getting back to order

Life with no frig was strange and now that the new one is in. The kids and I are trying to get life back in order. So the toy room got picked up and I moved the toy bins back to the wall. They got to eat mac n cheese while put all the food back in my cubbards. It worked well for us. Of course once I got it back in the boys moved it all back out of the pantry and move the cubbard like a fraction of an inch and then I had to put it all back in the cubbard again! But my kitchen is falling back into place. I love that I have the new frig. I wish I won the lottery now so I could redo the rest of that kitchen but Ed Mcmann has not come knocking and either has the lottery. Dang it! But I have me 4 children who love me for me which somedays is a hard thing i am sure of that!

And someday when old Ed comes knocking I will do something then.

thanks for the help

yea you know how most kids helpa nd shovel off the driveway making it clear of the white stuff? No not my daughter she shovels the snow back onto the driveway so it looks better. Yea we just roll with it too. She gets an idea in her head as the correct thing and there is no changing her mind. So you just go with it and in the end she comes up with what she needs and we get to laugh with her in the process!

catch up post

Does Dennis not look dang cute in his Christmas gift? It is so when he works on the computers or car it shines light for him. It take a man to wear something that funny and not care!

And is Twitch not just making you shake in your boots with that look? Dennis got him worked up and this is what he looked like. I think he wanted to tell Dennis to stop chasing him but I do not know. Maybe he is going to attack? Except that right after this he curled up in my lap and slept!

Love it

Here it is with food in it. I have way more room then I had before. This is all the food Ihad in the old frig. Mind you we have been careful for a few weeks not to keep left overs for more then a day. We ate them all the time so keep space open downstairs. But wow! Space. This is also all the food form my old freezer! Space glorious space!

Here it is my frig

I have not named our new frig but I feel like I should. Because it has taken on so much with us as a family! It best live up to those expectations to!

It is here!

Yes it is my new refrigerater is here and in! I hooked up the water line. I sanded off some of the top cubbard and it is in! I am soo stinking excited! I want to put food in it. but I am waiting to let it get cold first. I do not have to walk to the basement to get milk! Well as soon as I walk down there and go put it in my new FRIG!! I will take more picture soon and post them. But I must go admire my handy work!

I do not know that you should be so excited over something but I am. I love me my new frig and I love that it means I can move my food back to the main level of my house! Thank you to Lowes for sending toe 2 nice men out to bring it into my house and put it all together because without you I would still have no stinking frig!

Guess what?

Guess what is coming? Guess Guess!! I tell you it is coming at 9:30am and it is 9:08 now!! I am soo excited I am having the neighbors over for supper tonight!!

The ramblings of me

Yea this will bounce off many topics. But man I must say that today I have cabnets that are spaced 36" apart. I have staining to do. But when my new frig comes in it can go in my kitchen. That is a sticking point though. It should have been on a truck today to get delivered to the store and to my house tomorrow morning. That did not happen. the next truck is due on thur. Maybe! If not then Friday so my frig maybe here Friday morning or not. It maybe here Sat or not. It will come someday though of that I am sure. I maybe ready for it with staining done or not. I do not care right now.

I am sewing 2 shirts today for a pair of ladies who are doing a biggest loser at their gym. They amaze me with how well they have done. I have done laundry all day today again as poor Mini slept through an accident last night. Sheets, blankets, mattress pad. The works. And she woke up freezing at 4am cold and wet and so very sad that she had an accident. It came because she had not had a nap and she went to sleep at 6pm. And she was tired. I hope tonight is not a repeat as she once again skipped nap and once again is sleeping for well over an hour now. I think I will wake her before I go to bed for a pee break.

Today I watched a new Preident take office. Today I watched a man leave office and go home. I wonder what it feels like. To get to leave office and the stress that the office entails and get to go home. The emotions that must be there good and bad. I wonder if he can sleep tonight finally knowing that no one is depending on him. Yea I know many did not like him. You did not depend on him. But I wonder what it feels like to be the president in the morning and not that night. I just hope that our new President can do all the change he promises. They all go into office so young looking and the weight and stress age them so very much. I hope this time is different. I hope for once a politian can go there and get work done for the good of the country without worry of whether in 4 years someone will re-elect them. Please Mr President suck it up and do what is good for the country and do not worry about politics.

And now this Mommy is going to go workout and then tuck my little ones into bed. Good Night!

Pinewood derby race

Oh the time of year has come again that we raced our little 5.0 oz car down a track. Stephen did really well again. He placed 7th out of about 40 cars. He came up with the design a long john donut. And he did the sanding. I painted the sprinkles as it got to be the morning of weigh in and we were still painting.

There were judges and there were friends and in the end the boys had a really good time. Stephen got to go out ice fishing after the race. So it was a fun filled day till the end!

