Here it is - our new home (most likely) as of April 25th

SPRING BREAK - Minneapolis Style

There was a mini-Lego Land at the Mall of America - it was fantastic! Since I didn't have to clean-up the place - there was only LOVE (see other post).

I voted Anna the 2nd most likely child to be lost at Mall of America. (The most likely child was not one of mine and was already in the arms of a police man when we arrived.) Anna loves to push the stroller now, which you can imagine is a lot of fun for mom. One time she walked away from me without looking back. Obviously, I watched her like a HAWK and she was frequently in the stroller. No police assistance needed because I never let her out of my sight - little turkey.

Matthew went on this ride by himself. He actually was off the ride before we knew he got on! He loved it, but I did notice he wasn't hungry of lunch a bit later.

Anna wanted nothing to do w/ Blue and Matthew has grown beyond his old friend.

The kids w/ my buddy B.!

The kids and I joined Ken in Minneapolis for 3 days of Spring Break. He went off to work and we played. He used some of of the points he accumulated from all his travels and we stayed at Embassy Suites. Let's just say - that is good living - .....made to order breakfast, someone else making the beds (such that a coin could bounce!), a swimming pool (actually met a family that goes to our church in Ankeny and to the school the kids will attend next year), evening snacks/drinks and nights with the hubby.

I think the entire family most enjoyed our trip to Mall of America! My favorite part was that we were joined by my grad. school buddy B. He actually came to Bloomington over his lunch hour so that he could go with us to the mall. B. and his wife were the grad school friends who hosted Ken for four months before our marriage. (see previous post - sorry no hyper link - someday :) This is an indicator of what a great people they are, but it goes way beyond that. B. was so sweet and kind with the kids and it was like 16 years hadn't passed since we had seen each other!

I Love Them / I HATE Them

Catchy title. huh? Some of my favorite 1000 or so toys are Lego's. If we only had a peanut butter jar full, it would be ok. We have a bunch - many were hand-me downs another bunch were gifts. I will admit I have given my share - in part because I do love them so much. My kids can build Lego's for hours at a time. Matthew will build the kits as the instructions say, but he really just loves to build his own creations. (will post some pictures after we get into the house and we have some building sessions) Joel still needs help building the creations as the box indicates, but he likes to work with a team-mate to do so. Matthew at his age really just wanted to go out on his own. Carolyn pretty much does her own thing too, but I will be honest, she has chosen other gifts - not too many Lego's target the girl audience. Plus since she has the hand-me-down stash as well as her brothers Lego's, she would rather get other things that interest her.

Ok, so you are probably following the "LOVE THEM" part of the Blog title. Well.....here is why I HATE them.....they get EVERYWHERE. Like I mentioned in an earlier blog today, we sorted all the toys this weekend and did a major "pick-up" - in closets, drawers etc. Lego's were in every room in the house - even the "master" bath. The kids often use this when the other facilities are taken and I guess they brought a toy when the came in and forgot it when they left.

I guess I love them more than hate them.....but occasionally do put all things Lego on a shelf for a few weeks. When we get them down the kids act like they have a brand new toy and I have had a much needed break from bitty parts.

New house - assistance need

I tried to copy a picture off the web of my new house and paste it here - but blogger won't let me. I also tried to save it as a word doc and post that here - again no luck. Any ideas? If not you will have to wait until I get over to the house with my own camera. I don't really want to post a hyperlink to a realtor website - that's a bit too much information. (Haven't really perfected the hyper-link skill anyway.)


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THANKS SUZANNE! You're advice was just what I needed!

Ankeny Iowa - Traditions Apartment - late December 2008 to late April 2009

This is our temporary home for a little four months. The best thing about the apartment was that it allowed us to live together as a family for four months that we would have otherwise been separated. Sorry for the cruddy picture - I took it when I knew we were close to buying a house and wanted to get it posted. We actually live on the other end of the building, but the garages make it tough to get a good picture. Living in the apartment wasn't as bad as you might imagine, since we had 3 bedrooms and a garage. We lived on the 3rd floor and it was pretty quiet - except for us, of course. Going up the stairs was my main form of exercise. There is a neat exercise room, but I got creeped out when I was over there by myself after dark once (big guy came in - I quickly departed - enough said)!

