Joomies – noun – (jew-me’s) – Jammies from the mouth of a two year old.

Baffles – noun – (ba-fulls) – Waffles from the mouth of a two year old.

Tomorrow is Saturday, wear your Joomies and enjoy some Baffles!

C-

Alrighty, I got the new pictures up. http://www.pastorsfamily.com/Dec25-Jan212007/index.html We got the new Adobe Elements 5.0 program (moving up from 2.0) and my oh my, is it much easier and nicer to use! When you go to the pictures area – at the bottom there is a button to play it as a slide show.

Highlights of this set
- The rest of Christmas
- Dane’s Long Hair (which I adore) and short hair (which I am not as fond of…) But he’s still pretty darn cute!
- Matt’s Injury (It’s a long story… – suffice it to say when you are changing sheets you should not accidentally catch them on the light cover…
- Snow
- A Trip during Christmas Break to a Fun Play Place
- The Message Bean Plant
- The kids just being goofy

ENJOY!

What a poor neglected blog. Sorry! I have been very busy – Matt was out of town for a week in WI for a pastor’s conference and I have been working diligently on a new website. It is a retail store called Family Kitchen Boutique. It is not quite ready yet, but it has been fun picking out all the products for it! I have my designer working on the design. She is very talented, so I am excited to see how that turns out. It has been a whole new experience signing up for a Reseller Tax ID, and talking to wholesalers. I might even take in a trade show in Chicago in the spring. We’ll see!

So Dane has been working on potty training for about a week and a half. He is doing wonderful… as long as he is naked. The second we put underwear or a pull-up on him he decides it’s easier to use that. So hopefully he’ll decide to keep his underwear dry one of these days soon.

Ryan got his second report card last Wednesday. He is doing really well. He had 3 A’s and two B+’s. No complaints about that! They grade fairly strict as well, his B+’s were 93%. Christian also had a little mini-report. He knows all of the letters they have taught him so far A-M, can count to 10, and writes his name if he looks at his name tag. He’s right on track his teacher says, so that is reassuring. I always feel like he is a little behind since Ryan was advanced at this age.

Ryan joined basketball and has practice on Friday and games on Saturday through mid-March. So now our driveway has a brand new basketball hoop in it. It is the big 10 foot one that can be lowered to kiddo height.

We FINALLY got our first big snow (well sort of – about 2 inches). It was on Sunday so we went to church and then let the kids play to their heart’s content. Dane snuck outside right after church and played without mittens for a bit and then he cried and cried because his hands were so cold. Once we got him all bundled up he had a blast. Matt pulled the boys behind his John Deere in their sleds. That was so cute! I will try to update the photo gallery later tonight or tomorrow with all our recent pics.

The boy’s school had 16 kids gone today (out of their tiny population – I think they usually have about 85 or so). Christian only had 4 out of the 8 kids there. Ryan I think had 5 missing out of 21. Lots of little bugs going around, so I am hoping we don’t end up with something new since they finally got better. Dane has had a runny nose for a week and a half or so, but this morning I finally figured out that his top 2-year molars are coming in. So that explains that.

All right, I am off to help the boys with baths and head to church for a meeting.
C-

I guess it is time for an update! Our internet was not working properly for quite a few days. We finally got a technician out here yesterday to hopefully fix the problem. They were out here a couple months ago and “fixed” it. It worked about 2 weeks, so we’ll see!

Let’s see…. Looks like I left off with Christmas Day. The week between Christmas and New Year’s we just hung out as a family. We took a trip to a new place an hour north that is kind of like Chuck E. Cheese only bigger. They had the normal arcade games and tube playstructure thing. Then they had bumper cars, one of those big wavy slides like at the fair, and mini bowling. We had a good time. Afterwards we did some shopping and when we got back to the car I was loading the kids and Matt was loading the loot. My purse was hanging on the stroller. Well, I was busy solving a dispute about a Starbucks drink the kids were sharing when Matt set my purse down by my feet thinking that I would notice. (Yeah, you can probably guess the rest of the story…) So we get almost home and go through the McDonalds Drive through. I say, just a sec. I have a Gift Certificate for here, oh you probably put my purse is in the back. (figuring Matt put it back there with the stroller.) Matt says “Um… no you should have your purse” So yup, we left my purse in the middle of a strip mall parking lot! We drove the 45 minutes back while we called as many stores as we could think of in the strip. No one had it turned in. So Matt hit up the other stores we didn’t call while I searched the parking lot. (There was an older gentleman sitting in his car who I think thought I was crazy as I was wondering the parking lot in the dark looking under cars and all around at the ground.) Thankfully, someone had turned it in to the Party Store and everything was accounted for. PHEW! That was an adventure!

The 30th in the middle of the night Dane came down with the flu. He had not been eating much all week, but toddlers can be like that so I didn’t think too much of it. So we spent that night washing sheets, sanitizing etc. Fun Fun! He only threw-up once (first time in his life) but he had plenty of lovely diapers. Once again Matt and I did not get it. I am so thankful! Ever since then he has been eating like a horse. He is constantly saying he is hungry and we even fed him yogurt in the middle of the night last night because he was crying and saying he was hungry. I think he is finally making up from his cast and flu. He is noticably heavier the last couple days. He was getting pretty skinny! He also started walking on the 27th. He is doing pretty good, although he is still stiff in the morning and after his naps and he still limps along. The doctor said that is normal and should go away within a couple months. I am just glad I don’t have to haul him around everywhere anymore. He is much happier being able to go where he wants as well. He also is talking up a storm with full sentences these days. He surprises us every day with what he says. He’s a pretty smart little guy.

The boys are back at school now. Christian was really excited to go back. Ryan didn’t show much opinion either way. Ryan had an hour and 20 minutes of homework last night! I guess his teacher was trying to make up for Christmas break or something. Matt and I weren’t too impressed. Poor Christian had a hard day at school today. He got bit by another little boy and then later he was laying on the couch and just burst into tears. I asked him what was wrong and he said the kids at school laughed at him when he was trying to write his letters on his white board at school. Poor little guy!

Well, I have all kinds of great intentions for the new year, and one is to be in bed by 11:00 p.m. It is 11:12, so I guess I better sign-off. The goal is to get up at 6:30 each morning to do devotions before the boys wake-up. Well, since the first Dane has woken up every single day between 5:45 and 6:20. Go figure! He never used to do that! I have still been able to sneak my devotions in, but I would much prefer to do it on my own in the quiet morning. Hopefully soon he will get back on his normal routine again.

Happy New Year!
C-