Bria: Rheta, Reindeer Rustler

Bria's 4th grade Winter Program

Last night was a night Bria has waited for for almost 4 years! She has always looked forward to being involved in the 4th graders winter program. So when you have some time, sit down and enjoy. The total program is almost an hour long, but if you want to know what's going on with the story line, you'll want to watch all of it.
Bria's character was Rheta (reta) - a Reindeer Rustler. She was one of the "bad" guys and she loved every minute of it! She did a great job and had a lot of fun!

If you are trying to find Bria, she's wearing a brown and blue plaid shirt with a brown cowboy hat and a red bandana.

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Fun Christmas Pictures

Christmas decorating is a little different this year since we are trying to sell our house at the same time. So instead of getting out our big tree and all our Christmas "stuff", the girls each got miniature trees to decorate and put up on the dining room table. They had a great time decorating "their" trees and look forward to being able to put "their" trees in their bedrooms next Christmas. Thanks to Noni, I found a fun photo program online and added some fun extras to some of the pictures we took. :)

Poem Recital at School

Bria - Piano recital on November 20, 2010

Glasses for Emmy

Here she is.... cute as can be! and that other little cutey is the newest cousin...Oz!

Busy Days

Wow... life is keeping us both very busy and very much in "stalemate" mode these days. Jon started his new job this week which has kept him very busy. He's really enjoying getting to meet people and trying to figure out the ins and outs of a new place. We get to skype with him every night which is good for all of us and he's enjoying getting settled in.
We continue to pray for the sale of our house. It's only been on the market a month and we hear there are possibly a couple of interested parties, but are anxiously awaiting an offer so that we can make an offer on whatever house Jon picks out. So we try to keep busy with the day to day things of life as well as trying to keep the house in "show" mode - which has been eaiser than you might think with 2 girls, a dog and daycare kids still here. I have some fun things planned to do with the girls this weekend as we try to get in the "Christmas" mood. Normally that is not a problem for any of us, but being spread apart makes everything just a little weird this year.
I'll try to get Bria's piano recital posted on here this week as well as some fun pictures from Emmy's birthday party.
In the midst of moving and Thanksgiving, Emmy turned 7! I honestly can't quite wrap my brain around that fact.... to me she's still my baby ... she can't possibly be a beautiful young 7-year old girl but I look at her and realize she is. She's really growing up and maturing - it seems she's changed so much in the past 3 months.
So for now I need to get afterschool snacks ready, change diapers, get kids up from naps and all those things. I'll try to get more fun stuff posted soon. While you're waiting you can check out the jibjabs below - the girls love them!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Iowa Bound

Well, by now I'm sure you have all heard the news: we're moving back to Iowa!
Jon was offered a great job in Muscatine with Central State Bank. It will be a great career move for him as well as the rest of us - we should be able to settle in and finally get roots really put down in Muscatine. Jon starts work on November 29th, so we'll be moving him over Thanksgiving weekend. Thursday we'll get to have lunch with Jon's family and dinner with my family before driving Jon over to Muscatine on Friday. We'll all go so we can show the girls the town and where Jon will be working and living (temporarily) until we get our house sold in Grand Forks and one bought in Muscatine.
It will be great to only be 4 hours from grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. Another bonus? With Megan, Greg & Oz in Des Moines we have a handy dandy half-way meeting point. Looks like it will be the Culver's turn to host a family weekend get together this summer! :) (you said you were up for it sometime, Meg!)
I plan on keeping daycare open until Christmas break: December 22nd will be my last day of daycare. I will also be closed on Thursday, December 16th to attend Bria's school music program. At least 2 of the afterschool families have already made new daycare arrangements and will be all settled in their new spots before Thanksgiving. It's never easy to drop this kind of news on all the families who have been counting on me to watch their kids. Thankfully I was able to give everyone almost 6 weeks notice before I have to actually be done. The only way that timeline will change is if God steps in and sells our house very quickly.
The girls are looking forward to living closer to family. Obviously they both have some mixed emotions about the whole thing, but overall they are good with this move. We are praying that we can get moved before school starts back up after Christmas break. We fully aknowledge that would be a very big "God thing", but He has worked out the timing of all the other details to get us to this point and we are trusting Him to work out the best timing on the sale of our house as well. In our limited perspective, it seems like it would be easiest for the girls and us to be moved by the end of the year, but we are trusting God to work out the details in the best timeline for all of us. We sure will be missing Jon around here, but as I keep saying, hopefully we won't all be apart too long.
So, if anyone out there in the Grand Forks area knows of anyone looking to move close to Kelly Elementary/Schroder Middle School, we know of a great house for sale that goes on the market today!
So, between now and whenever we move, it will probably be a little crazy around here with open houses, house showings, moving Jon, doing daycare and managing all the other normal things at the same time. But, we've done it before and survived, so we should be even better prepared for it this time!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Emmy's Published Book!

