Recent Winter Events

Here's what we've been up to lately:

Eating dinner in the basement by the fire.  The kids thought this was so awesome!  We love have a wood burning fireplace.

Lexi turned Stina into an 80's Pop Princess (I guess that's Cindi Lauper).  I don't know if you can tell, but she has a side pony tail - never thought I'd see that again.

Alexis and her friend, Amber, did a history fair project.  They had to choose something from history that has had a large impact on our life now.  You can tell she's Ben's daughter - she chose Chocolate!

We had to pick up something in Green Bay.  I can't believe that Green Bay has an NFL team.  It felt like we were on a college campus - a really small city.

Last week we had a really bad scare.  Adi took a tumble down the basement stairs.  The staircase is wooden and at the bottom it's concrete.  I think it scared 10 years off of my life!  We have a gate, but in the bustle of getting ready for school it hadn't been shut completely.  She seemed fine, but I took her to the doctor anyway.  The red mark on her eyebrow was the only thing that she got from it and that was gone within an hour.  It was a huge miracle!! 

Stina has always been such a good helper, but now she likes to make sure that she's looking good while she's helping. 

Dayne and Stina making their own pizzas. 

Downtown Ice Scultures

Our town has sculpture contest every year and they invite local artists to compete.  It was fun walking through downtown and seeing all of the different sculptures.  I was amazed at how talented these people were.  I also found out that we have a pretty amazing downtown.  

I think this was of a woman holding a fish bowl above her head. 

This was a sculpture of a nun doing a karate kick - definitely the most creative one I saw.

Pole Vaulter

Freezin' Breezin'

Here's a picture of our new normal.  This is the kids walking to school . . . when it was "warm" (above 15 degrees).  When it's colder than that I drive them to school.  This morning it was -5 when I was driving them to school and when I got home and checked the weather, it turned out that it was -22 with the wind chill.  I found myself thinking - at least the weather is going to warm up by the end of the week (it's going to be 20 degrees).  Like I said. . . my new normal. . .

Getting my kids ready for school reminds me of the mom on Christmas Story getting
Ralphie ready.  It takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to get them all "suited up."

New Car

As I mentioned earlier, Ben's car died en route to our new home.  For the first few weeks we tried living on one car, but it became apparent that it was time to purchase another car.  If any of you know Ben, you'll know that he is meticulous about his research - however, he was 10x more meticulous when it came time to purchase a car.  He loves cars and is very particular about what he wants in a car.  When he had the Civic, he took amazing care of it and it had never had any problems until the engine died (which was a total fluke and had nothing to do with him).

For two weeks he carefully researched what he wanted in a car, what was available, what he could afford and what was a good deal depending on the model of the car.  All around our house were Consumer Reports, Car and Driver, etc and every spare moment was taken up researching.  He would decide on a car that he'd found locally and then for the whole day would research its reliability, performance, and cost.  He would decide on one in particular after much deliberation and then wake up the next morning and say, "I've decided against that car."  It was very exhausting and I wasn't even doing anything!

He finally found the car that he wanted for an AMAZING price and we went down to Chicago to check it out (up to this point we had spent a lot of time going to different dealerships around our area and hadn't found anything).

The funny thing about this car was that it was at a Bentley dealership (it was definitely the cheapest car on the lot).  I'm not a vain person, but I will tell you it's quite humbling to drive into a Bentley dealership with a Plymouth Voyager! ;-)   Anyway, Ben drove the car, felt good about it, and talked them down on their price so we ended up buying it.  It's a nice car which I have yet to drive in.  I told him that I wouldn't drive it until the snow is gone because it doesn't have snow tires on it (and because it's not nearly as classy as my van).

Moving On Up . . .Literally

I realize it's been a while since I've really kept this blog up, but now that I'm snowed in, there's no better time than the present!

Our last drive through Auburn.  I would like to think they were rolling the oaks in
farewell to us, but I think some State Championship was going on.

We've recently moved up to the Great White North.  No, not Canada, but close enough!  In July Ben got a new job.  Since he was contracted to teach at Auburn University until December, we didn't move until last month.  It was quite a shock going from 70 degree weather to snow, but we're still alive so I think we can make it until spring.

Just before leaving town, Ben was doing some last minute tune-ups to his car.  Turns out that was unnecessary!

First off, everything went well getting our stuff moved (his new company paid to move us - such a blessing!) and everything went off without a hitch.  We left on a Thursday (I think the 6th of December) and our plan was to drive to Nashville and stay the night, then finish our journey the next day.  We ended up making it 2 hours out of town and Ben's car had an oil light go on.  We quickly got it to a shop (right off the freeway) and left if there to be fixed.  We decided to stay the night in Birmingham and go to Louisville the next night and stay overnight.

Late afternoon the next day, we headed out with what we thought was a fixed car and made it to Huntsville.  Just outside of Huntsville, Ben's car -again - had the oil light go off.  He decided that since the exit was 1/4 of a mile away, he should stop there (it was night and he didn't want to be on the side of the road on the freeway with everyone).  He almost didn't make it to the exit because his car cut out and he coasted to the exit.

