Investing in some ear plugs...

Wow, sorry about the lack of updating. I guess I should go back a couple of weeks. We left Lignite on the 27th and spent a couple of days in Minnesota. We headed back to IL on the 30th. It's been busy since we've been back. The kids had their Sunday School Christmas program on the 2nd. They did a great job, here's a link to the program. Mark started class at ICC on the 3rd. He's taking a diesel engine class for his contingency training if the union goes on strike. He is currently taking an engine apart and then will be putting it back together. His partner happens to be a CAT engineer that graduated from UND a couple of years after Mark. Valynn and Mason went back to school on the 4th. On the 6th they started piano lessons. They are liking lessons so far, she does a different program where the kids learn how to play songs before they learn how to read music. I'll let you know what I think of it as we get further into the program.

On the 9th I had a church council meeting. We spent the weekend getting caught up on project around the house. on the 10th Kyra went back to school, the kids started their regular night of piano lessons. On Tuesday Kyra had storytime and then Valynn, Mason, and Kyra started their swimming lessons. Valynn and Mason each got moved up a level and Kyra went under water so it was a successful night. I had a PTO meeting on Tuesday night. Yesterday Kyra had school and  Kyleigh had gymnastics. Today I'm catching up on cleaning and finally taking time to update the blog. Valynn starts selling Girl Scout cookies tomorrow, Valynn and Mason start basketball on Saturday (I haven't decided if I'm going to coach yet or not), and Mason has practice for his Pinewood Derby car for boy scouts.

We're enjoying the extra family time with Mark while we can, he's been getting home before 5:00 thanks to his class schedule. That will all change next week when he starts up his MBA classes. The class he'll be taking is labor intensive so he'll be spending most nights on campus. He also starts his on the job training for his contingency assignment in February and his work hours will shift to 4 10 hour days and the 5th day doing his engineering job.

We hope everyone is doing well. It feels like winter here, it was 0 this morning. We have to wood burning stove going so the house it nice and toasty.

Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We made it to Lignite last night after a "short" 12 hour drive. I'm finally feeling better today. Mason got sick yesterday morning and again about 1 1/2 hours from here but is feeling better today. Grandma and Grandpa made ham for our wonderful Christmas meal. The kids opened their gifts last night and Santa found the kids. They were very excited about their gifts and have been playing with their toys all day. Tonight we got to see Dick, Linda, Penny, Ron, Tom, and Linda. We had a great visit with them.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Not my idea of a vacation....

Scraping barns that is. We headed up to Minnesota for Thanksgiving. The roads got slick towards the end of the trip but we made it. As always, the kids had fun playing with their cousins. Kyra and Kyleigh loved all the kittens (and no we didn't bring another one back). Valynn and Mason helped feed the calves and scrap manure out of the barn. They didn't have a lot of snow, but enough for the kids to be pulled in sleds behind the gator.

Monday night Mason had a boy scout meeting at a basketball game. Mason enjoyed watching the game. On Tuesday morning Mason had an endoscopy, he still had some sores on his esophagus. We get the results on Tuesday to see if it's improving. On Tuesday we decorated the house for Christmas. The kids were excited to get the tree decorated. Addy thought it was fun as well, she's climbed both trees, we had garland extended into three rooms, and lots of playing with the ornaments. Yesterday Mark took the day off and we did some Christmas shopping. We bought a few gifts but have ideas for almost everyone.

We have a busy weekend ahead of us. Tomorrow we are ringing bells for the Salvation army. Sunday we have church/SS practice, I have a church council meeting that I'm going to miss, we have the CAT Holiday show, we have Holiday Homecoming where Valynn is singing for Girl Scouts, and we have the Sunday School Christmas program practice. Next week is just as crazy with Boy Scout and Girl Scout meeting, doctor's appointments, and kids' activities.

Have a safe weekend everyone, we should be getting snow here and the kids are thrilled.

Ingalls' Homestead

The kids are home and we are getting back into a routine. They weren't ready to come home, I guess they were getting too spoiled. I was informed last night that Grandma didn't make them put their dishes in the dishwasher, just on the counter.

We took the kids to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead in De Smet, SD. What an amazing experience. They had a covered wagon (actual size), sod house, shanty, hay loft, house, animal barn, garage, and school house to walk through, clomb on, or ride. The kid got to churn butter, play a pump organ, use a treadle sewing machine, weave a rug, make a button toy, pump water, wash clothes, make rope, dekernel corn, grind grain, ride horse, drive a covered wagor and attend school in period clothing.

We spent Saturday night in Albert Lea and got a suite with three beds and a jacuzzi tub. I put bubbles in the tub and the kids had a great bath. We got home last night and today are getting back into routine. Valynn has a girl scout camp this afternoon. We're working on putting things away and getting caught up in the garden today.

TV

Valynn and Grandma were interviewed at the North Dakota State Fair yesterday. If you look quickly you can see all the kids at the beginning of the piece.

We are ready to get the kids back. I'm always good the first week because I'm busy working on my to do list but come the second week I really start missing them. We talked to them on Sunday and they aren't ready come home. Who would be when you are getting little hot dogs, chips, and pizza for supper?

Look who made TV

We are home but soon will be gone

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a great time in Indiana. We left Wednesday morning. Thursday Aunt Cindy and Uncle Rick cooked a wonderful meal. On Friday they took the older three kids to the circus. The kids thought it was great and got to ride an elephant, except for Kyra, she didn't want to. They saw horses, bears, tigers, lions, acrobats, clowns, etc. While the kids were at the circus, Mark, Brandon, Grandma, Kyleigh, and I met Tyler for lunch. Saturday we checked out the Evansville zoo, very nice zoo and we got to see the handy work of Sprinklers Plus (aka Uncle Rick and cousin Derrick).