Blog Blitz

I am going to post 5 posts back-to-back, because I have a feeling it will be a LONG time before I have time to post again. We will be leaving to Indiana in a few days and I have a goal to leave the apartment clean as a whistle - or at least a whole lot cleaner than it has been lately! We did a great job sorting and boxing up toys. (I don't want to move boxes of miscellaneous toys to the house! They just aren't fun to play with when they are all mixed up.) I also sorted through the masses of paper that have accumulated, with coming to a new state, new school, new insurance, selling a house, buying a house, taxes....you get the picture.

At least I am trying - funny thoughts......

Ken and I discussed last night that our living space is like painting the Brooklyn Bridge, by the time you finish one end, you need to start at the beginning again. Yesterday I made a concerted effort to get cleaning done but you couldn't tell it by looking!

At JCPenny today I picked up my photos. I had my order confirmation sheet in my hand and was going to throw it away on the spot - to make Maria proud. (If you don't know Maria, you should, but re: this post she is very neat.) I actually put the paper in the trash can when the lady at Pennys said, "oh no, you need to keep this in case you are going to reorder or do Smiles by Wire". Ok - I knew I wasn't going to reorder and I already downloaded all my pictures to my computer off of Smiles by Wire. Still I took the stupid paper back and away I went. (I never want to be rude - I guess, but how crazy is that!)

We bought a house

I don't want to go out of order, so you will have to wait until I post our apt. picture before you can see the new home. It was a rough negotiation (they didn't come down at all after out 2nd offer). Our real estate agent suggested we make a FINAL offer and they accepted. We are excited because it has what we were looking for - on a cul de sac, finished (mostly) basement and an office. We also are 3 blocks from the kid's new (next year) school. The house is smaller than our Newburgh home and the lot is too, but I love the location and unfortunately houses cost more here!

Portrait session - March 2009

Anna wasn't very cooperative for the sisterly love shots - oh well - here is her bear hugging Carolyn.

Let's just say I haven't been quite as good at getting Anna's picture taken as I should. Unfortunately the last time we went (October) she had an ear infection and wasn't really in the mood to smile. A smarter woman than I would have cancelled the appt. when the diagnosis was made. I won't make the same mistake again! Anyway, here are a few of the cute photos we got last Thursday (JC Pennys sends you all the pictures from the session via the Internet for $5. You don't have permission to print them, but I figure it is a great way to show off the pictures that I won't get around to mailing anyway!). What the pictures might not tell you - Matthew had a cracked lip and couldn't smile because smiling stretched the sore - Anna tried to escape while I was choosing which pictures to print (while on Spring break she walked way from me without looking back - where is the child's natural fear?) - I have a picture of the boys when Joel was 6 months old, very similar to a picture taken this time - it will be fun to look at both, but I don't have permission to show the 1st one on the internet due to copyright! You will just have to visit to see the comparison.

These are a few of our favorite things

It is good to remember what you love! This weekend I asked our family about their favorite things. Since pictures of my family are my favorite thing, we took pictures to go along with the fun!
This is me with one of our many scrapbooks. With the move, I have gotten behind in getting the pictures put in, but setting up a scrapbook session in my basement is one of the first things I plan to do after getting the essentials of the house unpacked. (picture taken by Matthew :)

Here is Ken (ok - I am here too, but I really liked this picture and just "found" it on a disk Ken's friend made for us), His first favorite (family) was disqualified because we aren’t including people in our choices. Therefore he chose Hawkeye sports to be his favorite thing.

Matthew chose Webkins (he also listed Mom and Dad 1st on his list – again disqualified, but appreciated). I thought he would go with the DS game, but no - Webkins was the big winner throughout the family (see below). Note that Matthew needed his picture to demonstrate the Webkins website to show off the games he can play.

Carolyn chose her “Whitefluffy” Webkins as her favorite thing, but decided to add all her stuffed animals to the picture, since the boys were showing off all their Webkins, and alas she has only one Webkin. This is because she chose a Build-A-Puppy for her birthday and Beanie Baby at Christmas time. She is already planning her next Webkins purchase, feeling very deprived with just one Webkins (clearly not deprived in the stuffed animal department). My favorite thing about Whitefluffy is that Matthew bought it for Carolyn when he received money for his First Communion and was purchasing his own first Webkin. I love when the kids are nice to each other without prompting (ok – even with prompting – I love it). Carolyn shared this picture with Anna, who always loves to climb into a good picture.

