Two Months

Here is a quick (or not so quick) look at what has been happening here since my last post......

Jacob turned 8 at the end of January! Wow, how can that be???
He started his day off with his breakfast of choice....pancakes, then moved on to presents. He has made a couple of good friends at school so he invited them both over for the afternoon to play and have cake.


Even though it was -12 or something like that, they insisted on playing outside in the snow forts...mostly they wrestled and threw each other down in the snow.


Luke braved the cold and went out to play fort wars with them.


Then they trekked through the field...yes, still throwing each other down in the snow. All in all I think they only lasted outside for about 45 minutes. It was just too cold!


Look at those cold cheeks! Jacob blew his candles out before I could get a picture. Stinker!


These two boys are the sweetest things. So polite and fun. It was great to have them over and see the relationships that Jacob is making. It was a great day celebrating an amazing young man.

Have I ever told you that it snows here?

We won't be swinging for a long while yet.


Zoe has come to grips with the fact that it is crazy cold all the time and there won't be any soft warm grass to lay in for a long time. So the next best thing is to take advantage of the sun being out even if it's below zero and you have to lay on top of 3 feet of snow.

A week after Jacob's birthday we got to have more cake! Luke turned 34.

He didn't have any friends over to play so I only got this picture of him with his cake and his baby. I am so blessed by him!

Next came Valentine's Day...man there is a lot of food in this post.

I made cupcakes to take to the church meeting that night. Mostly for the kids.


I also made a black and white flourless cake, for the adults (several in the group are gluten free). It was a great finish to a 4 course meal that we shared.


Did I say it was good? Oh ,my! It was extremely rich so no one had more than one piece....which meant we got to bring a little bit home for later!

Then I got to make mini cupcakes for Jacob and Samuel to take in for their class Valentine party.


Poor Samuel got sick with bronchitis and wasn't able to go to his party. I took the cupcakes to his room then went across the hall and helped Jacob's class with theirs. It was my first time being in his room and it was a blast. His teacher is fantastic!

Samuel with his nebulizer.....this became a good friend of his for the entire week that he was home sick. Thankfully he is better now!

Finally....this past week I have been painting some of the downstairs. All of the colors in this house are utterly and completely NOT ME. I have been dying to paint and make it our own. I haven' t even hung any pictures up since we moved in because I didn't want to take them all down again when we painted. Well, it took longer than I expected but we are finally starting to pick away at it. This week we did the kitchen, entry way and dining room.

The kitchen before....

Another before. Do you see why I wanted to paint? There was even a border around the top that had little birds, bird houses and garden trowels on it. You can bet I took that down quick!

And another before....


Now the after....


I love my red accent wall (two walls actually)

Down the hall to the entry and front door I painted the same latte color as this half of the kitchen. I will also take that color up the stair well to the landing.
It is amazing what a couple cans of paint will do!

And now the dining room before...

I am not a fan of the blue! It's in the half bath on the main floor too....I'll get to that eventually.


And the after....

We have an amazing and talented friend who does finish work. He had some "scraps" just lying around his garage, so he came over and dressed up my dining room walls by adding all those great molding squares around the bottom. Thanks Andy, I love it!

The color in the picture isn't quite true. I think it looks a little too orange here. It's more of a dark pumpkin pie color. When I first started putting it on, Braden walked in and said "Oooh Mommy this room looks yummy!" That's what I think too.
Now I just need to put all the light switch covers back on and get my pictures up and decorate. It'll be fun to do with colors that I love.

A Life Long Sport

Samuel, our bookworm who would rather sit in his room with the door shut and read or build things has found a new interest.



