freaky, fabulous, fun with family... (or insert your own corny title)

My brother Mike and his wifey Helen and their daughter Sam, and her little Xander were here for a little visit this week, on their way to Alabama. It was so fun to have them here and broke up the monotony of my days. Now we're back to monotonous again... sigh. It was nice while it lasted.

Enjoying some local cuisine... craw fish. I'm trying not to gag. The guys liked it though. I wish I liked seafood, living where we do and all, but I just can't make myself. I did try a bit. (A very minuscule bit, but I tried - not impressed) ahhhh, a wonderful side trip to buggy land. Here is Mike delivering my chariot. They left yesterday morning and yes, I got up to see them off (at like 6:30 or something like that). It was all worth it because the little guy was in such a sweet, cuddly, happy mood, so Dave got some good pictures. I thought about trying to hide him in our room, hoping they would leave without noticing, but no such luck... Isn't he just the sweetest? And my very favorite... How could you get any sweeter than this??

another quick hi...

I hope you are duly impressed at my posts, which whatever else they may be, they are indeed close together. yippie. So what to tell you? Yesterday was fun, well, most of it anyway. Being greatly housebound and bored as of late, I was able to spend close to 9 hours outside of my 4 walls. That, my friends, was blissful. The first chunk of time was spent at the clinic, which is not particularly enjoyable, but was okay. Dave came with me and then left for a class and I stayed behind and after the appointment was over, sat there waiting for him to come back. I was so happy when 3:00 came along because it meant that the TV in the waiting room would show Dr. Phil, as opposed to the incredibly pathetic soaps that had been playing the hours previous. Dave came just as it was getting good - a 32 year old woman was putting herself up for adoption -- wanted to be legally adopted and have a mom to do things with... um... I didn't hear the end of the story. Anyway, the appointment went okay. The doctor took x-rays and said that it looked good, things had not moved, so no surgery. But he said to stay off it for at 3 weeks and then come see him again. And no driving. = ( So, right now 3 weeks is feeling like a lifetime, but hopefully it will pass quickly. It was a lovely day outside. So Dave and I went to the library and got cards. YEAY! They have 13 libraries all in the same system that we now have access too. That made me very happy. We checked out some DVDs which took awhile. I haven't ventured out on crutches much before yesterday and let me just tell you that people are SO nice - I recommend everyone try it at least once. People open doors for you left and right, give up their seats, look at you with great compassion on their faces, and make cheery small talk about how horrible it is to try to walk with those things. From the library, we went to Olive Garden for supper, using a gift card we received for Christmas (thank you Jon and Kari!). I had not eaten lunch and was rather hungry when we got there. 25 - 30 minute wait says the lady. The lady lied with forked tongue! Anyway, somewhere probably around 45 - 50 minutes we were seated. It was all SOOOOOOO good!! THEN, we went to Walmart to purchase a few much needed items. And I got to ride the little dune buggy thing. Another high point in the day and something I strongly suggest you all try once. I mean, you could always just wrap your foot and ask for the buggy. They are FUN! They do beep when you are going backwards which is a tad embarrassing... but all in all, they are quite the trip and oh so much nicer than crutches. Then we came and watched some episodes of 7th Heaven. And that was the end of my exciting day out on the town.

I have not a good title for this post...

Hello all - What shall I bore you with today? I have already uploaded a trillion pictures... let's see. Well, life is rather dull and boring these days... Oh, I just remembered another picture I wanted to post. duh. let me go get that....

There is Dave trying to entertain me and keeping me from going out of my mind. Anyhoooo.... Well, I was supposed to go see the ortho. doc. yesterday but I ended up going to the clinic, being there 3 hours, and the doc. never came. Some sort of emergency I suppose. So I'm supposed to go back tomorrow. I had started walking on it some because it's just so much easier. And the crutches are such a pain. The lady at the clinic was really helpful - she looked at my e-rays and told me not to walk on it at all since it could make the bone separate farther and then they might need to put a pin in it. Okay, so I'm not walking on it anymore. So that's life around here. Dave is going to school and doing a lot of dishes and a bit of laundry here and there... I'm sitting on the couch, or today I've been on the computer for hours. I had some profound thoughts but now I'm tired of being on here so maybe I'll try to come up with a profound post soon. Until then, I hope the pictures will suffice in bringing endless mounds of joy and cheer into your day.

