Current Events

Pheww, I just downloaded pictures from two cameras, and there was ALOT going in the last two months that I didn't mention, so quickly I will attempt a catch up before I put up the Christmas pictures!!

Kayla's baby shower! We had so much fun with all of the girls. Mason is due at the end of January! Yipee!


Eli's first day of KIP, waiting for the bus that never came! It was a mix-up, but kind of disappointing for Eli. He must love KIP because he complains about it almost as much as he complains about kindergarten.

All of us on Thanksgiving. I love these peeps.


The day after Thanksgiving we went up to a small tree farm in Anoka, owned by a man who used to be a principal at one of the school's Curtis attended. It was a gorgeous day, just beautiful. We had so much fun walking back into the trees. There was another family there with a little black dog that kept wandering over to us. We finally picked out a cute little tree, and didn't take a picture of it! I was having too much fun taking pictures of Grumpy and JK, and thinking about how I want some acreage and a little black dog for these boys to run around with...

We stopped at Broadway Pizza on the way home, and then watched Home Alone, and THEN started decorating!! I love this part but it makes me a little crazy to have all the kids pulling out stuff at the same time, and then putting it all up and putting all the boxes away is at least a two day job! But we got her done and have been enjoying the coziness all of December.

Trip to Wisconsin Dells in early December with a very fun family from Honeywell, Cori and Jesse and their kids. They were so much fun to hang out with. We stayed at the Kalahari - no lines. It was a good time to go to the Dells. And JK got to stay with Lola and Sofi -lucky!!

Ethan's second gread concert. It was truly a highlight of my year. Oxbow has a songwriter who comes in and writes songs with the kids, and these songs were fabulous, they were based on several books about trees that the kids have read through the year. Some were funny and upbeat, and others were slower and reflective. But to hear these kids sing their hearts out brought tears to my eyes a few times. So cool. Click here to see Home Sweet Home.

Oxbow second graders and James Hersch

Ethan is in somewhere in there!!

After the concert with Mr. E.

I think that will do for tonight. If you have made it this far you are probably Curtis. Good night!

Aughh, I can't keep up with my life

Jonah IS Dash!



Is it just me or is this time of year so full? I love it but I am not on top of my life right now! On my mind:
- Christmas cards that are halfway done and on the floor- JK is going to have a heyday with them tomorrow if I don't move them!
- Christmas Crunch. It is always on my mind in Dec. It is delicious and I need to make some right away.
- Teaching Beehives tomorrow
-I need to blog Eli's b-day! He is 6 now and had a fun party.
-Christmas is 6 days away and I have alot of loose ends to tie up. I am so glad that Curtis has some time off next week! He owes us some time at home after lots of long days at work!
-We all watched The Polar Express today and made hot chocolate. I love doing that every year.
- Our pond is now a skating rink thanks mostly to Kerry. It is AWESOME, and the kids had so much fun sliding around and skating. I did too!

I am loving a Minnesota Christmas this year. I feel like we are getting totally settled in our house, I love how cozy this home is. What a blessing!

Happy Eli day!

Eli turned 6 this month! This kid is classic, he has a laugh that makes him loose bladder control at least once a week. He can be so stubborn sometimes, and then so sweet the next minute. He has the skinniest legs, no butt, and then a pudgy tummy. Here are his favorites on his 6th birthday:

Toy: Legos
Candy: Lemonheads
Food: Bananas
Color: Green
TV show: Johnny Test
Movie: Call of the Wild
Book: Robin Hood
Scripture Story: Noah and the Ark
Primary Song: When Joseph Went to Bethlehem
School Subject: Math
Eli wants to be a hotel owner when he grows up. He can talk for hours about what features his hotel is going to have. I know for sure that it is going to have free video games and a water park, and lego land. And it is going to be in Texas. He also does not give change, and may let his parents stay for free, or charge them $50,000 depending on his mood.


Sofi made Eli this cute card



Skull cake. yeahhh.

Curtis almost got taken out a few times, good thing he has cat-like reflexes for these kind of circumstances!

Eli get so excited about toys, I love watching him open up his gifts! But watch out, if he doesn't like it his reaction is just as intense the other way. Pheww this one met his approval!


