Loader Ride

Well this weekend we finished our basement project (pics to come) we just have to do a few more odds and ends and we will take tomorrow and do that. This weekend concluded of finishing painting, put up our new trim and moving in. Jon's family came over and helped with the moving in part and we really want to thank them for that!! We got all the big stuff hauled in and a few small boxes. The rest will be put on a rummage sale come spring.

Then Sunday afternoon my brother came over with my dad's loader and cleaned off our driveway. The past week it has snowed here and there and it really adds up and when we drive on it all the snow gets packed down so Greg and Trevor cleaned all that up. Trevor rode with Greg the whole time and even drove some and most important rose the bucket up and down a thousand times!

Phase 2

Well today I hit it hard again and got the whole first coat on in the basement. Yep that includes trimming everything out and rolling everything. This took at 2 hours to do everything and about 1 gallon of paint. It is taking forever to dry so I will slap the second coat on later this evening and then we will be ready to put the trim on.

I really like the color (coffee kiss) because it is a little dark but yet a natural color that will match with almost anything. Our couch is a leather cranberry sectional so I am excited to see those two pieces compliment each other. What a successful day!! I was missing my side kick painting partner KELSI......what do you say Kelsi want to help with the second coat??

PS...there was not taping involved it was all free handed!

You can still see it is wet from the paint lines.

What did I get into?

Well I guess I was feeling brave today because I started a huge project that I did not think would turn out to be very big, I hope that made sense. Yesterday (my first day off) I cleaned the whole house, did tons of laundry and got organized from all the Christmas hassle. So last night my mom called and said she would like to come over today and help me take down the wallpaper border in the family room downstairs. I surely could not turn down help and said "come on over".

We started the long day at 8:30am hard at work and within 45 minutes we were both swearing because I am telling you that wallpaper was on with super glue. My mom has taken down a lot of wallpaper in her time and she has never seen anything like this before. She said "you call someone in town and find a steamer because there is no other way this is coming down". So we got in the car and went to the Rental Depot and rented a steamer for $26 for a day and back home we went. It still took a very long time to get it all down (4.5 hours to be exact) and we were both ready to die when we got done!! This is the funniest quote of the day, we were almost done and my mom looks at me and said "it is a good thing we got that steamer because if not we would of killed each other by now", that cracked me up!!

So you think that would end the day, yeah right!! After ALL the wallpaper was down I cleaned everything up and decided to get more dirty. I called around town and found a great deal on base board for the whole LL and our old neighbor has a business staining and so I gave him a call and he is going to do it all tomorrow for me so we can put it up tomorrow night. So we just got back from Lowe's with a crap load of stuff, not to mention everything to finish the laundry room yep we are moving into high power now, look out!! Tomorrow my project is to paint the whole LL so Jon can put trim on tomorrow night and we should have things moved in by Sunday.

Here are a few pictures of before and after today and I will post more of the final project when we are done.

Notice how high that border is?? My arms feel like they are going to fall off!!

Trevor is always a good helper!!

You can still see where it was but they make a paint product to use to paint over that first before you apply the actual paint.

The 5 Days of Christmas

Well we had a very exciting 5 days and I do not even know where to begin so here it goes.

Day 1: Friday

We traveled to Fargo on Friday afternoon to meet all the Healy's at a hotel to celebrate Jon's cousin's graduation from college. We were not even there for 2 hours and Trevor fell into one of the hot tubs (good thing auntie Jenny and uncle Jack are quick and were able to rescue the boy). That evening was spent with the family and friends playing cards, cranium, dice and all the kids swimming. It also turned into a very late evening.

Day 2: Saturday

Saturday we woke up and did some shopping before it was time to get together for the Healy Christmas. And then we all ventured to Hu Hot for a belly filling meal (very very yummy) Then at 3:00pm to all gathered in the party room to celebrate Christmas. Mikey surprised us all and made a video of a bunch of pictures from past to current times so we all watched that and then we opened gifts. The rest of the night was filled with cranium, cards, dice and more swimming!! And was once again a very late night.

Day 3: Sunday

We slept in and went swimming once again and packed up the car and headed back to Minnesota where we had Christmas with Jon's immediate family. We ate a great supper, opened lots of gifts and then watched the Vikings game and ended with a game of dice. And still managed to get into bed by 1am.

