I got what I wanted for Christmas! ALL of my kids home!
Adam left to head back to the base on January 2nd. I don't know when we will see him next. He (again) left a mess when he left. We are going to start calling it the Adam Quake! You can turn a boy into a Marine but you can't take the boy out of him!! It WAS really good to see him and spend some time with him. It made me realize how much I miss him being there, even though he is a SLOB and keeps leaving a mess!
Everything is getting back to normal in our house now. As "normal" as it normally is anyways. I guess you would have to live here to understand "our" normal. It's still chaos, but without all the commotion, we simply wouldn't know what to do with ourselves! The kids are back in school (yeah!) and I have time to focus on Winter Guard, which I really, really AM enjoying. I love working with the kids and with the other guard coach. I don't know why I didn't start doing this a long time ago! Ella gets to go to some of the practices (since she goes to work with me on Mondays and practices are on Monday nights). Mary gets a little bummed that she doesn't get to go. She wants Baba to take her to a couple of the competitions so they can watch. Ha! Maybe Mary is going to end up being in color guard after all and NOT a cheerleader like I feared.
We fixed up the playroom into Mary's room. (I will post some pictures soon!) We got some Pooh stickers and a Pooh border to put on the walls to accent Winnie the Pooh's tree that is painted on the wall and ceiling and I made some curtains out of Pooh material that my sister had laying around. We ordered a Pooh bedding set on Ebay which should be here this week, so for now Mary just has a flowered set. She loves having her own room again. What a difference! No more fighting to go to bed! No more bickering as to who gets to turn off the light or turn on the night lights! They both really love having their "own" space, especially Mary. I think she likes the whole "big sister room" and is eating up all the Pooh stuff we are finding! We took the television out of that room so they can't watch movies in there all the time, but we HAVE let them take the little movie player in there once or twice if they don't like the movie we are watching. It's weird, but they are actually getting ALONG better since the move. We were a little worried about how Ella would do in a room by herself (since it is probably the FIRST time she has ever had a room to herself), but she seems to be okay with it. She likes still being downstairs with us so if she needs something, we can still hear her. I was a little nervous about Mary being upstairs (well, the boys are there too), but I put the baby monitor next to her bed and the receiver next to mine and it seems to make both of us feel better!
Ella celebrated her 4th birthday decked out in pure pink! She was wearing a pink princess outfit and had to have a PINK cake. Mary didn't like the idea that Ella was "the same age" as her and continues to remind us that she is still the "big sister". It's funny actually. I remember having the same kind of arguments between my brother and I when we were the "same age" for three months out of the year! Here are some pictures and a video of Ella, the pink princess and her birthday present "Tutu the dog".
Here is a video we took on Ella's birthday. In it, she is saying "Today is my birthday. I am four years old. I'm a big girl!". It's funny.
Ella's speech is still progressing with leaps and bounds. It's interesting to compare it to what it was a year ago. When she first came home and went to the office with me, we played the same "Good morning Cows!" and "Good night Cows!" that Mary use to play, but it was more like "Mo'in Now" and "Ni Nite Now". Her speech was difficult to understand and there was virtually NO hard sounds. This morning I noticed the amazing difference. I yelled "COWS" and Ella said "gooD MorNiN coWZZZ"! (The upper case letters represent the accent she put on the sounds.) Absolutely incredible the difference! I'm so excited to see where it will be a year from NOW!
Here are some pictures from recent.
Here are the girls with their Chinese buns in their hair (thanks to Auntie who made them special for them)!
...and here is what it looks like when you take the Chinese buns out!!
