The Christmas Update

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We're going green this year and saving the paper of a Christmas letter. If you've been keeping up to date with our blogging, this is short and sweet.

We still live in and enjoy Oklahoma and all its sights and adventures. We've had power outages and weather scares. But have made lots of new friends, visited old and made the most of our little house.

The kiddos continue to grow, Maddie goes to Mother's Day Out once a week and looks up to her big sister, Claire who enjoys twice a week pre-school, horse lessons and dance once a week.

Phil keeps flying and working too long, but his commute is 5 minutes--that's not too bad. Katie loves being a Mom and decided it was time to build the brood some more!

We hope everyone has a very safe and happy holiday season and happy returns for 2009!

Santa was here!

Here's what our morning looked like until the batteries died on the camera!

The girls made a good haul, Santa must have heard their requests and Claire got her "Pee-Pee in the Potty Baby" and Maddie an enormous bin of Play-Doh and accessories.

Dance Class

This was from a few days ago. Maddie got to learn along with Claire's class before the Christmas break. This was her 2nd time dancing with the girls. If you've got 3 minutes, it's worth the watch! Claire's been doing some instruction at home, we think.

Number 3

Sooo...

I can't think of any clever or witty way to break this news so I'll just be out with it: WE'RE PREGNANT! Baby Number Three should be joining us sometime in mid- to late-July (July 17th is the technical due date). It's still very early, but any and all prayers are good so we thought we'd put the news out there. :)

We haven't told the girls yet because the nine-month countdown seems a little long for them. Or, at least, it's a long time for us to have to explain that no, the baby is not here yet. They will be excited, though, to know that one of their cribs is going to be in use again.

I've been feeling a bit sick with this one, so the blog has been suffering from a lack of attention (along with the girls, the cleanliness of my house, the quality and amount of food cooked by me, etc). Please bear with us! My next priorities are Christmas shopping and Christmas cards. Then hopefully things will start to settle down here and this baby will stop making me feel so yucky!

Altus Christmas spirit

We haven't been to see the Altus Christmas lights yet this year, but we've definitely begun to experience Christmas. The girls found their stockings filled on Dec. 6 (St Nicholas Day) and found some neat surprises in them (Maddie's favorite: an apple; Claire's favorite: books sent from Gramma). Later that morning we took the girls to see Santa at Phil's squadron's Christmas party. That evening Phil and I went to the grown-up's Christmas party and the girls got to play with a babysitter. Lots of fun, but we didn't take any pictures of us (of course).

Then this morning we packed up the family and headed downtown for the Altus Christmas parade. It was a beautiful day and there was quite a crowd. Claire and Maddie managed to score some candy, see a marching band, lots of floats, and some horses. And, of course, what's a Christmas parade without Santa? He brought up the end of the parade, riding high on a fire truck.

Click on any of the photos to see a few more!

Whew! Almost makes up for the lack of shopping around here...

Our big girls got big beds

We ordered Claire a REAL bed (twin-size) a few weeks ago. She had finally grown too big for her crib-turned-toddler-bed. During our quest to find her a bed, we decided to buy bunk beds that can also function as twin beds. This will (hopefully) maximize our options in whatever other crazy-small houses the Air Force deems perfect for us. So that means that Maddie got a new bed too. Rather than store her nice, new bed in the yucky garage, we decided to just take the plunge and put her in her big bed too. They've both done really well in their big beds, so I guess they're big girls now. The poor cribs are up in the attic for now...

Maddie's dance moves

Maddie really must have really paid a lot of attention to Claire's dancing. She was doing some early practice all on her own:

O Christmas Tree

We have an artificial tree. It's a little one, but we have a little house. Regardless, we couldn't turn down the opportunity to go cut our own tree at the local Sasse Family Tree Farm. They're located just north of here and stopped planting trees about 10 years ago when their wells ran dry (apparently baby pine trees need lots of water and Oklahoma is not known for its rain. Tornadoes, yes, but not much rain). I'm usually a tree-hugger, but these trees were getting cut this year anyway, so we might as well get one, right? We bundled up the girls and headed out early on the day after Thanksgiving to get one picked out before the crowds got all the good ones. Some photos of the adventure:

Before

Cutting

Decorating

It's ready for Christmas (and so are they)!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone out there has a very happy Thanksgiving holiday. We have a lot to be thankful for here. :)

Our big 4 year-old

Yep, our little girl turned four. How crazy is that? The really crazy thing is that she and I have the same birthday, but she keeps getting older while I stay the same age (somewhere around 29). Odd.

