Winter is really here

After the pleasant end of 2006 and beginning of 2007 I was beginning to get spoiled. But winter is officially back, it has been cold here all week. Only about 3 inches of snow on the ground though. I am not sure how well it is going to work for the snowman building and sledding that Justin has planned for tomorrow.

I haven't posted in awhile, not much newsworthy going on here I guess. We have all been ill once since the new year started, but everyone is well at the current time. Unless you count the fact that Kyle ended up with (another) sinus infection after his cold from 2 weeks ago and ended up on antibiotics (again) this week. They have kicked in quickly and his nose is finally clearing up. He does not like having a dirty nose and is constantly telling me "nose" so I will give him a tissue for his dirty nose.

Justin started Floor Hockey a couple of weeks ago and really likes it. Several of his friends from school are on his team. It is basically some padded sticks hitting a crochetted ball. No worries about injuries for this form of hockey. Justin was a little confused when we started, I think he was invisioning ice hockey. Now he tells me he wants to take more ice skating lessons so he can do ice hockey next year..... I convinced Gary he should help coach Justin's team and since Gary is one of three coaches I think he is enjoying it. Justin is number 7.

Gary has been working a ton the past few weeks, but we are looking forward to him staying home for the next four days. We are going to Frankenmuth (a little German town about an hour north of us) for an overnight stay at a waterpark hotel with some friends. We went once last winter and the kids loved it, so I am sure they will love it again. We haven't told them yet, we figure we will just show up there and suprise them. And to not break any traditions we will make sure we visit Bronners (the world's largest Christmas store) and go to the Bavarian Inn for our Chicken Dinner (yummy-yummy)!!!!

Take care, Danielle

more photos

Happy New Year!!!!!!

I am a little sad that the holidays are over and it is time to get back to our normal schedules. I have enjoyed having the kids and Gary home with me for the past 10 days. We celebrated Christmas with my parents here visiting. We definitely had a great time watching the kids open packages and enjoying their new toys. Gary was working quite a bit before Christmas, so it was really nice to have him be able to spend some much time with us. We are hoping his schedule doesn't get as crazy again in January. Gary may be glad to get back to work, as he has had quite the "Honey Do" list to get completed...not that I wasn't right by his side sharing the work. We managed to get our storage/furnace room cleaned out (you literally could not get in the room any more for all the stuff we had stashed in there), we cleaned out our master closet (not as bad as the storage room was, but definitely needed cleaning out), purchased some new home electronics for the living room and a new entertainment center to put them in (which had to be put together and the old mammoth entertainment center disassembled (thanks for your help mom!!)) and lastly after almost 6 years in our home, we finally painted our dining room. The original flat paint the builder had used had definitely seen better days. And yes, can you believe it.....in February we will have been in our house for 6 years, it just doesn't seem possible to me!!! Oh.....I and I also got my husband to go furniture shopping for a new couch. We had to order it, so I am anxiously awaiting its arrival. Our old furniture is from the pre-children era and has definitely been abused by them, I am not sure they are really old enough yet to be kind to our new furniture, but we are just going to have to work on it since the arm is falling off of our current sofa :) We also took Justin and Megan to a place called The Fridge last week. It is an outdoor toboggan run. They clock your speed on the ride down, one run we were cruisin at 31 miles per hour....weeeee!!!!!