Today!!!!!

I had my doctors appointment today and did my Gestational Dieabets (sp?) test. Hopefully I pass :) The heartbeat was nice and strong and she moves around like crazy. Of course, when he measured my stomach I was yet again measuring big. This time I was measuring 5 weeks big. I am not to worried about it because as of right now it is just a tape measure laying on my belly. He is going to do another ultrasound in 3 weeks to get a more accurate measurment of the baby. I will believe the information more then. I am kind of excited to have another ultrasound, I have never had one this late in the game. Hopefully it is still a girl :) I usually measure a little big, but I don't remember how much bigger it usually is. Of course, we all know I have big babies.

Not much to add

Well, the reason I haven't added recently is because there isn't really much to report, which I think is a good thing in a way. Lexi's math competition is only a couple weeks away. I can't tell if she's getting excited or not. She has been playing piano for different grade levels during their music time. The teacher has encouraged her. She and Makayla have signed up to play the piano in the school talent show. I think that is in May. They are both still deciding which song they want to play.

Charlie went to the state wrestling tournament last weekend. They took 3 boys to compete and all three lost by the second day. It was good for Charlie to go though, good experience for him. I'm glad the season is finally over. He can come home earlier now in the evening which helps me to have more "me" time.

This weekend I get to go the the Time Out For Women program that Dessert Book puts on. A lady from my ward had an extra ticket and asked me to go. It goes from Friday to Saturday and is in Chicago. Because it's pretty close, we aren't going to stay the night, but it will still be a nice break for me. I look forward to spending some more time with some of the women from our ward.

I am beginning a friendship with the mother of one of Chelsea's friends from school. Chelsea and this little girl have been wanting to have a play date for a while and tomorrow we are going to meet at McDonald's for lunch. Chelsea is so excited. The mom's name is Crystal and the girl is Ali. Crystal seems like a nice person. They just recently moved to this area from the Milwaukee area and she doesn't know many people either. We'll see how it goes.

Scouts is going well. We had pack meeting last night. It was a lot of fun, but I wish the families supported it better. They just send their boys like it's a regular meeting. Pack meeting is suppose to be for the families though, especially so the boys can show off thier monthly accomplishments to their parents. It's kind of hard to do that when the parents don't come. Oh well, all I can do is keep encouraging the parents to come.

My sister, Jana, had gall bladder surgery yesterday. I still have yet to hear how it went. I'll probably call later tonight and find out. My mom had to have her gall bladder removed too. Jana told me that it tends to run in the family so I might need mine out at some point in my future. What a great thing to look forward to. At least it's a pretty routine surgery now. I just don't think I want to experience the pain associated with that. I don't really like pain much.

Well, that's about all I can think of. I'll try to be more dilligent about updating in the future.

What's going on?

It has been a week and nobody has posted anything new. I received an email today stating that they were not going to select a new person for the LCC job that I interviewed for until the week of March 10th. Lord I don't know if I have much more patience! Yesterday I didn't think that I got the job so I guess there is still hope. I just don't know, I guess I didn't knock them over with my interview : - ) There is a better way to look at it, it gives Dad another 2 weeks to find a better full time job so I don't have to work full time.

I think we want to catch up with you Hillary. We have 2/10 of an inch more to go to break the record high amount of snow fall in February. We are to get more than that before in reaches near 50 on Sunday. I can't wait until Sunday, I think the kids and I will have a party to celebrate. Well, everyone take care.

I love PE

I love teaching PE! Today was my last day teaching PE. I am gald that it is over because it is so time consuming, but I will miss it at the same time because I have so much fun. I also taught dance in the schools today, this is not fun to me. Creative dance is the first block and rhythm is the next block. I am hoping that I will enjoy the rhythm portion of the semester more.

Dad (Grandpa) is working!

Dad is working and that is all I can say. Well I guess I can say more, he doesn't like it but it is giving him something to do and some money coming in. He keeps looking for job like he use to have but there seems to be fewer of them all of the time.
I had an interview yesterday for LCC fulltime at their west campus. I should know by the first of next week. The only good thing about it is that it is fulltime with benfits. The job position sounds very demanding. I don't like to be bored at work and they told me that I would not have to worry about that. I also talked to the gal that use to have the job and she told me that she could not get her work done in 40 hours so we will see. They have to offer it to me first. Do I really want it? I don't know, I want the benfits with out the 40 hours.

Not much going on here!!!!

