It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Because it's snowing and snowing and snowing! Hello, everyone! It's been awhile so I thought I'd do a end of the year post.

We've gotten a lot of snow the past couple of days. We went down to Pocatello earlier this week and we were all amazed that once again they had pretty much no snow! The kids were saying they would have to come up to our house for Christmas if they want a white Christmas. Then when we were there that night it was snowing enough we ended up staying the night. Hopefully it will stick around for all of you for Christmas (just not to the roads).

As for us, we've got lots of snow. Barry had to snow blow the driveway TWICE yesterday so people could get in our driveway for a meeting. Then the roads were bad enough only two people came. Unfortunately that also meant Grandma and Grandpa Hansen didn't come up since the roads were slick. We missed you and we'll make our cake again for you the next time you are up.

Enough about the weather. The kids and mom are all very excited to have school out for two weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in until 8:30 today. They are already planning out cousins sleepovers and play dates with friends.

Barry will take his last final on Wednesday and I am hoping maybe he can actually hang out with us for Christmas and not be stressed he should be doing homework. I think the next week, though, he will have to spend starting his 60 page paper. I asked him if he had lots of charts and graphs he could stick in it so we can see him occassionally once school starts. Since they don't offer 9 credits worth of classes that he needs (and we're discovering he may only need 4 more!) then he has to go back to work full-time. They only let him work half-time if he is going to school full-time so now he will be trying to write this massive paper while maintaining a regular schedule. Please keep him in your prayers. He is really discouraged right now and wants to just quit due to a number of reasons but he is so close he is going to try to stick with it. Unless of course I said I'd be fine with him not finishing. Then I think he'd run while he had the chance.

Braden, Tyler and Karina are all doing fairly well in school. Karina had an absolute perfect grade and behavior report card at parent teacher conferences this month. Her teacher said you don't get any better students than her. I'm hoping some of the boys past teachers will get Karina to make up for the boys. Haha. The boys, amazingly enough, BOTH had good conferences this trimester. Normally I get frustrated teachers that don't know how to get them to focus and both teachers said they are doing well and are very smart boys. If they'd focus, they could get even better grades so the teachers are challenging them on that.

We also got Braden's ISAT scores back and he was advanced on everything so then we found out from his teacher that those scores are what they use to determine honors classes. She let him know how important it was to keep those up and to work hard on his math since he wants to be a scientist. Tyler got advanced on math, too, so we were excited to see that. They both absolutely love science and by now know more than their mother. I never could stand it so I think I promptly forgot all of it as soon as I passed each test.

Kayli is getting to be a big girl and is SUCH A TEASE! She just loves to play with Tyler and they tease each other constantly. She is a smart little bugger, too. We were helping her to say words and the conversation went like this:

Dad: Say "I"
Kayli: I
Dad: Say "Love"
Kayli: Love
Dad: Say "Daddy"
Kayli (with a very mischevious smirk and a laugh): Mommy!

She did the exact some thing to Angela and Jared, throwing in Jared instead of Angela and then laughing.

Kayli is also a dancing and singing girl. Right now we are working on teaching her Jingle Bells. I keep telling the kids they can't sing the silly versions of songs from school as they will confusion, especially the Jingle Bells ones.

As for me, as my family knows, I've been busy with Angela working on our website, Coupon Stretch. Some of my family members went to a internet boot camp conference and so we started picking their brains for information. We've made the website awhile ago but dropped it as we couldn't figure out how to monetize it well. So now we've got it set up and are already making money. It's very nice and is lots of fun to do. If anyone else has web pages, could you please add the link to ours to yours? Right now we have deals, printable coupons, a store and review on there. We will slowly be adding more stuff to it as time goes on but it is finally ready for everyone to see. I think my favorite part is the coupon codes feature, though. I had no idea there was a nicely organized place with all the coupons and deals for lots of major stores out there. Since you all know how much I love to bargain shop this is a good fit for me. No more scouring the internet for a coupon before I go to a dept. store. Even Barry liked it.

Debra, I went and looked at your website when I found the link on this page (that I apparently haven't been to for awhile) and love it! You two are doing a great job with that and it looks great. I was really impressed with the whole Spanish section.

Okay, thanks for stopping by everyone and have a great Christmas!

So much to do, so little time and other fun stuff

Oh, I'm starting to regret my time decisions earlier this week. I have tons to do before we leave on Friday and I'm starting to feel stressed. I forgot to factor in Braden's 5th grade patriotic performance tonight and the big one, pack meeting tomorrow night! I will be spending most of tomorrow and some of today doing awards, going to the store and preparing for that.

Plus there are lots of other things I need to get done before we can go. I look forward to taking Kayli with me to get the tires rotated and transmission flushed on the van "like a poke in the eye" as Barry puts it. However, they really need done before we drive somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 miles these next two weeks.