This is the last year Stephen will be in the pinwood derby as he will crossover come the beginning of March. So the 2nd year Weblos carried the flags. It is odd to see this year coming to an end. To see cub scouts come to an end as we will now move forward with boy scouts. Though I am sure we will get 1 year off and then be back in as Matthew can not wait for cub scouts so when 1st grade rolls around I am sure we will be back to tuesday night meetings.

Refrigerator shopping

I wish I could say we bought the first one we found. The first one we liked at the first store we went to. Well I can say that but only after going home, going to 4 more stores, going back again. And then talking to Jim and Kent to see about moving my cubbards. And then going back to the first place and buying a refrigerater that for now does not fit in my kitchen! The picture is of the frig we would buy if we could not move our cubbards but now we are going to be moving cubbards tonight. Yes we are taking the pantry and moving it 1 3/4 of an inch down the wall to be flush. Then the frig I bought will fit when it is delivered Wed. So please let this work! Or I own a very expensive piece of wall decor!

The one we bought has twin doors on top. It also has more space. Wish Castco sold it. But oh well. We got the bigger frig for almost the same price as the smaller one and we like the bigger one much much better. So we will go with it. And the men will come deliver it and take away my old one and they will set up my new one. And I will no longer have to walk the stairs 100 times a day getting milk, butter, ketchup, or anything else I need from my frig.

But for tonight I am emptying out my pantry and I am cleaning a kitchen so we can make it dirty. Yea you have to love just wrecking things! I am afraid very afraid since Dennis and I have no clue. Kent can do it though. He has done it before. If not Jim has promised I can call him. Got to love brothers. Anyway, I have more posts they have to come later. Laundry is being done and that kitchen will not be ready for the boys if I do not get my butt in gear!

Dennis' Kroll party

We got invited to the Kroll Christmas party! Wow got to say had someone said we would be standing for hours and hours I would have not wore 2 1/2 inch heels! But we had fun. We played blackjack for 3 hours and we earned 7 or 8 tickets to go in the drawing. Dennis is bad at blackjack and I am not much better is all I can say! We had no clue what we were doing since we do not play it. EVER

But we laughed and we accidently won and we put our tickets into the drawing. We did nto win but we had fun and it was nice to go out and dress up. Or play dress up. But man my shoes hurt me a lot! And I was not the only lady not walking to the car at the end of the night. We were lined ona bench waiting for husbands to go get the car so we did not have to walk anymore. And the car ride home was the first time I had sat since arriving at this party. My feet hurt. Good thing Dennis loves me with no high heels as I hate wearing them!

my old frig

So the repair man came wed and said you need a new frig. Your old one here has a compressor that is seized and the burning smell came from this here override switch. It has switched enough times it burned out and then smoldered and this here blackened area is what that smell was. Thankfully we were home and I smelled it. The thoughts it brings to my head if we had been fishing at the cabin for a week when it happened is not good thoughts. Though really nothing in this house is worth anything to me as long as my family is not in it. But still this will take some forgetting for me.
So I took everything out of the frig and I put it on the table and I had to figure out where it would all go. Somethings went in the garbage. Some went in the basement frig. I took out all the beer. And I squeezed all the freezer things outside in the freezer. but really it is amazing what you find in your frig when you empty it all the way out to clean. (Well I am not cleaning it now that it will be going to the recycling center)But out sad is this at 5 1/2 years it still has on its protective coverings on the shelves in the freezer! If only it worked!

Samantha's Back

Yea sorry everyone I left you all hanging. It has been insane here is the only way to put what this week has been. Her appointment turned out good. Her back is curved we knew that. They will take x-rays every 6 months now and she will go see Dr Walker after each x-ray. So we will show up to Gillette and go get height and weight and then x-rays then go see Dr Walker. And let me say these people have it down at getting you to where you should be. So for the next 6 years Samantha will have a hot date at the hospital in July and Jan. If her curve hits 15% then her dates will get moved closer together. At 20% they will brace her back. And then 60% of the time no surgery is required. 40% it is still needed to fix the back. So we wait and see. And I am just fine with that.

As for her legs, they have nothing to do with her back. Her femur bone is rotated in on both her right and left legs. Her right leg also has a rotation in the tibia bone. So it turns in in two places. But all that being said. Good news is it is not bad enough to require surgery. Bad news is then nothing gets done so she will just run with her toes pointed in. But it will not hurt her. When she grows he said it will be when she notices it so biking will bother. that is what they invented IB for is what I guess. He will continue to watch it though when she goes for her back appts and if it starts to limit her we will see.

So it was a good appt. We had to go down there on a day full of snow and wind and people crashing cars. But we got there fine and we got home fine. But I was glad Dennis was our driver as way too many people on the road. In July I might MIGHT try to go on my own there as he can not be taking a day off at least 2 days a year to go watch her get an x-ray. At some point I will have to learn to drive St Paul. YUCK!

