Chance Is Here Today

I don't know, was Garth in the house? 

posted by Colleen @ 12:15 PM 1 comments

Happy Thanksgiving! 

posted by Colleen @ 12:12 PM 0 comments

Just Relaxing 

posted by Colleen @ 12:09 PM 0 comments

It's so hard to sleep when the lights are so bright! 

posted by Colleen @ 12:06 PM 1 comments

Race's First Deer!!

Well, the key to life is being in the right place at the right time and being flexible! My cousin Thad, his wife Wendy and their two kids Race 12 & Riley 11 live behind us about 1/4 of a mile. This is Race's first year hunting and he and Thad have gone up to Eli the past two weekends hunting. He says people have been teasing him because he hasn't even seen a deer. Well this weekend Wendy is up in International Falls and Thad took Riley to Hockey practice so Race was home alone sitting in his parents room watching TV. He said he looked out the window and there was a 5 point buck in the back yard. He tried calling his dad, but didn't get an answer so he grabbed his shotgun, stepped out the back door and fired. He figures he missed with the first shot and so he shot again. This time he got the deer about 100 yards from the house! He called our house right away at about 8:45am to see if David knew how to gut a deer. David said no, sorry he didn't know how but the Uncle Kenny would. So, we called Uncle Kenny and David and Kenny headed back to take care of the deer. Mom, Chance, Jordyn and I got ready and went up. We got the deer gutted and drug up into the back yard when Thad got home. Boy was that kid proud and rightly so, GOOD JOB RACE!!!!

Of course little Miss Jordyn had to get into the action. Uncle Kenny has been saying that he was going to take her out deer hunting with him, I guess this is as close as it gets this year.
I told her the key to life is being flexible. One minute dad is feeding her breakfast and the next minute we are in the woods gutting a deer!

posted by Colleen @ 8:24 AM 4 comments

Happy little girl. 

posted by Colleen @ 1:35 PM 1 comments

All this... 

posted by Colleen @ 4:01 PM 0 comments

Went into here... 

posted by Colleen @ 3:56 PM 0 comments

And finally after two years, into here!!! 

posted by Colleen @ 3:34 PM 0 comments

We did it!!!

I can't believe it, it is done!!!

This morning we got up at 5:00am to get ready to go to Duluth. We reserved the U-haul truck for 8:00am and so we planned on leaving the house by 6:30am. But, like any household with kids, we were about 15 minutes late. Then, we drove down Hwy 16 to about 5 miles from Hwy 53 and realized that we didn't have the keys to the storage unit gate! There is a story there...

Two years ago when we were moving all of our stuff into the storage unit, David talked to the owners and made arrangements for our moving in. They said that the office was not open on Saturdays, but that the gate would be open. So, Saturday morning David, my mother, my cousin Thad, his wife Wendy and I headed for Duluth with our van and the U-haul Truck. We got to the storage unit and pulled up in front of the gate which was locked with a chain and paddlock. Of course we were all upset because they told us it was going to be open and we had people coming to help and a truck full of stuff. So Thad and David, being the industrious guys that they are, decided that we should go nextstore to Menards and buy a saw and another lock and cut thru the chain. So, that is what we did. After opening the gate we went in and drove around but we couldn't find storage unit #917. We were confused for a second until we realized that those numbers were nextstore in the storage units with the open gate! So we drove out and shut the gate and then refastened the chain with the new lock. That way they could still get in the gate by opening up their lock! Boy did we feel stupid but we sure had a good laugh, needless to say, we never confessed to them that we did that.

Anyway, today we decided that we should just go back and get the key in case the gate was closed.

Despite the fact that there is a U-haul Truck place a block from where our storage shed was, we had to drive to Superior to get our truck. Apparently only the people from Wisconsin can get their trucks in Hermantown! We got to the storage unit at 9:30am and after a short two hours had everything loaded!! After a quick dinner at McDonalds, we headed home. At home it only took one hour to unload the whole truck. I want to take a second to thank a whole bunch of people who made something I was so looking forward to yet seriously dreading (if that makes sense) turn into hardly any work at all.

Thank you to my sister Diane and nephew Aaron who showed up in Duluth to help on that end.
Thank you to my sister Sharon, nephew Wade, friend Scotty, cousin Wendy & her son Riely, our Rustproof friend Kranny and my really good friend Craig and Kirsty & Bre for making this end of the work go by so fast.

Thank you to my mother who at 81 is more willing to help than any person half her age and never ceases to amaze me.

Thank you to my sister Sandy who yet again comes to my aid showing up at our house at 6:30am to watch my children so that I can do what I need to do and not worry about them!!

You guys have no idea what your showing up and helping means to us! We are certainly blessed!!! I guess I am home now!

posted by Colleen @ 3:28 PM 1 comments

Swinging with Woody & Jesse. Chance didn't want Jordyn to be lonely in her swing so he gave her some "friends" to hang out with 

posted by Colleen @ 3:28 PM 2 comments

Her brother sure loves her! 

posted by Colleen @ 3:25 PM 0 comments

My beautiful little girl! 

posted by Colleen @ 3:22 PM 1 comments

I don't know, who do you think, Jordyn or Chance. I have been going thru Chance's pictures on our CD's (I finally got our E drive to work). This is Chance when he was almost 6 months old. I couldn't believe it when I looked at them, Jordyn looks just like him but with a little longer face. 

posted by Colleen @ 6:07 PM 3 comments

Taking Our Insulation for a Drive

Yep...we bought our insulation in June and we really felt that it needed to get out for a while so we took it down to Duluth!!!