I asked Joel if his newest Webkins, “Groundy”, was his favorite thing and he said “Groundy and Carolyn”. (Again, Carolyn was disqualified – but the answer warmed my heart.) I have 2 shots of Joel – one because we tried to get an action shot, and the 2nd because in the action shot “Groudy” had flown out of the picture. I like the 2nd shot because it shows Joel straightening his animal’s whiskers for the picture – cute!

Anna’s favorite thing is her Binkies. I had to use an old picture because “Binkies are for bed” and I didn’t want to give her a binky for the picture than take it away – I am not that cruel!

Newburgh Indiana, May 2003 - March 2009

The best thing about this house is that this is where our two youngest children joined our family (once again - not IN the house - at a hospital, but you know what I mean). The 2nd best thing I loved about this house wasn't the house, but the town in which we lived. I loved our church and all the fantastic friends we made here.

Re: the house itself....I will miss the gigantic backyard and the fact that we lived in an area where the brickyards made an all brick house affordable to us. You will see in a future entry that brick houses are WAY out of our price range in a state where brickyards aren't so prevalent! You can't have everything, but if I could pick up and bring this house with me to Ankeny, I would in a heartbeat! (of course in this magical world I would place it on top of a basement and change the tile color (see below) and add sidewalks - (it's a magical world remember?) In that case, I would put it on a cul de sac!

Anna is showing off our beautiful (VERY NEW) wood entry way. We had this put in right before we moved because we had to replace three broken tiles. The builder put in obsolete tiles and didn't leave any extra so we had no choice but to completely replace the entry way. Our agent thought the wood floor would help sell the house in the buyers market that we were working in. We will never know, but it did look marvelous (wish we could have enjoyed it ourselves).

Ok - my kitchen only looked this clean when I was having a showing to try to sell the house. Not even having guests at my house got the kitchen THIS clean. I really liked this kitchen (esp. after the new paint job), but I really HATED the white tile floor. (It looked dirty all the time, just one meal after cleaning it and I felt like I needed to get on my hands and knees again - which if you know me, I DID NOT get on my hands and knees after each meal or even each day.) We hated even more that the builder didn't leave us one extra tile (are you seeing a pattern here?) and we had to have the Grout Doctor come and pull 10 tiles out of our laundry room closet to replace cracked tiles.

I wish I could somehow live like this without cleaning 2 hours every night after the kids went to bed.

We are re-looking at a couple of houses on Saturday, so we may have our new home entry shortly.

Noblesville (Indianapolis area) Indiana Jan. 2001-May 2003

Ok - I now realize the lighting was all wrong for this shot. I have a better picture, but not in the state (I have a copy of the picture we took when we sold this house, but it is in Newburgh.) I digress....We moved to this house when Matthew was 2 years old and Carolyn was born the following August. The best thing about this house was its location - we were 2 blocks from the neighborhood park and pool. It wasn't a public park or pool - we paid a yearly "dues", but it was fantastic - not too busy - and within easy walking distance. We walked a lot in the neighborhood, esp. with Miss. D and her daughter K. We were in a playgroup with our church and met many nice families. With no school kids, it felt like we had more free time to just "play".

Our first home, in Omaha Nebraska Aug 1994-Jan 2001

I realized that I better get hopping if I hope to go through all of our old homes before I get to our new one. (we are making an offer today - well maybe tomorrow, by the time we get our act together). This was our first home, where Matthew was born (at the hospital, not in the actual home). We lived on a cul de sac and had great neighbors to the right. Of course, for the first 5 years, we weren't home much because we were at work all week. It was a nice home and it served us well. We had a long back yard and our first garden. Ken replaced our deck with the beautiful one you see in the little photo, the summer before we moved. We painted our garage doors before putting the house on the market, but I didn't match the color well. So .... Ken to the rescue, we took a chip of the old paint and got a perfect match. He was out in the November cold, re-painting the door with cold-weather paint, before it became so cold that the paint wouldn't adhere until the warm weather of spring.

