Nana sent us steaks for Christmas. And they were GOOD, GOOD, GOOD Nana!! They were packed in dry ice so the kids had fun making a "potion" out of it. It was very entertaining! I used an option on my camera that takes a bunch of pictures consecutively. Not sure what that's called. But those pictures are fun to watch. I wonder if I could turn them into a video......hmmmmm. And I just LOVE this picture of John. He was talking to me and it just seemed so funny. I felt like I was having a conversation with the tv. That is his Christmas present. I don't know what Santa was thinking, cuz what we needed is another excuse to sit on our tails in front of the tv, right? We need that crazy lady from The Biggest Loser to come get us off the couch and exercising.

This semester is going to be much more challenging for me. I'm sure my whining will register high on the "Will you just shut up?" scale. Prepare yourselves. I have class on Wednesday and Thursday. Thursdays I will be in class from 9am to 7pm. And I have clinicals two days a week where I will actually see and assess patients with a preceptor. The kids are such troopers. They are really good to me, helping with chores, helping with dinner, giving me extra hugs when I feel stupid, they are GREAT! And then John comes home on Friday and tries to pack 7 days worth of chores and fun into two days. We are BUSY!

Those Crazy Thompsons

Went to Hershey, PA over the Christmas break. The home of chocolate!! What a fun place! Didn't get to do everything because it was too cold. We will have to go back in the Spring. BUT we rode the little ride that shows how cocoa beans become chocolate in a Hershey factory. At the end you are supposed to smile so you can be tempted to buy a picture of your lovely family coming to the end of the ride. Well, you know the Thompsons, they can't do nothin' right. We decided to ham it up a little. John and Ethan, and I thought we were doing a good job, but dad and Emily made us look lame. Does Emily look like she is just having too much fun choking her dad???? Yaaaaaaaaa, he is sleeping with one eye open after seein' that! It was a fun trip. The house in the picture at the top is made entirely of chocolate and candy. Wouldn't that be a fun house to build. My dream job-----working in the Hershey factory. I'd be 300 pounds! Picture the I Love Lucy episode where she is eating all that candy. YES!

2nd Annual Gingerbread House Demolition

They are just as much to destroy as they are to build. Maybe more! Cause ya know, sometimes it is pretty darn frustrating to get those first two walls together. This year John wanted to shoot the big one we made with a BB gun. When that failed to produce the desired results, we set it on fire. It smelled so good!!! We had graham cracker crumbs everywhere. Did I say everywhere? Cuz what I meant was EVERYWHERE! It was a mess. Ah, but it was fun!

Looking back......

.....to the last decade....since I can't get any pictures to post, which I'm sure is thanks to my crappy internet.....anyway....I have heard so many say that they are glad to see this last decade come to a close and especially this last year, it just makes me kinda sad. All in all, this last decade has been a good one for us. Starting the decade off right, Emily was born in March of 2000. And she will tell you that was the best thing that happened, and she may be right, she's so darn cute! We have lived in 3 states in the last decade......Texas, Georgia, Texas (again), and Virginia. How many moves in each state? Let's don't go there. It always gets John in trouble. Wait...let's just count....once in TX the first time, 3 in GA, 3 in TX the second time, and 2 in VA. Not bad for 10 years, huh? John has spent almost two and a half years away from us with the Army. We've had many happy times in the last decade and not too many sad ones. A couple of jobs hated, a couple of jobs loved. John worked for Scholastic Book Fairs in Georgia. I got to dress up as Clifford the Big Red Dog and Franklin for John's preschool class. That's a good memory. We did have some scary moments. Almost lost John in the lake in our subdivision in Georgia. Very scary!!! I break out in a sweat every time I think about it. Doctor thought Ethan had leukemia in 2004. Emily broke her arm in 2008. Ethan, Our Ethan, I'm not kidding, accused of being a terrorist in the fifth grade. 2005--I had to drive through an ice storm from Texas to Georgia to pick John up when he came home from Iraq. Worth every white knuckled mile (I don't drive well in dry weather, much less bad weather)!!! I'll never forget the look on his face when I first saw him come out of the crowd of soldiers. Tired and weary, happy to be home, the most handsome I'd ever seen him! What else have we done over the last decade......the kids have grown into their personalities, which I gotta tell you, they are not what I expected them to be based on how they acted as babies, but I love who they are so much more than what I expected. We can look into the future at this point and look forward to how much fun we will have with them as adults. If they are not spending too much in therapy, that is.