OK, not really but sort of. We bought all of the insulation for the house last June and now it is time to start insulating the basement. The studs upstairs were 16" in center, but the studs in the new basement are only 12" so we decided rather than David cutting all of the insulation we would return the 16" stuff and buy 12". So we loaded the insulation on the truck and put the kids in the back seat and off we went to Duluth. Actually we had some other stuff to do down there too. Anyway, we went to Home Depot and David and an employee unloaded the insulation and put in on two carts and brought it into the store. The lady gave us a store credit because we brought the wrong receipit down and we headed to the insulation asile to get our 12" stuff. Guess what, THEY DON'T MAKE 12" INSULATION!!! So, feeling really dumb, we grabbed the two carts with our insulation still on it, and headed to the checkout. Unfortunately, they called the same young man to come and help us load the insulation back on to the truck so we got busted!!!

The upside of the story is that on the way to the insulation asile, we passed a "hot deal" sign by some flooring. They had 3/4" thick 2 1/4" wide solid oak wood flooring on sale for $2.99 a sq ft. The manufactured thin flooring is $2.49 a sq ft so this was a really good deal. We needed 500 sq ft so you do the math!!! It was the exact color that I wanted too, which is darker than my mother wanted but since it was a really good deal we made an executive decision and got it. I am really excited about having real hardwood floors in the kitchen and dining room, but I am nervous too. With 5 cats, 2 kids and 1 dog, can you say throw rugs for the next 18 years!!!!

Another piece of good news!!! We rented the Uhaul and will be going to Duluth next weekend, I think it is the 12th to get our stuff out of storage. I can't believe it. After 2 months short of 2 years, I will have my stuff back. It will be like Christmas. I really am excited to have it, but I sure do dread the loading and unloading the truck. Pray for good weather that weekend.

posted by Colleen @ 9:36 AM 2 comments

Laughing at Grandma! 

posted by Colleen @ 6:52 PM 0 comments

Our little Ms. Snuffy 

posted by Colleen @ 6:49 PM 1 comments

My Encounter

I just wanted to share my really neat encounter with you guys. Jordyn has had a cold for the past couple of weeks, she has been affectionally known as Ms. Snuffy. Anyway, yesterday she started running a small temp. I gave her some baby Motrin and took her temp about a half an hour later. OK, actually my sister Sharon took her temp, but anyway it was about 101.5 in an area where nobody wants their temp to be taken. So I called Dr. Baldwin's nurse and she said that I probably should bring her in. Like my $800 medical bill is not enough. Not that I wouldn't pay anything for my children, but I figured they were going to tell me my daughter had a cold. But given the fact that I suffered greatly with ear infections, I wanted to make sure she didn't have one. So in we went.

My sister Sandy met me at the clinic because she happened to have a Dr.'s appointment around the same time. We were sitting in the waiting room and all of a sudden this women (probably in her 70's) came around the corner from the other side of the waiting room and headed straight for us. She said, "I have to see this baby." She asked me her name and I told her it was Jordyn, granted she heard Georgie, but that is fine. She asked me how old and I told her she was 3 months and then she put her hand on Jordyn's (Georgie's) head and said, "I am going to say a prayer for her." Sandy and I said that was fine and so she started to pray. I don't really remember anything she said except that she prayed for peace. After her prayer she looked right at me and said, "Now you are still nursing right?" I thought at the time that was a pretty gutsy thing to say to me given the fact that she didn't know me and it wasn't a question, it was a statement. I replied yes and she said, "good, everything is going to be just fine," and she walked away. When we got into the Dr.'s office and Dr. Baldwin looked her over she said that she had a cold (go figure) and that she had water behind the ear drum but that the drum was fine and she had no ear infection. She then said that had I not been nursing, she probably would be giving antibiotics for an ear infection.

All this to say that I think that God was simply telling me to keep going. The past couple of days I have been questioning if what I am doing is doing any good. I am all for nursing the old fashion way, but I sometimes wonder if I she isn't loosing important nutrients in all the middle stuff that I have to do. Nice to know that we can count on God to re-enforce things in really neat ways.

I am happy to say that Halloween is over!!!!!!!! At our house we don't celebrate Halloween and it doesn't go over well with alot of the family. I personally would just like to run away around this time of year, but we made it thru without to much problem. Chance isn't old enough to care right now, but I did have to take a stab at explaining why we don't celebrate it, and it wasn't easy to put it into terms a 3 year old could understand. I apparently made some headway because my sister Sandy said she got a lecture on how Halloween is not a good holiday and that Jesus doesn't like it.

Chance learned to whistle this past week, so our house has been filled with whistling. I really love to hear him in the frontroom putting his puzzle together or playing with his blocks a whistling away.

Tonight we had "Chance is Here Today School" and they played "Duck Duck Owl". Well, when we got home we all had to learn how to play. Picture David, me and my mother all sitting around on the wood floor while Chance went around the circle saying, "Duck, Duck Owl." Of course the first one to get picked was my mother, so she had to get up and run after him. We all got to get a chance to be the owl and chase him. He thought that was pretty funny.

While we were in CIHT school, Jordyn went into sibling care. When I went to pick her up, there she was sitting in her car seat surrounded by 4 little boys and she was just talking away. I told David, "look out, it is starting really early!"

posted by Colleen @ 6:17 PM 3 comments