Over a Year?

I can't believe its been over a year since my last post. I've been slacking. And busy. But mostly just slacking. Lets see....

David is now in 2nd grade. We pulled him out of public school and put him in a private school in Sparta. He loves it, and is doing very well. He's learning to write in cursive and has words on his spelling lists that I can't believe are on a 2nd grader's spelling list. He consistently brings home spelling tests with A+s on them. David is also taking piano lessons, and is doing fairly well. He just needs to learn to count a steady beat while he plays. He'll be going to church camp this summer for the first time with his cousin, Owen, in Minnesota. He's very excited about it, and a little nervous, too.

Nathaniel is in his 2nd year of pre-kindergarten. Because he has an August birthday, he turned 5 about 3 weeks before he would have started kindergarten. At the end of last year, his pre-k teachers, Richard & I made the decision to have him repeat pre-k - he just wasn't ready for kindergarten; he would have ended up repeating kindergarten. His teachers now assure me that he's ready for Kindergarten. He'll have David's Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Fawcett, who is awesome! :) Nathaniel is our stubborn one, the one most like Richard. He wants to do things his way, or no way, and isn't afraid to butt heads with anyone, anyone except Daddy, that is. He loves to play outside, and keeps asking if its spring, even though just a couple of days ago we got 6 inches of snow.

I started working out in late December with a gal from church, and we've been pretty regular about it. We've been going to Snap Fitness, and I've really enjoyed it, although when I'm there I usually don't want to be there. I've also been playing piano and singing on the church worship team, which I really enjoy doing.

Richard has been keeping busy at Ft. McCoy, instructing for Blue Force Tracker. He's getting ready to head down to San Antonio for an Army rifle competition; he's very excited (although you'd never know it), this could open a lot of doors for him.

Well. A brief synopsis of the past year. I'll try to be a bit more regular from now on. Ta-ta for now!

Yes, Yes I'm Here!

I know, I know, its been a while. Ok. A long while since my last post. I've been trying not to spend so much time on the internet, so I haven't even been reading the blogs that I did before. Call it a New Year's Resolution.

So what's been happening here? Lets see......

We had a really nice Christmas holiday. We went down to my parents' house and didn't get to go to Christmas Eve service because it was canceled due to bad weather. Dad and I almost didn't go last minute shopping for Mom due to the yucky weather. But we managed to make it into town. A couple days after Christmas, we went up to Richard's sister's place in the Twin Cities, and spent several days there. A nice suprise for the boys was Richard's aunt Cherie was visiting from Boise, and we didn't tell the boys, so they were excited! They had another suprise when we finally got home. "Santa" left a Wii and a bunch of games. The kids could hardly contain themselves, they were so excited. The most popular game by far has been the Lego Star Wars: The Collection. It has all 6 episodes on it. I have to admit that it is rather fun.

The boys are still enjoying school. We haven't had any more snow days since the last post, which is good, because then the kids will actually get a 4 day Easter Weekend, which also doubles as their Spring Break.

My bread machine finally died, so now I'm using my Kitchen Aid stand mixer to make bread. As long as I preheat my stoneware loaf pan (pampered chef!!) in the oven before I put the bread dough in it, it rises pretty well.

Richard is keeping busy with work, although during the winter his hours are a little more normal. He's been getting home between 4:30 and 5:30 pm, which is a lot better than, "I don't know when I'll be home". We actually get to eat dinner as a family most nights.

Richard now has orders that will take him through April, 2011, so we're here till then. Yippee! We asked for our landlord's permission to paint our front room, and they said yes, so I'm hoping to get that done in the next few weeks. I had to promise that we wouldn't use pink, purple or black though. :)

Midnight is doing pretty well. She still doesn't have a lot of feeling in her back feet, she can't "tell where her feet are". That's what the vet says, anyway. But the vet was also surprised that she's still up and going. The vet didn't think she'd last this long.

Richard and I had a nice Valentine's Day. We went to a couples banquet at church. It was a lot of fun, and the food was excellent! A couple who is working on opening a real French restaurant (she's French, he's a chef) in La Crosse did the cooking, so everything was great.

Can you believe that in just over 2 weeks, Richard & I will be celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary?

I think that's it in a nutshell. I'm going to try to post at least once a week from now on.

Snow Day!!

Today is the first snow day of the school year. David & Nathaniel slept in till about 7:45 am, much to my delight. They wanted to go outside right away, but I've been making them wait a little while. They do need to eat breakfast, and they have a few chores to do before heading outside to play.

In the meantime, here are some pictures just to show how much snow we've gotten since yesterday afternoon.

This is Stormy, up to her chest in snow, but she loves it.

Our poor grill is covered.

Stormy again.

And somewhere, under all that snow is our red car. Oh, right. There it is.

We've gotten over a foot of snow so far, and it just keeps coming. The wind is starting to pick up too. I'm guessing when the kids finally go outside, it won't be for very long.

In other, non-snowy news, Richard has bronchitis. He went and saw a Dr on post yesterday. So he's on drugs for the next 10 days. Poor guy. I'm still not feeling great, but I am feeling much better compared to a week ago. I still don't have my appetite back, which is good for the waistline.

Monday evening was our last FPU lesson for this class session. I'm going to take a break until the end of February, and then start another one.

Have a great Snow Day!

