6 in the Sticks

Karma taught me well years ago not to mess with this date too harsh, "ya never know what yer gonna get."

Jeromy said he drove Ash to school today as he was working in Ely. The town had these signs plastered all over town. One of the local gas stations had a sign that they were accepting loonies, a Canadian coin, today only.

Well, this kind of freaked me out after imagining my whole family getting health care and the possibility of the Canadian government paying for our children's college education, realizing we are not actually Ely residents anymore even though our kids have stayed in the school system since we moved  seven years ago. I told my husband I almost signed the petition until I thought about it some more. Not sure how many people did but I'm sure we'll hear about it tomorrow.

I guess if the papers publish the same stuff tomorrow, I'll check into therapy for my trust issues.

These pictures were from yesterday morning. I think quite a bit of snow melted since then. We're looking forward to springtime yard clean up, gardens, and outdoor house repairs. The weather report said we'd get freezing rain and snow today, I thought they lied until a few moments ago. Se la vi!

So long ice rink, please don't melt away and flood our basement.

Not sure how well you can see this, it is the beginning stages of our tulips. They surprise me every year by coming up early and surviving the years that we get a prolonged winter.

Deep Thought By Jack Handey

You know something that would really make me applaud? A guy gets stuck in quicksand, then sinks, then suddenly comes shooting out, riding on water skis! How do they do that?!

Saturday. Jeromy went fishing and brought home two crappies.

Sunday. We woke up to about a foot of snow.

Jeromy plowed a few swipes down the driveway when the neighbor called and was wondering if she could get some help getting her car out of her driveway. I asked him if he'd mind plowing their driveway first. After he finished over there, the belt broke on our snow blower. Good enough for now we thought. The weather report initially reported the snow to stop by late morning. It never stopped.

Sunday evening. Ashley's cell phone was ringing off the hook with numerous classmates announcing that school was called off on Monday. I think they were all pretty sad. NOT! I think the only students that are pretty sad are then ones in Jackson and Charly's grades.

Snack time for Charly.

Tulips recovered.

Monday. Tulips covered even more.

It is still snowing outside. I heard that our town had a total of twenty-seven inches since Saturday night. One of our trees in the backyard snapped off during the night. Funny when I think about how I prayed last night that the trees don't snap and hit the house above the kid's rooms. Very nice to see that it was laying next to the house and that our power was still in tact. Thank you!

Jeromy was off to town for a new belt for the snow blower. It took us a good half hour to try and get a vehicle out of the driveway. Not only is the snow deep, but basically turns to ice once packed down. He made it home safely.

The weather report as of now says we are due for more snow on Wednesday, and all through next weekend. So funny when I was thinking on Saturday how I should start raking the areas of the yard where the snow has melted. Guess we'll have to wait a little while more.

Why couldn't it have been the dead tree that we need to cut down? We're not sure if this tree will make it now that the top has snapped off so we're making tentative plans for it if we need to cut it down.

Poor buried Moose dog. It's a good thing we don't have our puppy yet as I think we would lose it.

Driveway clear.

The kids made a slide from the top of Jeromy's lawn ornament and spent a good amount of time climbing and sliding.

I don't have a clue how I forgot to talk about last Friday night. Would love to post pictures from our camcorder but after trying to get them on our computer, realize why we got a camcorder so cheap. No way to transfer to a computer. Bummer, but will have old fashioned VHS tapes of it anyway.

My point. Ashley had her singing debut with a band for the high school talent show last Friday! I was so nervous for her. They sounded great! Very cool. They played the songs Closing Time, and Hotel California. They did very good. So fun! Today she is on the road with her band class for sectionals. Hope she has a safe trip and that they all play beautifully.

Saw Jessica yesterday, she's still plugging away with school and work. Won't be long until graduation day now.

Charly's latest saying. When she really wants something, she'll tell you, " I very want mommy home. " Or , "Mom, I very very want to paint." I love the things kids say as they learn how to communicate, the abundance of happiness and love you feel being a parent, such a natural high.