Pictures of yesteryear... (sniff)

Here's a bunch of pictures I was going to post before Christmas but our computer wasn't working well enough to do such things. Sometime in late November, after being in the building 3 times, Dave and I actually got to ride up to the lookout at the capital building. The only problem was that it was freeaing cold and terribly windy. Which is why there are tears on my cheeks. But the view was really nice, we just didn't stay long.
Self-explanitory pics of us making Christmas cookies. Dave had school work to do, but he was sweet enough to help anyway. I know you don't need to see 3 pictures of our little fake Christmas tree, but they're all different and I couldn't decide, so here ya go.
Dave and I had our little Christmas party the middle of Sept. soon before we left for the northland. This was around 4:30 am when we left for our trip. We thought we were packed then. Oh my! I should have gotten pictures of us on the way back. There's tons of room in this picture! Random pictures of my adorable small relatives and such... Jenni and Rhonda already posted, so I tried to not duplicate stuff... Here's Hannah: lill Xanderone of my beautiful neices, Kayla Seriously - it wasn't that cold at Mike and Helen's place! Josiah and Larissa. Serenity Dave with Matthew and Rhonda's girls James and Scotty at Dave's parent's place...

a little Christmas craft...

So, this year when my family was hanging out at Stormer Lake, Jenni had the idea to do this little thing that she saw on some ladies blog (who had too much time on her hands, possibly?). Anyway, all it was was ripping stuff out of magazines and putting it in a notebook to use as you wish. Sounds corny, but it happens to be rather addictive. Especially when one has little to do but sit on a couch! So a bunch of us started them at Stormer and I've been working a lot on mine the last few days. It's been therapeutic, it's free, they're fun, and I can hardly even look at a magazine anymore without having the urge to rip it to shreds. Such fun. So because my former roommate wanted pictures and I spent all the time downsizing these, I thought I'd throw a few in here as well - bug Jenni and Rhonda if you want to see theirs. They have some really neeto pages! Here's us doing them at Stormer and then a bunch of my random pages.

DRAT!

So, today I was still unable to walk with any ease at all so I went in for x-rays. Yep, broken foot. And I did it all by myself while walking across the room. The most annoying part is that the doctor told me not to walk on it at all (I could get by hobbling on the inside of that foot) and they gave me crutches. I struggle to be graceful and stay on 2 feet under ideal circumstances. Now I'm afraid I'm going to break the other foot trying to walk with the things. I have an appointment on Wednesday with the Orthopedic doc and he will decide whether or not to put a cast on at that point. On the way home from the doctor, Dave ran into the grocery store to buy a few things and came out with flowers and said "Happy 5 month anniversary." This was the first one I forgot. Anyway, you can pray that we don't murder each other in the next couple weeks. In spite of newly wedded bliss, loosing independence and having to ask for every little thing is a huge pain for both of us. This is not at all how I planned on spending the next little while. Yeah, I'm rather grouchy today. And the mess from our trip is still everywhere. Getting it all sorted and put away will be a true test of marital stability I'm sure. I would so much rather just do it myself than try to explain where everything goes and such. Alright, this cheery post is drawing to a close. Happy '09 everyone!

In case anyone is still checking...

HELLO and HAPPY NEW YEAR to one and all! Hopefully this is the season where long blogging absences are excused. While traveling, I preferred to actually talk face to face with my friends and family, rather than blogging about how wonderful it is to talk to them face to face. Or maybe I was just lazy too. At any rate, I barely know where to begin. Seems like a year since I last posted and a lot of fun stuff was crammed into that time. I'll start off with a word to the wise... okay, I'm probably the only one um... ridiculous enough to come up with such creative ways of injuring myself, but can I just say that sitting on one foot while spending time on the computer might be hazardous to your health! I almost always sit on one foot while I'm online and frequently I don't realize how asleep I've let my foot get, until I stand up, and oh my. Such was the case this morning. I had determined to not blog until we were all unpacked. That planned has changed since... well, I'll just tell you the story. So this morning I was online for awhile and when I got up from the chair, my foot was very soundly sleeping. So I was trying to hobble out of the computer room, when I'm not even sure what happened exactly. I think I must have stepped on it sideways with a lot of force. I screamed out in pain, as I have not felt pain like that in some time. As the foot became more and more awake, it only hurt more and more. There's now sort of a bulge on the side and it hurts to walk on it, but I can hobble around - not exactly practical when one is wanting to unpack and run around all day. ahhh well, so here I sit at the computer - with both feet on the floor.