Happy 6th Birthday Eli, you are a special, original boy who is very much loved around here! What would we do without you? Laugh alot less, and do alot less laundry:)

Thanksgiving Day 2009

Thanksgiving day Schedule:

8 am- Wake up without an alarm clock... yessss
9:30- Curtis and the boys leave for the Turkey Bowl with ward friends.
10:00-JK and I Start pumpkin pies
11:00- Green bean casserole. Boys come home with red, red rosy cheeks
12:00- Mashed potatoes
1:00- appetizers, drinks
1:30- green bean casserole and sweet potatoes in to bake, Grumpy arrives
2:00- set tables
2:30- Keith and Kayla arrive
3:00 Kim, Todd, and the kids arrive

Kim's turkey was divine, Grumpy carving in case you couldn't tell:)


Kayle and Keith (There are actually 3 people in this picture... the third will be making his entrance soon)
Sofi and Eli
CJL and JK :)

Jonah with a mashed potato mustache. He was so cute in his plaid suit coat and gingham shirt... picked out all by himself of course! Hogan hamming it up

beautiful niece Lola, she even did her hair for the occasion

Kim and Janie
Ethan teaching Lola how to play chess, Kim is envisioning our black Friday route

Playing go fish before bed... the only picture of mom all day!

I am so grateful for:

The gospel and a free country where it was restored

Healthy children

A warm, cozy home on these frigid nights

Having Thanksgiving with family this year

For the hunter in you named Nick

The day after Thanksgiving we were putzing around the house, and then Curtis noticed this guy in our backyard:

And then he walked up to the fence and STEPPED over it. No effort. There was a little doe on the other side of the fence that he was scoping out, he came back and stayed all afternoon. So Nick if you want to come and kill Bambi in our backyard, just keep in mind that you will have our Home Owners Association in an uproar. Not to mention Stacey Charlesworth:)

For those of you needing a JK fix...

I was going to post Thanksgiving but came across these and wanted to look at them a little more! We had some gorgeous November days, including Thanksgiving. I can't get enought of a that pony! So much fun!

Stephanie Nielson's story

I have been following Stephanie Nielsons's blog since her plane crash last August, and there is a new article from the AZ Republic that is just awesome. I don't know Stephanie personally, but through reading her blog I have been inspired again and again. I hope that I can figure it out and post the link here.

Giving Thanks this Week

Doing it all, while reading The Book Thief

It was a busy week around here, on Monday I wondered it how I was going to get through it.
***A Small Detail***
- CJL has been in Europe since Saturday

He is the guy who gets us out the door on time for church, because he irons all the kids clothes Saturday night. And he doesn't take any crap on Sunday mornings. I am the girl who waits until Sunday morning to iron, and then it's too late.
p.s. He ironed all the clothes before he left for the airport and we were still late... but just a little.

***The Book Thief is on my brain***
- I read it in 2 days for Book Group
(thanks Jill though I don't think you read this blog very much)
- It is written with alot of bolded groups of info like this

Instead I slept by a sock rice bag this week. Do you have one of those?? Mine is a white sock full of rice, with the top of the sock tied in a knot. It is a little stained up because I put it in the microwave once when the tray was dirty in the sink, so the rice inside didn't rotate and got a little scorched, and left some yellow stuff on the sock. It looks like sweat, but it isn't. My feet rarely sweat, because they are usually cold (except now that I have some really warm shearling boots from costco, they are so toasty).

I was laying with my little rice bag last night giggling because I was imagining a video montage with me and the rice bag. I am too tired, and don't know how, to create a video montage, but it tickled my funny bone to think of pictures of me and my little friend, doing things together... like making dinner, giving the kids a bath, it riding in the front seat while I take the kids to school, and then especially laying by me on CJL's pillow. I don't have a good song yet, but it will come to me, I'm sure it will.

***How do some people do everything??***

-I think they never sleep.


Joni, I made your crock pot brownie cake and it was warm and melty and delicious with vanilla ice cream, and I also doubled the recipe so there is plenty for breakfast tomorrow.

***A small announcement***
- I am going to bed, after I eat a little more
brownie cake. goodnight.

Pretty Much the Cutest Thing I've Ever Seen

...Except for piggy tails!

