And a Video

Climbing Dome!

We* worked hard this morning to put the dome together!  I'm not sure which was more difficult - tightening a ba-jillion bolts or keeping the kids off of it until it was good and secure.  We were so thankful for the gorgeous day. We spent about five hours building the dome and playing on it.  The Brooks even came down to join us for about an hour.  It's certainly going to be a fun neighborhood attraction!

It didn't take her long to get the hang of it. Ha ha.

Even Beck tried his hand at climbing with a little help from Daddy.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, Happy & Pops!! What a wonderful Christmas present to both them and me.  You've given my furniture and cabinets another 10 years of life.

I'll post a video a bit later today.

*And by "we," I really mean Thomas. I helped a tiny bit.

Some Christmas Eve Pictures

These are pretty much the only pictures I took all weekend. If anyone else got some good ones, do share!

Tuscaloosa Gala

I told a few of you about the Gala we attended in Tuscaloosa the week before Christmas to celebrate the opening of a new Federal Court House. Here's a picture of us all dolled up!  We were definitely in the youngest 1/10 of the 300 people there, and we got lots of sweet comments about and sideways-glances at my huge tummy.  Definitely the only pregnant girl there. 

As I was getting ready, I had a bit of deja vu.  The first Chi O party I took Thomas to was in Tuscaloosa in December - 11 years ago!  We both look back on that night with fondness and a realization that it was the day we fell in love.  The sparks were definitely flying even though it took us about two more months to become an item.

I believe he wore the same tux with a different tie.  I, however, would not be able to fit in the dress I wore...for obviously reasons :) 

Oh, how much has changed in 11 years!  One thing's for sure - I love the man I get to get dressed up with more and more as the days go by.  I'm so thankful for our history, and I am giddy about our future!

Another Update from Afghanistan

Update from David:

It is starting to get colder and feel more like northern Afghanistan should, I guess. I'm still doing very well. We have received many care packages from people we don't know. In them there were many letters that people across the country wrote to deployed soldiers. I found one from a 3rd grade class at Mountain View Elementary School in Marietta and have started correspondence with those kids. I have a pen pal (I guess multiple pen pals)! It's pretty neat to see people close to home reaching out to those of us over here. I also have been receiving care packages and letters of my own, which I am very thankful for. I want to say a special thanks to the Bishops for their kind letter and my parent's Sunday school class for a care package. Thank you all for the continued thoughts and prayers for Claire and myself. It's hard to believe that I've already been gone for almost a month. Time seems to be going by pretty fast here so far. I hope everyone is doing well back at home and has a wonderful Christmas season! Merry Christmas.

And here are some pictures he sent for the blog:

These are the planes they fly (when weather permits). It sounds like they're going to be able to fly today. I imagine that the wings end just outside of the frame of the picture, but it's a lot more fun to imagine that they go on a lot farther.

David's Pictures

Here are a couple of pictures that I took a couple days ago.

We are living in tents like these. There is a mountain range that is quite a view when it's not foggy. There is even some grass (no trees that I've seen) growing from the snow melt. They have us living 10 men to a tent, so it's kind of tight quarters - pardon my mess. Things are continuing to go well out here. It is real foggy in the mornings and it usually has been clearing up in the afternoons. We also got about 15 care packages for our soldiers and contractors from an organization. That was very generous of them. It had one entire box full of letters and cards to the troops. I noticed that some of them came from Atlanta which was pretty cool. I think I'm going to respond back to one letter in particular that came from a 3rd grade class at Mountain View Elementary School. I didn't recognize any of the writers, but it was really nice to see people close to home taking the time to write over here.

I hope everyone is doing well and that you have a wonderful week!

Thanksgiving and More...

We had a great Thanksgiving although we missed being with all of you. Seung Hwan was off all week and Benjamin and I got spoiled. Tomorrow will be a hard day. We had the Boney's for the first part of the week - which was so fun... but we did not get any pictures, and Claire for the 2nd half. We had so much fun with Claire. We ate too much, visited Aunt Marty and Reid and Kim and family, went to the mall, decorated for Christmas, and played and played. Here are a couple of pictures...





Alice went to Claire almost as soon as she walked into the door.



This Santa sings like Alan Jackson... Benjamin was amazed.

And because I am so behind in blogging... here are a couple of pictures of the little monkey...