Fun in the snow!

As you can see, the children are really enjoying the snow. This year has been very unusual, as we didn't see any lasting snow until last Friday night. We had our first snowstorm in mid November, and got a foot of snow in one day! But then we saw above normal temps that melted all the snow, and left us with nothing until now. The best thing is that the temps are still above normal, so the children can get outside and enjoy the snow without freezing! AND...all the snowmobilers are breathing a collective sigh of relief...the snowmobile trails in Oneida County (which is where Rhinelander is located) are officially open as of 8AM today! For those of us who are from the south (yes, KC counts as the south when you live up here), it's hard to understand the impact of snow on the lives of people in this part of the country. But let me tell you, when the lakes freeze and the snow starts to pile up....everyone up here is happy! And I must say, it makes me appreciate the warmth of spring, the long days of summer, and the last few days of autumn more than ever before!

We don't have much going on this week, which is strange. School starts back up next Wednesday, January 3rd. We are all having trouble just sitting around and doing nothing, it's so unusual for us. My mom left yesterday evening, so today we just sat around the house goofing off and then took two of the cats to the vet at 120 for booster shots. I spent some time on the computer making plans for our trip over spring break in April, renting a car and looking at the cost of plane tickets.

Ahhh...spring break, we are so excited about our trip, it will be our first real vacation...where we aren't traveling to see family, or just spending a weekend a few hours from our house. Forgive me if I'm repeating something I've written before, I'm honestly too lazy to look back at all my journal entries and see if I've told you all about our plans already.

Well, we've rented a house in Pawley's Island, SC for a week starting April 7th (http://www.greatbeachvacations.com/book/house.html?PMSUnitID=DEJA). We are actually staying on Litchfield Peninsula, which is bound by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, and a tidal creek on the west. The house sleeps 12, so my mom, Pavan's parents, and maybe his youngest brother Duemani, and coming along for the week. I was able to find flights for all of us that have us all meeting up at the airport in Atlanta for a lay over, and then flying into Myrtle Beach together. From there it's a 30 minute drive (in the huge van I rented that seats 12) to the beach house. Then, it's a week with our family, on a beach, hooray! It makes me immediately relax to just think about sitting on the beach, soaking in the warmth and sun, watching the kids play in the water and collect sea shells. You know, I've been to the beach before. But I've never CRAVED the beach like I have since we moved to northern Wisconsin! The grass is always greener...huh.

Better get going. I am going to start making our plans for this summer...it's going to take some work to put together the puzzle of camps, summer school, family vacations, etc. The girls both want to attend Fort Wilderness, a Christian camp located just north of Rhinelander, AND Girl Scout camp at Camp Birch Trails, which is about an hour south of Rhinelander. I'd love to get Noah into summer school again this year, and probably Anna too. Kindra will be happy to hear she's officially too old for the summer school programs offered here!

More later!

Rebecca

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to our many faithful readers, I apologize it's been so long since I had a journal entry. This time of year is insane around our house, as with many of you. All the birthdays, all the school programs, all the Christmas preparations....now that's the presents are opened, the dinner is eaten, the programs are over....I can breathe a big sigh of relief!!

Here are lots of pictures from the last two weeks....including some from today.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, will write more later!

Rebecca

Our weekend

I needed to get on here today to add some more pictures before I get way behind again and hit you with 80 pictures at once!!

We had a busy, but very enjoyable weekend, getting ready for Christmas! The children are starting to get very excited since Christmas is only two weeks away, and our lives are getting crazy with school programs and choir concerts. Tonight is Kindra's choir concert and tomorrow is Anna's school program. Noah's isn't until a week from Friday. Throw in Anna's birthday next Wednesday, and trying to arrange for a trial gymnastics lesson in Weston, plus all the normal Christmas hustle and bustle, and it keeps me on my toes!

Saturday we did a little shopping at Walmart, had lunch at Hardees (where Amaya got bit by a naughty little boy...I wasn't mean to the mom though, after dealing with Noah for the last 4 years, I have a lot of compassion for mother's of naughty little boys....), and then picked out our Christmas tree. This is the first time we've had a real tree since we got married, and Pavan was so excited! It's very tall, as you can see in the pictures. But it looks beautiful in our living room. Now Pavan is convinced we need a vaulted ceiling in the living room when we build a new house....and I can't say that I disagree...we'll have to see how that fits into our plans. I was already planning on high ceilings, so we might be ok without the vaulted part....