Day 4: Monday (Christmas Eve)

We woke up and waited for Diane's brother and Sister's families to arrive and enjoyed a great meal of kumla. Once again we opened more gifts and then we were out to door to have Christmas with my side of the family at my grandma and grandpa Pearson's house. All of my family arrived in time for a huge Christmas Eve meal and then......yep you guessed it opened more presents!! Trevor was getting pretty tired so we left around 8:30pm and put him to bed at my mom and dad's house. My parents came home and we watched movies and had too much to drink.

Day 5: Tuesday (Christmas Day)

We woke up to snow which was really nice but what we did not know is that the snow would change our plans.

Trevor was very excited to open MORE presents and to play with all his new things. Then my brother and Kelsi left to go to her side and we got ready to head down to Dell Rapids to my grandma's house. While we were getting ready my dad decided to clean the fish that he caught the day before and Trevor was all about watching. NOTE: the cutting board he is using to clean the fish is a Christmas present I gave him in 1997 which I made all by myself, I did an engraving on the back for him and my dad showed it to Trevor so that was special.

So anyways, we were off to Dell Rapids and got as far as Brookings and it was getting worse so we called my parents who were about 15 minutes ahead of us and they said it was awful and they were turning around and so we did the same. So since my mom was in charge of bringing meatballs and gravy they just came over to our house and I made the potatoes and vegetable and we had a great meal. They we all watched a movie (all of us fell asleep) and then they went back home. So overall it turned out to be a good day!!

I am going to post a few of my favorite pictures and then I will put the rest in a slide show. Enjoy!!

Showing off their new coats.

We did not even plan it but all of us ended up wearing brown on Christmas Day.

Relaxing in his beach chair with his new best friend.

I love this picture of the 3 of us except for Trevor is not even looking at the camera.

Watching grandpa clean fish.

Merry Christmas to Everyone!

More Comments at pYzam.com

Well I wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I will be on a short blogging break until Wed Dec 26 because we will be taking off shortly and we will not return home until Wednesday. But just a little note to leave you with, Jon and I decided last minute (2 days ago) that we needed a new car and we just got it yesterday and I love it!!! I will post pictures on Wednesday.

I wish everyone safe travels and a Merry Christmas!!

Hunting and Fishing

Well as it turns out Jon had to take his week long vacation this week because of the start of his new year at work. If he would of waited and took it with me when I had off he would of lost it so he had to use up 37 hours. He went to work on Monday but has the rest of the week off and next Monday and Tuesday. So can anyone guess what he has decided to do with his time off since Trevor and I are not home?? Yep, go hunting and fishing!! Tuesday he went pheasant hunting with Mydland and then went fishing at Fish Lake and brought some home for Trevor to see but there were not any big enough to eat. Then yesterday him and our old neighbor Lucas went hunting and then fishing all day. Once again did not bring anything home big enough to eat, I like to give Jon a bad time about this. So here are some pictures that I took because Trevor was so excited to see the fish and the pheasant! Even though the fish were not big enough to eat I really thanked Jon for bringing them home to show Trevor because he was so excited!

Christmas #1

I am not even sure where to start so I will say this. Thank you to everyone for all the awesome holiday cards, Monday night when I got home I had 9 of them in my mailbox and last night I had 5, so yes yes please keep sending I love to read them!!

Second of all we had our first Christmas last night at home. Through out the next week we will attend 8 different Christmas's....yep that is right so last night we decided to get the ball rolling. We leave on Friday for Fargo and so we agreed to let Trevor open up his gifts from us last night since he will be so overwhelmed with everything and all the other gifts in the next few days. So I will post some pictures of everything that he got (yep grandma Mydland the pictures are for you) but I will also give you a list of the things he got.

1. Portable DVD player for the car (he was like oh wow a TV but once we told him it was for the car he said alright mommy lets go to the car and watch TV)


2. The mount to display the DVD player over the seat with headphones and the whole works


3. A coloring book with trucks in it and also a Elmo coloring book (he loves to color and wanted too right when he opened them up but we made him keep going)


4. Thomas the Train DVD (yep that went right into the DVD player and I have already seen it twice)


5. An Elmo DVD
   
6. Thomas the Train shoes that light up (yep he would of went to bed with these on if I would of let him but he wore them to daycare today to show everyone)


7. New PJ's (he also wore these today to daycare)
   
8. And last but not least and remote control pick-up (all I can say is oh my god, he loves this. I was really not sure when I bought it but holy smokes you should of seen this kid when he found out that the remote controlled what the car did, I will try to get it on video)

So here are some pictures for you to enjoy!!

