What a week! Last week we were quite busy. Tuesday was our road trip, Wednesday the Globetrotters were here, Thursday was the Family Holiday Party for the Squadron, Friday was Give Parents a Break, and Saturday was mail your packages or else day.
And because nothing is ever as simple as it seems - we stood out in the wind and rain for 45 minutes waiting to get in to see the Globetrotters. And let me tell you - the line was long! It wrapped around the gym, through the parking lots and then around the front and side of the movie theater. The doors didn't open until 1800, we got there at around 1715 and waited and waited. There was a large group of kids playing beside the line, so we told T that he could go and play but to stay where we could see him. And, he mostly did. R went to get an umbrella when the mist turned to sprinkles turned into cold, hard pelting rain. We have one of those big golf umbrellas so that we can all fit, which is nice for us but not so great for the folks ahead and behind us, who (thanks to the gusting winds) narrowly missed getting an eye put out more than once. Need some personal space? Take a golf umbrella. Tilt it just right and you can channel a nice stream of water into the back of someones shoe.
Anyway - we look up from our huddle to realize we don't see T anywhere. R goes and looks for him - can't find him. I go and look for him - can't find him. Trying not to panic, we discuss options-alert security forces, go back to the car for a flashlight and search more ourselves, scrap the flashlight and keep looking separately, give up our place in line and search in sweeping circles. We decided to leave the line. No big loss, since we were near the back and we saw at least 70 people cut in front of us. Good thing the military teaches honor and honesty, huh? Besides, due to our lack of umbrella control, we hadn't exactly endeared ourselves to the people around us. So, R goes one way, I go the other and R finds T splashing in a nice, muddy puddle just out of our line of sight. He could see us, we couldn't see him. But he was fine, and we learned our lesson too. Cold, wet, and way less panicked, we decided to scrap the whole Globetrotters thing and grab some dinner where we could get warm. Turns out the gym filled up to capacity long before half the line was admitted. I, ever the picture of grace and attentiveness, managed to step on a board with a nail sticking out of it when searching for T. Lucky for me, it missed my foot, but did managed to go all the way through the sole of my shoe, which means now anytime it rains (which is pretty much every day) water comes up into my shoe through the nice little hole. For the record, this is something duct tape didn't fix. Go figure.
Thursday night was the family holiday party. It was so much fun! There were activity stations - decorate your own gingerbread man, build a gingerbread house (out of graham crackers - what a great alternative), and make a paper boot to fill with candy. I had way more fun than the kids did with the crafts. I consider it a fringe benefit to parenthood. Santa came and read stories to the kids and they all got the option to sit on his lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. T, to my surprise, didn't want anything but instead gave Santa his decorated gingerbread man. How sweet! It was however, missing a bite or two so we warned Santa about that - not that he'd be interested in eating a gingerbread man with about an inch of icing, two handfuls of M&M's some marshmallows, and I think chocolate sprinkles. At least I hope they were chocolate sprinkles. Nothing like getting the kids all sugared up right before bedtime.
Friday was Give Parents a Break and for a nominal fee, you can leave your kids at the base childcare center. This time it was from 6:30 to 11:30. So R and I got five whole hours all to ourselves. (Doing a little happy dance). We went to see Fred Claus, which was really cute. And, since we still had time left and had eaten earlier with the kids, we went to see the second movie showing which was The Kingdom. Unfortunately, we had to leave before it was over, but we had a lot of fun. The kids did really well being left in childcare, and slept really late on Saturday.
And....as an upside to our rain drenched fiasco (where we also lost S's pacifier, drat it) Wednesday night, we got a call on Friday that we'd won a grill. The new gas station/shopette/care care center opened Wednesday and we stopped by there on our way home. While waiting for T and I to come out of the bathroom, R registered for the grand opening giveaways. It's a nice portable grill, it's even on wheels! You know what else is nice about it? Robert's excited to have a new grill, so he's been a grill master and that means less cooking for me, which is always a bonus!
On Saturday, we went to the post office to mail off the last of our Christmas gifts. Encouraged by the kids' good behavior in the post office in the line that seemed to never end or progress, we went to the Christmas market in Bitburg. It was smaller than we remembered and really, really cold. T had a blast looking at all the decorations loved being able to run around a little. Walking by an alleyway, I saw a sign for Funk Taxi, and let me just say, given some of the body odors wafting around here, I don't know that I'd have picked that out for a business name. I tried to take a picture, but it didn't come out well. You know what they say - funk it! 
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