Insanity at it's finest.......

Moving. Moving is insane. Why must we do it so often?! Oh yeah, we're a military family. Whatevs. Right now, I'm over it. So very very over it.

After living with my grandmother for 3 months, we finally got the call that our house was ready and that the keys were OURS. It was a week earlier than expected, and a huge surprise. We were stoked.

That was Friday. Yet, it's Tuesday and here I sit..... at my grandmothers. Apparently "we can turn your electricity on today" translates somehow to "we can turn your electricity on TUESDAY"..... lame.

Really, if that's all I have to complain about, I'm not doing too bad. It really could be worse.

We are truly excited to be in the house, and the electric should be on sometime in the near future. I can't wait to post pictures and show you where we'll be living for (hopefully) the entire time we're in Texas!! I hope the neighbors like us ;)

Oy Ve....

I'm in the doghouse again for my lack of blogging. I promise to catch up soon, and to post pictures. We are ALL four in Texas now and we cannot wait to move into our new house. We're going to take Philip to see the new digs this afternoon. I hope he falls in love with it instantly like I did. The kids are also seeing it for the first time. I think they want to stake claims on their bedrooms!! I'm sure Morgan will ask for the master ;)

Howdy Y'all...

We're here, well, 3 out of the 4 of us are here! We got to Texas about two weeks ago and it's been a whirlwind of house hunting and mexican food! Yesterday we found out we got the house we really wanted. And really, I use the word "we" loosely, poor Philip hasn't even seen the house. So, I guess we got the house I wanted! hehe. It'll be perfect for us. The back yard is huge and it comes with a hot tub, enough said right?! The only drawback is that we can't move in until August 1st. Oh well, we're near family and we have a few trips planned to keep us busy and help pass the time!

Man, being away for a few years, you forget how disgustingly humid it is here!! I've gone from taking a nice long shower every night before I go to bed, to taking one in the morning AND one before bed. Annoying! And my hair..... don't even get me started. It hates me, or should I say it hates Texas?! LOL

Really, we're so blessed and grateful to have the next 4 years at "home." It'll be so much fun to watch our nieces and nephews grow up and have our parents at birthday parties and over for the holidays. Let's just hope they call before they come over ;) lol

Happy Easter...

I know it's been so long since I've blogged, and I'm sorry. My grandma nags me all the time to update and post pics. So here I go.... updating, and posting pictures! LOL

Easter is my most favorite holiday. I love everything about it. I love how I wake up every Easter and just feel renewed, awake. Church this morning was beautiful. Our series is titled "Awake" and our pastor talked about how he pictured the moment when Jesus took his first breath as a risen King. How he thought he might have felt when he first opened his eyes after lying dead seconds before. It was magical. I hope you all feel the magic of the resurrection story, and that you continue to feel it. Easter isn't something we should think about once a year. We reap the benefits of Jesus conquering death every single day, and oh how I wish we all lived as so.

Anyway, off my soapbox and on with the show..... Every year I go way overboard for Easter and this year was no different!! The kid woke up to baskets overflowing with goodies. And I do mean overflowing, I had to move onto the table!

After opening all the goodies and going to church we headed down to the Coast Guard base to an Easter brunch with many of our St. Pete friends. I organize an Easter get together every year and this year we did it big!! We had roughly 50 people in attendance and 18 of them were kids!!! Getting this picture of them all together was like herding kittens. Impossible. We're STILL missing one little one and most of them aren't even looking. Oh well, they're all there.

We had such a great time. I can't believe we'll be saying *See you later* to all our friends in two weeks. Unreal.

This might be my new favorite picture. They're so sweet they make my teeth hurt. I just love it. They're dressed to impress and wearing smiles. They melt my heart. How did I get so lucky?!

After photo shoots on the deck and a yummy meal, it was time to hunt eggs. Dozens and dozens and dozens of eggs!

I just really love Easter. I'm so blessed to have been able to spend it with friends that mean so much to me. Being away from our families around holidays is always a little rough. I'm so glad that I have such amazing friends that deal with the same thing. We are each others adopted family. Each others chosen family. It makes me happy.

We are so richly blessed. Remember, we serve a RISEN KING!! Jesus conquered death and brought us life. He chose to die for us, choose to live for him.

Merry Christmas...

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I'm working on getting photos off the camera and onto the computer so I can update everyone on our whirlwind Christmas so far! Santa has yet to come to the Pinto house because we were in Texas spending the holiday with our family, but he comes tomorrow and it's sure to be fun! Stay tuned for Christmas in Texas, part 1!!

O Christmas Tree........

I decided that since I took a few pictures of our tree this morning, I'd participate in this weeks "Show us your life" at Kelly's Korner.

Normally I have more than one tree, but this year we're cramped into this tiny apartment and the other tree(s) just won't fit. I decided to put up the main on and this year I changed the color scheme to Red and White with a touch of silver.

In person it looks perfect, but when I looked at the pics I thought it looked like the tree needed more ornaments. I'm not sure though. I have tons more red and white, maybe I should put them up! What do you think?!

I LOVE the snowflake ornaments. I got them all on sale last year a few days after Christmas.....when I bought them I decided to go with the red/white this year. I fell in love with them and I couldn't be happier with how they look!

I need to pull out the last few Christmas boxes and find my tree topper, but other than that, I think I'm finished decorating!! I'll try to get more pictures of the rest of the house up soon!

Happy Thanksgiving.....

I wanted to hop on for a minute and wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for this year and I hope everyone reading this is surrounded by people they love and that they're enjoying their holiday.

We didn't go home for Thanksgiving this year, but we're blessed to be spending our Thanksgiving with great friends that we like to consider our "military family."

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone reading this, and Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband.

Philip, I love you with my entire soul. Here's to our lifetime together!!