Happy New Year!

I've kind of fallen off the blogging bandwagon.  I didn't write a single post in the month of December!  Yikes!  Let's play catch up.  As I mentioned in a few previous posts, the Hubs had been working insane hours ever since returning from deployment in preparation for the ship's INSURV inspection.  Well, they finally had the inspection in the beginning of December.  They failed.  They got home from a 6 month deployment and for the next 6 months worked 12+ hour days, 6 days a week.........and they failed.  Imagine how discouraging that is for the crew and the families after dealing with those grueling work hours.  Failing INSURV is a pretty big deal in the Navy.  Here's an article about his ship and another ship failing the inspection.  So, now they have to redo the inspection in a few months.  Nightmare!

On the bright side, Hubs finally got a break from work with the holiday leave period, so we went to Tampa to spend the holidays with his family.  It was exhausting, but so much fun.  It's always so nice to see everyone, especially the kids, but there's never enough time and the trip just flies by.  We drove from Virginia to Tampa and it only took us 12 hours.  We drove through the night and the kids slept the majority of the trip, so it was a pretty easy drive.  We drove home Christmas day and thankfully made it home just before the blizzard.

While we were in Florida we took E-Ray to Disney for the first time.  We went to Magic Kingdom.  He really enjoyed it.  I didn't care for it, but I did enjoy the Christmas parade.  I just hated waiting in long lines for such boring rides, but the smile on E-Ray's adorable little face made it all worth it.  :)

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays as much as we did, and I wish you all the best in the new year!  Here are a few photos from December:

Lulu and I Christmas Eve

Hubs and his best friends.