The stockings were hung...

The month of December has been exciting, stressful, and fun all at the same time. We have had a whirl wind of things involving Justin's school, and board exams, and finding out where we are going. And then we throw Christmas somewhere in the middle. We managed to find a few spare moments in our schedule to pull out the Christmas decorations. Jack was more than excited and LOVED decorating the tree. You can see his good work with all of the ornaments that he hung at the very bottom.

We hung up our stockings and got everything all ready for Santa to visit us. Jack has made it very clear that his stocking is the one with the red reindeer on it.

My awesome advent calendar from my good friend, Sarah.

We are definitely having a white Christmas this year. It has snowed multiple times already and one day I walked outside and it was up to the top of my boots. Jack of course loves it and is always begging Justin to be able to go out and shovel, make snow angels and throw snowballs at each other.

Even Anderson likes to see the flakes falling down. When he sees it snowing, or when he sees any Christmas lights, he lets out a big, "Wow!!"

I tried to get a picture of the boys in front of the tree, but Anderson was not cooperating.

We went to our ward Christmas dinner. The primary sang a couple songs for us. Even though Jack isn't in primary yet, and didn't know the songs, he really wanted to go up there and sing. His friend Jackson, in the orange, was saying to his dad, "Jack Heaton isn't even in our class!"

We were watching Spencer and Suzy's little girl that night so we took her to the party. After dinner, all the kids were able to see Santa. Sydney was super excited about it until it was our turn. She totally freaked out! This picture does not do it justice. I felt so bad! But then when we put her down and her turn was over, she was totally fine and says, "Santa gave me a sucker!"

Jack was sure to tell Santa that he wanted him to bring him binoculars for Christmas.

For family night on Monday, we decorated gingerbread houses. Jack went a little crazy on the sprinkles. They were everywhere! Oh well. He had fun. Anderson has a double ear infection and has not been enjoying the festivities so much. I feel like I have no pictures of him being cute and happy from this week which is when we have done everything since Justin has been stuck studying all month. Hopefully he will be feeling better by Christmas Eve! (tomorrow!)

We put our houses on display!

Mine is on the left, Jack's is in the middle and Justin's is on the right. His roof caved in early so he resulted to a flat roof. :)

Jack has found a perfect spot to sit and watch the snow fall.

Today Jack and I went to a story time at the library. They read books about snow, danced to songs, and made a craft. The only part I did was cut out the circles for the snowman and put the glue on for him. I thought he did such a good job! I was so surprised when he put all the buttons in just the right spot, drew his mouth, got his nose on right, and drew his arms. He is getting way too big!

Mississippi

So if you thought Cleveland, Ohio was a random place to live.... we are now moving to the Mississippi Gulf Coast!!!

We will be there for one year where Justin will be doing an AEGD residency at the Keesler Air Force Base. He is very excited about the program and we are lucky to get a spot.

When Justin told me I thought he was making it up because we have been joking for a couple weeks now that we are going to end up somewhere totally random, like Mississippi!! It is very ironic that we are actually going there. I had made a joke about going to Mississippi not even 24 hrs before we found out. Maybe Heavenly Father was trying to mentally prepare me. :) I asked Jack this morning if he remembered where we were moving to. He said to our new house in Mrs. Kaiser. Mrs. Kaiser is his preschool teacher! He was also asking us if "Mrs. Sippi" has a big sand box we can play in. I tried to explain that Mississippi is a place, and it's not "Mrs. Sippi's" house that we are moving to. He was really funny about it.

This is a picture of Keesler AFB. The town where it is and the base itself had some major damage from hurricane Katrina, so hopefully they have made some progress in rebuilding things. We are hoping to go down there during Justin's spring break to check things out since we know NOTHING about the south! The only thing I know is that it is right on the beach, which I am super excited about. And it is about 2.5 hours away from Destin, FL which is a beautiful beach and resort town we have been wanting to visit. I checked the weather there yesterday and it was sunny and 70 degrees. Slightly different from Cleveland's 20 degrees and snow! It looks like we are turning in our snow boots for flip flops, and for that, we are excited!

It will definitely be a new adventure. I think we will have lived in the two most random places in the country after this. It will only be a year though, and then we will be stationed somewhere else for our three year payback from Justin's HPSP scholarship. It will definitely be fun though to see another part of the country. Since we have lived in Ohio we have driven and seen so many places that I never thought we would be able to. We have put a million miles on our car doing it, but we have been grateful for the opportunity. We love Ohio, we will miss it, but we are SO excited to be out of dental school and moving on!!