Well, I haven't posted in a while, but there is not much going on over here. We have just been living our day to day live, nothing to exciting. The two younger ones and I are still working like crazy and Bradyn has really been enjoying school. Les still really likes his job so, that is always a plus. He has been talking to the principal about the possiblity of teaching the first session of summer school. We will see what comes of that. I don't know when the district decides on stuff like that. If it goes how we want, he will teach from like June 15th until like July 10th or something like that. Then, we would be able to come to michigan and stay for a while. We are still hoping to bless the baby when we come to Michigan and plan on doing the blessing the first Sunday in August. Of course, this is all only if our plans work out the way we want it too :)

We have started talking about buying a house. I look a lot, but it is still to early for us to buy. There are some pretty cheap forclosures out there, I just don't know what kind of shape they are in. Some of the forclosures I have seen are only a few years old so, I am hoping that not too much damage has been done.

I'm shrinking...

...it's a good thing though. I weighed myself at Curves today and found myself at 163.5 lbs. This is the smallest I've been since I was pregnant with Alexis! I feel so good about my weight loss now, especially since I haven't lost weight since before Christmas (it was really hard getting back on the weight loss band wagon after the vacation I took from it). Now I hope I'm back on track to being at my goal weight by the middle of June (that will be my year mark from when I first joined Weight Watchers). Just thought I'd shout it from the roof tops (figuratively) and share my good news.

My New Car

Today I went and bought a new car with Jen (She is the best!). The car is a 1999 Ford Taurus. It drives very nice and smooth and I am happy with the purchase. Now I have one less thing to stress about in my life.

Hi

Just wanted to tell the boys HI and that I love them. Hope all is going well with all of you. Grandpa will get a 10% discount at Wal-Mart so I think one of the first things I will get is a digital camera so I can post pictures. We love all of you.

Krist where are you?

Haven't heard from you in a while. How are things going with you guys? How are you feeling? Fill us in.

Love

Happy Valentine's Day!!!! Remember to kiss that special someone today. I have decided that for Valentine's Day, I will work. :) Hope you all have a sweet day!

Hope your first day of work goes wonderfully Dad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Phone Call at Last

Dad received his call from Wal-Mart yesterday at about 10 am. They wanted him for orenitation at 10 am today. I have a yucky feeling that this is the way they may run a lot of things in their store. Any way we got Kim to watch the kids so Dad could go. I hope that they plan their working schedules better and are able to tell Dad what days he will have off so we can plan child care. I am looking forward to a check coming in but it may have it's down fall to. Like by the time we pay child care, taxes, insurance, and loss of food stamps we may not brake even. But it really doesn't make a difference as long as Dad feels better about everything.

Snow Pictures

This first one is of the pile we created from the snow on our driveway. We ended up shoveling twice for this storm. We went out at about 3 pm and shoveled about 8 inches of snow. Then we went our again at about 8:30 pm and shoveled another 4 inches or so. It was incredible.The second picture is of our backyard. We had to shovel out a small area for Meg to go to the bathroom in because it was too deep for her otherwise.

This is the front of the house and the pile in the front yard is the pile in the first picture. Compare it to our van. Isn't it high? It hurt to shovel that much snow into a pile that high.

I thought I'd post some pictures of the 12 + inches of snow we got for my birthday last week. This passed weekend we had temperatures below zero with wind chills in the -30 to -40 degree range. There was a wind chill warning in effect from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow we are expecting to get another 3 to 5 inches of snow. It's so hard to travel around on the roads right now. All the snow we had on my birthday had not been plowed off the roads before we got the arctic blast. That means that most of the side roads are now sheets of frozen slush. The city can't spread salt on them either because it's too cold for it to matter. Salt only brings the freezing temperature down to about 18 degrees. So with temps down below zero, the water and snow freeze dispite the salt. They have been putting down sand to try and provide some traction, but it's not the best. I really try to to go anywhere when the roads are like this. This winter has been so delightful! We also found out that we have to make up all four snow days that we've had so far. The school district doesn't build in snow days to their calendar. Does that make sense to anyone? We are in Wisconsin and they don't automatically count on having at least a few snow days? I think it's ridiculous!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MERRIT!!!!!!!!

Did I miss your Birthday Hillary?????

I am thinking that I missed your birthday, was it yesterday? If I did, then I am so sorry. But I do want to wish you a very happy 3oth Birthday!!!!! Now you can truely say that you are an adult :)

Picture catch-up

This is the museum in Milwaukee on Jan. 31st. They had this tank of sturgeon that you could touch. They also had a full size ship, named the Challenge, the used to do runs up and down the Wisconsin coast. The picture of Jaxson is him coming up the ladder from the cargo hold on the Challenge. The picture of Lexi laying down is her laying on a bed of nails. We all got to try it. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt.

