New Year, New Challenges, New Adventures!

Happy 2014 everyone! Took a little bit of time off to spend with the family here for the holidays, hope you all enjoyed your Winter festivities as much as we did! We went on movie dates (can you all get over how cute "Frozen" is?!?!), saw some AMAZING Christmas lights at Callaway Gardens, & just enjoyed time with each other, which was definitely needed.


^Monsters showing off their new Yule jammies.^

^Me & My Dork on Christmas morning.^

As that ball came down & 2013 became a memory, so did a lot of normalcy in the house. We kicked off January 1st by saying goodbye to Daddy, who will be bouncing around on various training assignments for work before heading out on his first deployment this coming Spring.

Deep breath in & siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

It had to happen eventually I suppose. Just another chapter to fill in the story of our lives.
All in all the monsters are taking the pending changes like champs. There's plenty of questions & a little more stress than normal among the crowd, but honesty it's going a lot calmer than I expected. (Here's hoping I don't eat those words a few months down the road!)
The biggest insecurity they have so far is how much Daddy will be missing out on. Which, sadly, is most of the coming year. However, while talking with DH last week we've come to realize that, thanks to the wonder that is social media, he doesn't HAVE to miss out on any of our day-to-day crazy around the house. I know many people start the year off with different photo challenges (30-day lists & 365-selfies seem to be the most popular), but I'm going to try my hardest to do a 365-home challenge. No glitz or glamor here. No set rules to follow. No statements to make. Just real, every day life so that our family can try to keep the bond we share together over whatever time & distance we will be spending apart.

So, throughout the year I'll be posting pictures taken &/or captioned by the monsters every few days to share with their Daddy, along with my regular here-&-there blog entries. :)
With that & without further ado, I give you Days 1 & 2 in our new 2014 adventure!

Day 1
x2 - "That's us getting ready to watch 'Duck Dynasty' before bed!"
x1 - "Yeah, we got to stay up late, all the way til 9.30p! Thirty WHOLE minutes longer than normal!" *fist pump*

Day 2
x3 - "SEEDS! I loved the seeds. They came in the mail & they're all babies & really cute."
x1 - "And tasty. Well, eventually."