I Have a VERY Good Reason....

for not posting anything for an entire week. In my previous post, I mentioned that David was sick. Well, he was running a fever all last weekend, and then Monday afternoon, while Nathaniel was out with Richard, he got sick as well. But not just throwing up sick. Out the other end as well. So I made a Drs' appt for David on Tuesday, and of course had to bring Nathaniel along. Turns out it was H1N1. Yep. Both at the same time, just a couple days apart symptom-wise. So we didn't go to Iowa for Thanksgiving. So up until yesterday (Saturday) we were all doing fairly well. Until about 2:30 am, when it was my turn. So I spent all day yesterday in bed, while Richard held down the fort. He called the Dr for me and a Rx for Tamiflu was called in for me, so he and the boys went and picked that up. The highest my fever was all day was 101.9, and its down around 99 now. I'm feeling much better now that I'm not throwing up every 30 minutes or so like I was early yesterday morning. Richard is such a good hubby, he even ran a bath for me yesterday since my back was hurting from laying in bed all day.

I did get some Christmas shopping done on Friday, the craziest store I went to was Old Navy. There was a line to check out almost all the way back to the back of the store. I was out of there quick. Not wanting to fight crowds.

See? I did have a good excuse for going so long without a post.

Only 25 shopping days left til Christmas! :)

This and That

Let's see... what has been happening around here?

Oh yes, Richard finally got a buck a couple of weeks ago. It was the 8th of November, to be exact. A little rack, but he doesn't usually go for trophy bucks, just something to put meat on the table (or freezer). That one he shot with his bow. He just shot one yesterday, another buck, with his rifle. Actually, with my rifle. His buddy talked him into doing a European mount of the head/antlers, which translates to a bare skull & antlers. Much, much cheaper than a full mount. By about $400-450 dollars.

Richard took the boys with him yesterday up to his buddy's house to cut up the deer. He called me about a hour after they left to tell me to come get David. He threw up in the parking lot of a gas station. I talked him in to letting him rest and see if it was just motion sickness, but he kept throwing up. So I had to drive an hour and 15 minutes to get them (all 3 came home with me). I left at 7:45 pm, and we all got home about 11 pm. We, of course, had to stay and visit for a little while, which is why we got home so late.

Oh, and I celebrated my 30-something birthday this past Thursday. Richard and the boys took me out to eat at Famous Dave's in La Crosse. It was a lot of fun. That day I also went to help out in David's class, and I brought in birthday treats for the kids. There was a substitute teacher, and she was helping the kids make a giant birthday card for me when I arrived. It was really sweet. And they sang Happy Birthday to me and I got hugs from several of the kids. They kept asking how old I was and I told them I was older than 30 & younger than 40. They were a little disappointed with that answer.

Can You Believe It!?!

Yep, its another post from yours truly. Finally. We haven't had much going on since David's exciting coloring contest win, so no posts. Still don't have much going on, so this is likely to be short.

Have you ever seen something that just breaks your heart? Of course you have. And I have too, but what I saw on Monday ripped my heart out and stomped on it.

I go in 2 times a week to help in David's class. Monday I went in, and went to PE with the class. I noticed a little boy who was wearing jeans that were so short on him that they could've been capris. And his long sleeved shirt was more the 3/4 length. I didn't see any kids teasing him about it, but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. And this isn't the first time I've seen this boy wear clothes that were obviously too small for him. Obviously, his parents either can't afford to buy him clothes that fit, or, well, I guess that would be the only logical explanation. So after thinking about it & praying about it, I asked Richard if we could buy the boy some new clothes. Anonymously. And he agreed. I was almost in tears talking to Richard about it, it had me so upset. So I'm watching sales, and hope to go shopping for him this weekend. We're going to make sure to take all the tags off everything so that nothing can be returned for cash that the parents will spend on themselves.

In other news, David gets out of school early today & will be home around 2pm. He's excited about that. Except that I told him he might have to take a nap. :) Maybe. We'll see.

Oh, and Richard & I went on Sunday afternoon to see the high school production of "The Sound of Music", one of my very favorite musicals. The cast did a fantastic job! It was actually made up of elementary school age up to high school. The girl who played Maria did an awesome job! And the boy who played Captian von Trapp was very, very good as well. Richard basically went because I really, really wanted to go, but he ended up being very impressed as well. Two of the von Trapp children were played by two girls from church. They did a great job as well. The entire cast was great. I do have to say that the boy who was cast to play Rolfe did a good job, but his makeup made him look like a girl. It didn't help that he had long hair that was in a pony tail that was tucked into his collar. But other than that, I'd go see it again. But it only ran over the weekend.

David's Picture

For those of you who asked, here is a picture of the picture David drew for the Hometown Heroes Coloring Contest that he won (see November 6th's post). I jokingly asked him last night if I could throw the picture away. With a look of panic on his face he said, "NO!" To which I answered, "I'm just kidding!" What a look of relief!

Among other news, Richard is out hunting this morning. He left the house around 5:30 am. I still haven't heard anything from him, and I'm not going to call him either. Hopefully he'll get something today.

I'm also taking David to the eye doctor this afternoon. He started complaining on Thursday that the words in a book we were reading were fuzzy, and when I mentioned it to his teacher, she said that he said he couldn't read the words on the board at school. So we'll see what the Dr. says.