Happy Birthday?? Hubby!!

Yesterday was Husband's birthday. It was also the day that we received 12+ inches of snow. Husband gets up at 2 AM everyday in order to get to work by 4 AM. The roads were not great when he went to work, but while he worked for the next 10 hours, the snow continued to fall fast and furious! By the time he was off, all the state crews had been pulled off the roads; it was just too snowy and windy to do any good. Poor Husband had to weather the storm sitting at work all by himself on his birthday! He finally made it home between 5 and 6 PM. What made matters worse was that when he got home he had to shovel the back driveway. I had shoveled the front driveway so that he could get the car in the garage, but it took me two hours!! I was so exhausted that I couldn't shovel the back driveway too.
On the bright side, we had celebrated his birthday on Sunday. It was a lot of fun. We went to a Chinese buffet and he opened his presents. My mom made him his favorite pie--french silk. If nothing else, this was definitely a birthday he will never forget!! Happy Birthday, Honey!!

John Deere Tour

Husband was recently blessed with a new job welding on combines at John Deere. God has been SO good to us! He was actually trained to weld by John Deere! This is a HUGE deal because not only did it save us about $2500 on welding courses at a community college, but he was getting paid as he was learning. He is now a certified welder! This job has already been such a blessing to our family, and the benefits are just beginning!! We continue to praise God daily for this job!

On December first, we were able to tour the facility. This was a pretty big deal because there hasn't been a tour like this since the early 90's. It was so interesting to see combines in all stages of development. I couldn't do justice to it if I tried to explain it all, but I highly recommend touring a facility like this if you ever get the chance! It was mind-boggling! The only downer of the day was that we were having a pretty significant ice storm!! The hour drive wasn't much fun!! After we left, we had to buy a new scraper because as Husband was scraping the ice off the car when it was time to go, the scraper snapped in half!

This is a picture of a wall of windows inside the visitor's center. Along the bottom, you can see that the ice had accumulated on the glass. Theses huge sheets of ice slid down the length of these windows (about 3 stories) and it looked like an ice fountain. I wish I could've gotten a video of it. It was really spectacular!

Always thinking about fodder for the blog, I took this picture hoping to show the horrible weather conditions. You can't really see the freezing rain and ice falling from the sky, but this gives you an idea of how windy it was on top of everything else!

Despite the weather, we had a good time touring the plant!

Shopping Craziness

Husband and I thought it would be a good idea to get some shopping done the day after Thanksgiving. We were going to take advantage of eager-to-babysit grandparents, and enjoy the benefits of Minnesota's no tax on clothing, not to mention all the great day after Thanksgiving deals!!! Well, the outlet mall not to far from Husband's parents' house opened at 12:01 AM. Thinking it would be much easier to stay up and go shop than to get up at 3:30 AM, we ventured out at 11:15 PM and headed to the outlets. Little did we know we would literally shop till we dropped, and not return back home until 3:30 PM the next day. Yes, you're right, we shopped ALL NIGHT LONG AND A GOOD PORTION OF THE NEXT DAY!!!!!!!! Yes, you're right, we ARE certified CRAZY!!! We did get some good deals, but no, we didn't get all of our shopping done. We didn't end up going to bed until after 9:00 PM that night. We were up a record-setting 40 hours. I forgot to mention in the previous post that due to hazardous weather we weren't able to drive to MN Wednesday night. We had gotten up at 4:45 AM Thanksgiving day, and gotten on the road by 6:20 AM to arrive in time for Thanksgiving dinner! Believe it or not, we didn't even nap before our shopping extravaganza. I can't say that we'd do it again, but it was definitely a memory-making experience! Here we are past comatose. Lookin' good, huh?