Justin is taking his boards part II today and tomorrow. There are a lot of hurdles he has to get over between now and graduation in May, but this is a major one. I am anxious for him to have it over with so we can maybe try and celebrate Christmas for the 2 days that will be left of it! It has been a stressful time for all of us, but knowing that Justin was able to get a residency spot and knowing where we will be next year makes it a little more bearable.

So, the countdown is on! Mississippi... here we come!

(that is so weird to think about!!)

Thanksgiving in NYC

We spent our Thanksgiving in NYC this year with my family. As expected, NY did not disappoint!

Just thought I'd start the post off with a doozy from Jack. Gotta love the sass. Jack was not being nice (I know, hard to believe!) and I took him in the back room to talk to him about it. I said, "Jack, how many times to I have to tell you to be nice??" And he replies, "Seven!!" Apparently I just haven't asked seven times yet.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I really enjoyed it. There were so many amazing things there. And extremely old things too! Everything from mummies to ancient Greek jewelry to paintings from Monet, Picasso, and Van Gogh. It was awesome.

I actually think that this Starry Night painting was at the MOMA museum, and not the Met, but it was fun to see too.

The Met is HUGE! I could not believe how big it was. You could spend a week there and still not see everything.

Van Gogh

Monet

These boys looked like they came straight off of Harry Potter.

Goof Ball

We can't come to Central Park and not do our jumping pictures! Oh wait, do we go anywhere without doing jumping pictures? No. What can I say? We are GEEKS!

Nice Dad :)

We picked the best day to go to Central Park. It was around 65 and sunny. I was happy that there were still some pretty leaves on the trees. (Most of these pictures were taken by Whitney.)

Photo by Whitney :)

These soldiers outside of FAO Schwartz were awesome. They seemed to enjoy their job a lot. I thought they were cute.

Time Square

Can you find us on the screen??

There is a family that we know here in Cleveland and all of their kids play the violin or viola. The two oldest girls are at Juilliard right now and we were lucky enough to go to one of their orchestra concerts. It was amazing!! The quality of the music was unlike anything I have ever heard. It was my favorite part of the whole trip. Anna even gave us a tour of the school. The picture above is us in the new dance studio that looks out at Lincoln Center. And if you look closely, you can see the temple behind us. It was awesome.

We took the Staten Island Ferry to show Whitney the Statue of Liberty. The view isn't quite as great at night. Still fun though.

Jack kept looking out and saying, "I see the Statue of Liverty!!"

We also went to China Town. Now that was quite the experience. My parents took us to this market that had every live creature you could think of to buy and apparently eat too.

Jack thought we were at some kind of zoo. There were so many things you could buy and they were almost all alive. Turtles, eels, you name it.

We watched this guy dig through this bucket of live toads and throw a couple in his bag with his other groceries he was buying. Sounds yummy, right?

Cute!

I love that my mom and dad are so close. I love that I get to see them on their mission and be able to experience a tiny piece of it with them. They are great examples to me and I could not have been happier that they were called to serve in New York City!

On Thanksgiving, we had Star come and eat with us. She is a lady in my parent's branch that is currently homeless. She was such a nice lady. Anderson did NOT want to take a picture with her. Having her there made me so grateful for everything that I have. I can't imagine being homeless. So sad.

We also were crazy enough to try out the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was CRAZINESS!! These people that brought their ladders had the right idea. There are 4 million people that go to watch it so you can imagine the chaos.

Us with Kung Fu Panda coming up!

The balloons were cool. They are huge! There were so many people though, the balloons were pretty much all we could see. Justin could see a lot more of the parade than I could...Imagine that! It is a 3 hour parade so we stayed for about an hour and a half and then joined my Mom and Anderson at their apartment to watch the end.

Jack helped to decorate my parent's HUGE Christmas tree. :) I think it was about 4 ft tall...maybe. It was cute though and perfect for their tiny apartment.

Cuteness. This little guy did not sleep that great while we were there, which means Justin and I didn't sleep. Gotta love traveling with little kids!

And to top everything off, we got to see Scott and Denisse as well! They came on Sunday and had gyozas with us. It is so funny to see them in Queens, NY of all places. It was very nice of them to take a couple hours out of their weekend getaway to come and visit with us. :)

It was a great trip, but as always, it is nice to get my kids back in their own environment. I feel like it has taken me 2 wks to get back in the groove of things, and yet I still feel like I am trying to catch up. Oh well, there's always tomorrow, right?