Berry Hill Farm

The weekend before we got sick we drove up to Berry Hill Farm in Ramsey. Ethan had a fever the day we went, but with motrin he perked up, so we went anyway. Little did we know what was in store for us, and I wonder how Ethan made it through this day, he is such a good sport. If we had any idea what was brewing we would have stayed home all weekend, if anything just to avoid spreading what we had! Hindsight is 20/20 I guess. I am still learning how to use my new camera, and most of the pictures I took were really blurry. Looking at them now, I think it was an aperature/fine focus problem. I have ALOT to learn, but it is exciting to get even a few good shots out of the many I have been taking. I am not saying that these are good shots, they are just the best of the worst! My shadow is in most of them! Augh!

On these last two I was panning Eli as he ran. Kind of fun to see the differences in focus.

Halloween 2009

Some big nerds with the last name Junker invited pregnant Raggedy Anne and baby daddy Raggedy Andy to their barn for a night before Halloween-Halloween party.Popeye and Olive Oyl got to tag along and sing Monster Mash karaoke. It was an awesome, cold night.


Janie was a little witch. She hated her hat, pulled it off every time.

Driving his rig in his fro wig...

Kids having a blast! Ethan was ahead with the neighbor kids.

Ethan took this picture of Eli after we were done Trick-or-Treating, eating candy at the bar.

Shake shake shake your booty, all day long! A little bit of a sugar high going on, he just ate like 15 mini candy bars, and a 12 inch gummy snake. Halloween must have been a success with numbers like that!

Our H1N1 week

It was a really miserable week here last week! Ethan started out over the weekend with a fever and headache, and then developed a cough. He perked right up when I gave him tylenol or motrin, so because of that he seemed ok. Then Sunday I started feeling a little weird, and Jonah started a fever. Monday morning Curtis went to Freeport, IL for a project he's working on. He was going to come home Wednesday night, and then leave again Thursday morning with Jonah for Utah. (He always is conveniently gone for all the good stuff- hormonal wife, sick kids, I don't know how he does it) We didn't have school, so we got up and I felt good enough to make pancakes and home-made syrup, and even tried out my new close-up filters on my camera. I will post those later. But as I was cleaning up breakfast I started feeling dizzy and really tired. Then Eli developed a fever as well. Tuesday I was supposed to go with Eli on a field trip, but neither one of us were up for that at all, Jonah spiked a fever of 104.9 that morning, and Ethan stayed home from school as well. I kept feeling Janie's head, expecting a fever any time, but she miraculously didn't get sick, which was and is such a blessing. Tuesday our neighbor Jill brought us groceries and home made chicken noodle soup for dinner. That was another huge blessing. I think because I was up with the kids at night, I also got a cold along with the virus; I had so much sinus pressure I had to sleep with a few pillows propping me up. Jonah's fever broke Tuesday and I thought he was on his way to recovery, but Friday he went upstairs and fell asleep, and when I checked on him he had another 104 degree temp. I took him in Saturday morning to Ready Care, and he had a blood test and a chest x-ray. He also had to have his ears flushed out. He's crying when we're talking to the nurse about it and he screeches: 'Is it gonna be FIRE?' And then when she was flushing out his ear he's yelling: 'Is it BLOOD...BLOOD?!!!' I was almost laughing I tell ya! He also got a tiny little face maks to wear. He could almost be Micheal Jackson for Halloween. All of his tests came out just fine, which is another blessing, I am so grateful that he is doing so much better (he has a hacking cough, it sounds HORRIBLE) but what a blessing that he doesn't have pneumonia or another secondary infection. I was amazed how quickly his chest films were developed and read by the Dr. And I am so grateful for medical care, and Doctors and nurses who work on Saturdays and don't mind working with contagious, grumpy kids!
Curtis arrived hom Wednesday night to a lovely sight, a house full of sick, grumpy people who were going stir crazy from being home together for 3 days. He slept downstairs in the guest room with JK in a pack and play because I could feel the germs coating all surfaces. Sick. Thursday I was feeling well enough and grossed out enough to start cleaning. It feels better but I am still not convinced that our house is safe. Maybe in a week or two.
It was a stressful week but also a week full of blessings. We had neighbors and friends and family watching out for us. I am still catching up on laundry, but that's nothing new. Curtis cancelled his trip to Utah. Too bad, but he got to be here Sunday for the Primary Program, which turned out so very awesome. Hopefully we are good and immune for awhile!

Happy...Fall?????

Why does my porch say this:

>



But a look off the deck says this??

And it is STILL snowing. What the...??? Robbed, gypped, and other words are coming to mind. I guess I can skip the Halloween decorating and skip right to Christmas???