Let's see, Dave and I left about 3.5 weeks ago and had a great trip seeing a lot of friends and family. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of the details I was going to bore you with. We headed up to Iowa the first night and were going to head to Minnesota the next day, but were delayed due to some nasty weather they were having. So we spent a nice day relaxing there. Dave mom introduced me to their neighborhood Goodwill and I became a die hard fan - you can get amazing stuff for very cheap. Goodwills definitely vary in quality, organization, and such, but this one is a real winner! So, the next day Dave and I drove to International Falls and then the next day we made our way up to Red Lake, stopping to explore the scenic ditches and by ways ... yeah, it was a long trip. We went in the ditch right after we got off the 502 (for the Canadians out there), with a truck driving right towards us and us definitely in his lane. We was able to swerve around us and we sailed nicely into the deep snow of the ditch. We then proceeded to have tea and crumpets with the sweetest lady which we waited (and waited and waited and waited) for the tow truck to arrive. I think she really enjoyed the company, actually. I was disappointed about getting to Red Lake later than planned, but it all was okay in the end. We were able to see Archchch..thur and Iris and their kids that evening, some good friends from Red Lake who I have not seen for years. Time in Red Lake always seems to fly by so fast. It was wonderful seeing all my family and friends there. My family had a get together at Stormer Lake since we have outgrown any of the houses that people have in Red Lake. When we were driving home from Stormer, we saw the most gorgeous sunset I've seen in ages. I've seen really nice ones here as well, but this one with all the snow and tall trees - it was magnificent. And sadly, my camera was elsewhere. Some highlights of Red Lake were the Christmas Eve service, Stormer Lake and getting together with family, seeing friends that I haven't seen in awhile and going from house to house visiting folks. I could easily deal without the frigid temperatures though. As I sit today in the 70 degrees and sunshine. The south has to have a few redeeming qualities, right? Anyway, from Red Lake we headed to International Falls and avoided all ditches. Dave however, the poor guy, got to experience me chocking to the point that I could barely breathe and was very loudly gagging and gasping for breath. This happens every once in a while and it's very terrifying. It's even more fun when it happens in the middle of nowhere on bad roads. Poor guy didn't know what to do with me, but it ended without any loss of oxygen to the brain. We spent 2 nights with my brother Sheldon and his family. We had a lot of fun playing games and Darla and I got to go for coffee while the guys did things like watch football. Then we headed to Iowa to spend almost a week with Dave's family. That was so nice and relaxing. So many differences pop up when visiting our respective families with one of us the oldest child and the other the youngest. For instance, staying with my sister and her family - we have 4 handy dandy little alarm clocks to wake us up every morning. At Dave's place, oh my, it was SO quiet. = ) Yes, we slept in way too late on several occasions. It was fun to relax, play games, play with their new Wii, etc. = ) There are 2 games in which I can soundly beat Dave - the rest, I'm pretty bad. One is bowling and the other is a mindless, brainless, shoot anything that moves type game. I hope there's not a deeper meaning there. I don't think so. Anyhoo, from Iowa, we headed to Warsaw for a couple days. Again, it did not seem long enough and I felt like I could spend a couple weeks there. It was SO good to be back there and reconnect with some friends. Dave had a couple good math books and some videos so he was fine with me playing with my friends as much as I wanted and it was so wonderful. Yesterday we left Warsaw and spent an obscene number of hours in a VERY overstuffed car. Oh my - we had been accumulating stuff everywhere we went and by the end of the trip, we were quite loaded down. We got in last night around 10 and yeah, back "home." Although driving into Warsaw felt a lot like driving home as well. And then there's Red Lake which will always be home. So I'm confused. The house was okay except for a dead cockroach and some really odd, very tiny, tad pole like things swimming in one of the toilets. I was thoroughly disgusted but once I flushed it and sprayed bug spray, the problem has seemed to be solved. I shouldn't admit that to anyone planning on coming to see us any time soon. Alrighty, well, I should hobble out to the living room and see about sorting through a bunch of our stuff. Happy New Year once again.