Sunday we just goofed off around the house in the morning, and then headed to Wausau around noon to see Santa at the mall. I feel funny even calling this place a mall, our Walmart is probably bigger! We got to the mall around 130, and of course Santa had just left for lunch and wouldn't be back until 230. Darn the luck! So we just walked around for an hour. There wasn't anything we were looking to buy, so it was pretty boring. We got back into line to see Santa around 215, and once he got back from lunch the line moved pretty quickly. I was surprised that Noah went up and got on Santa's lap with Anna. Kindra sat over to the side on a stool with Amaya on her lap. Noah even told Santa what he wanted for Christmas, but then got shy when the lady started calling his name to take the picture. Oh well...this was the first year we got a picture of Noah with Santa, so just getting up there was enough for me. One side note...I cannot believe how much it cost to get a picture with Santa...we paid $24 for one 5x8 and 4 wallets. The cheapest package was 2 5x7 for $20!!! And of course they wouldn't let you take your own pictures...I was pretty irritated! I think next year we'll be checking out the FREE breakfast with Santa at Anna's school!! Live and learn....

Enjoy the pictures, and be sure to take a look at our videos on You Tube. Let me know if you want me to send you a link. There are videos of Anna's gymnastics routines at the last meet, and videos of Amaya carrying on conversations with various household items. She's got an amazingly strange imagination!

More later,

Rebecca

Gymnastics Meet

Go Hodags! Ok, so I don't suppose the Rhinelander Gymnastics Club uses the Hodags for their mascot, but they do use the same colors...so maybe it's not entirely wrong to say that...

Anna had her second gymnastics meet today, in Antigo WI. It took us a little under an hour to drive there, and of course it was snowing pretty hard this morning for our drive. I was hoping the snow would keep the deer from wandering onto the road, haha. I'd never been to Antigo before, and it was a bigger town than I'd expected. Their highschool, where the meet was held, was very large and very nice. We got there around 830 this morning, and left by 130...so at least it didn't consume the entire day like the one in Marshfield.

All of the girls did a really great job today, and for a lot of the Level 3 medal ceremonies, our girls dominated the awards. Anna got 6 medals today! She got second place on floor, second place on vault, third place on beam, third place on bars, second place in all around (when they add all 4 of their scores together), and a second place team medal. The awards were divided up differently this time, which caused her to get second place medals when she would have gotten first place ones at the Marshfield meet. At Marshfield, they divided the Level 3 girls by age....9 and under were together, 10 and above were together. At today's meet, all of the Level 3 girls were judged together. Each meet is different, and Anna didn't mind once I explained to her what had happened...she was happy to hear that she scored better on each individual event than she had at the previous meet...which is what they encourage (obviously). They want the girls to focus on improving their own individual scores from one meet to the next, instead of comparing themselves to everyone else.

We've decided to sign Anna up for a recreational gymnastics class in Weston, instead of the competitive team down there. That way she can work on her skills, get some extra practice between sessions here in Rhinelander....but still be a part of the Rhinelander Gymnastics Club and compete with them. Anna's coach talked with me about that decision today, and told me the place in Weston is great, and that a lot of the high school girls from Rhinelander go to Weston for individual coaching. She said that Anna is a very strong gymnast and has a lot of potential to be great at the sport, and that she is probably going to be moving Anna to level 4! Exciting news!

In other news....haha

I spoke too soon about Noah not having a Christmas program at school, that same day he came home with a note from school....and the preschool class is putting on a Christmas program and breakfast from 830-930 on December 22nd. From what I heard, it's a very very cute program (aren't all preschool programs cute?), and I will be able to pull Anna out of class to come watch Noah's program. I will be sure to videotape the program for those of you who won't be able to make it to Rhinelander for Christmas.

Amaya wasn't feeling well last night. She went to bed around 10, but woke up around 11 very fussy. You could tell she was tired and wanted to go back to sleep, but she just couldn't get comfortable. After about an hour of this, I realized she was sort of rubbing on her left ear....and when I tried to touch her left ear she screamed! So we gave her some Motrin, put some ear drops into that ear to help with the pain, and turned on a movie for her. She wanted to watch Monster House, which wouldn't have been my first choice for 1AM....but within 30 minutes she was back asleep, and seems to be feeling better today. I'll probably give her some Motrin before she heads to bed tonight though, to avoid a repeat of last night!!

