Love

Oh how we LOVE this baby!!!! She has some serious bed head in the mornings. . . or make that all the time! But, we think she couldn't get any cuter! :-)

Dirt Pile

Here is what our yard looks like after they tried to jam all the frozen dirt back into the hole. It sticks up almost two feet off the grass. One good thing out of all of this is they didn't have to rip up any cement.

Water line break

Yesterday, I got home and went out to get the mail. It was below zero outside so I moved quick. As I got to the mail box my shoe stepped in slush. I thought, "Hmmm, that's odd!" I quick went back inside. As I was looking through the mail, I realized my sock was wet from stepping in the water. I thought for a moment longer and thought I better go back out to the mailbox and check it out. Why would there be open water when it was blow zero outside? Checking it out some more, I figured it could only be one thing. . . a WATER LINE BREAK!!!! I was hoping I was wrong! I called the guy from the city and he came over to look at it. He said he would check back in the morning to see if there was more water. Well, this morning the water was now several feet out from our driveway. . . so yup, it was a water line break! An hour later they had an e-mail out to the entire city telling them that parts of the town would be without water while they fixed it and they had the back hoe in our yard and began to dig. These are the pictures I just took when I ran home on my lunch break. Nice huh?!?!

This picture is deceiving. . . I couldn't believe how deep this hole was. Notice the ladder in the top right. They needed that to get down to the bottom. It was SUPER deep!

Here is a close up of the pipe.

Now we are just waiting word if it is our responsibility to pay for this or if it falls onto the city. Keep for your fingers crossed that it is the cities responsibility! :-)

5 Months

You would think getting ONE good picture would be an easy task. . . but not with this little monkey! Getting her to sit still long enough is next to impossible. I think I took around 50 pictures and this was the best one I got.

New things she can do this month are: Sit on her own (for short periods), get up on her hands and knees (again for short periods), use her hands to grab things and bring them to her mouth, scoots all over, rolls so quick we are always surprised she doesn't get dizzy, and loves standing in her exersaucer. She is still such a happy girl. She loves her big brother and sister and could watch them play for hours! :-)

Ten Years!

It is hard to believe it has been ten years today since our Grandpa M. passed away! There are SO many things I miss about him! The thing that makes me the most sad is that my children never had the chance to meet him. We talk about him often, so they know who he is. We know he is smiling down on us (probably from the back of a horse!) We love you and miss you so much Grandpa!!!! Until we meet again . . . .

"Our Dad"
By: Nana (This was read at his funeral by my cousin Jamie) :-)

Our Dad was one of the last of the cowboys. He loved Quarter Horses, Hereford cattle, and Fords. Two of his favorite horses were Beauty and a palomino named Topper. As children we enjoyed the stories about Beauty. She was the horse that you couldn’t fall asleep on if you were fox hunting. She would put you behind the saddle and you would have to hang on for dear life as she bolted ahead when a fox leaped from its den. She was also the horse that could run all day and still be ornery enough to turn around to kick you at day’s end when you unsaddled her. Dad gave the last of her bloodline to his granddaughter, Mistie, so their spirit lives on. Dad loved going to horse sales and entertained us with his horse-trading stories. One particular story comes to mind when we recall Dad harnessing a “well-broke” team to the stone boat only to see him racing around and around the pasture on a full-blast run. As it turned out, the horses had been tranquilized to behave in the ring, and when the reins hit the next morning and the drug had worn off, the true story unfolded.

He loved raising pheasants, Canadian Geese, and buffalo. Our childhood memories are filled with German Shepard puppies, chickens that laid colored eggs, and baby lambs. And who could forget the famous line, “a sick sheep is a dead sheep.” Yes, we grew to love cattle because who could love an animal as dumb as a sheep. And Dad’s favorite sheep joke was about a teacher asking the question, “Students, if you have four sheep and one sheep crawls through the fence, how many do you have left?” Little Johnny answers, “Zero!” The teacher says, “Johnny, you are wrong, the answer is three,” and Johnny replies, “Lady, you don’t know nothing about sheep, if one sheep gets out, they all get out.”

