The second week of October we took a trip to Community Orchards in Fort Dodge. It was super windy, but fun anyway!
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Some of my favorite pictures...
Brice was so happy this date in September or October, I can not remember for sure. He could finally put his hoop buildings in operation!
Will is very imaginative lately!
I wanted a picture with the birthday girl, and we got a 'photo bomb' from Will!
This picture brings tears to my eyes. Gabbie had a 'friend party' for her birthday. The look on her face here is priceless! I think she was having a great time!
This is a great picture just showing how the kids play-Will is doing his own thing (and barefoot already!) and Henrik has to watch his big sister.
In awe of the snow!
This was such a funny moment. Henrik kept smiling so fierce for pictures! Well, until I wanted a family picture for the Christmas card...then he was out of smiles!
Brice honored at annual Niman Ranch Dinner
Brice & Hunter. Brice received his 10 year award with Niman Ranch, and Hunter received a scholarship from the company.
It was a nice weekend! After the event we took Gabbie with us for a tour of ISU!
Will turns 4!
He loved his train cake; although it was not staying together very well :(
His big CHEESE smile! He had a fun celebration with family!
First Day of School, 2015-2016 year
They were all smiles at 6:40 am that day! We'll have to make this an annual picture :)
Chores when she gets home! Feeding a baby calf....the novelty wore off fairly quickly.
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Brice-ism's
Well, the first snow of the season hit this weekend. Brice is just so cheery...after it melts. In the meantime we all get to hear about how much it "sucks".
So, this year I'm going to tackle winter with some humor. Brice does read the blog once in a great while. I'm not ashamed nor do I feel bad about writing things he says; its not meant to be spouse-bashing at all. I need to get through this with a smile, and I'm sure he will look back and small as well....right, dear/sweetie/honey/whatever we call each other?
Friday at noon-ish it starts snowing. Historically Brice does not call me to update me on weather issues. And if he does it really does not matter...we are 30 minutes apart and the weather is rarely the same in both places. Well, he did tell me Friday to "head home"....it wasn't bad. But, it did get bad later so I will go ahead and give him credit. Though I still stand by my story that no one ever cared where I was until there were 3 "kinda behaved" children running around.
Nevertheless we made the best of an unexpected afternoon at home. Here are a few things that happened:
1. I haven't been sleeping well lately, so decided I'd take a 15 minute nap. Brice called 3 times. I can not remember the reason for any of the phone calls but the end result was the nap was over.
2. I hear a POUNDING on the window. Loud enough I was certain it would break. I see Brice frantic outside with a cow walking up the lane. That one is a long story but I just prior to that had asked the two older kids to say a quick prayer for Dad's safety in the weather. So, credit to the kids and I on that one.
3. I ran out to help him with the cow in sandals and a t-shirt. It was very windy and snowy at this point. While outside Brice decided we would put the chickens in. Well, they have grown accustomed to not going in the shed. The conversation went like this with everything I'm quoting being things said by Brice. "Oh, screw 'em, then can freeze to death", "Damn it Melanie grab that one and get it in the shed", "Forget it just get them in the machine shed", "Corner that one and get it in the chicken shed". I finally just walked in the house. I mean really, my ears were hurting and I could hardly see anything anyway and he was spewing such conflicting information that my head was hurting.
4. I tried posting a picture here but the computer tells me
"Server rejected".
Even the server could tell it was a 'fake selfie'. So on top of everything else on a cold, snowy day....Brice had a truck coming to load some hogs. It was supposed to be at 5:30, turned out to be 8:00. Meanwhile he's in the house every 5 minutes "has the trucker called yet", "has the trucker called yet", "has the trucker called yet". I don't think he understands that often times in the house I'm apt to ignore the phone altogether. Its usually not for me, or is political. Unless someone specifically asks me to listen for a certain call, I often don't. Well, the trucker called when Brice was no where to be found. No surprize. I started asking questions, like "where are we loading from", and "how many hogs". We were fighting before we even started. I prefer to fight via text message; so there was a lot of "you are ducking annoying me", and "its ducking cold", thanks to auto-correct on the phone preventing me from sinning my life away with swear words. So just to be a terd I made Brice take a 'selfie' with me. I had to ask him to smile. We actually look like we like each other in the picture! The arguing continued, because apparantly I was supposed to be counting the hogs, but I wasn't, so I made a mistake (but is it a mistake when you weren't aware you were supposed to be counting them to begin with?)
