our island outlook

Today is the eve before Christmas and we celebrated as a first time as a little family of three - four if you include Toby.

This morning they fixed our oven around 9:30; we were expecting them to bring a new part for the old oven but the landlord had a brand new oven installed! What a treat. After that we brought Dan's dress uniforms to the cleaners so they are ready when he needs them next and then we went to the commissary.

We were invited to a couple's house for tomorrow, someone that Dan works with. We're to bring rice pilaf so we bought three boxes...that should be enough, right? I guess a lot of the Jr. Marines will be there so hopefully three boxes will be plenty. We also got a small butterball turkey to fit into our crockpot, some potatoes for mashed potatoes, corn, and a pum'kin pie.

Oh, oh, oh -- but before we went to base to do our necessary errands, we each opened a gift. Dan's family opened their gifts on Christmas Day whereas my family opened the bulk of ours on Christmas Eve, followed by more gifts from Santa in the morning. Our family is going to do the best of both worlds from each Christmas from now on: one gift each on Christmas Eve and the rest of Christmas day. A nice holiday tradition of our own. :)

Great minds think alike -- the gift I opened was a Scrabble game and the gift he opened was Risk. I thought about getting him Scrabble because our travel set is great when traveling but...you get what I mean. Good thing I didn't! I chose Risk instead because he said he enjoyed playing that when he was younger. Evelyn opened a gift from Grandma Mary -- she only has four from us, two under the tree and two in her "stocking".

We have an interesting arrangement for stockings this year. They had none at either Exchange we looked at so we bought decorative Christmas bags and those are our temporary stockings. By next Christmas we'll have our own monogrammed set of stockings but for now this is pretty innovative and it works just great.

After we got back from the commissary we broke out the new Scrabble set and played a game. I ended up winning but it was a pretty close game; if Dan wouldn't have been stuck with a "J" and a "Q" he would've won. We were going to play Risk but I needed a nap.

While I napped Dan tended to Ms. Fussypants and it has been like that ever since. She's not a very happy camper tonight though she is thankfully sleeping as I type this. She's snuggled up right up next to me thanks to the Moby wrap. The Moby was a lifesaver last night during her fussiest hours (starting around 7pm) -- I got her nice and snuggly then just walked in circles in our bedroom for thirty minutes, fed her, then sat with her for a good ten or fifteen more minutes before I laid her down.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours! ♥