Dad’s favorite time of the year was spring and summer. Calving brought great joy to Dad as he loaded us in the Ford pickup to tour the pasture and check out the baby calves or colts. Each Sunday was spent attending church and then we were off for the “Hills” to inspect his beloved polled Hereford cattle. We each had our favorite calf and Dad happily searched the entire pasture until we found ours. Dad was a man of few words. Some of his famous one-liners were: “I don’t need it in writing, a man’s word should be good enough.” “Are you up for all day?” “How’s my girl?” “Do it right the first time and you won’t have to do it over.” “Do you want to race, or are you afraid this Ford will beat you?”and “You could drive the wheels off a Cadillac and not find a girl as nice as her.”—referring to Rodney’s wife, Cindy, of course.

Dad was a great father. He was patient and kind. The only time he ever lost his temper was when he was sorting or chasing cows. He was a mentor. You learned by his example because he was not afraid to tackle any task. He was exceptionally proud of his grandchildren, Heidi, Jamie, Mistie, Jill, and Tami Jo and his great-granddaughter, Addi. He loved to watch Addi walk on her toes. He walked the road of honesty, hard-work, and pride in a job well-done. Dad, we will miss you dearly, but if God needed one more cowboy in Heaven, then we guess you’re the perfect one!

Finding a Cure!

Hi, everyone! Many of you have heard me talk about Kenley, our friend's daughter who has diabetes and celiacs. For the last couple years she has been doing a diabetes walk along with her family to help raise money to find a cure. This year she has included Easton in on her write-up. We can't read her story without tearing up! We are so blessed to know her and see how strong she is. . . It gives us hope!!! After reading her post we knew we needed to join her team and start working to help find a cure!

I wanted to send you the following links for the “Kenley’s Krew” website as we prepare for the JDRF walk. I know we all have causes that are near and dear to our heart, so please DO NOT feel obligated in any way to donate. Financially, we can’t do it all.

The links below will show you Kenley’s personal page (a paragraph in her own words) and our team page. The third link is Easton's. . . Not as detailed as Kenley's, but I'll work on that ! :-)

http://www2.jdrf.org/site/TR/Walk-MN/Chapter-MinnDakotas4316 px=1213300&pg=personal&fr_id=1665

http://www2.jdrf.org/site/TR/Walk-MN/Chapter-MinnDakotas4316?team_id=41715&pg=team&fr_id=1665

http://www2.jdrf.org/site/TR/Walk-MN/Chapter-MinnDakotas4316?px=2005962&pg=personal&fr_id=1665

JDRF is making lots of headway in the fight to find a cure. Not only are they making great strides to find a cure they are also developing many great technologies to help make the lives of people who live with diabetes a little easier. For example, they are the ones who are pushing the FDA to approve the artificial pancreas. Check out their website to learn more! http://www.jdrf.org/

Thanks so much for anything you can donate! :-)

Student of the Month

At the end of the school day yesterday our principal came on the intercom to announce the January Students of the Month! For preschool, Miss E's name was called. We were very excited for her! She is really starting to come out of her shell and is making some great strides this year.

The Student of the Month gets a certificate, a free personal pizza, a pencil, and a free movie pass. She also gets her picture on a bulletin board and in the local newspaper. To celebrate also we went out to Space Aliens (something she has been asking for a while to do!)


Here is a close up of her write up and her picture on the bulletin board.

Weekend Fun

We finally got some snow this weekend so Daddy set out to make the biggest snowman ever! ;-) Yup he is still a kid at heart! Mommy had to tease Daddy that he got his snowman made, but didn't have time to shovel the driveway! LOL!!! Both Miss E and Little E had strep throat this weekend so they watched Daddy work from the window.

Two days later everyone was feeling better and ready to go out and help decorate the snowman.


Then it was time for a few trips around the yard on the sled.