Mary's Blog

Most of you may know Ryan and Kate Nelson. Ryan was really good friends with Jon growing up and he was also over seas when Jon was and they were able to get together a time or two. But anyways they had a baby girl last February and she has been diagnosed with SMA type 1 (spinal muscular atrophy). It is a group of diseases which affect the neurons of the spinal cord and brain stem.

I wanted to share her blog with you because they need all the support they can get because just this week she was diagnosed with pneumonia and she is once again in the hospital. Her website is http://www.miracleformary.com/ and then you can just click on the side of her web page to enter into her blog and to stay updated. Ryan and Kate our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Weekend Recap

Wow what a weekend we had. First of all I will start with Saturday. I had to work because it was SDSU graduation and so Jon went hunting and Trevor spent a few hours with my parents. Grandpa Dirk took him on his first ice fishing trip and Trevor played in the minnow bucket the whole time because there were fish in there according to him. Jon got his limit of birds in 20 minutes so they ate lunch in Hendricks and headed for home.

I worked all day catering for the graduation and I was in charge of helping set-up for the President's lunch. He met with our catering director and informed her that we are catering for a division 1 school so all of his lunch's should be top notch. Just to give you an idea of what this means, the director ordered 6 table clothes for the party and alone they were $400 plus the flowers and everything else. I took pictures so you could see how nice things looked.

All tables included Presidential china (we even polished the silverware)

The Menu if you can read it

You would think that after hearing all of this that Saturday was over but you are wrong. Saturday night was Jon's work Christmas party at the Ram Pub so Dennis and Diane were very nice and willing to babysit Trevor, THANK YOU!! Trevor had a great time with you he especially liked the 2 hour bath!

Sunday we headed to Sioux Falls to finish our Christmas shopping and boy was that a bad idea, it was nuts!!! Jon and Trevor stayed at Scheels the whole time while I went wild and hit every store possible to finish up. Then Sunday afternoon we went to my aunt and uncle's house for their Christmas party. They do it every year and everyone brings a $10 gift and we play and game so we each end up with one present. It was a lot of fun, Trevor especially thought it was fun because he played with all the cousins and helped everyone unwrap their gift. Total there was about 42 adults and 10 kids 10 and under, it was wild one. This was only about 1/4 of our family so if you think that is a lot of people you wait until you see the Christmas photos I take on Christmas Day. I took some photos to share so I hope you enjoy them!!

Trevor, Grandpa Dirk and Baby Lacie who is 5 months

One of my cousins brought this hat and Trevor thought he would give it a try

Not a seat in the house

Trevor playing with his new 4 wheeler that Santa brought

Grandma got a very cute present

Brittany got a new hat

Trevor is unwrapping Uncle Greg's present for him

Helping Grandpa Dirk

Happy, Happy, Happy

I am happy tonight for more then one reason!

Reason 1: I got home and in the mail were 3 very cute Christmas cards (The Sheik Family, The Goodale Family and The Johnson's) thank you to all of you, very cute cards!!

Reason 2: When I got home from the grocery store I received a call from the court house telling me that I do NOT have to report for jury duty because they have settled outside of court.

Reason 3: Tomorrow night is Jon's Christmas party for work and we could not find a babysitter until 9pm so grandma and grandpa Healy to the rescue!! (Don't worry Diane I stocked up on decaf coffe, splenda and soy creamer. I even got you your own little container to put it in so each and every time you visit you will know right where to go.) So thank you for helping us out!!

It has turned out to be a great night!!!!

Round Two!

Alright so I had a great plan to write a nice long post about Christmas but that all came to a damper around 5pm last night. I got home and got the mail and there was a letter for me to appear at the court house YES AGAIN for another round of jury duty! Are you kidding me?? I was furious because it is the worst time since finals are next week and we will be busy shutting down our building for a month. I need to report next Wed so I am going to have my boss call and beg that I do not have to do. Or we can all just wish that they settle outside of court. Do you know how awful it would be to have to do jury duty over Christmas? Especially for me because we are going to be gone for 5 days because of all the places that we have to go. This just really puts a stop to all my happiness.