Anyway, Claire got a big dose of birthday this year because her actual birthday was Friday and her party was Saturday. And she got sung to at school on Thursday since that was as close to her birthday as they were going to get. Not a bad week for our Claire-bear! Here is the gratuitous slide show from her birthday at our house and then her cowgirl party at the gymnastics gym:

Little ballerina

I went to Claire's dance class on Wednesday and took a few photos of her in class. Madeline was really interested in the dance moves too. When Claire's teacher noticed Maddie doing the dances on the sidelines, she found an extra pair of tap shoes and Maddie got to tap with Claire's class. Boy was she excited! It's going to be a long wait for her until she turns 3 and can go to lessons too.

This weekend Claire had her dance "showcase". It's not exactly a recital (no costumes), but all of the classes got up on stage and did a few routines with the lights and a crowd watching. It's supposed to help them get over their stage fright for the real recital next spring. I don't know if it worked or not, but they sure were cute up there!

Leaves are falling

Ever since the first few leaves fell off the tree in our backyard Claire has been begging for a pile of them to jump in. Fortunately for her, Phil can't stand the leaves everywhere in our yard, so he grabbed a rake and made a big pile for her (well, it was actually for the lawn maintenance folks to come and vacuum up, but she was happy about it anyway). I think the two of them had a nice time.

Butterflies

I don't know if the local butterflies were overly cold, tired from migrating, or just super-friendly, but we had bunches of them on our basil this week. They were nice butterflies, too. One even perched on Claire's jeans for awhile and the girls were able to catch a few to look at.

Halloween '08

More exciting than the upcoming election (at least, for our kids) was the promise of costumes and candy for Halloween! The girls got all dressed up this afternoon and we headed over to Phil's squadron to trick-or-treat there. They both gathered lots of candy and then ate a hotdog dinner (or at least the chips on their plates) and made a little time to play with their friends. Then we brought them back to the house for the big neighborhood trick-or-treat event.

While we got things organized a few trick-or-treaters started trickling in and I let Claire give them their candy. She quickly found that candy-hander-outer was her calling and refused to reliquish her bowl of treats to go around and get more for herself. Her call to duty was so strong, in fact, that she was virtually unable to set down her bowl o' treats to do just about anything - get bug spray, smile for a photo, you name it. Maddie was happy to go get some candy, so Phil took her while I stayed with Claire.

After TWO HOURS of handing out candy, we finally convinced Claire that there were no more trick-or-treaters coming down our street in need of candy and she grudgingly agreed to go to the neighbor's house to get some candy for herself. We then found two more houses for her to stop at (we were out after hours, so we went to Phil's boss' house and saw another house open for business along the way). Both girls managed to get enough loot to keep themselves busy for quite awhile and they both went to sleep without a peep last night. I think, though, that they were a little disappointed to find out that they wouldn't get to go out and do it all again tomorrow!

Carving our pumpkins

It was a beautiful day today and Phil got home at a decent hour from work so we took the girls outside to carve their pumpkins. Claire hated the 'goo' inside the pumpkins and put herself to work supervising and keeping track of the pumpkins seeds (to be roasted later). Maddie had a great time pulling out pumpkin goo and moving it from here to there. Daddy got stuck doing most of the work.

*Grandparent note: Click photo if you'd like to see a few more !*

pumpkins!

There isn't a pumpkin patch within an hour and a half's drive of here, so we planted our own this summer. The darned thing took a REAL long time to set pumpkins, but it finally did and most of them turned orange this week (much better for carving than a green pumpkin!). What timing! Here are the girls with a couple of them that we picked today.