Part of the P.E. program at his elementary school here in NY is learning to cross country ski. Twice a week, the classes bundle up and head out into the snow to ski around in the field. From the moment he heard about this, Sam was extremely excited. I on the other hand was worried. He had missed the lessons before Christmas break when they all learned (in the gym on the mats) how to fall down and get back up properly, how to put on your boots and how to put on your skis. In my head I saw him falling down the instant he put his skis on then breaking down, crying and never wanting to try it again.
Wrong!
His first day out, he only fell three times. He never cried and he figured out how to get up the proper way. His second day out, he didn't fall at all. He loved it so much that he decided he wanted to be a part of the ski club for 4th graders! There are about 50 4th graders that meet every morning before school to ski for an hour. One of the P.E. teachers is always there to give them new lessons on things like how to climb a hill, etc.
It has been such a heart warming thing to see Samuel out there, trying this and succeeding. This is something he would not have wanted to do a year or two ago, and the outcome of his trying probably would have ended the way I anticipated. He has grown so much. We are so proud of him!
Enough talk.....here are a few pictures of my ski pro! (there is a video on facebook as well but they take way too long to upload here so I'm going to stick with still shots for this post).


All of the kids learning from Mr. Stimson how to make a "herring bone pattern" when you climb a hill.


Samuel and his friend McKenzie lining up to go on a "tour" with the teacher.




Doesn't he look great? I love this picture. We are going to start looking for ski's for all of us towards the end of winter when they are on sale or people are getting rid of their old ones. This could be a great winter activity for the whole family. Luke and I have done it before but we think Samuel might get to the point where we can't keep up with him!

A Peek at Christmas

Just a few videos from Christmas (mostly for you grandparents).

We had a very nice Christmas even though we missed all of our family and friends. It was just the five of us. Quiet (relatively) and relaxing. I don't even think I brushed my teeth until 3:30! We played a lot of new games, watched movies and at too much food. All in all a great day.

Christmas Videos

I had great plans of posting a couple of short videos from Christmas morning, but I have spent way too much time "redecorating" my blog and now I am too tired!
I'll try to get them up tomorrow along with some pictures of Samuel's first day of Cross-Country ski club. They meet in the morning, an hour before school starts to ski in the field. I hope to get some good pictures....weather permitting!
Check back soon. In the mean time, enjoy the new blog look. I've had trouble with people seeing the "extras" so let me know if you get nothing but black background.

I Have No Clue

Bear with me....my site is under construction.

I decided to play around with it a few nights ago.....change up the picture at the top, change the background to something Christmasy, etc. Wouldn't you know, I messed it up! I don't really know what is wrong with it. I was able to see the new picture of the boys at the top just fine but heard from several other people that after the blog opened up, the picture would go black. So, I am trying to fix it. We'll see what I can manage to do with it.

In the mean time, it'll probably be different and only partly finished for the next week or so until I can get it figured out.

The Post I've Been Putting Off

Leading up to our move I had great plans of posting pictures along the drive across the country but that just didn't happen. I am not kidding when I tell you that I have hundreds and hundreds of pictures from our trip. True that about half of them were from the Ingalls Homestead (Little House on the Prarie) but that was such a huge higlight for the us that I couldn't help myself.
Well, now that we are here I've kind of been dreading this post because it meant sorting through all of the pictures and trying to limit it to as few as possible.......that is hard to do. So, picking up where I left off the night we stayed in Minnesota and I actually posted, here is the rest of our trip (plus just a couple others from the early part of the drive)


This was my view almost the entire way (the truck I mean)


Yellowstone is a very cool place but kinda stinky. Samuel is not a fan of sulfur smell!


Pit stop after Yellowstone. I think they missed each other, having been separated between the two vehicles!


This is "the Big Slew" that was next to Laura's house. They had to walk all the way around it to get to school or town.


The prairie where Laura grew up, ran, played and worked. We pitched a tent right on the prairie! So cool!


Pumping water out of Pa's original well for Zoe.


Our night on the prairie was a rough one. First we couldn't sleep because of a huge lightning storm not too far off....so we sat in the dark and watched it in our p.j.s (not a good idea and you'll see why a few pictures down) After the storm it got really windy and Luke and I literally had to hold the sides of the tent up in the wee hours of the morning because the wind was bending the poles and pushing the sides down on top of our sleeping boys. We could see why this place was so hard on the pioneers!


