Exploring the Woods, Baking Cookies, and Wrestling

Basically 3 of the many things that Matt excels at with our boys.

1)  Exploring the Woods:
Yes, we do live in townhomes, without too much mature landscaping around; however, there is a large patch of woods just 100 yards away from our front door.  The boys LOVE going into the woods with Matt.  Cutting sticks with pockets knifes, creating bow and arrows, and just being men in nature.

Matt gave Isaac a small pocket knife.  Isaac is now a man. 

2)  Baking Cookies:
It is Matt's family tradition to perfect the art of chocolate chip cookie baking.  And Matt's near his mother's ability and intuition (that's saying something!).  Matt is now passing his knowledge to his boys, and they love it!  Especially eating mounds of cookie dough out of the bowl!

3) Wrestling: 

The boys can't get enough of it.  It's seriously their most favorite thing in the whole world, especially since it revolves around their dad! 

Listen, I Tried

I tried really, really hard to convince Matt that we didn't need a new camera.   I brought out our Nikon D80, took lots of pictures to show that the images are still really good and that we can capture really great moments:

But holy smokes he wears one down with those baby blue eyes of his!   SO… We got a new camera.  It's kind of like, "Thanks for surviving Afghanistan, now here's a special present."  Matt LOVES cameras, and we practically get a new camera is some shape or form every year.
This year we really up graded, and switched from Nikon to Cannon.  This SHOULD suit us for a good long while (we had the Nikon D80 as our main camera for 5 years).  And since this camera is a Full Frame, it can possibly be our main camera for years and years to come.

Behold, the Cannon 6D Full Frame!

The Cannon 6D Full Frame basically let's one take pictures and see into other's souls.
Like the image quality is so good, it's amazing.  Really, soul capturing.
Here, let me show you guys of some of the images he's taken:

We're All Out of Nursery

Titus has graduated out of the nursery program at church.  It's a whole new experience for us!  Since Isaac was 18 months old (like… March of 2008) we've had a kid nursery age… So weird to have everyone in Primary!

First Sunday of the new year!
Matt sporting is month old beard (his first legit beard!)

Isaac is now a CTR 7
Eli a CTR 4
and Titus a Sunbeam

I'm still a the 3rd Sunday Relief Society teacher (I'm really enjoying teaching from Joseph Fielding Smith's teachings!  So much easier than Lorenzo Snow.  For realz.), and Matt has just been called to the Cub Scout 11 yr old assistant troop leader (so he's now gone Wednesday nights).

Isaac and Eli are pros at Primary.  Weird to have Isaac in Senior Primary!  Titus was not a fan of Primary the few times they tried to introduce him to it in December, but he's come along since then.  Didn't even whine the last Sunday.  We're a growing up family!  That's for sure!  

Overall this church congregation we attend is really great.  Except since's it's half military there is huge turnover every summer.  Not looking forward to saying goodbye to lots of friends, but also excited to see who will come in… and one day it'll be our turn (preparing myself now).

The First "Real" Military Ball

It's been time again!  The time to FREAK out about attending a military ball!

I'm not sure why I get myself so worked up about these things but I worry so much about each little detail--knowing that I will never look "red carpet" worthy, nor will any other spouse at the event  (I mean, those "red carpet" ladies and gents have TEAMS to put them together, haha.)
A FB status update which I posted:
*growing up

Probably the hardest part of this ball was not knowing what I was going to wear.  I had a gown that I liked but it was empire-waist and it sorta made me look pregnant.   (Not a fan of looking pregnant when I am not.  Understandable, right?)  
The day before the ball I found this ivory-white gown on a clearance rack in Target, and everything else slowly came together (though I had to do a WalMart run 2 hours before we left for the ball, since I needed a different kind of shoe).

Mean while Matt had been perfecting his uniform to the T.  The uniform actually has so much that needs be thought and precisely placed.  Matt's pretty on top of it all, so it only took him an hour or two to get it all right.

The hour before we left for the ball was crunch time.  My hair did NOT want to work with me.  Holy smokes, I was almost in tears.  I had washed my hair earlier in the day, so it had none of the lovely "second day hair" aspects which make doing fancy things so much easier.
I took some photos while trying to do different styles:

In the end I was like, "FORGET IT!  I'm just wearing it down."   

I quickly decided on the jacket I was going to wear:  between a black shawl and a vintage silver dinner jacket--vintage silver dinner jacket surprisingly won!  (I borrowed both of these from two friends.  Hooray for friends in an hour of need!)

The babysitter came, and the boys were so excited.  I think they know they can get away with a lot when a babysitter comes, haha.  

And Matt and I were out the door!  

Since Matt was the "introducer" at the receiving-line  (aka, the guy who gets the couples names, then tells colonel the names) and I was not supposed to stand with Matt, I pretty much hung out at some tables with some buddies of Matt's.  I think the receiving-line was supposed to be 30 minutes long but it ran a little bit longer than that, and not everyone was able to go through the line!  (Upwards of 600 people at the ball.)  

We were able to take our seat, and the ball official began.  

There's a lot of tradition with the ball, including toasts, raising of the colors, etc.  The one that really got me was the moment of silent for those that did not return from combat, the killed in action (KIA) and prisoners of war (POW).  There weren't any POWs from the deployment, but from Matt's battalion there were 5 KIAs… I mean, here we were, all dressed up and partying, and not even two months ago all these men and women came home--but 5 didn't.   Yup, I had tears.  Ah, raw emotions!  