I hope you all had a great weekend. We finally have a couple of inches of snow on the ground, and I'm sure everyone up here is holding their breath for about a foot more so they can get out on their snowmobiles. I do hope to have snow on the ground for Christmas...next weekend we plan to get a Christmas tree and decorate our house. I've been thinking about decorating the tree with popcorn and cranberries, anyone ever done that?? Ok, so I'm just feeling too lazy to drag out all the ornaments....they are easy to drag out, but a real pain to put away later!

Have a great week,

More later 

Rebecca

Sorry it's been so long since I had a new journal entry, I have no excuse other than the long list of things that need to be done this time of year!

We had a great trip to Kansas City for Thanksgiving, other than the fact that we couldn't take our Suburban along! We were in a rented Durango, the biggest thing they had available...considering we had to leave town 2 days after the crash. The Durango was a really nice vehicle, I'd recommend one to anyone looking to buy an SUV....but the cargo room wasn't really sufficient for all of us. Of course, on the way back to Rhinelander, the Durango's power outlets stopped working...a real problem when we needed them to power the DVD player and my XM radio!! So, we called Enterprise and arranged to pick up another vehicle in Des Moines. This time we got a mini van...which gave us a lot more room for our things, but someone had been smoking inside the van, and once all the air freshener wore off, just being in the thing made me cough! But not to worry....the day after we got back in town, the Enterprise office here in Rhinelander called and said they had to take the van back to Iowa, so I needed to come in and switch cars AGAIN!! This time I got a Nissan Armada....this thing is huge! It seats 8, and feels like I'm driving a tank! Very very nice though....but I'm ready to get my Suburban back!

Speaking of my Suburban....I got a phone call from Allstate earlier this week. They'd sent someone to the body shop to check out the damage, make arrangements for payment with the body shop and such. Final damage estimate is right at $7000. WOW!! One funny sidenote...the night of the accident, Pavan was on the phone with Allstate, and the lady asked him about where the police report would be filed, etc. Then she asked if the police had found anyone at fault. I guess it's a reasonable question, but every time I think about it I laugh. Yes, ma'am. The officer found the deer at fault, for failure to look both ways before crossing the highway, but I'm afraid he won't be able to pay much more than he already has....

While in KC, we had two birthday parties. One for Noah, and one for me...a surprise to say the least! You see, I am going to be 30 tomorrow. Never thought that day would come...but here it is! But for today, I'm in my 20s. I'll let tomorrow worry about itself, haha.

Anna has her second gymnastics meet this Sunday in Antigo, WI. Then gymnastics is over for awhile. I have contacted a gymnastics studio in Weston, WI to inquire about more lessons for her. She loves gymnastics, and seems to have a real talent for the sport....so I feel badly that she will be limited by the resources available here in Rhinelander. The Rhinelander Gymnastics Club is great, but they only offer sessions 4 times each year, for 6 weeks at a time. So after the meet this Sunday, there won't be any more gymnastics until April!! That's four months with no practice at all....it's not like you can practice most of this stuff at home!! So, I'll see what this place in Weston has to say (Weston is just south of Wausau, 75 miles from Rhinelander). You can't beat small town life for raising children...but when your small town is over an hour from the nearest big town (if Wausau can be called a big town....), it makes it hard to access certain services. I haven't missed the shopping....with the internet, and our frequent trips to KC, I get all the shopping I need. But just like we have to drive 45 minutes to Merrill for dance each week, I'm afraid we might have to make that same sort of commitment for gynmastics if Anna wants to persue this...and with her talent, I hate to just see it go to waste.

A couple more tidbits before I go....Anna got a solo part in her school choir concert, which will be during the Christmas Eve Mass...very exciting! And Kindra auditioned for a special part during her school "holiday" concert, and got the part! She'll be singing a special part with 5 other kids during the concert, on December 11th. As far as I know, Noah doesn't have any special holiday programs for school.

Better get going, I am hoping to clean out the toy room today. Need to get rid of all the toys the children have outgrown or never use to make room for all the new stuff that's sure to arrive on Christmas Day!

More later,

Rebecca