And one of them in their Halloween dresses:

This Place 10/19/2008

I'm guessing the "This Place" blog is going to be a recurring one. At least twice a week either Phil or I utter in exasperation, "Argh! This place!" generally when something has occurred that wouldn't have happened anywhere else that we've ever been. It usually is the result of living very far away from civilization and resources, where our only options are what's available here in town or on base. Here's what the situation was today:

The Bears are playing the Vikings. Phil's boss is a Vikings fan. We've discussed getting together for the game for quite awhile. As it drew closer it became evident that it wouldn't be broadcast on our TV (no SportsTicket or whatever it is that you have to subscribe to in order to get every football game ever played anywhere). There aren't any sports bar/restaurant places here, but it's not a big deal because The Club on base shows football games and they would have it. So we stopped by after church to make sure that there would be room for us; several people from the squadron planned on going. Phil left early to secure seats and a TV and I got the girls ready to go. Here's what it took to get the girls ready to go today:

*Lured them into the house from outside with promises of going to do something fun
*Fed them b/c they probably wouldn't eat "game food"
*Printed up Halloween coloring sheets for them to keep them busy at The Club (found with the powers of Google)
*Found two packages of crayons that included the colors orange, purple, black, and green, one set of which was washable crayons for Maddie (for the aforementioned Halloween coloring sheets)
*Found 6 board books that would interest them and take them awhile to read but were small enough to be portable
*Packed all of that - plus some princess figurines and some notebooks - into a bag
*Attempted various forms of mind control and eventually reverse psychology to convince Claire to put on her Bears cheerleader outfit
*Wrestled each girl into her cheerleader outfit
*Redid their hair because the turtlenecks messed up their pigtails
*Fixed my make-up and put on a presentable outfit that successfully combined the "casual" and "put-together" looks
*Made both girls go potty and wash hands (this is way more difficult than it sounds)
*Prepared Bears-colored sippy cups - juice for Maddie and milk for Claire
*Cleaned up a juice spill from an over-excited Maddie
*Put shoes on all of us
*Put sweaters on the girls

Then the phone rang. (No, I didn't have them strapped into their carseats yet, but I swear I was in the process of opening the garage door.) It was Phil, saying that there was no room outside of the bar area for the football game because the Sunday brunch was still going on. No kids are allowed in the bar area, so the girls can't be there. Soooo... I get the wonderful job of explaining to the girls that we're NOT going anywhere fun and they CAN'T wear their cheerleader outfits anymore (can't wear 'em outside or they'll get unfixably dirty in the Oklahoma dirt and at this point Claire was very excited to be wearing hers) AND I miss the Bears game.

This place...

PS - HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Phil's sister Nikki today! Hope you have a wonderful day!

The fire department open house

The fire department on base had an open house today to commemorate fire prevention week. I took the kids, not knowing quite what to expect. Turns out they had: fire hats, raffles, trucks to climb in, a bouncy castle, a real fire hose that kids could spray, real firemen, and Sparky the fire dog. If you don't think that's fun then you're clearly not a 3 year-old. Maddie thought it was all great, except Sparky the fire dog. The mere sight of him sent her into hysterics. She cheered up when she got behind the wheel of a fire truck, though.

Fall party

Claire had her Fall party at school this week. The kids have been practicing their songs for weeks now. I was a little busy with the party because I apparently lost the capacity for logical thought during the first day of school and accidentally volunteered to be the "room mom", which means I organize the treats and snacks for the parties. After all was said and done we still had cookies on the list, so Claire and Maddie honed their art skills by helping decorate cookies for the party. They seemed to think it was fun. Anyway, the kids preformed their songs wonderfully and were very cute.

The gratuitous photos and video:

Click for more!

Happy Fall, ya'll!

Great- Grandpa Dermody

It was 90 years ago on October 9th that my great-grandfather was captured by the Germans in France during The Great War. His story is an amazing one, and my uncle has put Grandpa's journal online so that it can be read by those who are interested. It helps keep his memory alive and also gives us all a glimpse of what those soldiers experienced.