Elijah of Buxton

I love to read good children's books, especially Newbery books. They are award winners for a reason! So often adult books are graphic, scary or smutty that I don't often don't want to read them. I was so happy when Matthew was old enough to read Newbery books! Here is the latest, that he read for book club. I started to read it then, but didn't finish it until tonight (I had to wait until it came in at the public library, since Matthew had to return his school book.)

This book is about a boy growing up as the first child born free in Buxton Canada to escaped or freed slaves. I recommend it for your kiddos if they are old enough now, or just tuck it away in your memory banks. (There is some serious subject matter, so I would say 4th grade.) Boys might like it better than girls, but I loved it.

BTW If Matthew was recommending books, he would say the Percy and the Olympiad series or 39 Clues, but he liked this book as well. If you have good book recommendations for any of my kiddos, pass them on.

BALANCE part 2

If you read my first blog you know that my word for 2008 is BALANCE. Luckily it is just a goal, because it seems to be a bit tough to accomplish. I am looking for good hints on how you stay balanced. The way I see it, people need to balance:

· the needs of their family (self, spouse, children and the group as a whole,

occasionally: parents, grandparents, siblings, nieces, nephews)
· the needs of the community (helping at church, a child’s school, coaching a team etc.)
· the need to eat healthy and exercise vs. finding the time and money to do both – and even

if you have the time and the money – chances are in the dead of winter you will have a sick

kid that will make it impossible to exercise sometimes, even with good intentions.
· the need to keep organized and tidy vs. playing with your kids vs. doing something you like

to do
· striving for goals vs. being realistic when some goals aren’t obtained vs. getting upset when

you don’t reach a goal and then being crabby about it
· saving vs. spending
· work vs. play

Do you see my point? I need some advice – how do you stay balanced in life? How do you stay motivated, without getting upset when goals aren’t met? How do you have fun while accomplishing everything (sometimes anything) you want to do? What do you do when your children are glued to your hip making it impossible to accomplish much of anything at all?

Home away from home 1993-2000

This picture was supposed to be part of the Omaha post, but I kept crashing my "blog dashboard". Anyway....we never lived here, but it was definately a second home. My first professional job, and except for a couple of private-practice patients, my only post-graduate job has been working for BTNRH - Boys Town National Research Hospital. It doesn't look like this anymore....or at least this isn't the view on the website. (My friend C* provided this picture for me as well as the apt. shot below when I left for Indiana.)

My first job involved 2 things. #1 The Cochlear Implant team - identifying if patients were candidates, programming speech processors and providing aural rehab (fancy words for speech and hearing therapy for people with hearing loss). #2 Research Associate (sounds better than assistant). I did (still do) work studying the speech/language of people w/ hearing loss and their normal hearing control subjects. I definitely felt that the Cochlear Implant team was the best part of my job at first, but by the time I left B.T., I enjoyed my research collegues much more and I was able to take my research job with me to Indiana. I have been contracting with B.T. ever since then, first with Dr. Maureen Higgins - who has since died of Hodgkins disease. She was a wonderful mentor and support and will always be missed by me. Luckily, she talked Dr. Mary Pat Moeller into hiring me once her grant ended (a year after her death). I continue to work for Mary Pat and now also do some work for Nick Smith, whom I have never met. He sometimes jokes that I was contracted by Mary Pat from India (rather than Indiana) and says I have very little accent. I guess now that I live so close, we will meet. Soon I will be working with the University of Iowa as well, because Mary Pat is collaborating with them on a grant!

Omaha, NE

Here is our 2nd stop during our married life. 60th and Maple in the Benton area of Omaha - probably not the best area of town, definitely not the best neighbors below us (I think they were evicted - let's just say they didn't get along very well). Yes there is a stop light right outside our bedroom window and it was a bit noisy. We picked this place because a co-worker owned the building and because I moved to Omaha a month before Ken. (He probably would have found us something better :) The main reason we chose it was because it was cheap - and we were able to save enough money after 1 year to move into our first home....tune in later this week....Thanks to my friend C* who took this picture for me to add to a memory page when I was leaving Nebraska. She was one of our favorite visitors to this apartment!