The link below will take you to a preview of the book that Emmy had published this week. Talk about a proud and excited little girl! She has a copy to give to her teacher at school and I think all the teachers have either asked for a copy or given her input for her next Fairy book! So if you'd love to take a peek, the link below will take you to her book. Or you can check out the link on the right hand side of the blog that will take you to her book as well. Enjoy!

Science Fairy Research by Emmy Holthe Make Your Own Book

Daycare Pumpkin Patch 2010

We walked up the pumpkin patch at Reed's school earlier this week and the kids had a good time exploring!

UND Women's Hockey

Last weekend we had a chance to go the first UND women's hockey game of the season. Also the first UND game for Jocelyn and Monique Lamoureux - the twins who played on the USA Women's Hockey team this last winter. It was a great game! It was the second highest attendance on record (second only to the first game the UND women ever played). The Fighting Sioux one and the girls had a great time watching the game. They each brought a friend along with and it was fun to watch UND beat 4th ranked Boston College.

Crazy Hair Night - Awana

The girls had a lot of fun getting their hair ready for Crazy Hair night at Awana!

Loving This Weather

This week has been absolutely beautiful! The weather has warmed back up and over the course of 4 days all the leaves turned colors and have been falling like crazy.

With no school on Monday and Tuesday we took advantage of the chance to get outside. We played in the backyard and went up to Viking school playground to check out the new play equipment.

Daycare... Back in the Swing of Things

Oh it's good to be at the end of September! Everyone feels like they are finally into the full routine of the school year. Everyone is getting along well and school seems to be going well for everyone, including Reed, who is enjoying preschool this year.

Sophie and Ethan get some hang time while Reed is at preschool. That first week or two Sophie wasn't thrilled with her brother leaving, but now that it's become routine it doesn't bother her at all. It's such a different world to watch the littlest ones interact compared to the big kids. It's a good mix though - the different ages make it fun for everyone. Reed loves having the big kids here after school. I think he will be a happy boy next Monday and Tuesday when there is no school and the kids will be here all day. Today he burst into tears when they all headed out the door to go to school. It was short-lived, but he sure does enjoy having them here!

And next week should be beautiful weather so I am hoping we can get to the playground after Ethan's morning naps both Monday and Tuesday.

Just thought I'd get a little daycare update on here. It's been awhile since I have. Thanks to everyone for your help in making this school year transition a good one. Your kids are doing great and the flow of most days around here is good and easy. We'll be trying to enjoy as much outside time as we can until winter comes. Hopefully we can fit in a lot of morning walks still and afternoon playtime outside.

Here are a few pictures of Ethan and Sophie enjoying the dress-up hats.

New Carpet

We are loving our new carpet. It may not look hugely different than before, but it's nice to have something without ripped up strings (thanks to a puppy) and it's nice to have it just look fresh and new. so for those family members who were asking - here are a couple of photos!

Chuck season 4 coming.....

The Big 1-0!

It finally happened...we have a double-digit kiddo!

Happy 10th Birthday, Bria!!!!!!

So happy to be watching my little girl grow up. Although the time is slipping away faster and faster, it seems, Bria is a girl we are incredibly proud of. Even today, on her birthday, she is concerend about a new girl at school whose dog just died, so she's giving that girl one of her Littlest Pet Shop dogs in hopes of cheering her up a little bit.

We didn't get to see her long this morning - piano lessons at 7:00 before school and intramurals after school until around 4:10..... so it will be good to get her back home tonight! Her dinner request? Pizza from Little Ceasar's, followed up by a blizzard from DQ and her favorite birthday cake.

So again, Happy Birthday Bria!!!!

Emmy's Werewolf Tips

Emmy made this video this morning wanting to share with everyone her tips on werewolves (which she plans on being for Halloween).....

First Day of School! 2010-2011

It's finally here! The girls are so excited to be headed back to school. Thankfully they enjoyed most of their summer together. It's only been the past couple of weeks that I have been hearing the phrase, "I'm bored." They got along great all summer too. I think it's good for everyone that school has started up again though.

