Monday, December 26, 2011

Christmas has come and gone...


Ahhhhh the food is gone and the gifts are opened. 

Well, ok so the food is not ENTIRELY gone.  There are leftovers in the fridge of course - some ranch potatoes and some broccoli casserole still hanging around just waiting to add another layer to my thighs.  But holy smokes what a great dinner we had on Christmas eve.  Don did a duck on the grill, and he did an AMAZING job with it.  The thing about duck - it's pretty rich...but it's also a pretty small bird when compared with a pheasant or a turkey.  Our duck was 6 pounds.  We didn't eat it all, but came pretty darn close.  Is it my imagination, or are ducks all dark meat?  It was SO YUMMY.  Really - pure yum.


My husband is (as I've called him before) a grill God.  I don't know how he does it, but he does it and he does it well, so I don't ask any questions.
Christmas morning came bright and early (after the elves were up far too late).  It was a great morning though, the kids were over the top excited, and Paige about lost it when she finally noticed that big ole' Barbie house over next to the tree.


It was pretty funny, she didn't notice it for a good 5 minutes...how she missed it I'll never know.

I made Ina Garten's Holiday Sticky Buns for breakfast Christmas morning.  A carbohydrate nightmare, but OMG they nearly rivaled the duck.
Nearly.


I sent 6 of them home with my good friend Donna, she has 4 nine year old boys and a (?) year old husband - I knew they'd get eaten UP, and quickly.  If they'd have stayed here, they'd have been, you guessed it, eaten UP...and of course there'd have been yet ANOTHER layer added to my thighs.  What is it exactly about the holidays and thighs?
Don shopped for me at Pandora this year - he bought me the most beautiful charm bracelet a woman could ask for - and I in turn bought him a new locking console for his jeep.  It's got a hidden compartment for his stereo deck, that locks, and it's also iPod compatible.  It was something that I felt he deserved after his previous deck was stolen on our trip from Washington to South Carolina. He installed it today and was so stinking cute - like a giddy school boy.

Ultimately, this has been an amazing Christmas.  Not because of any charm bracelet or new vehicular lock box.  Not because we had an amazing duck or delectible sticky buns.  What has made this holiday season so phenomenal has been the company. 

Our little family is together for a whole fourteen days - and we do not take these moments for granted.  There are material things that will always make us smile, and make us feel good - but the best part of it all is the memories made.  The time appreciated and not taken for granted.  The love that we share as we cuddle together and watch silly movies and goofy reality TV (the kids still lose their minds over AFV and Wipeout). 

What we have is amazing, and beautiful, and real.  It is something we fight for and live for and love for. 

We are the Rhine family. 

We are unbreakable, unstoppable, and undeniable.

Merry Christmas..with love.

~


Monday, December 19, 2011

Where exactly DOES the time go?

WOW!!
I just realized I haven't blogged since August of last year.  Of course I have my constant Facebook updates, and you can find me on Tumblr too.  But there's something therapeutic about blogging...and I assure you, after the last year I could TOTALLY use some therapy! 

I need to write more. 

I need to become more organized.
 
I need a cleaner house.

Eh, one out of three ain't bad, right?  Let's go with baby steps for the win.

What a year it has been!

Paige turned 6 in January. Don was deployed.

James turned 3 in February. Don was still deployed.

Don finished a 7 month deployment in April.  That's when we moved our family and all of our STUFF 3,000 miles across the country to South Carolina.   It was a fun trip in the Winnebago, we did a lot of driving, and a lot of singing...


The kids did a lot of coloring, and some bickering.


For every frown or disagreeable moment, there was at least one bout of laughter, and a smile or two to be had.

Even Pepper enjoyed himself...he did a lot of - well - riding.  It was nice of him though to keep track of the map for us.


Don did most of the driving.  I drove for a day...or maybe it was a few hours.  It was incredibly windy, which translated into "Becca speak" is oh-my-God-how-do-you-keep-this-thing-on-the-road scary.  We got hit by a ginormous dust devil going through Utah that pushed us across the freeway and onto the opposite shoulder.  I thought we were goners, it was, by far, the scariest vehicular moment of my life.  Don was driving. 

We got to South Carolina in April and came right to the house!  It was nice to be back, our renters didn't destroy it, but it really could use new carpet and some new paint.  That'll be my goal for the first part of the new year.  I want to get the kids' rooms in shape.  They are the priority after all.

Let's see - what else?

Don left for Virginia in September. 

Thanks to the US Navy, he'll be working in Virginia until September 2012, but we're blessed that he makes it home once a month or so for the weekend.  The distance is only 400 miles - we've endured much much farther distances than that.

It's CHRISTMAS! 
(This is our tree)

Even with chaos surrounding us and a life that we only pretend we can control, there are still beautiful moments.  Treasured, God-given moments spent together, not to be taken for granted.
Ultimately, it's been an insane crazy, crazy insane year.  We've been through a lot, but we're still truckin'.  We get through it, because it's all we can do.  I promise to blog more frequently, for my own sake as well as for the sake of my friends and family that may or may not get tired of listening to me ramble endlessly on and on into oblivion.

"Live a good life - for in the end it's not the years in a life, but the life in the years."
~ Abraham Lincoln ~