Thought For The Day . . .

"Gratitude. More aware of what you have than what you don't. Recognizing the treasure in the simple - a child's hug, a song, a golden sunset. Relishing in the comfort of the common - a warm bed, a hot meal, a clean shirt."

Max Lucado

I'm BEAT tonight, but I'll post an update tomorrow!! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;his faithfulness continues through all generations." Psalm 100:4-5

Happy Thanksgiving from the Roisums! We are enjoying the holiday at my mom and dad's house in Spearfish - drove up here last night after Mark got done with work, right before the snow hit - it snowed quite a bit last night here in the hills, and it's BEAUTIFUL! Had a nice evening last night of pizza and games, and now today we are watching the Macy's parade and lounging around. The whole Horak family is here, so we're just enjoying being all together. I can't believe it's Thanksgiving, that there's snow on the ground, and that we will be getting our Christmas tree tomorrow! Unbelievable. And I "officially" get to start the Christmas music tomorrow! :) Can't wait.

Anyway, hope you all have a wonderful day filled with many thankful thoughts!

Okay I did it . . .

. . . I broke the "rules" and started listening to Christmas music today - !!! I'm one of those people who believes you DON'T break out the Christmas tunes until the day after Thanksgiving . . but in preparation of Friday November 23rd, I started loading all of our Christmas CDs onto iTunes so I can get them on our iPod. Well, when you upload a CD onto iTunes, it starts playing right away, and I have to admit, from song 1, I was hooked. It was too tempting!! So I bee-bopped along to my favorite Christmas music while paying the bills and balancing the checkbook this morning - it was awesome. Made a not-so-fun job much more pleasant! But that's IT for now! I got my "fix" and now no more till after Thanksgiving!! :-)

Getting Caught Up

We had a great trip to Minnesota - a little "whirlwind-ish" for me, but we made it through just fine. Five nights in a different location each night! Whew! I was worried about how the kids would handle it, but they did awesome and had a lot of fun. We first stopped in Willmar for a couple days to visit the Roisum clan, and were amazed at the remodeling that took place at Mark's parents house over the past couple months. WOW, what fun to see such a big change! It looks awesome you guys! Hope you enjoy it immensely. (Here's a photo of the boys "dressing up" Mark's Uncle Marty - he's a VERY patient man!!) :)

After the Vikings game last Sunday, we headed to Minneapolis, and stayed with my aunt and uncle the first night. They have been blessed with an enormous house and we got a kick out of Jack and Noah's awe-inspired comments - "This looks like a hotel" - "What if I get up in the middle of the night and can't find you?" - "Which stairs do we go down, there are so many?" They had been there several times before the age of 3, but not since then, so they didn't remember it. They had a total blast and didn't want to leave in the morning. I told my aunt I was going to send them to her this summer (they are recent empty-nesters), and she said "SURE!" So watch out, Ben and Ann, we may just take you up on it! :)

We then spent the day at the Mall of America - the kids have been asking for over a year to visit Legoland, so that was top priority, and it didn't disappoint. They were very impressed. We had lunch with Mark's brother and his family, and then headed off to do some rides in the former Camp Snoopy (not sure what they call it now). Then we hit the Build-a-Bear workshop where the boys each made their own dog - they LOVED it. At the end of the day, we went to the Cheesecake Factory and then crashed at our hotel.

Mark's training for work started early the next morning, so the boys and I slept in and then headed to the zoo, which was a much bigger hit with Jack and Noah than I thought it would be! They were enthralled with the dolphin show and the tank where they could pet stingrays and little sharks. I wasn't sure they would do it, but Jack had his arms in that tank up to his shoulders within seconds. Noah took a little coaxing, but after a while he got into it too. They stayed at that tank for an hour! We also hit a 3D Imax movie - their first 3D experience - and that was a riot. We had a great day together.

Mark, his brother, and their boys at LegoLand:

Noah stuffing his dog at Build-a-Bear

Jack operating the stuffing machine . . .

On a ride at the Mall of America:

At the zoo:

Sporting the 3D glasses:

Jack getting ready to "pounce"
Wednesday we headed home! I then spent Thursday and Friday just trying to get caught up - my goodness, four people can create a lot of laundry in 6 days!!! We had a nice quiet weekend at home - Saturday we did some major cleaning/reorganizing in the playroom/family room area, which felt really good. We had to make room for Mark's Mall of America purchase - a LoveSac. If you aren't familiar, they are fancy adult-size "bean bags" except they aren't made of beans, they are full of foam. He wanted the biggest - an 8-footer - but it was almost impossible to move, so we settled on the next size down - the 6-footer. We love it - it's VERY comfy!!
Here's what it looked like right out of the bag:

And after a lot of work by the four of us, kneading and fluffing:

Now we're off to a normal week, looking forward to my sister and her family coming on Saturday!! They'll be here through Thanksgiving weekend - partly at our house, and partly at my mom and dad's in Spearfish. Can you stand it - Thanksgiving is already almost here? Amazing!

Halloween and a Happy Birthday

After finally feeling healthy again, we ended up having a GREAT Halloween. On Halloween "eve" (the 30th) the boys carved their pumpkins, we ate a mummy cake and then snuggled up on the couch and watched The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown on T.V. On Halloween, the boys got dressed RIGHT after school, we went to McDonalds for supper (which was really fun because there were tons of kids there, all dressed up), then headed to the boys' school for the carnival there. After playing several games there, we took them trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. This year, Mark and I followed them with the truck in case they got cold and wanted to warm up. So we just drove along the curb, while they walked on the sidewalk, and Mark and I were SO entertained - both had these fancy masks that they could hardly see through, but they insisted on wearing them, so they were stumbling around, tripping over bushes, nearly running into mailboxes - at one house, they actually ended up going around the garage to the backyard. It was SO funny - - only because we knew they were safe and we were right there with them. Towards the end of the night we got them to take off the masks so they could see. :) As you can see, Star Wars was the theme this year - Noah being Darth Vader and Jack being a Storm Trooper. Jack was having a hard time remembering the term "Storm Trooper," so on occasion when someone not familiar with Star Wars would ask him what he was, he would say "I'm Darth Vader's people!!" It was so CUTE!

Thursday we had parent/teacher conferences at school. Both kids are doing great - we're so glad we waited until they were 6 to start them - we've found it's making a huge difference. They are both excelling academically, but we did hear some interesting comments from both teachers! We were told (and this wasn't a surprise) that Noah is very quiet and shy - which actually is so contrary to his personality at home! He has his group of friends, but isn't one of the boisterous kids, which is o.k. with us! Jack's teacher surprised us a little more when she said he has two difficulties - 1) he misses Noah (WHAT!?!?) and 2) he's highly competitive. Number 1 was a total shock and number 2, not so much. :) I never expected Jack to miss Noah - Jack's the more independent one so I was blown away. She said he's highly protective and possessive of Noah at recess and lunch (when both classes are together). Last night I asked Jack if it was true that he misses Noah during the day, and he looked at me with big eyes and nodded. Wow! Anyway, she suggested we get Jack involved in some outlet for his competiveness, so we need to get to work on that!

Other big news from yesterday is that it was Mark's birthday - 37!! We had my family over to celebrate last night - and also to celebrate my mom's birthday which was on Oct. 26th. It was a fun night, and Mark got his usual haul of Vikings stuff!

Now we are off to Minnesota today - headed to Willmar first, to see Mark's family - then off to Minneapolis to goof off for a couple of days - then Mark has training in Mpls. on Tuesday, and then we'll head home on Wednesday. We're looking forward to a few days away, and some time with the kids!! Have a great weekend!