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we headed up to MN to spend some time with Husband's family. It was SO MUCH fun! His entire family was able to get together, and there were 22 people at his parent's house. I have to admit, I did feel a bit overwhelmed, but it was a good kind of overwhelmed. :) A typical Thanksgiving on my side of the family consists of about half as many people. We had good food, great fellowship, and fun, fun, fun! Our nephew just turned one, and is such a little cutie! The Girl absolutely loves babies, and was in baby heaven since Husband's cousins were also there with their little guy who was one in Oct. We took advantage of having everyone in one place, and got some pictures of the three generations represented.

"The Originals"

"The Kids"

You can see by this picture that there were several "photographers." I don't think we were successful in getting everyone looking at the same camera at the same time! Ha Ha Ha!!!

"The Grandkids"

Playing Catch-Up

Since I have been absolutely HORRIBLE at updating lately, I thought I would go through month by month and give some highlights. I am a bit anal, and can't seem to move on to what's happening now without 'tying up loose ends' so to speak. Even though there are a few entries from September I think that's where I'll start with the updating. I don't typically make New Year's Resolutions because they are so hard to keep, then I just feel depressed that I didn't stick to them, but this year I think I'll make an exception and resolve to do a better job on my blog. :) OK, it's in writing now, so I'm a little more accountable, right?!


SEPTEMBER

Husband and I attended a Joyce Meyer conference in St. Paul, MN. It was WONDERFUL!! Husband made fun of me, calling me a Joyce Meyer groupie since I insisted on getting to each meeting at least an hour before the doors opened. It was well worth it, since we were able to get floor seats for each of the four sessions, and the farthest back we sat was 10 rows from the front!! The closest we sat was 5 rows from the front, and the first three rows are reserved. You see, the conference was free and there was no saving seats between sessions. If you ever get the chance to her, I HIGHLY recommend it. She is so practical and down to earth. She speaks in everyday language that's easy to understand. She's been through a lot of junk in her life, so she preaches about things that she's experienced herself. I just love her.

While we were in MN, we were able to squeeze in a little bit of time with family. On the way to St. Paul we stopped in to see Husband's aunt at her elementary school. It was fun for me to see her classroom, as we both teach first grade. We stayed with my cousin, who I haven't been able to spend much time with in recent years. We had a good time catching up, and enjoyed some of his "famous" french toast. We also went to Matt's on 35th and Cedar for a Juicy Lucy.....YUM!! If you ever get to the Minneapolis area, you've got to go have a Juicy Lucy! We were also able to have a short visit with husband's mom and dad. A little too short, but nice all the same. Mostly, husband and I were mostly able to have some much needed us time. In between sessions on Friday we walked around downtown St. Paul. It's a beautiful city and the weather was picture perfect.

OCTOBER
October was a busier month than it should have been! I teach in a school on a balanced calendar, which means that I start earlier and end later than traditional calendar schools, but I get a couple two-week breaks during the year. One of those breaks comes in October. Instead of taking both weeks off that were offered, I opted to teach an intersession class the first week. The pay was too good to pass up, but it sure did make break fly by! The weekend of the first week off, Husband and I went to visit some old friends at a church retreat a couple of hours from where we live. We saw some friends from when we were young and going to church camp! It was a lot of fun.
The second week of break I was off, but it seemed like every day was filled with things to do. Some were fun like going to Galena with my mom and celebrating my birthday with my family at my favorite restaurant. Others were not so fun like chiropractor appointments. Still others were things that we mom's just do like going to middle school basketball games to watch your daughter cheer. Before I knew it, October was gone and November had come.

Happy Birthday, Dad!!

It's my dad's birthday today. He doesn't like big To-Do's made over him, so we just went to visit after church today. It was nice. He's such a good guy and does so much for me, I wish we could do more for him. Happy Birthday, Dad!! Have a wonderful year!!

Updated Picture

As promised, here is an updated photo of Husband with the kids. As you can see, he's lost a considerable amount of weight! This was on the 4th of July as we were waiting for the fireworks to start. They were definitely worth the wait!! We thoroughly enjoyed them!

Never Too Old

Can We Slide NOW, Grandpa???

