Winter. And MORE winter.

We had yet another snow day today - and we thought we were lucky with the two last week! Isn't it supposed to be spring? Actually I don't know why I'm surprised. We always get most of our winter snowfall in March and April (and even May!) . . . heck, we're probably just gettin' started! The kids are LOVING it, of course. They came into our room this morning, eyes bright with anticipation just like it was Christmas morning, wondering if school had been cancelled. Let me tell you, it is really fun to give them the news.

They are ALL ABOUT this winter stuff right now. On Saturday morning, Grandpa drove in from Spearfish unexpectedly - bright and early too - for the boys' last basketball game at 8:00 a.m. He's a true fan. After the game, Grandpa wondered if his buddies could come home with him to play and stay overnight. They have 3 feet of new snow at their house, so we packed up the kids and their snow stuff and sent them on their merry way. They spent most of the day outside with Grandpa - and he is very good about taking pictures!

Here's the snow cave:

Jack sledding . . . .
. . . and then wiping out . . .
And Noah subsequently looking a little nervous:

They had a marvelous time with one of their most favorite playmates and Mark and I had a very nice day and evening getting some long overdue stuff done and just enjoying entire conversations without interruptions! :) It was a much needed scenario for all of us.

And today - well, today we had one of those perfect family days. Mark tried to go in to work, of course, but at 10:00 a.m. got concerned about getting home again with the no travel advisories so he came back home. The four of us spent the whole day playing (and eating) - Yahtzee, Whoonu (CUTE Cranium game), Vikings Monopoly, Wii golf and bowling. Oh, and yes, I rocked their world in bowling. In fact, I'm SO GOOD at it, the Wii gave ME a special bowling ball - it's all sparkly and shiny and has stars on it. Because I'm so good. :) All 3 of my boys just groan and analyze my every movement to see just how I do it. But they'll never catch me. It's the only thing I can beat them at, so I have to gloat a little bit.

Now the boys are tucked in bed, Mark is snowblowing and I'm sitting here being so very thankful that God created another day for the 4 us to just be together!!

Sick of sick!!

We have spent the entire past week fighting illness. Yuck. Noah started it all 2 weeks ago with a whopper of a cold - at which point I braced myself because if Noah gets a cold, that means it's a BAD cold. Sure enough, last Thursday it jumped to me and Jack. Jack missed yet another day of school on Friday and by the end of the weekend I had been sucker-punched. Wow. And we're STILL trying to get over it!

Last Sunday while Jack and I were leveled, it was a balmy 78 degrees out. And we couldn't even enjoy it! Then, get this, the very next day a blizzard rolls in. Gotta love South Dakota. The weather keeps us entertained . . . It was a whopper, too. Got two snow days out of the deal - the kids were over the moon. We spent many hours playing the Wii, Monopoly and Life. Jack and Noah were over the moon. So was I - I totally love it when our whole world is forced to come to a halt for a while. Mark, however, tends to climb the walls so he worked part of each day. We're working on his ability to chill.

Tonight we attempted to go out to eat but didn't get going until late because I was hard at work on the women's retreat for church - once I get going on something I can't quit - and by the time we went, we couldn't get in anywhere. So, we decided to grab pizza and hotdogs at Sam's Club during a stop there. Not fancy, but nice on the checkbook - our total bill was $14 and that included ice cream for desert! Go figure. Anyway, later on, Jack was crawling into bed and said "I hope we can eat there again - their food is REALLY good!!" ummm??? At least he's easy to please. Then he proceeded to say "goodnight sweet lips." Goofball.

Yep, we're still here . . .

Not sure where the past week and a half have gone - wow! For the past week, I've been playing catch-up - and I'm not sure what I've been catching up FROM! All of the sudden I was WAY behind on everything - house cleaning, laundry, ironing, grocery shopping, misc. errands, bill paying, the checkbook, my committee work . . . uggh! Anyway, here's what else we've been up to:

• Last weekend, went to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation banquet in Spearfish that my "little" brother chaired - it was actually really fun and I was a very proud big sister. :) (Way to go, Josh!) It was huge and he put on quite the event!


• Got the bunk beds! Then got the bedrooms all re-arranged and re-organized and the kids are happy with their new digs. Maybe that's why I was so behind with everything else . . .
(Talking on the phone to Grandma and Grandpa)


• Jack and Noah finished memorizing the books of the Old Testament - no small feat, people. Whew.


• Mark moved his office in the bank (from 1st floor to 2nd floor);


• Nursed Jack through a "sprained" ankle (and let me tell you, did he MAXIMIZE that injury. I, of course, bought some of his drama hook line and sinker, but Mark could see through it. Little stinker. He's got an Oscar waiting for him.);


• Now nursing Jack (and myself) through a nasty, yucky cold (are we almost done with this season yet???)