Once food was served, a general spoke.  He was really entertaining, actually.  After these Matt and I were able to go around to see some more of his buddies, along with waiting for the raffle drawings to be announced.  Many things were given out, and I actually won!  A Garmin runner watch, pretty cool since I'll actually use it.  (Though I wish it had been a heart rate monitor!) 

When we got home Eli was still awake.  Babysitter said he'd been complaining of an ear ache for the last hour.  Eli was in tears at this point--one part pain, one part exhaustion.  I had some ear drops for him, and he went to sleep pretty easily after that.  

So that was our night for our first "real" military ball!  Not bad, not bad at all.  

We Fail, but are Redeemed

I hear screaming from the other room, then more and more screaming.  Like, extreme pain type of screaming.  

"He bit me!  He bit me!"  I hear Eli yell. 

"He scratched me!  He scratched me!"  I hear Titus shout. 

I go into investigate, and everyone seems to be in tears.  I find Eli's wound, the place where Titus had bit him, and it's a deep purple bruise on the top of his leg.  Teeth marks are visible, skin in torn.  I find Titus holding his head, and see two distinct scratch marks down the side of his head. 

I know exactly what happened:  Titus bit Eli on the leg, and to get Titus off of him, Eli scratched Titus' face.  While I'm like, "Titus!  You. Do. NOT.  BITE!", Isaac is getting Eli comfortable on the couch and finding to put on his leg.  

Things settle down, and I ask Titus to apologize.   At first he is very hesitant, but then goes over and gives lots of hugs.  Eli also apologizes for scratching.   

Titus and Eli are redeemed from their mistakes. 

Titus finds a tube of Chapstick.  He becomes obsessed with it, and without asking removes it from the place I was keeping it for him.  Luckily he only made a mess of his face, but it still would have been nice if he put it on under my supervision.

He fails by disobeying, but is redeemed by being extremely cute.  I mean, those eye lashes--be still my heart.

Dinner was an amazing failure.  I pan seared some flounder, which was pretty yummy, but all fell apart in the pan; and then I decided I should try a lemon and spinach spaghetti, which was disgusting.  I tried to eat it, but it was pretty apparent by everyone's faces that this meal was asking too much from them.  (It's downfall was too much lemon.  I mean, we called it "Lemonade pasta," for goodness sake.) 

Luckily/happily we had left overs from two previous meals from the week.  Hooray for homemade pizza and homemade burritos!  They saved the day!  And redeemed my backside!  

Les AWESOME Mis

Last night me and Matt were able to go on, what we like to call, a "Savannah" date.  Meaning: we go into historic Savannah downtown, eat in a truly established Savannah restaurant, and be entertained with an original Savannah experience.

Last night we were able to go and see a full, live stage production of Les Mis.  Holy awesome.  I truly love the novel (read it twice) and I truly love music from the musical (listened to it thousands of times), but this was the first time I have been able to actually see it!  (Matt had gone once before when he was in his early-ish teens.  Lucky duck.)

A friend of mine had mentioned that the Savannah Theater was running a production of Les Mis for just this week.  Yesterday I got on the site just to see how much it'd be, what times it was playing.  To my surprise the site said "Military:  Free Admission."  I was like, "Yeah, we're going!!"  We got a sitter pretty easy, and two hours after making our plans we were in our seats in at (I believe) the oldest theater house in the USA.

It was a small theater, and a small production, but still pretty good.  I weld up like 5 or 6 times, though Matt is the one that let real tear flow at least once :)
I LOVE DATE NIGHTS WITH MY HUSBAND!

Again: Matt and a Camera, Shannon and an Illness, Isaac and an Obsession, Eli and Preschool, Titus and a Head Wound

Matt decided that he deserved a new camera--mainly for surviving a deployment to Afghanistan, but also because the DSLR model we have is 8 years old.  Out with the old, in with the new! (AGAIN.)  We've switched now from a Nikon D80 DSLR to a Canon 6D Full Frame.  It's pretty amaze-balls, to tell the truth.  So in the end, I'm all for his decision.  Hopefully some sa-weet pictures to be shown on the blog. (Instead of the lame-o camera ones that seemed to full the blog the last year.  Lame.  O.)

Shannon, myself, contracted a cough and congestion this last week.  So I've been battling illness. (AGAIN.)  A fever never set in, thank goodness, but with all the coughing I did feel like a was creating a new abdominal muscle.  It's starting to dissipate.

Isaac has got an obsession (AGAIN).  This time it's Harry Potter and the movies (which we're all watching together at night, and the boys are all really into actually).  We went to Orlando Universal Studies and Island of Adventure after Christmas and Isaac got his own wand.  Big deal.  And now there's an obsession to needing to understand the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  Hey, I'm not complaining.

Eli started a new preschool this week (AGAIN).  So that's technically his 3rd preschool this school year.  First the Methodist Church preschool--which lasted 6 weeks.  Then our "Friends Preschool" that more or less 3 months.  Now he's enrolled in a preschool which is free (Georgia Lottery funded) and is at a pretty amazing school.  BUT he's gone from 8 in the morning till 2:30 in the afternoon, 5 days a week.  It's a bit overwhelming, but he was ready to go…

Titus once again banged open his head (AGAIN).   This was a very big adventure at Universal Studios, which included an ambulance ride--but that's another post in it's self.  He got his stitches out this week, and everything is healing well.