And here are a few photos that we took during a trip to the battlefields with my parents when Phil and I lived in Germany:

Bois de Chaume

Same shot, 90 years ago:

craters made from shelling

Photo credits to Uncle Dave for the photo of Great-Grandpa D and to my dad for finding the old photo of the Bois de Chaume

Oklahoma wildlife

As the girls and I were getting ready to go for a walk this morning my neighbor came over to show us the "wildlife" that their 5 year-old found in their backyard. Here it is:

Yes that's a tarantula. I'm a tad freaked out that it was just hanging around in their backyard, a mere 30 feet or so away from my own backyard. These guys are native to this area of Oklahoma. Who knew? Certainly not me, when I agreed that we should come here!

Thomas at OKC

This past weekend we managed to make plans to meet our friends, Susan, Halsey & their little boy Ethan, in Oklahoma City to see Day Out With Thomas. We were stationed with them in Washington until Ethan and Claire were about 4 or 5 months old and they ditched us for Hawaii. The nerve. Anyway, thanks to the powers of the Air Force they're now in Kansas so this seemed like a great way to get together (though a more careful look at a map showed that OKC is NOT in the middle - we definitely got the good end of this deal).

The Thomas adventure was pretty fun. I was surprised that there was more for the kids to do than at the one in Washington (and it wasn't raining!). The kids got temporary train tattoos, bounced, watched trains visited Sir Topham hat, shopped a bit, and ate popcorn. Our car was the one right behind Thomas. And it was air-conditioned. Makes for a good day.

We got hotel rooms for the whole weekend so that we could hang out a bit. Managed to secure adjoining rooms at the hotel (woohoo!). The kids got along really well, except for a few squabbles over whose turn it was for the Troublesome Trucks on their Thomas track. Those trucks really are troublesome! They went to sleep without too much fuss in one room so we grown-ups could all hang out. Susan and I hit the mall and a few other stores kid-free, which was so fun. I was having major mall-withdrawal since we don't have one anywhere near us in Altus. Of course we mostly bought stuff for the kids, but whatever. All-in-all it was a great time. Though I think Ethan has caught the crud that Claire was coming down with. She apparently had no problem sharing that...

A few highlights:

Dancin' Queen

My dad drove Claire to school for me one morning while they were visiting. Apparently they had the Mamma Mia soundtrack playing in their van because when my mom and I went to Wal-mart with Claire a day or so later Claire told us, "Guys... When Pawpaw was driving he had a good song on the radio. It was about a dancing queen."

She has since informed us that Dancin' Queen is her favorite song. Move over Veggie Tales CD, Abba is here!

Grandparents! Four of 'em!

As we mentioned before, we both had our parents in town together for a week, just to see us (because let's face it: we don't live in a tourist destination down here!). We were SO happy that they all could make it out here for a visit.

The girls and I were in grandparent heaven. With four grandparents in the house, I didn't push a single kid on the swing set for an entire week. Not once. That's really saying something because that's really all Maddie ever wants to do. (Ever. If she could figure out a way to suck her thumb on the swing I don't think we'd ever get her back in the house.) And we had a good excuse to go out to eat (gotta show them the local culture, right?). They took Claire to and from school and dance. They picked up whiny kids and entertained them, they broke up fights and prevented arguments.

Ummm, can you guys come back, please??? I'm still trying to adjust back to doing all of that myself all day long! Pretty please???

(click for more pics!)

Squeaky shoes

Here's a quick video of Maddie and her grandmothers at the mall. Maddie had just gotten her two year-old photos taken and was enjoying a stroll (hop?) in her special squeaky shoes. It takes a long time to go the length of a mall like this:

Maddie's Birthday

Our little Maddie-kins turned two. How does this happen? One minute she's a cute little baby and the next minute she's a sassy (though still pretty darned cute) two year-old. We had a little party for her here at the house with a few of her friends and some very special guests - her GRANDPARENTS! Yep, both sets of grandparents were troopers and hopped into my parents' minivan to drive here in time to celebrate Maddie's birthday with her. Wasn't that sweet? She and Claire get an entire week of quadruple-grandparent spoiling.