Bria will be in Ms. Blair's 4th grade class. She doesn't really know anything about her teacher, but was delighted at the open house last night when she walked into the classroom and saw an entire wall full of books! We decided right there and then her teacher must be ok if she has that many books in her classroom. :)

Emmy is in Mrs. Gregory's 1st grade class. We are SO happy to have Mrs. Gregory as her teacher! Bria was in her 1st grade class as well and we all loved her! Emmy was beyond excited to have Caitlin, Claire and Alexander in her class this year as well.

It's such a good thing to have the kids excited to head back today. And I'm enjoying the relative peace and quiet of a house full of only 3 little kids as opposed to 3 little kids and 5 big kids - it's amazingly quiet around here so far today!

The only major thing left to do for today is to bake oatmeal chocolate chip cookies this afternoon - that's the tradition for the first day of school at our house. The girls love walking in to a house smelling of cookies!

Emmy, ready for 1st grade Me and the girls Jon and the girls Emmy and her friend, Claire Walking to school-wow is it nice to live close!

Building benches instead of frisbees.

Building benches instead of frisbees.

Water Flips

Emmy had fun learning to do front and back flips in the water while on vacation and she really wanted me to take video of her doing that..... so here you go!

Bemidji and Bay Lake Vacation

It's hard to be back from vacation! We enjoyed such a good time! First we were at Ruttger's Birchmont Lodge in Bemidji, MN. The first night there we went and saw The Sorcerer's Apprentice - FUN movie! On Monday the girls enjoyed spending some time at the children's program while Jon and I explored downtown Bemidji a little bit. I also found a new favorite treat that I will HAVE to go get again the next time we are there - it was a huge rice krispie bar, on a stick, covered in caramel, then rolled in peanut butter chips and then coated with hard chocolate. OH MY GOODNESS! It was incredible! After picking up the girls and having some lunch we relaxed on the beach for the rest of the day - it was so nice to just relax. The girls enjoyed building sandcastles, kayaking and swimming.

Tuesday we went swimming in the morning, had lunch downtown and then the girls enjoyed exploring the Headwater's Science Center in Bemidji. That afternoon and evening we spent more time at the lake.

Wednesday we headed out for Ruttger's Bay Lake Lodge near Brainerd, MN. Wow - what a place! Thanks again for the gift, Serena. It was really really nice and quite the resort. Our room had a balcony off the golf course and after checking in on Wednesday the girls wanted to go to the outdoor pool and then the beach. They loved swimming at the pool and looking for shells, reading and relaxing at the beach. Wednesday night we ate dinner at the restaurant at the lodge.

Thursday morning was Jon's golf time. We all headed out on The Lakes golf course - Jon said it was the nicest course he's ever played on and it was beautiful. He and I golfed while the girls helped with driving the golf cart. Some of the holes were absolutely gorgeous! It was a lot of fun. We followed up golf with lunch at the restaurant there at the golf course. It was a long wait for food, but sure did taste good! That afternoon after some downtime in our room we headed back to the pool and the beach for more swimming and shell hunting. Emmy found a lot of shells and was quite the happy girl. I even found a shell to replace the one that Tre lost at our house last summer! :) Thursday night we kind of snacked for dinner and then went out on a pontoon tour of Bay Lake in the evening. It was quite relaxing - Emmy slept for the entire ride.

Friday after we relaxed and then checked out we stopped in Brainerd before heading home to enjoy Pirate's Cove mini-golf. It was a very fun course. The girls had a blast and I have to say it was awesome to kick Jon's butt at putt-putt! I even had 3 holes-in-one (Jon had zero). So he may have royally creamed me on the real golf course, but I got my revenge during putt-putt.

It was good to get back home and sleep in our own beds Friday night. Vacation was a wonderful change of pace and much needed for all of us. After a whirlwind trip to Iowa this weekend we'll settle back down for one more week of summer before school starts on the 25th. Here are several pictures from our vacation.
we stayed in the same room in Bemidji as last year - the girls were delighted!

feeding ducks in Bemidji

ooey gooey goodness on a stick - oh my!!!!

painted beavers all over downtown Bemidji

Relaxing in Bemidji

indoor pool - bemidji

Bemidji kayaking

Bemidji bouncers

Bay Lake outdoor pool

Bay Lake

Silly Bands! (The balcony of our room at Bay Lake)

The Lakes golf course

Bay Lake, outdoor pool

Bay Lake shell collecting

Pontoon ride on Bay Lake

Bay Lake

Pirate's Cover putt-putt, Brainerd, MN