Ringing in the New Year '08

This year really just flew by. We ended it in a somewhat traditional way by taking the kids to the Monona Terrace for a night filled with jugglers, live music, huge blow up jumpers, slides and putt putt golf. It would not be complete if we did not also see the Rick Wilcox amazing magic show. And, to follow in tradition - Dad (Nono) got to go up on stage and "help"! Dad sacrificed his watch for the illusion! It's just an amazing show!


















After the kids fun was over we left the kids with Emme and Nono and we actually went to a party! It was a lot of fun and the champagne was unexpectedly good! I am paying the price for that today ... We had an amazing ham dinner compliments of Emme and pretty much vegged out on the couch! All is good in 2008!

First ski trip of the season!

We took our first ski trip of the season and given the amount of snow we have already and how amazing Chris did I think we will be able to do a few more trips this season! Chris had a lesson and now skies down the hill saying "... french fries ... pizza ..." What this means is - make your skies look like french fries when you want to go fast and make them look like a slice of pizza when you want to slow down. It will not be long before we can all ski together!!


Click the link to see more skiing photos.

Slide show of Skiing

Riding bare back!

Acacia continues to show great improvements with the horse back riding. Recently she was allowed to ride bare back and now she is even trotting bare back. She is gaining more and more confidence and still just loves it.





Click the link to see a slideshow of more photos ...

Slide show of Riding Bareback

Christmas Day '07

I can't believe we actually were ready for Christmas this year - but we did manage to pull it off! Chris came in around 8a to tell me ... "Mom! It's Christmas ... Can I play on your computer??" No request to open gifts or anything. He just wanted to play on my computer! We were able to convince him to open gifts and he only asked twice during the gift opening if he could play on my computer. Thanks everyone for making our Christmas GREAT!



Click the link to see all the fun!

Slide show of Christmas Day '07

Christmas Tree Cut '07

At long last, we finally went out and got our tree! We cut it down this year. Everyone helped!

Slide show of Cutting the Tree '07

Steelers crush Rams '07

December 20th - 8a - off to pick up Matt, Gail and Rod for our road trip to St Louis to watch the Steelers crush the Rams! We saw car after car of Steelers fans on the way down and we saw more Steelers fan around St Louis then Rams fans. We went to the arch and got a close up view of some fog but the little tram ride was very cool ... unless you ask Rod. We did a mini tail gate in the parking lot and waited for Brian and Karen to arrive and then off we went to the stadium. Relieved that our tickets actually worked we made our way to our seats. As it turned out, we never actually sat in our seats but we did sit in about 7 different seats until we found a home at about the 35-40 yard line. It was awesome! It was a good high scoring game with lots of action. We yelled and screamed our heads off and had a great time. The final score was 41-24. I think we beat the spread! We spent the night with Brian and Karen and took off to see some body museum but there was so much traffic we never did make it. We just drove on home. It did end up taking us about 9 hours to get home where it only took us a little over 5 to get down there. The fog was just terrible. Emme and Nono stayed home with the kids. Click the link to see all the fun!!



Slide show of Road Trip to SL to see STEELERS '07

Acacia's Christmas Concert '07

Well, you sure will not find this at a public school here in Madison - but Acacia performed in her schools Christmas Concert this year. Thanks to Emme's new camera with a zoom - we have photos!

More hockey and horses

After one season of hockey and horse back riding the results are amazing! If you recall from earlier in the blog the first day of hockey and horse back riding compared to this entry. Acacia still totally loves horse back riding but Chris is not so thrilled with hockey. He really likes to skate but the concept of hockey is not winning him over. He really does not want to have anything to do with the hockey stick. In fact, he wants to learn how to ride a horses ... We will see. I hope you can view the two below movies. Enjoy!

Bye to my Fuzzy One...

I knew it had to happen and I was sure hoping it would have been easier ... We had to say good bye to my fuzzy one, little miss Nita. Her hind legs were failing her and with all the snow and ice we've had it was just making her life pretty sad. It is VERY weird being in the house without a dog. Between Ross and Nita we've had at least one dog in the house for over 15 years.

Snow ..... and more snow ...

Sooo, we've been getting a bit of snow lately. This is the most snow this early we've seen in the 11 years we've lived here. It came up on us so early this year we were unable to get any Christmas decorations on the house. Oh well. Guess we will have to make up for it on the inside of the house! Hope everyone is staying warm!

Lost the front tooth!

It's been a long time coming, but she finally lost the front tooth. For whatever reason, she was terribly embarrassed and wept uncontrollably ... But, the tooth fairy brought double the money for this front tooth. Acacia has informed us that the tooth fairy is really "your mom and dad ..." but that Santa and the Easter Bunny are in fact real.

Promega Christmas Party '07

For those paying attention, I've worn the same 2 black dresses to the Promega Christmas party every year for the past ... several years. This year, amongst the chaos that is our daily lives, we all went shopping so I could get the thumbs up or down from Randy (and the kids). Here is what we all agreed on. The party was fun but uneventful this year. We played craps but just never found the right groove. Normally between the two of us we win enough to purchase at least 10+ raffle tickets. This year we won enough for about 4. It snowed the entire day and 350 of the 600 expected guests did not show up for the party and we still did not win. Oh well. It was still fun and I am still ready to hit the real tables in Vegas ... some day.

Ben and Nikki hung with us at the craps table. They did not have the best luck either.

Our craps dealer (Dave) was an old co-worker of mine from my days with Athletics. If I ever go to Vegas, I am taking Dave with me!



The grand prize this year was a trip for two to Paris ... thus the tower ..

More Horseback riding '07

Here we have Acacia and her pony, Danielle.

And, here is a video clip from her 2nd lesson. She is learning how to post. Much more difficult then you would think ....

Thanksgiving '07

This year we celebrated Thanksgiving a little differently. Since our house is kind of a mess (new carpet going in) cooking a big meal was just not something either of really wanted to do. I received an email from the church asking for people to volunteer to "host a table" at the church for internationals to come and celebrate and American Thanksgiving. The night before Thanksgiving we brought to the church a table cloth, place settings for 8 and some table decorations and we set our table. Thanksgiving day, we arrived and slapped on name tags and then greeted internationals and invited them to sit at our table until it was full. This only took asking 3 as 2 were married with children. After everyone was seated (over 300) Randy and I went to the food tables and got the food. We had everything you would expect ... turkey, stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, corn, pumpkin, apple and pecan pie .... you get the idea! Other members of the church donated all the food, cooked it and then cleaned up. All we had to do was take our 8 dirty place settings home and toss them in the dish washer. It was GREAT!! Everyone kept thanking us for "hosting" but really we are the ones that are grateful! We got a great meal and met some neat families and were able to expose them to an American Thanksgiving and the possibility of a relationship with Jesus. It was really a great experience. All our guests ended up being from China so they communicated very well ... with each other. Seriously, we were able to communicate just fine. Here are a couple photos of our group and our table. Hope everyone had a great T-Day!

Halloween '07

Our camera is in the shop and I had a loaner that I could not figure out how to use. But, we did get a couple photos of the night. We ended up at the Kaji's. When it was all said and done we had 4 gallon zip lock baggies filled with candy! mmmm ... that should last a while! Acacia got so much loot that her plastic pumpkin bucket handle broke!