5. By the end of the day I was sooo tired of the constant negativity emiting from his coveralls. So I said "you know, you did choose this life and you can always go get a job in town if you don't like it." To which he responds "yeah, I'm sure you'd love that. A consistent paycheck.". Well how does one respond to that? "Oh no, the last thing I want is a consistent paycheck?"
End of Winter Storm number 1. I'm ready to go back to work tomorrow.
So, this year I'm going to tackle winter with some humor. Brice does read the blog once in a great while. I'm not ashamed nor do I feel bad about writing things he says; its not meant to be spouse-bashing at all. I need to get through this with a smile, and I'm sure he will look back and small as well....right, dear/sweetie/honey/whatever we call each other?
Friday at noon-ish it starts snowing. Historically Brice does not call me to update me on weather issues. And if he does it really does not matter...we are 30 minutes apart and the weather is rarely the same in both places. Well, he did tell me Friday to "head home"....it wasn't bad. But, it did get bad later so I will go ahead and give him credit. Though I still stand by my story that no one ever cared where I was until there were 3 "kinda behaved" children running around.
Nevertheless we made the best of an unexpected afternoon at home. Here are a few things that happened:
1. I haven't been sleeping well lately, so decided I'd take a 15 minute nap. Brice called 3 times. I can not remember the reason for any of the phone calls but the end result was the nap was over.
2. I hear a POUNDING on the window. Loud enough I was certain it would break. I see Brice frantic outside with a cow walking up the lane. That one is a long story but I just prior to that had asked the two older kids to say a quick prayer for Dad's safety in the weather. So, credit to the kids and I on that one.
3. I ran out to help him with the cow in sandals and a t-shirt. It was very windy and snowy at this point. While outside Brice decided we would put the chickens in. Well, they have grown accustomed to not going in the shed. The conversation went like this with everything I'm quoting being things said by Brice. "Oh, screw 'em, then can freeze to death", "Damn it Melanie grab that one and get it in the shed", "Forget it just get them in the machine shed", "Corner that one and get it in the chicken shed". I finally just walked in the house. I mean really, my ears were hurting and I could hardly see anything anyway and he was spewing such conflicting information that my head was hurting.
4. I tried posting a picture here but the computer tells me
"Server rejected".
Even the server could tell it was a 'fake selfie'. So on top of everything else on a cold, snowy day....Brice had a truck coming to load some hogs. It was supposed to be at 5:30, turned out to be 8:00. Meanwhile he's in the house every 5 minutes "has the trucker called yet", "has the trucker called yet", "has the trucker called yet". I don't think he understands that often times in the house I'm apt to ignore the phone altogether. Its usually not for me, or is political. Unless someone specifically asks me to listen for a certain call, I often don't. Well, the trucker called when Brice was no where to be found. No surprize. I started asking questions, like "where are we loading from", and "how many hogs". We were fighting before we even started. I prefer to fight via text message; so there was a lot of "you are ducking annoying me", and "its ducking cold", thanks to auto-correct on the phone preventing me from sinning my life away with swear words. So just to be a terd I made Brice take a 'selfie' with me. I had to ask him to smile. We actually look like we like each other in the picture! The arguing continued, because apparantly I was supposed to be counting the hogs, but I wasn't, so I made a mistake (but is it a mistake when you weren't aware you were supposed to be counting them to begin with?)
5. By the end of the day I was sooo tired of the constant negativity emiting from his coveralls. So I said "you know, you did choose this life and you can always go get a job in town if you don't like it." To which he responds "yeah, I'm sure you'd love that. A consistent paycheck.". Well how does one respond to that? "Oh no, the last thing I want is a consistent paycheck?"
End of Winter Storm number 1. I'm ready to go back to work tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Lots to catch up on!