We got home on Sunday in time to watch the Vikings beat the Bears! Today I took Kyra and Kyleigh to the doctor. Kyra has a UTI. Kyleigh has what might be the beginning of an ear infection. She tipped the scales at 19# 15 oz (10%) (she would have weighed 20 lbs. had she not pooped right before we weighed her). She is also 30 1/4 in. long (45%). We will be keeping a close eye on her since she isn't saying very many words but as the doctor explained he tends to see extremes in 3rd and 4th kids. They either talk ALOT (Kyra) or the don't need to talk because everyone knows what they want (Kyleigh). She gets her point across by grunting so why should she learn to talk.

Tomorrow Mason has Pajama day at school. I will be helping out. Thursday afternoon we are leaving for Minnesota. We will be staying at the farm Thursday night, picking up a niece and heading to Hawley for Brady and Jodi's wedding. We will head back to the farm on Sunday and back to Illinois on Monday.

Have a great week. Sorry no pictures but I forgot to take my camera to Indiana. I'm waiting for Aunt Cindy to send some but we won't have any of the circus.

Valynn is 7

So it has been a couple of weeks since I've posted, we've been busy. I'll start with the most important thing. Valynn turned 7 today. Wow, where does the time go? She is getting so big and too smart. If Mark or I are reading a book and we make a mistake, she corrects us, she brought home her last list of sight words that she needs to know by the end of first grade, and is curious about how everything works. Unfortunately we weren't here to help her celebrate her birthday. We are fortunate to have such good friends that brought her a cake and help her ring in her 7th year. She got a horse blanket from Grandma and Grandpa Larson (great job grandma!). Mark, Kyleigh and I were in North Dakota to celebrate my "other Mark's" wedding. We had a great time. Friday night we drove to Eden Prairie and spent the night with my college roommate Christy and her husband. Another college roommate stopped by to visit with her two kids. We had a great visit with them and wish we could get together more often. On Friday we drove to Fargo (it was cold and rainy, and in IL, sunny and 80). We had a great time at the wedding catching up with old friends from college. A friend of mine was there with her little boy Emery who is one day younger than Kyleigh. We joked that they had their first wedding dates. Of course we couldn't resist taking a few pictures. I also had Kyleigh get her picture taken with the bride and groom. Kyleigh shares a birthday with Mark. We had a long drive back today but were very happy to have to turn the air conditioner on when we got home, much better than the 3 inches of snow in Lignite. The three older kids stayed with some friends of ours over the weekend. They had a blast playing with their three kids but were happy to get home. We brought back "Chippers" (chocolate covered potato chips) as thank you gifts for everyone who helped us out by watching the kids.


Valynn marched in the homecoming parade a couple of weeks ago with girl scouts. As you can imagine Mason and Kyra had fun getting the candy that was thrown. We're doing good, Kyleigh slept 6 and 7 hours stretches at night this weekend so we're hoping this trend continues. She was a very good traveler sleeping most of the way. Valynn and Mason have tomorrow off so we're going to be able to sleep in and take it easy except for gymnastics, get Halloween costumes, finish the head room mom list and buy groceries for Valynn's birthday supper. We should have a pretty easy week, Valynn's birthday party is on Saturday and Mark is planning on going to the school to help install the new playground equiment. We finally got another contractor lined up to do the garage and it sounds like he plans on pouring the concrete this week, yeah (keep your fingers crossed)!!! Mark finished his online class last week so he has a couple of weeks off. He won't know his grade until later since the class is graded on a curve.

Friday morning was hectic here because the school bus left without Valynn. It showed up 5 minutes early. The neighbor kids ran out to the bus when they saw it pull up but because we can't see the bus stop we didn't know it was early and Valynn saw it pulling away. I called the bus supervisor to discuss the situation and then the bus driver called me to apologize and tried to tell me she was on time. She didn't have an answer when I asked her if she realized that there were no kids waiting at the bus stop so she must have been early. If it happens again the bus will have to start driving down the street to pick up Valynn.

Thursday I took Kyleigh to the doctor. She hadn't slept well for two nights and has had a cold so we suspected an ear infection. The doctor was positive she had one as well based upon what I told her. As it turns out Kyleigh didn't have an ear infection, which was good, and the doctor thinks she might have had a sinus headache from being congested or just had difficulty breathing. Our little peanut is now weighing 9 # 5 oz. Wow, is she getting big.

That is about all from here. I think I have the last two weeks summarized. Have a great week everyone.

Iowa Vacation

We had a great time on vacation. We left a day earlier than planned and headed to the Quad Cities. We went to the zoo and spent close to four hours there. They have a lot more features and animals than the zoo in Peoria. We were able to feed some birds nectar, they kids thought it was great how the birds would land on you. We saw a baby monkey playing with it's parents. The kids enjoyed all the animals and the train ride. After the zoo we headed north to Maquoketa to visit Bonnie and Jerald since we hadn't seen them all winter. Bonnie spoiled us with fresh homemade donuts and chocolate chip bars. We always eat too much when we're there. We had a great visit. On Monday we went to Burlington, IA. We went to the waterpark, go kart track, arcade, and bowling. The kids had a great time. Kyra didn't think much of the water at first but by the last day she loved it. Valynn was able to go down the big tube slide with Mark. I think the two of the would have spent most of the day there. It was too cold for the outdoor waterpark to be open, so maybe next time. Valynn and Mason were able to drive their own go karts. We made sure to drive down Snake Alley, it's the crookedest street in the world. We also had to try to tackle their 28" pizza (we ate half). The kids thought it was great to watch TV until 11:00 at night and sleep in the next day. The kids can't wait to go again. We have a busy weekend coming up so I'll be posting more pictures later.