Happy Valentine's Day!

Paul's not here, obviously, so the girls and I had a low-key holiday. Carly went in to school with five pounds of strawberries and bananas for her class party and came home with a Ziploc bag full of candy and pencils from her friends. Bree spent the day doing all kinds of cute Valentine's-themed activities with her friends at friend school while I was supposed to working with the Family Readiness Officer...who neglected to tell me that she was out of town taking care of a family health matter. Since the CDC makes you pay for the whole reservation regardless of how much you actually use, I billed the battalion as planned and went shopping then spent two hours reading in Barnes and Noble. That was pretty fabulous, actually.

So, then I found this picture from last week. Nobody freak out about OPSEC okay, this is a public photo of the Excalibur round and you will notice there are no nametapes or faces showing. The round right there is $30,000 of your tax dollars at work. That's right. 30k, y'all. Which, ironically, is more than half these guys pictured make in a year. It goes really far and blows up lots of bad guys and the three units who got to fire it last week hit precisely where they were aiming. Kaboom.

So anyway, back to me? Found Easter dresses for the girls, yay. Love them. This is Carly's, with the belt. Bree's is slightly different with a tie sash and no crinoline under the skirt. It took every ounce of my willpower not to buy Baby Girl the infant version just because it's so rare to find outfits matching across three departments (honestly, who cares about this?) and also because - well, it's so stinking cute.

And finally. After talking to Paul (yay!) and dinner, the girls took a super rad bath. This is not my child - I pulled the picture off Pinterest - but you get the effect. The kids got glow sticks in their little Valentine's buckets this morning and added to their standard Tuesday-night bubble bath, it was really cool. Then they got to watch a movie (on a school night! Can you imagine?!) and both spent the next forty-five minutes lobbying to sleep in my bed.

Bree is actually on a pallet on the floor next to my bed right now, having just fallen asleep, at 10pm, after kicking the wall, and wiggling, and whispering to her animals for two hours. It is so hard for her to fall asleep! I'm sure Carly will be down here on a pallet on the other side of my bed before the morning. It's funny because I know there are those who would say I should let them sleep with me in my bed and put their needs for closeness above my needs of not being kicked and coughed on all night and those who would say I should force them to sleep in their own beds. I swear the best part about having parented for the short amount of time I have is that it's been just long enough that I know to just do what works for us. Which, for the time being, involves children sleeping on the floor of my room every night. =)