Henrik & Rollie enjoying the TA Easter Egg Hunt
Easter Dinner at G'ma Linda's
Henrik had such a cute outfit for Easter! I'm disappointed in myself...Easter was my holiday to work this year so I didn't get a picture of all the kids dressed up.
He can't get the food in fast enough sometimes!
April 27th; Brice is 34 and Gabbie is 6.5!
I enjoyed joining Gabbie's class for their Kindergarten field trip; until I got a phone call about Henrik having a 104 degree temperature at daycare :(
Will's PreSchool graduation!
Gabbie's last day of Kindergarten, already
Gabbie did a great job at Dance Recital this year!
The Grandparents enjoyed watching!
Above and below are my favorite 2 pictures from Summer 2015...
I didn't realize how far behind I was on catching up on the 'blog'. Its fun to look back at the summer pictures now that the school year has started.
I'm so proud of the kids; they have adapted to an early morning schedule and haven't missed the bus arrival at 6:45 yet. I 'think' they are both doing well in school; other than Will being a jumping bean on the school bus and not being able to zip his coat to earn a sticker in his classroom. He seems to really enjoy being "weather reporter"...the days I pick him up I get a full weather report, mostly letting me know if its "partly sunny" or "partly cloudy". Gabbie's goal was to get 20/20 on her spelling tests, which she finally achieved this past week after several weeks at 19/20.
I am enjoying a slower October. In September my Monday afternoon and Tuesdays off were filled with PRN work at various facilities, covering therapists who had had surgeries and one whose father was in a very debilitating accident so she needed to be with him. It was nice to get through that and spend time at home; mostly to get caught back up on basic housekeeping and get reorganized with the kids bringing home all kinds of paperwork and projects from school.
I've learned the results of my food allergy test that I took a few weeks ago. Apparantly my system does not tolerate gluten or kaisin (?sp) which is the protein in dairy. Before I knew this I was transitioning myself to a gluten free diet without much problem. Now all the sudden I want it all the time! Cookies, muffins, toast. Oh well. Hopefully this is the answer to my low iron situation.
This month I agreed to help a friend who is earning another degree from the University of Arizona. She will be doing health coaching. Her background is in nursing; but she found as she worked that she felt the Western model of medicine wasn't working, and felt the need to do more. Her coaching incorporates 6 pieces of the 'pie' of our lifes: nurtition, sleep, exercise/activity, relationships, spirituality, and something else which I can not remember right now. Anyway, she needed to gain 100 hours of coaching, so I agreed to 10 hours. I had no idea what to expect...but what she is doing is so amazing! The piece of my 'pie' that I rated the lowest was spirituality; finding meaning in daily life tasks and living in the present moment. Every week we talk for an hour about setting goals to achieve this, strategies to use in daily life. After we talk she sends a 'menu' with the stated goals for the week and an action plan. A couple weeks ago we had discussed how I hated the evening rush of trying to get the kids to bed. So the goal we set was finding 20-30 minutes before I lay the kids down to just be together, no phones or TV. She even suggested finding a name for it, so Gabbie came up with the "Hundling Huddle". It was cute of her to pick that! Now she asks about it in the evenings, and what the plan is for it. Some things the kids pick are board games, legos, or books. Its been nice to have that to look forward to after supper and bathtime. My friend has so many great strategies; such as during the day just stopping what you are doing and thinking about where your mind and thoughts are at. If you are dwelling on something from the past, take the time to push it out and recenter in the present. Yesterday we talked about perfectionism and she read an awesome statement about how our worry of judgement prevents growth. We should strive to be our best, not to be perfect, and then we will find we are internally driving for the right reasons, not for outside approval. The statement she gave me to think about this week is:
pain x resistance=suffering
I wish I'd taken the time to write in here every week that we've talked, there's been so much good information about nutrition that she's helped me with as well. Her and I both agree with the type of nutrition we strive for for our family; she just has a much larger knowledge base than I so its been fun to have that as part of our discussion. Thanks to her I was able to get my whole family to eat, and enjoy, liver and onions :) That was a success for sure!
I'll keep working on updating this, especially since I have some great pictures of Brice's newest hoop buildings finally being used!
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