We spent Maddie's birthday with a party, some bubbles, kite-flying, a walk (with a turtle-sighting) and present-opening. All-in-all not a bad day. :)

(Click for Pics of the Day!)

Our poor goldfish

A couple of weeks ago one of our goldfish went belly-up. He didn't last long, but for $.50 a fish you really can't expect much. It was Maddie's fish and I thought she was a bit too young to learn about all of that, but I called Claire in and told her that the fishy had gone to Heaven and we needed to send him back to the ocean. We said a little prayer for him and flushed him down the toilet. Claire was heartbroken and bawled her eyes out but we replaced him and Maddie was none the wiser.

This morning I noticed that both fish were belly-up in the bowl. I sat the girls down to breakfast and oh-so-sneakily flushed the fish, trying to figure out how to deal with it this time around. Do I go to the pet store and try to find two more fish that look just like the original two? Do I 'fess up and tell the girls? I had already flushed them, so a somber ceremony was out of the question this time. Hmmmm... After much contemplation, here's how it went down when Maddie and I picked up Claire from preschool:

Me: Girls! Guess where we get to go today!
Girls: (excitedly) Where???
Me: To the pet store!!! Our fishies got sick last night so we have to go to the pet store to pick out two new ones to replace them!!! (said with much enthusiasm, like this is the best news in the world)
Girls: Yay! Oh boy! The pet store!!!

So now I know how to deliver that information the next time it's necessary (which seems pretty often, judging on how many fish we've been through already!). Bon chance, new fishies!

Big week for Maddie

It was a very eventful week for Maddie. First, she mustered up the courage to ride Yankee after Claire's lesson on Monday. This is a HUGE deal for her, as she is terrified of horses. She didn't even want to pet the fuzzy miniature horses at the county fair. But as Claire was riding this week Maddie told us, "Me turn," over and over again until it was her turn to ride. Here she is:

From 2008-09

Her other big accomplishment is (drum roll, please): she's learned to use the potty! We're still in the early phases and we have some issues at nap time, but she is done with diapers. Woohoo! I can't believe what a big girl she's becoming. So big, in fact, that she's turning two in less than a week. Seriously, where does the time go?

An evening storm

A little late summer storm blew through about 15 miles north of our place. Our view across the fields let me take a few decent shots -- I won't try to compare to the weather experts' talents though.

Happy Anniversary

Today was our 7th wedding anniversary. Not wanting to let such an occasion just slip by, we thought we'd get a babysitter and go to Altus' finest restaurant. OK, OK, seriously now. After reviewing our dining choices we decided to cook at home so we headed to Walmart to pick up the fixins for surf-n-turf. Don't judge us; I'm pretty sure it's the only gig in town that sells lobster. Maddie helped Phil pick out a lobster from the tank (I was across the store. I can't contribute to the murder of those poor critters) and some yummy bacon-wrapped filets. When he was done grilling it I think we had a pretty nice meal:

We also served the girls some fine cuisine. Here is their mac-n-cheese a la peas (it was the nice 3-cheese variety):

I'd say we had a pretty nice anniversary!

Hurricane in OK?

Southwest Oklahoma = Hurricane? Oh my.

All joking aside, we hope this blows over and everyone stays safe.

Riding lessons

After all of that rodeo excitement last weekend the girls decided they wanted to be cowgirls when they grow up. They've been yee-haw'ing and galloping all over the house. Lucky for Claire, I had already scheduled her to start horse riding lessons today. Maddie made sure I didn't get confused and think she wanted lessons by reiterating all morning long, "No me pet neigh." (Translation: I don't want to pet the horse).

Claire will be learning some horse basics (like don't get your feet stepped on and how to not get kicked) plus she's getting to actually ride the horse a bit. If Maddie ever warms up to them then she can take a lap around the ring at the end of Claire's lesson until she's old enough to have her own lesson.

