Merry Christmas!

Well, Christmas has come and gone once again. Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I really enjoy Christmas. I like the overall feelings associated with the Christmas season. I am, however, a little burnt out on Christmas music. I am going to delete my Christmas music station on Pandora.com - at least until next year.

I think our children enjoyed their Christmas. We tried to keep it fairly simple this year. One of the best places to shop is a store we have here in Iowa City called Stuff. It is a second hand store that has great prices. We have bought everything from furniture to sporting equipment there. This Christmas we found some really nice shirts for the boys and a lot of books. I firmly believe that you can never have enough books. I also never throw a book away - unless it is absolute trash. I currently have two large book cases that are overly full. I am going to try to learn to make a book case (or two) this coming year.

It has also been nice to have some time off (even though I am sitting at my desk at work writing this - I had to check on something). I have been able to get some stuff done at home that I have been meaning to do. Really that means that I have been able to sit on my rear and read a good book. Our children have loved being out of school. They spend about half their day at the sledding hill and the other half back in the house trying to warm up. It has been bitterly cold here for about the past two weeks but today we are having a heat wave. The temperature is already in the mid-30's and is supposed to get into the 40's.

Wow! The concert last night was very good. There were a variety of performances. The show choirs were great and the string duet they had on stage while the choirs were switching places was incredible. I don't know that I have ever heard to high school aged musicians play that well. They played a piece by Handel that was extremely challanging and beautiful. I was surprised by the amount of talent on that stage last night. I guess I have just been to one too many 5th and 6th grade band performances. The best part was being able to tease Caleb about wearing makeup. He was very cute with rosy cheeks and eye liner. No wonder the girls all like him.

The Iceman arrived

I usually don't get very cold. Actually, I am usually complaining because it is too warm. Today, however, I can barely type because my fingers are so cold. A cold front moved in yesterday afternoon and the temperatures are hovering around zero. With the ever present wind, it is nearly -25 degrees outside. I am tired of winter already. In an effort to save money and save energy, we try to keep the thermostat set at around 66 degrees. In light of the cold outside, I checked the thermostat and saw that someone had it set at 62. No wonder I am so stinking cold.

Tonight is Caleb's first show choir concert. This will be interesting. It is always fun to watch gangly teenagers dance and sing. Caleb has a great voice with an incredible range but he needs to work on breath support which he claims he just can't do. Maybe if his teacher told him he would listen. I am pleased that Caleb is in show choir and hope he sticks with it.

check out this news story

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=75303


I found this news story to be quite interesting. I heard about it on the radio.

I feel that it should be okay to drive in that lane in this situation.

Good day

I had a good day today. Taught Body Step this morning and had a blast. After class, I immediately changed into my swimming suit and spent 10 minutes in the gym's hot tub. I felt wonderful. This afternoon, I spent two hours at the UI women's gymastics meet. It was an intrasquad meet (Gold team vs. Black team). The coolest thing is that a couple of days ago I was asked by the head coach to be one of the "celebrity" judges. It is a whole new vantage point to watch the floor exercise from the side of the mat. Part of the fun is that each team bribes the judges with candy. I got a whole gift bag with mini Snickers and Milky Ways in addition to a bottle of Diet Coke. The gymnasts are incredible. I wouldn't even dare to climb up on the balance beam let alone walk across it. Flips? Not a chance on a surface four feet off the floor that is barely wide enough for my feet. Now is all I have left to do for the day is a quick, 15 minute trip into work to do some cell culture.

Can I borrow your fridge?

You'd think one appliance going out would be enough this time of year, but NO it must be our thing around here to have appliances die.

Our refrigerator decided to quit as well. It felt warm over the weekend, Two days ago I put a thermometer in it. It reads 50 degrees. I took off the back of the fridge and vacuumed the heck out of it. It was dirty. However that didn't help. The thermometer has read 50 degrees and sometimes 52 degrees all day. No wonder why the milk tasted so bad at breakfast. It was nasty.

Problem is, it's a CROSLEY brand. Who has ever heard of that?

it came with the house. We moved here 2 years ago.

It's a newer looking model, but obviously a piece of crap. I called every appliance fixer person in the phone book and so far they all say the same thing

"We don't fix that brand"

Nice. I searched it on the Internet. The Internet will let me order parts. What part do you order? Seriously I haven't been trained in this. The Internet will also let me order a manual. Maybe I should so by the time a week or two goes by and everything rots inside I might have figured out what might be wrong. Meanwhile everything that is worth saving is out on the back deck in the snow.

Unbelievable.

Nothing in particular

Christmas is coming. We have snow on the ground and it is COLD! I know Christmas is coming not just because there is snow on the ground and the calendar says that it is December but because I have my Christmas station back on Pandora.com. It is nice to be able to listen to Christmas carols while I work. I love this time of year. It tends to be a little frustrating sometimes because we just don't have the resources but it is nice none the less.

Life has been a little disheartening around here lately but I am an eternal optimist and am always trying to find the silver lining. I firmly believe that there is good to found in everything that happens - you just have to look for it. Things are starting to settle down and hopefully will be back to a familiar routine/grind soon. I am very grateful for the peace I find in the scriptures and through prayer. I know that our Heavenly Father is very aware of me (and all of us) personally and is very concerned for my well-being. I very much appreciate His willingness to let me make mistakes and am aware how much it must pain him when I do so. As such, I am also very thankful for the atoning grace of the Savior. There is always hope.

December already!

Wow this year went fast. I am still in shock that Thanksgiving happened and is now gone. Only 23 days till Christmas.

New things going on in the last week:

Jason put seed in the birdfeeders and now we have birds of all types visiting our yard (word travels fast).

Our ceiling got the popcorn stuff put on it, so it looks mostly finished (at least more than it has in 4 months). It should look finished, but the taping job Jason did before the popcorn stuff is trying to fall down, so you can see the outline of the square hole. Not sure if it will ever look right unless we tear apart the entire ceiling and re-do all of it. I am dissapointed in the overall look, but really don't want to care about it anymore.

My Mom and Dad visited so we had a traditional Thanksgiving with a pretty table and awesome food. They traveled here from Ohio. Thanks Mom and Dad for making the 9 plus hour drive to be here with us. We appreciate the effort and time you took to be here.

I did a little bit of Christmas shopping. I purchased a large item for Scott, a few smaller things for Alyssa, some items for my friend Rodona, an item for Jared and two items for Jason. This is great for me since I'm a last minute shopper. I figured I'd spend a little bit per paycheck. I only spent $90 so far, so I'm doing well.

Taught a few classes over the weekend at N.D.A.C. that was fun.

Cleaned my Pampered Chef office.

Donated Plasma twice (I'm so grateful to be able to do that again) there was at least a month I wasn't able to donate because of waiting for results of a Protein test. The first two I had taken came back a point too low so I kept getting deferred for longer each time after the results of the test. This was frustrating since the money I make from donating plasma is our extra income so not having any extra this time of year was hard.

Anyway there's your update to our boring lives. Nothing much happens here. Honestly I'm not sure why I even update this since I'm not sure who even reads this thing anyway. I would love to know if you visit the blog. Ok friends and family out there, that was just an invitation to comment!!