Way to cold out

We have no school today. It is 42 below zero with the windchill. I will not allow the kids to step foot outside out home today. For nothing!
My bad day the other day started like this:
I woke at 4:30am (not my best time of any day) I smelled burning plastic. Great a house fire at 4:30am could it be at noon when I am awake please?! I got Dennis up and he freaked. (Note to self do not wake up husband at 4:30am and mention house fire) He wanted the kids out of the house even with no smoke alarms going off. No thanks I will wake them up if I see smoke or flames not before. So we wnet around the house looking. We narrowed it down to our kitchen. Great as there is how many appliances there. We checked the new bunn coffee pot Dad gave us. No it did not smell of burning but man the odor was strong there. Dennis pulled out the frig and unplugged it and went checking in the basement in case the smell was coming up the vent from there. Nope he could find nothing. I plugged in frig and the stench was bad so we had found the culprit. Unplugged it and tried to go back to sleep. but images of what would have happened had I not smelled it did not sit great with me.

The thought of not getting my 4 kids up and out the door went over in my head. I fell asleep when Dennis went to work for the day and I got up shortly after. I called to get someone out to look at it. Not happening till this week. Great! I moved the frig stuff to the basement refrig. Thank goodness we keep that beer frig! And moved the freezer stuff to where I could out in the big freezer. (Maybe living in MN right now is not bad as I could have tossed things on the top of said freezer and they would be colder!

Then I turned on my computer to sew. And my masterworks which I use everyday I sew to make up my designs did not work because when Dennis shut down my computer it was not happy at how he did it. Great! I have a friend coming over to sew as her machine was broke and now mine is out to! And then e-mail went down and well the kids wanded me to go buy yogurt but gee you need space to put that and at the moment I have no frig space and I am tired and I am sure when they come look at said frig they will say I need a new one and well great because w eall have $1000 laying around to buy new frigs when old ones are only 5 1/2 years old! So yea it was a bad day but it did end. And yesterday they came to look at my frig and told me I needed a new one.

I was not suprised. he showed me the burning plastic I smelled the overload button had jammed or something because the compressor froze and it tried to trip but because it had done it so many times before it did not work and it started smoldering. And in the end I am thnkful beyond belief that all I need is a new frig. Because my family is safe and this week or next I will go pick out a new frig. Considering this one broke 6 months after the warrentee went out I doubt it will be from Sears.

This week is a busy one and I have sewed more and I have got some good pictures I will get them up later. For now I need to finish getting my girl scout cookie packets together and go deliver them. Because though it is cold Cookies go on sale on Sat and being the cookie Mom means I need to get 11 little girls their things so they can sell cookies! So if you see Samantha coming know she will hit you up to buy some cookies! Have a warm day guys and stay inside!

bad day

I am not having a good day. Nothing is going right and my additude is getting worse by the second not minute any more. I hope today is almost over.

Samantha

I thought I had posted about miss Samantha but I may have had the conversation in my head 100 times and did not put it on here. And it all came up wwhen Mom was going for surgery and recovery so it could have easily been left to the side.

Last May Samantha had her first x-ray for scoliosis. Her back was at a 10-12 degree curve only so a repeat x-ray in 9 months was ordered. Which would be here in Jan with her reg ped. But this summer Samantha went form riding her bike just fine and no pain to her right foot turn inward by about 45 degrees and her left foot starting to turn inward. And it hurt to ride her bike enough that she stopped. And where before we could not really see the curve it is visible now. Where her shoulder blades are a few inches apart when you look at her back. One sits higher then the other. And you can see a C in her back. So I know the numbers will be worse just not sure how bad. And we need to find out if her legs are seperate form the back or if her back and turning all of it. So she sees Dr Walker on Monday to let us know what is happening with her. And I am not sure what good news would be really. Nothing is wrong? And she has to learn to deal with it. Her back is getting worse wait it out. Kids are cruel or it is bad enough for surgery? Where I have to let them take my daughter and put her in a lot of pain. Really all of this hurts my head. But she is fine over all she just is having a harder time running and you all know how hard of a time she had before!

Anyway monday will bring us answers. I will post when we get home. But I expect that to be later rather then sooner.

this week

This week is flying by and I do not know where the time has gone. I got my Christmas stuff down. And Dennis put the tree up and out of the way last night. I bowled and did well again! 2 weeks in a row where I did well I don't know what is up! The week before Christmas I bowled a 225. I got 7 strikes in a row. If you know me that is soo not me! And last night I got 2 turkeys and bowled a 187. So to say my average will go up is inevitable. So now I hope the strikes keep coming as last night I went in with a 138 average and I expect a 139 or 140 for next week.