Thanks to Diane here is a picture of the whole gang from last weekend at Jennifer & Chris's house!

11 Days

Well there are only 11 days left until Christmas, are you ready? I know I am not I still have some shopping to do. There are a few gifts that I just can not find, you would think after shopping at the Mall of America I would be able to find what I needed but so such luck.

I also wanted to let everyone know that I mailed out Christmas cards on Tuesday so if you have not seem yours yet you will probably get it today! I just love getting the mail everyday to see who's card I we are going to get. So far I only have 2, I sure hope we will get more!!

Have a good day!!

Water

Well I figured I have not posted anything about Trevor in a while so I thought I would do that today. As most of you remember he is still in love with playing water (as he calls it). He gets the chair in the kitchen and all the right equipment and plays water for hours at a time. For example last night he played in the kitchen sink for 45 minutes without moving. The he would get down and talk to us and play trucks for a few minutes and then play water again. By the end he was wet from head to toe.

When he was done playing water he came up to me and said "oh mom I am all wet, what did you do?"

Vacation

Well most of you do not know too much about ARAMARK the company I work so here the low down. For the most part I get most weekends off but there are a few where I have to work to help with catering or concessions or HOBO DAYZ or even graduation (which is actually this weekend). Since I help out on those weekends my weekday schedule really varies and I can pick my hours which is nice because then I can leave early since I worked the weekend or stayed late on a certain night. So lately we have been really busy and with graduation this weekend things are going to be crazy! Finals week are next week so that means only a few more days to get through. So my boss being the nice guy that he is has given all the manger's 5 days off through our Christmas break and we do not have to use our vacation or PTO day. Basically 5 FREE days!!

With the holidays that I already get and my 5 FREE days I will get almost 2 whole weeks off...YEAH! I can not wait!! I told daycare that Trevor would also be gone those days and then she informed me she was taking a small family vacation also on those days so I sure lucked out. Then to complete my whole vacation story Jon called me yesterday and said that Waltz had called him yesterday and said that he had too much vacation time saved up and so he needs to use a week before the 1st of the year or he will loose it. So can you guess what week he will take off??? The same story goes for him as well with all the holidays he will also get almost 2 weeks off.....can you tell I am excited?

Minneapolis & Clint Eastwood

Well this past weekend we traveled to Minneapolis to visit Jen and Chris to see there new home and also to do some Christmas shopping. We left on Friday evening and came home on Sunday so it was a nice trip but the driving got kind of long.

Friday night when we got there we just sat around, talked stupid and made a plan for Saturday. Jennifer had asked the boys to help haul in a mattress that was in the garage and it needed to go to the basement. So Jon, Dennis and Chris said no problem we will go and grab it. Jon and Dennis threw on there shoes and out to the garage they went. Well Chris on the other hand had to find his jacket, put on his ear warmers, put on his boats and by this time I was laughing so hard I said to Chris "by the time you get all your hoopla on that mattress is already going to be down in your basement." He had no response. I guess him and Jennifer and still used to there nice warm weather in Florida!

Saturday morning we got up ate breakfast and the girls headed to the mall for some serious shopping. We left the boys behind thinking they would make plans of there own but as the day went on they decided to just stay home. So when we got back from shopping Chris had made his famous ribs for us (they were very yummy). And then Jon and I gave Chris one of his Christmas presents early. It was the game "cranium" the reason we did this is so that we could play it that night and boy let me tell you it was tons of fun. Most of the pictures that I have are from the game and they just made me laugh so I had to post them. And then of course I had to post the video starring Clint Eastwood. While we were playing the game Dennis had to act out Clint Eastwood and Diane had to guess what he was doing, it was hilarious! On a side note Chris and I will never be partners at this game again, we did horrible!

Sunday we woke up and waited for some other friends and relatives to arrive to have brunch. Chad, Kristina and Sophia came over and also Jennifer's friend Melissa. It was nice to see them all again. Then it was time for us to head for home, we had a great time and can not wait to do it again. Thank you to Jennifer and Chris for all the great food and hospitality!!

The lefsa queen!

Showing off her 40 below boots she bought

Cranium partners (oh so cute)

All I can say is "uff-da"

I do not have a clue what she was trying to do

Father like son (look at Jon in pic above)

Little Sophia

I do not have a picture of everyone but I know that Jennifer and Diane took one will you please send it to me so I can post it.