These pictures are of the museum in Rockford, Il on Jan 28th. This one at the bottom that looks like a big cage is actually the stair case to the 2nd floor. They had climbing platforms inside that you could climb up (if you were small enough to fit in the little holes). The kids loved it. The picture of the tubes was a wall of tubes that had air flowing through them. There were foam balls that you could put inside and watch the air move them through the maze of tubes. Merrit and Jaxson really liked this display. The red pictures are an impression of each one of us in one of those needle table-like things. Charlie thought it would be fun to have our family picture done that way. We actually have one picture with all of us in it, but it's really hard to see detail in that one. Can you tell who is who? The picture at the top with all the kids sitting in that big yellow thing was actually a giant sit and spin. The red knob in the middle allowed you to push or pull yourself around in a circle. The kids had lots of fun with that.

Here are some of my pictures of New Years at Grandma's.

These videos are ones I shot with our digital camera so there is no sound, but they are of our sledding trip we took on our last snow day, Feb.02. They kids had such a great time. It's a good thing Charlie likes to play too or they probably won't have had half as many fun experiences as they have had in their lives.

Whoa momma!!!!

So, I went and saw my new Dr. on Thursday and told him about my old Dr. plan to induce me 10 days early. I didn't really get a feeling of what he thought about that idea. However, he said that he would measure me. So I layed on the table and he got out the tape measure. I am 23 weeks along and he said that I am measuring at 27. Say what?!?!?!?!?!? I am not sure that I am really believing this because 3 weeks ago at my ultrasound she was measuring right on. So, he said that he would do another ultrasound at 37 weeks to see how big the baby is. Hey, works for me :)

Unusal week

We just had a real unusual week. The kids didn't have school on Monday because it was records day for teachers to turn in grades for the 1st semester. Charlie only had to work a half day so we decided to go to a children's museum in Rockford, Il in the afternoon. It was lots of fun. The drive was about 2 hours there, but it seemed to be worth it. The day was actually pretty warm. We hit a high of about 46 degrees, which was shorts weather compared to what we've been having.

Tuesday night a super cold front came in and the temperatures went from around 42 degrees to -2 degrees in one day. Then factor in the wind chills and it was about -20 to -30 degrees. We had a wind chills advisory for Tuesday night to Wednesday afternoon. Because there are so many walkers to the schools in the city, the administration decided to close school. So we had another day off. Because the roads were still driveable, we decided to go to another museum. This one was in Milwaukee. It didn't have as many kid-friendly displays, but they had a super awesome aquarium. I'd go back just for that feature.

The next day was pretty cold, but the wind chill advisory was lifted so we had school. But I woke up in the morning to find a flat tire on the van. So I had to walk the kids to school. Boy was that fun in the freezing cold :)! I also had to walk to pick them up. I kept Chelsea home because I had no way to get her to school. Her school is way too far to walk, even if the weather was nice. It turned out we had a nail in the tire, but we got that fixed up when Charlie got home from work.

Thursday afternoon at about 3 it started snowing. It didn't stop until about 9 am on Friday. Needless to say we got about 8 inches, in my opinion. According to the news the official measurement for Racine was 12 inches, but I don't think it looked that deep. So school was canceled again. It made for a nice long weekend. We took the kids sledding yesterday. They have wanted to all winter and we thought we should take advantage of the great blanket of snow that was around.

It is snowing right now as I write this. I don't think we'll get enough to cancel school again, but I could be wrong. I am really just sick of snow. The weather man said the average for the whole season is about 51 inches and with that snow that fell on Friday morning it put us to about 52 inches and the season isn't even over this year. Of course we would move here to witness such great record breaking opportunities.

This week Charlie and I rented 10 videos from the local Family Vidoe. They have old movies that you can rent 2 for $1 and have them for 5 days. So we decided to try to knock some off of our list that we've been making over the years. One of them was The Day After Tomorrow. Charlie and I both liked it a lot. It's definately a movie that gives you an appreciation for the need to have food storage. We also have seen Dodgeball, Memoirs of a Geisha, Catwoman, Electra, and The Forgotten. Charlie watched My Super Ex-girlfriend, but I had seen that one before and didn't care to see it again. We have 3 left. We have liked all that we've seen except Catwoman was a little disappointing. We have until tomorrow night to return them. I hope we can fit the rest in. With the superbowl on tonight though, we may not make it.

Well, in 3 days I will be 30. I never thought being a certain age would make a difference to me, but turning 30 has become a little bit of an issue. It's just weird for me to think of not being in my twenties any more. I feel old. I know I'm not, but to me, the twenties seem to be such a fun, young age. The thirties, from where I am now, doesn't feel like that. I know once my birthday has come and gone, it won't really be an issue anymore, but being on the brink is a little uncomfortable for me.