with my mommy.

Maren: I had fun crawling around in the sand and water and trying to do everything the big kids were doing.

Whitney: After the beach, our friends came over for dinner and to play. It was a long day but super fun.

Berry picking...

Last month we went down to Virginia Beach to pick blueberries and blackberries. We enjoyed all the fresh berries. It was a fun day but hot and humid. Here are a few fun shots!

Recent pictures..

Here are some recent pictures for the last roll of film that mom developed!