We had the car towed to another mechanic (thank goodness for friends that are from Huntsville!) and went on our way in one vehicle to Louisville.  Ben decided that he would just have to fly back in a week or so and drive it up when it was fixed.

Waiting for the tow truck in Huntsville.

However, the next day we found out it was the engine that had died (and that whole story is for another time).  We got to our new home late that evening - just in time for the first snowfall of the year!  Everyone arrived safe and sound and despite loosing a car, it wasn't too bad.  The kids were awesome and were so excited about the snow!

Technology Negotiations

My 8 year old son gave me this note, letting me know that my policies on electronic gifts are unacceptable. 

 Here's the translation if you can't read it:

Mom, I've had it,
so have your other kids had it.
Everything is very, very, very,
very, very, very, very, very, very,
very, very, very, very, VERY, not
fair.
And WHY?
TONS of families in this world
are very spoiled,
and we are nowhere 
CLOSE to being spoiled.
So there!
It's about time you make things
fair, Mom.
And if we whine . . .
DEAL WITH IT!!!!!!


With a letter like that, how do I say no?

Disneyworld

The week of Thanksgiving Ben's parents took us to Disneyworld. We were there for 4 days and got to go to Epcot (twice), Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom (the kids didn't want to go to Hollywood Studios).

It was a surprise for the kids. We told them that Ben was going to have a conference for school in Orlando the week of Thanksgiving. They were really excited to go even though they didn't think we were really going to do anything. We drove down to Orlando (only 7 hours away) and about 30 minutes before we got to the rental house we told the kids that the house had a hot tub and they got really excited. When we got there we found out that it had a pool as well. The kids were jumping up and down and running around shouting how happy they were that there was going to be a pool to swim in. We told them that they couldn't get in yet because some maintenance people had to come by (Ben's parents) and check out the house first. His parents arrived and the kids were hugging them and so happy to see them because they didn't know that they'd be there. Then Ben's dad sat them down on the couch and told them that he had a surprise for them. He pulled out the tickets for Disneyworld and said, "There's not any conference - we're taking you to Disneyworld!" The kids just sat there in shock with their mouths open - like they couldn't understand what he'd just said. It was hilarious! I think we gave them too many surprises in one day.


Epcot (Day 1):

This was a roller coaster simulator.  It wasn't working, but that didn't stop the boys from having fun.

The highlight of this day was eating at a Moroccan restaurant.  They had Moroccan music and a belly dancer.  The belly dancer asked some of the girls to come up and learn how to dance.  Alexis went up and learned some new moves (not that I'll ever let her use them!).

Magic Kingdom (Day 2):

Animal Kingdom (Day 3):  We actually spent Thanksgiving Day at this park . . and had our dinner at an awesome Asian restaurant.

My kids playing with goats.  It warms my heart - maybe someday we'll actually get to have some of our own (not if Ben has anything to do with it).

Epcot (Day 4):

This was the pool at our rental house.  The kids loved it so much that some days they were asking if they could leave the park early so they could go home and swim.  Crazy kids!

Family Pictures 2011

My friend, Nicole, is starting up a photography business so we asked her to take our family pictures.  I know we just had them last year (and still haven't put those up on the wall), but it's so much fun to get pictures of the kids . . . that are taken by somebody who knows what they're doing!  Hopefully now that we have these I can get both sets up before they're all are out of date.  These are a few of my favorite ones . . .

Stina's 2nd Birthday

My sweet little baby turned 2 last week.  Time flies when you're going crazy!  j/k . . . sort of.  I'm not a huge celebrator, but my daughter, Alexis, makes it up for me.  She planned a little party for Stina and decorated the dining room, with a little help from her brothers.  Stina loved all of the attention even if she had no idea why we were doing it!

It was so fun to watch her blow out the candles.  And, for your information - yes, that is a pie, not a cake.  We're on this "no sugar" thing so the kids decided they wanted Chocolate Pie (because I know how to make it with agave and alt. milks so Sam can have it).  Stina didn't care - she didn't know it was supposed to be a cake!  (Although, a pie with candles does make me think of Jim Gaffigan.)

I love the look on her face here.  It's her "getting after daddy" face.  All girls make such good little mommies.

She got this doll for her birthday.  She's been carrying it around ever since.

Chickens

A couple of weeks ago we went and picked up 3 silkie chickens.  The kids totally love them and take care of them very well.  Last week Ben finished making a chicken tractor for them.  I gave him some crude drawings of what I wanted and he designed it in some CAD software.  It turned out way better than if I had done it.  It cost us very little to build it because a builder in our congregation at church gave us some of his scrap wood to use and he gave us some really good stuff.  The only downer to this post is that 2 days ago, the black silkie died during a really bad storm.  All in all though, we LOVE having chickens - Dayne loves to hold them, Alexis is the best caretaker, and Sam loves to write stories about the chickens in his journal.