We had a GREAT week! The week after Christmas is almost always as busy for us as the week of Christmas, thanks mostly to our wedding anniversary on the 30th, as well as the New Year's holiday.
Jonathan and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on Tuesday. It's crazy how quickly the years have flown by! I remember our wedding day like it was yesterday-- and now one DECADE later, 8 of those years living solo on the East coast, plus three adorable, feisty children, homes in four different states (two apartments and two houses), three university degrees (one a doctorate) and four graduations (one a residency), 4 1/2 years of military service, five cars, two fish, countless church callings, definitely sicknesses (ahhh, the cries of kids puking in the night!) and definitely good health, thousands of adventures in over 32 states (whoa!!), and one more epic move across the country looming dead ahead, and I realize we're really doing it. Life is hard. Marriage is hard. But it is also really, really good. And I am SO thankful we've not only survived 10 of the hardest years ever, fraught with lots of ups and downs, but we've also thrived-- and I love our life together!
Not surprisingly, Tuesday was mostly like any other day. We woke up, Jon went to work, the kids and I ran errands, and the Traverse broke down. Again. For like the tenth time in the six years we've owned it. We took it in to the shop only to find out it needed a new catalytic converter, costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 to fix. And this, on top of the $4,000 we'd already poured into it in 2014 alone and Jon was NOT a happy camper. So we did the only impulsive, straw-that-breaks-the-camels-back thing we could have done in that moment and traded it in! We got a SCREAMIN' deal on a 2015 Toyota Sienna minivan, thanks to the fact that it was literally almost the last day of the year and they were pretty desperate, plus we traded in Jon's new Ford Focus as well, and they took our Traverse AS-IS-- busted catalytic converter, busted windshield, busted chair and all. In the words of my Dad to Jonathan on our wedding day: "She's your problem now." (That's what we said to the car dealer, and how appropriate seeing that this is the anniversary post).
So here it is in all its glory: The new family minivan! Although it was a bit impulsive, we both felt really, really good about the decision once it was done. We're now down to two cars instead of three, cheaper insurance, much cheaper car payment, and ((hopefully)) a more reliable car!! Let's hope that little white Toyota with its 200,000+ miles can last just a little bit longer...
And as if to reassure us of our change in good car-fortunes, this little baby popped up in my email account the very next morning. HOORAY!! A lot of blood, sweat, and tears (okay, okay, no tears but a lot of laughing at myself) went into the earning of this piece of paper! I taped my class four days before Christmas, sick with a cold and a fever, with almost no voice, right after teaching Body Pump, so it was on a wing and prayer that we submitted it. Thank goodness it's done!
Bring on the New Year's Eve party!! Jon had to work that morning, but that evening we set up a nacho bar with some fresh pico de gallo and some yummy 7-layer dip our friends the Bassetts brought. Throw in some Martinelli's and a batch of homemade Smart Cookies and we had ourselves a par-tay!!
Zach, Leah, and Hermione, er, I mean Lucy, enjoying their nachos while waiting for the Bassetts to arrive!
After dinner we headed over to downtown Southern Pines for the annual "Pinecone Drop" at a very family-friendly time of 8 p.m.
Here it is! The Pinecone in the Sky! And brrrrr! It was really cold.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,1... Who doesn't love a good countdown?? We were all a little confused as to why the mascot was that Western-looking-cowboy-man-on-stilts, since this is obviously NOT the wild, wild west?? But there he was in the thick of the action!
Farewell 2014, you were indeed good to us and we're certainly thankful for that, but also looking forward to what 2015 brings! It's been a date floating around in our heads for many, many years, as it's always signified the END of our dental school/military payback journey....
We danced, we partied, we were merry, and the kids threw confetti and made a HUGE mess! Here they are with their friends Jane and Grant Bassett.
Sadly, not one of us made it to midnight, but that was in anticipation of our adventure the next day to Great Wolf Lodge. We got to christen the minivan on its maiden voyage to Charlotte. How exciting! We LOVE the new DVD system, tons of extra room, automatic sliding doors, navigation system, leather seats plus heated front seats, etc. That car is one sweet mom-mobile!
And about 1 1/2 hours later we made it to the CTL! And the place was boppin'! They told Jon in the 30+ people check-in line that the place was sold-out. Happy New Year!
The decorations inside the lodge were FAB! And although it was about 10x busier than when we went last spring, we got such a sweet military discount on our room we didn't really mind.
We got checked in around 1:30 p.m. and headed straight for the indoor water park, and all things considered it wasn't actually that busy. The kids played for a couple of hours and did all of the slides, and then we headed back to our room to wash up and go out to dinner. I picked On The Border, because I needed my Mexican-fix, and their stuffed, deep-fried avocado is amazing!!
We took the kids down to the lobby for the Bedtime Story Show, and Leah loved it. She sat mesmerized and didn't want it to be over. They even had real snow fall from the ceiling at the end!
After a fairly decent night's sleep, we headed right back to the water park. This is the baby part, which Leah spent most of her time in, and thanks to Lucy and Zach's help, mom and dad got to just sit and watch for awhile.
The big bucket drop is there at the top, right in the middle of the water park, and it was hands-down Lucy's favorite thing. As soon as the warning-bell started clanging that the bucket was ready to tip, she'd book it over there and stand right underneath where it spilled. She could spend all day in the water and never get sick of it! The rest of us, not so much... We played from about 10 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., which was plenty long enough for me!
We dried off, changed into our regular clothes, and headed over to IKEA to shop and eat lunch. You'd have thought it was going out of business, based on how insane the check-out lines were and with how much stuff people had packed into their carts, that we actually ditched ours (we just had a handful of things) in a furniture aisle somewhere and got the heck outta there! We loaded back into the van and got home just in time for bed.
With one more day to play before "real life" resumes on Monday, Jon and I finally got our Anniversary date on Saturday night. We'd gotten a babysitter Tuesday night for a date then, but ended up spending almost the entire time at the car dealership! My mom and dad sent us some "date night" money for a babysitter since they couldn't be here to babysit, which came in VERY handy for Date Night #2-- which involved pizza at Mellow Mushroom with friends and watching Bilbo help save Middle Earth at The Hobbit movie. All in all, it was just a really, really great Christmas vacation. Happy New Year y'all!