The horse's name is Yankee, and he's actually the very same horse she rode at the 4th of July party. He's quite a nice horse and didn't seem to mind getting led around this morning instead of enjoying his usual pasture time.

Here she is getting ready to catch her horse:

She got him!

Comb him while having a water break:

Look at our girl go (do ya think she's having fun?)

What's more American than...

...a parade down Main Street?

Today Altus had the rodeo parade. It went right down Main Street, then down 62 to the rodeo grounds across from Bar S Foods (no, I'm not making this stuff up). Pretty cool. Claire loved the horses; Maddie couldn't decide if she liked the "neighs" or if she was afraid of them. They both really liked the candy. In fact, Claire informed us on the way home, "Well, I really liked the whole thing, but my favorite, favorite, favorite part was the CANDY!!!"

Is that the sound of... a cattle drive?

We live in Oklahoma. They have rodeos here. This is a new thing for us, aside from a very brief trip to a rodeo in San Antonio when Phil and I were dating (and it was really more like a carnival than anything else). Anyway, they really rope and ride at the rodeos around here. Unfortunately most of that ropin' and ridin' starts at 8pm, which is a bit late for our little cowgirls. Lucky for us, though, there are some events that take place during the day. Like the cattle drive. You know, the one that goes through the base and right through housing! Crazy? Yes. But it's true.

The girls were in school & Mother's Day Out when the cattle came through housing, but I managed to get them back in time to see some steers (or are they cows?). Claire now officially wants to be a cowgirl when she grows up.

I didn't have my camera with me, and I'm still waiting on photos from a friend who was there with hers. In the meantime, you'll just have to believe me that we had longhorns and cowboys here today!

Guess where we're going

Can anyone guess where we're going right now?

Claire's uber-excited for her first dance lesson; Maddie's dressed up for moral support!

No lazy Saturday for Phil

Phil has been putting in some really long hours for the last few weeks. And it looks like there will be a few late evenings at work yet to come, so I kind-of guilted him into a nice new swingset for the girls. After all, if I'm going to have a couple of extra hours during which I need to keep them occupied every day then we have to add something cool to the arsenal, right? Thankfully Walmart had just marked down a nifty swingset, so we picked it up and poor Phil had his work cut out for him.

Of course the girls knew he was up to something when he started banging around in the garage. Claire joined him a bit to "help Daddy with his project" and it didn't take her long to announce that her daddy was building her a PLAYGROUND! We really had her going for awhile, trying to convince her that it was actually a shelf for my plants. She got pretty exasperated with us and started talking to us slowly like we were 3 years old, "No guys. Mommy's plants would slide right off of that slide. It's a PLAAAAAAYGROUNNNNNND!"

Phil built the whole thing himself (I occasionally held things in place when he ran out of hands) and the girls thought he did a great job.

He started in the garage:

Then moved to the backyard:



Then (after a short rain- and lunch-break) he put in the final screws and the girls got to play!

Now for the unending chorus of, "Mommy, come push me on the swing!" or, in Maddie-speak, "Mommeeeee! I 'unt fwiiiiiing!"

School begins

One could almost hear an audible collective sigh from the moms around the block today, as all of our kids went back to school. Mother's Day Out started today for Maddie too, so I was kid-free for a couple of (short) hours.

Phil was home this morning because he's flying tonight, so we dropped off the kiddos together and -GET THIS!- went out to breakfast. By ourselves. With no children. And we ate leisurely. Sure, we were eating Altus-diner-breakfast-food, but no matter. It was nice.

Of course, a photo of the kidlets (and more if you click on it!):

Hopscotch

As you can see, Claire is learning the art of hopscotch. Yes, we've finally had a few days in a row where it wasn't 105 degrees so we actually ventured out and did "outside" activities, like draw with chalk on the sidewalk. Maddie tries to hopscotch too, but she was napping when I took the video.



And HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAWPAW!!!

Hot Enough for You?

If only we could push some of this north...