Seeing the Blessings: February 2021

It's Christmas!!!

For the fourth year in a row, our family has come to see us for Christmas. It is something we all look forward to and we always have a blast! This year was unique, because they came to visit two weeks after we moved into our new house. We were on a mission. We had some long days and late nights but it made it all worth it because our house was finished and ready for visitors! We work best when we have a deadline. Their time here in Virginia consisted of doing holiday traditions and sight seeing in our new city! It was wonderful!

Gingerbread cookies with Gram

Playing games! She's the best!

Christmas Lights on a FREEZING night

Ready for cousin battle with our new nerf guns!

Our sweet boys!

Christmas Eve service

Granddaddy took the boys to a candy store and they were in heaven!

Decorating Christmas cookies with the cousins!

Making cookies with Aunt Julie

A trip to Great Falls

And of course we traveled into DC to do some sight seeing. We had a great time looking around our new city.

the Bible Museum

MLK memorial

Lincoln Memorial

The National Mall with my honey

Arlington Cemetery

Having a picnic on mall

Washington Monument

The Capitol

Taking in the sights with our cousins

We had a great time with them here! We feel so honored that they travel to see us for Christmas. It is so fun waking up with them on Christmas morning and partaking in all of our Christmas traditions together!

Our Sixth Move

Its that time of year again... and this time we are going to Washington, DC. Chris and I are excited to be in a big town and on the east coast near bigger cities (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc.) and the boys are excited about the possibility of snow (more on that in a later blog). Along with a PCS comes endless cleaning and packing and scheduling and this year we got to throw in some Covid. Never a dull moment with the Morris family.

After all is said and done and we are established in our new home, I can look back and say that was one of the most seamless moves ever. This was our first stateside move. All of our other previous moves have been overseas which meant doing without our stuff for a month (either on the front end or back end of our move). This move, the movers came on a Thursday and Friday to pack up our stuff in Jacksonville and then we saw our boxes on the following Monday in Alexandria. It was crazy, but so good! We found an amazing house to rent, all by the grace of God, He literally set it in our laps and we could not be happier. Despite the cold.

Before we leave a place, we always take pictures in front of our house and some around town at some memorable places. It is one of Abram's favorite things to do. We call it Picture Day!

In front of the Home mural. It is my favorite!

Memorial Park in Riverside

Bridge Park... Jacksonville is known for their bridges across the St. John's River and this is a park of all the miniature versions of the bridges

Our front door picture

We will miss this home, we loved it so!

We pulled out on a Sunday morning. The boys were in the van with me (because I had the movies, of course) and Chris was in front of us with the camper. It was a long drive, but everyone did amazing! We pulled into our new city that evening and ready to start a new chapter of our life!

Our new home!

Such a blessing to be here on Doyle Drive.

I love our cheery yellow door!

Our biggest answer to prayers..

So the best part of our new house has been the kids... every night before we moved, the boys prayed specifically for friends to live on their street. Well, we serve a God who answers our prayers and the boys got to experience that right away. As soon as the moving van pulled up, we had kids knocking on our door ready to play with our boys. They play every day and travel around from back yard to back yard. It could not be any better! We are grateful! We think we are going to enjoy our time here in Alexandria, Virginia.

Our Final Disney Trips

We always knew when we arrived in Jacksonville, that we would go to the Disney parks one last time right before we moved when the boys were the oldest (tallest) and could ride the rides and remember the parks. We split our trip into two weekend trips. We did Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios on the first weekend and then Epcot and Magic Kingdom on the second weekend. It was absolutely perfect... because of Covid, the parks are only open to 25% capacity. The lines were a breeze and there weren't any crowds. The boys had a blast at all four parks, but I know their absolute favorite was Hollywood Studios because of the Star Wars Adventures. The loved the two Star Wars rides and they came home with the best souvenirs. Abram made his own light saber and Jack and Luke made their own droid. So fun!! The only downside to coming to these parks during covid is that we had to wear our masks at all times, even during pictures. But these are memories, too!

The Tree of Life

Our boys loved filling in their Wilderness Journals.

Jack's amazing drawing of Scar that he did during a drawing workshop

Pandora (sad to say Luke couldn't ride, but he rode a special ride with Mama)

The next day we went to Hollywood Studios and ran, literally ran to get our place in the queue for the infamous Star Wars ride. I have to admit, it was pretty spectacular! The Star Wars area of the park was pretty amazing, too. We spent the majority of our day there because, well, I have four boys! I was just excited to see the Toy Story area but the boys just kept asking when we could go back to Star Wars.

All their dreams are coming true!

Not thrilled at all. Me, I loved it!

Designing their own droid. So cool!

We loved seeing the Storm Troopers walking around.

Making his own light saber which he paid for!

Just the best!

Now, they are excited! This was such a fun ride- and in the rain!!

The second weekend we went to Epcot. This was our first time there. We had heard there weren't lots of fun rides, but we all ended up loving it. We went during a holiday weekend where they had food from around the world and it was fantastic! We ate so much!

Some of our food sampling.

I love this... the tori with the Epcot ball behind it.

The boys especially loved this exhibit... it was Washington DC made out of graham crackers!

Such a fun time!

We were in the hotel for December 1, so we brought their gifts to the hotel. They got new Christmas pajamas, a new ornaments, and they opened their first Christmas book of the season. It is one of our favorite traditions.

The final leg of our trip was to Magic Kingdom. We had such a fun day! The boys love rides... they get so excited and its something special they enjoy doing with Chris. So glad we decided to make this trip down to Orlando one last time!