Today I am making a sweatshirt for someone that he ordered New Years Eve. And we are having dinner or at Tia's. I have a friends boy coming after school and I have laundry in the machine. I plan on vaccumming soon here, but am so not motived to do it. But it too needs to be done. I need to make a list of to do things as I do better with that but not got on that either. I did get my pot of peppermint coffee made and drank for that matter. I chatted on the phone with friends and a package arrived yesterday that I opened and found a pair of black leather undies in them. So I made a call to see why they showe dup on my door step! I am also planning on getting the design ready for those. As I am pretty sure what is going to go on those. I am also working on the valentines design for Shorty. Underwear seem to be coming out of my ears!

And I am filling out paperwork for Samantha's appt next Monday. I am reading up on it and seeing what we all need to do to make the day at Gillette go smooth. I filled out the paperwork to apply for Stephen to go to the magnet school based on math and science next year. I just hope he gets drawn as I think he would thrive in a math science based school. I am trying to decide if Samantha would do better in a magnet school to. But I think I will wait till she is in 6th grade to and send her to the one I am trying to get Stephen into.

If he gets in she is grandfathered in. I love that! Otherwise Stephen will go to the regular middle school next year. The year just started and yet it seems to be going much much to fast for me. My Christmas cards still sit in front of me on my desk. Dennis was going to put labels on them but he can not do that. So now I need to hand address them and I hate doing that. It would require I sit still and do it.

Maybe I will do it while we sit around and wait on Monday. Really Monday is taking up a lot of my head right now. I sure hope it goes good. Maybe I will make Samantha a special shirt as I did for Matthew when he had his echo. I do not have many projects on my plate right now. December was so busy and Jan is not so I may just find a cool design for her.

Anyway enough rambling as I need to get some things done here. My machine doe snot need me so off I go.

So tired

Mini and I and Twitch took a nap yesterday afternoon! I was so very tired and it was warm under the blanket! Mini had scared me to no end before she went to sleep by coming up to me and putting her nose on mine while I was sleeping and then hitting my face. So then she crawled up by me and slept and of course if I was sleeping so was puppy! I swear he doe snot ever leave my side!

Strange man

Ok it has been really cold out and even we thought it was cold in our house. So Dnenis does what? He puts on shorts and then a sweatshirt. I was under a blanket and still cold and he wore shorts and said how codl he was! Strange man is all I can say!

puzzles

the kids gave me a puzzle for Christmas. It was called an impossible puzzle. We had it together in a few hours. Pain in butt puzzle but not so very hard to do. And then I put another together but it was missing pieces so after I got that one together I tossed it. But Mini loved it as it glowed in the dark. So we had to leave it up long enough to get dark out to see it shine.

Not coming out

Twitch was afraid when we came home we may just leave again. I did not put his kennel upstairs right away and he was afraid of getting left home alone so he kept going in his kennel to sit in case I was leaving. And he is a big brother! His mommy had 2 more puppies on New Years day! I want to go up and see them soon. No we are nto getting anymore puppies. One is enough! But he should get to meet his sibling don't you think?!

Mom's side

Since the gathering was for Mom's side of the family we took a picture of her and her siblings that are left. And then the husbands and wives to. Lisa wanted a copy of them all so I am posting them here. Mom got to wear her wedding rings. She was so excited. It has been years and years since her set fit. And now they are loose on her. It is a reminder of how hard this has all been on her though. And it is moments iwth family that are so very good. We drove her home after lunch so she could go get some sleep. More sleep would not hurt her. It seems we talk about it all the time! The things you never plan on having a daily talk on with your Mom. I am just happy to say her repeat colonoscopy came back great and there is no sign of cancer returning! Now for the oncologist the end of Jan to look at her lungs.

New Years Day

We had New Years at Pauline's house. Not many of us there but we had a good time and lots of food as always! We did not stay to long as we had to head back here to Elk River and the weather was not all the great. We got home by 3pm and we were glad to be inside where it was warm!

Helping Mommy sew

Mini sat and helped me sew towels and underwear the one day. She loves to sit and chat with me while I am busy changing colors. Well her favorite spot is of course on my lap but that makes changing colors really hard! So in a chair next to Mom is where she is most of the time, checking things out!

Homemade carmels

I made these on the 30th and the 31st. They came out great! I have a few blisters on my hand form it splattering me but they came out great. Dennis took some to work and I left some for Mom and Dad and I gave some to Lisa and Allen. I sent some to friends and I plan on sending some to Joseph in a box to. I also sent a whole sheet of them to Tia. Since she helped make the first batch with me.

We have plenty left here at home but I have to get them out of my house since I am eating way to many of them for my own good!

Flowers

Dennis brought me flowers the one day. They smell heavenly and I love that they are bright in this cold yucky weather we are having once more. Spring could get here anytime if you ask me!