More on December happenings...
The boys after they got their driving permits:

They are quite grumpy-faced, but we did wake them up early to go to the DMV when it opened - We still had to wait over an hour but it wasn't too bad because my friend Nancy and her son Josh met us there.
Tully took his written test first and got 4 incorrect answers - surprising, since he is my little smarty-pants. Josh took his test next and only missed 3 - Go Josh! Then Stone took the test, and my Stoney only missed 2!! Go Stoney! There is something to be said for common sense, which Tully sometimes seems to lack and Stone has in spades.
Tully kept insisting on the drive home that he got harder questions on
his test...
Winter walks in the bosque with Shane and Tallulah...

Tallulah has put on a bit of weight over the holidays... I'm not blaming anyone, but
someone in our house just cannot stop feeding her bites of his people food. That someone is trying to walk her more to remedy the situation, since even he now admits that my little chihuahua is looking a lot like a mini-pig these days!!
I went on a girl-date with my sweet (and gorgeous!) Ariane:

We had so much fun - we really needed to catch up. We went to
Desert Fish and I treated her to a rockin' meal - we even had dessert (Orange Creme Brulee - delish!)
Tully's birthday was a great success... We woke him up and made him open his presents from the fam:

The kid literally sleeps in a nest, I swear. And yes, those 2 cats are permanent fixtures in his bed...
It's so hard when your birthday is the day after Christmas, but I do my darndest to make it an awesome day. It helps whe he has such awesome friends:

We went to
It'z in Albuquerque - it always works out well to go on his birthday as December 26 is not a busy day there.
Brothers handing off tickets:

Stone, acting like Stone (he's absolutely my son):

And lots and lots and lots of games...




They were enjoying winning the tickets... They won so many on the "Deal or No Deal" game that they could stretch the tickets directly from the game to the ticket-counting machine:

Then more games:

And more tickets:


Good stuff. We were there for a few hours, then it was back to the house for CAKE!

I ordered him an airbrushed-camouflage cake, and added the set of green army men that I found at Walgreen's... Tully loved it.

After the cake, the boys went outside and played some sort of made-up game that involved random sports equipment -

They basically play
Calvinball -

If you don't know what
Calvinball is, you need to read more Calvin and Hobbes.


After they tired themselves out, they all joined Shane on the couch, who was watching "Alaska State Troopers", which was suitable manly enough to watch as a group:

I love that six dudes can easily and comfortably flop on our Big Brown Couch (also known as the comfiest couch in the universe). His party lasted about 10 hours, and a good time was had by all :)
I'm going out with some of the squadron wives tonight - Chinese food and paint-your-own ceramics! Tomorrow is Tully's big math challenge finals at UNM... I tried to get him to do some studying/prep work with me, but he wasn't interested. Sigh... But I still refuse to pressure my kids to do anything, so he'll do fine, I'm sure.
Off to finish some work before the boys all get home...