On a very happy note, only 2 1/2 days left until we leave. I caught Braden sitting at the bar last night with a smiley dreamy look on his face as he said to himself "only 2 1/2 more days until we leave". Hahaha.

For other news, the kids all started a 6-week jump rope program at school last week. This is so fun for them and a great $5 deal for mom to get them to EXERCISE. Tyler got his jump rope at school yesterday as they didn't get the older kids in on time. Last night after dinner he was begging to go out and jump rope so he headed for the back deck. The last time he tried this program he was frustrated because he tried and tried and really couldn't do it almost at all. Last night he was jump roping backwards with a huge smile on his face! Looks like he has finally figured it out.

Braden has been telling me about all the things he can do with a rope but I haven't seen them yet. I am going to go outside with them later today and have everyone show me what they are learning. They came home with a list of different skills by level and a point value for them. I can guess what most of them are but are at a loss for the others. Apparently Braden has gotten past his mentality that jump roping is a "girl thing". He has been getting comments from his classmates about how good he is at when they jump rope during P.E. So, that makes me a little curious because he certainly didn't learn it at home.

Karina is really excited about it, too. Once the kids are in 1st grade they can join an actual jump rope team that I think will start doing competitions. One of the ladies doing it was a jump rope champion for some high level like national or world or something. THAT would be very interesting to watch!

From the frying pan and into the fire as they say...

Barry got his new calling at church today and was released as the Cubmaster only to be sustained the Scoutmaster for the 11-13 year olds. We both got a good laugh after church when we were visiting about it. He said he had a lot of people come up and comment to him and somewhat express condolences on his new calling and I got the same from a few people! Fortunately we are both really excited about the new calling and he is very enthusiastic so we just had a good chuckle about it all instead of agreeing with all of them.

He was really excited to tell me that the troop already has planned a 50-mile (or is it 150-mile?) bike trek later this summer. I had fun needling him about getting to relive his "glory days" as a scout and finally getting to go on a scout bike trek. There are lots of other ideas floating around in his head (some quite wild) so I'm sure the scouts are going to have a fantastic time with him, especially Braden.

Ahem, yes, it's been awhile

Now that I haven't posted in over a year, maybe I should do that, eh? I would upload some pictures but I don't have any recent ones. Another thing I seem to have been slacking on. I'll rectify that later this week since Karina is having another ballet on Saturday.

As for what is new in our neck of the woods - not much. Kayli is still a big tease like always. Having learned it from Tyler and that is who she teases the most we all just get a good laugh. Her favorite game with him is to go over, sit on his back and bounce up and down while he laughs and tells her to sit on his head. They have a great love/tease relationship. She is also signing to use more so we are having a better idea of what she is wanting. Fortunately she is attempting to throw in the words she learns on the signing time videos so she is at least saying something, too.

Karina Ballerina is still loving dance and we are trying to decide what to do with that. As you can guess, it has extra costs and other things associated with it so ballet isn't the cheapest of hobbies/sports. However, she absolutely loves it so we will keep at it awhile longer and debate for a few more months what to do when Barry goes to work part-time.

Tyler is such a sweet smiley boy. He had his first piano festival last weekend and got a superior. He was expecting something more like a recital apparently. When we got all done and left, later that day he asked me when he was going to have his festival in the chapel. He didn't realize that festival was just walking in the room, playing your scales and pieces for a judge and you were done.

Tyler also finally got qualified for speech therapy through school. He started that a week or so ago and is very happy about that. He is working on his "th" sounds at the moment and is practicing them fairly well.

Braden is still in the "the oldest child who thinks he knows everything" phase. Exactly when does that go away, if ever? He thrills in learning all kinds of new stuff - and then "sharing" it with all the jocks/bullies at school who harass him about being a nerd. I'm sure that doesn't help the situation but at least he is being true to himself I suppose. He is still playing the cello and had his first concert with the jr. high and high school this month. Oh, hey. I even have video of that, too, now that I think about it. I'll add that a little later. If you see the camera bouncing around it is because Kayli wanted to help.

Barry is busy with school, work and as of next week a new church calling. We are a little nervous about how he is going to fit that calling in as it involves lots of time, money and effort but I'm banking he'll be blessed for saying yes and everything will work out. More on that later since it hasn't officially been announced in church yet.

As for me, life is just regular duties - cook, maid, chauffeur, errand runner, cub scouts, etc. With no bear leaders at the moment I've added that onto the Webelos leader and advancement chairperson assignments so that Tyler has some cub scouts to go to. I have fun with the boys, though, and since Braden is the only consistent Webelos it gives him someone to do activities with.

So there is the rather mundane (happily so) update of our lives for the moment. Hopefully I won't take a year to post the next one.