You'll notice in the previous post that Father-in-Law was in his swim trunks. Well, the very good reason for this was that The Boy was playing on his Slip-N-Slide while Grandpa was working on the clothesline. The Boy wanted to Grandpa to play on the Slip-N-Slide as well, and Grandpa was happy to oblige! Grandma and I felt much too old to join in the fun, but Grandpa?? "Never too old!" he said!

Dive and Slide!

Anything for The Boy!!

A Visit From the In-Laws~The Overview

Husband's parents came for a visit from out of state last week. They arrived last Tuesday night and stayed through Sunday morning. We had lots of fun! Husband had to work a lot, but the kids and I and Grandma and Grandpa did some fun things together. The first full day they were here, Grandpa set to work on some projects around the house. As you know, I am always ready to take advantage of a handyman when he comes to the house! He fixed our toilet that wasn't flushing correctly, put plastic over our broken window so we could turn the air on, (It was in the upper 90's and we about melted the night before and got next to no sleep!) and started on replacing the stretchy white clotheslines with nice taut green clothesline. We went swimming, saw a movie, went for Chinese, played on the Slip-N-Slide, went for walks along the river, and watched fireworks. It was a busy visit, but very nice. I will need to go into more detail in individual posts, (hopefully in the near future) but it's taking me a while to get caught up!

DDR

It's The Girl's birthday today! Happy Birthday!!! We have been celebrating since Saturday. She asked for DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) for the longest time. Well, Aunt Chloe and Uncle Skeeter came through! I can't tell you how glad I am that they got it for her! IT IS SOOOO FUN!!!! I have been on it as much as the kids. I was on it last night for a couple of hours after the kids were in bed and really worked up a sweat! I did the workout mode and it told me that I did the equivalent of a 1.3 mile jog. Boy, I'll take DDR over jogging any day! Our whole family got in on the fun Saturday. Here are some fun pictures.

Grandpa giving it a shot

Check out Husband's Hands!!!

What's with the fist?????

All in all, it was a really fun day. Grandma and Uncle Skeeter and Aunt Chloe and I all took our turns too, unfortunately I don't have pictures to share! Oh yeah, we let the kids have a turn or two, too!!!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day! I have been blessed to have not one, but three great dad's in my life. First of all, my dad, who I've talked about quite a bit already. He is always ready to help me out in any situation. I love to fish and play sports with my dad (although it seems this happens less and less as the years go by). I like to tease my dad; the poor guy gets a LOT of this! Especially since he was the only man in our family until my sister and I got married--even all of our pets were girls! I have to admit, even though I am grown up and on my own now, I still think my dad is the strongest, toughest, handiest dad of them all. My dad is also a wonderful grandpa. My daughter definitely has grandpa wrapped around her little finger!

Secondly, I have a wonderful father-in-law. Even though my husband and I have only been married a little under three years, I have known and had a good relationship with my father-in-law for about fifteen years. He was like a grandfather to my daughter long before he was officially her grandfather. He is sweet and sensitive,(even when he's gruff) and loves his family. The best part is that he loves the Lord and raised his son to do the same!

Finally, my husband. He has been a great father to both of our kids. I love to watch him out playing ball, riding bikes, swimming, and jumping on the trampoline with them. Instantly becoming a father to an eight-year-old girl is not an easy thing to do. She has definitely given him a run for his money! She knows how to push his buttons and enjoys doing so! :) I freely admit that my job of becoming a mother to a three-year-old boy was a much easier task than what he did. It's so rewarding to see the fruit of his labor. When The Girl makes her own Father's Day card for him and tells her friends how lucky she is to have him as a step-dad it makes it all worth it!

These pictures are a few years old, but since I absolutely INSISTED that the Dad's wear tuxes in our wedding, I thought I'd post them at their finest! As I looked for a picture of Husband with the kids I realized that I didn't really have very many! This is a really nice picture of them, even though both the kids are so much more grown up and Husband weighs about 85 pounds less now! You know what I'll be doing when we are all together in the next couple of weeks!!! Get your smiles ready guys!