Moran Family Fun

Being separated from your husband for six months isn't the best thing in the world, but it has been a great excuse to take almost monthly getaways to Sicily. After four trips to visit Jared over the last six months I've come to know the island a little bit (and at this point, I'm also very familiar with the airport in Catania as well as the London Luton airport) and I'm going to miss my mini vacations. A couple of weeks ago Abigail, Samantha, and I boarded a plane to Catania and set off for one last Sicilian adventure!  These two hadn't seen their dad in five months so they were excited about this trip! We arrived around midday and spent the afternoon relaxing, working out, and getting the girls oriented to the base. That evening we headed into Catania for paninis, which is usually Jared's Friday night thing but he made an exception for us. The girls weren't sure about them, but I think they were surprised by how delicious a sandwich from a sli...

Deployment is one of those necessary evils in military life. Luckily we've not had to deal with it very much over the past twenty-one years. We're just one month away from the end of deployment number two. For those of us who have been left behind at home, it's actually been a pretty easy deployment. You'd have to ask Jared whether or not he'd say the same thing! The fact that Jared is in a location where he is not harm's way every day and that we can visit has certainly contributed to that feeling. I'm currently in the middle of my fourth and final trip to Sicily and am typing this from the comfort of Jared's hotel suite, his home for the past five months. Despite the differences between Jared's first deployment and his current one, the emotions that I've cycled through during his time away have been surprisingly similar both times. It starts before your spouse even leaves with good old fashioned stress because there's a lot to do and a lo...

The transition from vacation to real life was swift and we weren't all the way ready for it. All the girls were at home at the beginning of the week and then suddenly all the girls weren't here because Madison left for Utah and everyone else went back to school. Well, not everyone. Emily was sick so she spent most of the week sitting in the same spot on the couch alternating between napping and complaining about how sick she felt. During that strange week between Christmas and the new year, I decided that I wasn't going to go grocery shopping. There was enough food in the house as long as we used some imagination with recipes. By Monday we were scraping the bottom of the barrel food wise and we really needed to buy some groceries. I didn't realize that everything would be closed on New Year's Day - even the stores on base. So we paid way too much for six eggs at a gas station and had waffles for dinner that night. Tuesday I was determined to find actual grocerie...

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself has changed, but that our power to do it is increased." - Ralph Waldo Emerson It's the time of year for resolutions and goals so for our Family Home Evening this week we talked about what makes a good goal and how we'd like to improve our lives in 2018. The girls spent a little bit of time writing down their goals and a whole lot of time making beautiful posters of their resolutions to hang up in their rooms to remind them of their plans. They were all thoughtful about what they wanted to work on this year and made SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) like we'd talked about in our lesson. I'm excited to see how they'll grow and change this year as they work on their goals. Samantha's wardrobe doors are so colorful now! I kind of struggled with narrowing my focus for goals this year. The girls were all finished wi...

The week between Christmas and the New Year is weird because it's someow both busy and dead at the same time. You're just in limbo between two celebrations and are never quite sure what day it is. It feels like every day is Saturday and it's hard to actually feel like doing  anything. Still, we tried to make the best of this rare time we have with all the girls here under one roof.  The day after Christmas, or Boxing Day, was dedicated to homework and scholarship applications. Not super exciting, but super necessary. I'm so, so grateful that our girls have always been pretty self-motivated with their schoolwork. Unless they're really stumped and need help finding an answer, they just get it done and generally do it well. We'll probably spend another day this coming week before school starts up again doing the same thing.  But all work and no play is no fun for anyone so we fit some adventures into our week too! Wednesday we headed through the snowy we...

You know what's awesome about having older children at Christmas? They sleep in until almost 10 a.m. so you can get some rest after being awake until almost 2 a.m. because you were up playing Santa. Somebody has to eat those cookies after all!  We had a little breakfast and then the girls and I emptied our stockings. In the absence of their father, Emily and Abigial took on the task of finding surprises for mine. They maybe went a little overboard because they bought so many things they had to hang up a gift bag filled with things for me in addition to my stocking. We planned to have Jared there with us via FaceTime while we opened presents so we connected the computer to the television. It was a different way to do Christmas morning, but at least we were kind of all together, right? We continuted our Christmas morning tradition of hiding an ornament shaped like a pickle on the tree. In our house, the child who finds the pickle gets to open the first gift on Christm...