The site of Laura and Almanzo's house where Rose was born. The house is no longer there. It was only about a short drive from Ma and Pa's but would have been a full day to go visit and come back home in a wagon.


In the town of DeSmett they still have the original surveyors house where Laura and her family stayed the first winter they lived here. They were all alone, there was no town yet and no other settlers.


This is the original building for the Loftus store that we read about in The Long Winter. It was located right across the street from Pa's building that he had built in town.


The Little House on the Prairie!


Inside a shanty that belonged to a family who lived down the road from the Ingalls. The shanty was taken apart and rebuild on the Ingalls homestead to give visitors an idea of what shanties were like when families first put a claim on land but had not build their houses yet. One room for the entire famliy!


Luke and I sitting down for a meal in the dugout. Also recreated so that you can see what the Ingalls family lived in as they moved around. The dugout is their home from On the Banks of Plum Creek.


Doing the laundry just like Ma did.


Inside the little house. This is the "sitting room" that was added on in the later years. It held Ma's sewing machine,a stove for warming and Mary's organ for when she came home from blind school.

Just walking in the front door of the house you are in the kitchen/dining area and can see right into the bedrooms. Such a simple place!


Samuel got to drive the team of horses through the prairie on our way out to the schoolhouse for a lesson!

On our way out of town we stopped in the DeSmett cemetary. Everyone from the Ingalls family is buried here except Laura and Rose. This is Pa's headstone.


Ma


Mary


Grace
Carrie was there too but for some reason I didn't get a picture.


We left the Prairie and headed to and through Minnesota


No relation, but cool none the less.


Leaving Minnesota and crossing the mighty Mississippi River into Wisconsin


A somewhat short drive through the very pretty state of Wisconsin to Illinois


Can you tell that we were kind of tired and done sight seeing once we left South Dakota? I just have pictures from the car and mostly they are just the state signs.


We camped just north of Chicago for the night and then got on the road early to miss the rush hour traffic driving through the city.


Into Indiana


I missed the Ohio state sign so you get to see one of the turnpike. In Ohio we met up with Brendon and Amy who were staying at Beulah Beach with her parents for a little vacation. We stayed the night there. Our last night on the road....the next day we would head to New York.


Remember when I said watching the lightening show in P.J.s on the prairie was a bad idea? This is Samuel's leg......apparently the mosquitoes were awful. No one said a word to me about being bitten and I don't ever get bothered by the bugs so I had no idea it was this bad! Believe me I was more careful from there on out because his entire body looked like this! OUCH!


Our kids and the Cochran kids were great friends right off the bat. It's so nice that they get along so well.


Pennsylvania! Getting so close. We stopped at a rest stop just over the border and the first thing we saw was a truck pull up to get gas, the tailgate and camper window popped open and a load of Amish men piled out. We had to laugh. I didn't think they would appreciate me taking pictures of them piling out like a bunch of clowns in a tiny car so I kept my camera in the van.


WELCOME TO NEW YORK!!!!


This picture is especially for my friend MaryLou (and anyone else who hears the name New York, and instantly thinks New York City). The entire state of NY looks like this....beautiful farm land, trees and rolling hills. It is NOT cement and skyscrapers. It's an absolutely beautiful state.

Almost to our exit off of I-90....it was a long drive across the country on the same road almost the entire way!
I didn't get any pictures pulling up to the house because we stayed at the Cochrans for a few days until the house closed. Then I didn't get any pictures of unloading the truck because we were just so glad to be here and start settling and unpacking that I forgot. But, this post is done now and I can start in on pictures that I have of us in our new home and new town. I've got some good ones, so come back! I have to add that if you made it to the end of this post, pat yourself on the back. It was a doosy!