• Re-financed the house, so that put Mark in a better mood! Ya-hoo! There's ONE good thing about this stupid economy.


• Got the deal of the century on a new camper. Or shall I say summer vacation home. We plan on spending A LOT of time in it this summer. In fact, we may be unreachable for 3 months. Be forewarned.

God has provided us some comic relief in Jack and Noah lately. We find ourselves laughing at them every day - they are always coming up with something new. Noah has taken to calling Obama "FTJ" (that would be "fruity-tooty-juicy." Remember. He's in 1st grade and 1st grade boys are totally into "toots" and all other bodily functions. Except in this house they are called "blasties." Anyway. Yes, I know, a lesson or two is in order about respecting our president. But it's so dang funny when he looks at the TV and rolls his eyes and says oh, there's FTJ.)

Jack, meanwhile, is into calling me Sweet Lips. NO IDEA where this came from. No, Mark does not call me that. Again, I realize some correction is needed here, but I can't help but laugh when he does it because it always catches me totally off guard.

And one night, Noah prayed that Jack would "stop complimenting me." ?? Turns out, he's been misunderstanding me - I'll often say "stop commenting on each other!!" - well, Noah thinks I said compliment. It was one of the cutest prayers ever.

This weekend, we are entertaining Grandma Rayne (LaRayne) and Grandpa Paul from Willmar. The kids are off-the-wall excited - had at least a million things to SHOW them when they got here. In fact, they are so entertained, I may just leave for the weekend. Go into hiding and recover from my cold. Why can't moms get time off when we're sick??? Where's MY bailout? :)

Divorce Agreement

Now THIS is a divorce agreement I can get behind. This was forwarded to me in an email so you may have already seen it, but it is so good I had to post it.

To Mr. Wall: Sign me up. I'm behind this idea 100%.

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).

We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.

We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely, John J. Wall Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.

A Dark Cloud . . .

. . . . seems to have settled over our house. We are stressed, y'all. I wish I had something more entertaining or newsworthy to post, but today all I can muster is to be real. Not that I'm usually artificial or anything, but sometimes you just need to strip the layers away and be more exposed than usual. Stress has just permeated our household and as a wife and mother, I'm desperately trying to figure out how to restore a sense of peace. Not that we are all arguing and fighting - we're not, so don't get that impression.

We're having a trickle-down effect from Mark. Have you happened to turn on the news lately? This country is a MESS. A mess. And we have an extremely childish person leading this country who has an astounding level of arrogance seeping from his pores and is determined to screw things up even further and is supported by people who are brainwashed zombies who will agree to any insane idea this moron comes up with.

But anyway.

For those of you who know what Mark does, he probably has the worst job in the world right now. He drags himself to work everyday just to get beat up one side and down the other. He manages to muddle through it, but he's lost his spunk, the gleam in his eyes. And as a wife, it's torture. I have to just sit and watch it. I can't help, I can't fix it, I can't do much of anything. Except pray. And try and have a peaceful environment at home for him.

Which brings me to our next issue - Noah. He's turned into an overreactive, emotional wreck. Over tiny ridiculous little things. And spacey, too. We joke that we have a teenage girl on our hands but really it's not so funny. I think kids can sense when things aren't right and he's so astute, and so sensitive, I think he's picking up on the fact that Dad isn't himself, and Mom isn't really herself either, even though we try very hard to hide all of it. I think he's feeling it. And he can't stand his teacher. Which is another form of torture for me - it is unbelievably hard to send him off every morning into an environment that makes him miserable. It's a sucker-punch to my heart. A positive, though, is that Jack is with him and I think that gets Noah through it. Noah is a very lovey-dovey, rules-oriented kind of person and his teacher is not either of those so that's the heart of the issue.

We reached a new level last night when Mark even told me to not answer the door anymore unless I'm expecting someone or can tell who it is. ?? I wondered why, and he said "Anne, I have clients that have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and people tend to get a little crazy about that." Oh yeah, great. THAT makes me feel good. My brain hadn't even gone there, and my brain goes many, many places. But I hadn't gone there.

I am, however, being taught some valuable lessons. The state of this country and it's idiotic leader is no surprise to God. He's not ruffled. Or worried. He has a plan - for this country and for my family - but what I'm learning is that just because He has a plan, it doesn't mean it's my plan. And it doesn't mean it will be a comfortable plan. Or stress-free. Or convenient. But I do find peace in knowing He hasn't checked out. I also have enormous gratitude for the fact that I even have a husband to worry about, that he's bringing home a paycheck, as painful as it might be, that I have kids who pull on my heartstrings, and that we are all healthy and together. Things could be worse.

Okay, enough real-ness for a while. Got it out of my system. Next post I promise to have something much more lighthearted! :)