I'm really not sure what's going on with Jackson these days. We noticed that he's getting EXTREMELY sensitive lately. Sure we make excuses to ourselves as what's been happening lately and the different changes he's been going through. It's just frustrating getting to the bottom of it and helping him, extremely frustrating when we have to go someplace and have to deal with the criticizing comments from people thinking he's just being a brat or trying to get attention. More moments of dreaming of whopping people upside their heads. My little man. He must be a strong soul because he's faced quite a few challenges since the day he came into this world. Hope his worries pass soon.

My mom went back for more tests yesterday as the Dr's wanted a biopsy of a spot they found on her pancreas. They weren't able to get a good biopsy so she will be going in for surgery. Frustrating being in limbo again while waiting for the Dr's to get back to her on the when's and how's. We're hoping everything will be fine and that she won't have to go through too much to get there.

Jeromy is really getting excited for turkey hunting. He gets SO excited and tense about hunting to where he works himself into a frenzy. Would be nice to bottle that energy up and release to him in moderation. Don't bother trying to have a conversation with him as when he's got hunting on the mind, he's averaging a two second attention span. I hope he gets his bird, and that he doesn't have a heart attack working at it.

We're really getting excited for our puppy, just a matter of a few more weeks. It'll be so fun, can't wait.

I should be so lucky. What does a parent do to keep kids occupied on a treacherous snow day? Let them reenact No More Monkey's Jumping On The Bed!

Crazy kids.

Last week the kids painted flower pots.Charly planted her seeds while Jackson was waiting for his to dry. Hopefully he'll get a chance to plant his tomorrow. Charly's have already started to grow.

Saturday was how far and fast can the kids travel through three feet of snow day.

A hug for luck. And off for an adventure!

Snow paint time.

When they got sick of that, and I was ready for them to blow off more steam, we made lines across each end of the driveway and did relay races. Then red light, green light. But Jackson thought he could change the rules as we went. I don't think so! I know the squishy snow and the fact that I am out of shape contributed, but it was kind of hard to beat Jackson. That boy can book!

Ashley is supposed to get her braces on Wednesday so I'll have to get some shots before her smile glistens with glitter. Until then.

My mom is going to have surgery in a couple of weeks or so. She is going to have what they call the "Whipple Procedure". We are just waiting now for the scheduled date. Mom is keeping a very positive attitude and is feeling very good. Her goal at this point is to prepare as much as possible with her health, and home.

Thank you to those of you who have sent well wishes and prayers, it has meant so much. She is home for now and trying to stay relaxed and comfortable.

We really hope everything goes smooth and that there will be no complications as we understand this to be a pretty major surgery. Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Wishful thinking? Hope not.

Jeromy and Charly are heading down to the farm for turkey hunting. Brian will be there with them too. I'm going to miss not being there with them. I'm not sure how well we clarified things for Charly as she was telling me she is going hunting with daddy and how she can sit in a deer stand and be really quiet. :) I'll miss my little babe tagging along with me. I'll miss my big babe tagging along with me too. Good luck Jeromy! We can't wait to hear about all of the fun we're missing! I hope to take advantage of the alone time and finish the stripping in the kitchen for good! Wish me luck too.

My smallest babe.

Thumbs up for turkey hunting. Or should I say toes up! Ever since Charly was a small babe she would twirl her little "bear blankey" between her toes. She also colors, paints, and picks things up with them. She seems to do pretty good with them too.

One of the latest mispronounced words she says at the moment is "wood picker" for woodpecker. It's so cute and hard not to laugh at her when she's so serious with her eyes wide open telling me, "And we saw a woodpicker in the woods picking bugs out of a tree!"

Have a few things to get done this morning before the two of them are off for the weekend. Also, I will take pictures of Ashley's beautiful smile today before it changes slightly tomorrow. Braces. They sure have changed since the day I had them. I still can't get used to the colored ones though, as I do a double take thinking someone has a good amount of food stuck in them. Sigh. Teeth.

It got to sixty degrees yesterday! The tulips and lilies liked that as well as Jack and myself.

Charly all packed and ready to go to the farm. She was so excited.

I think Cally missed being slightly tortured by her yesterday because we found her sleeping on Charly's bed. We haven't seen her sleep on her bed before. Jackson thought since she wanted to sleep in the princess room, she aught to have a tiara on. It was a little big.

We had nine deer come into the yard last night. Jackson shelled some corn at the feeder yesterday so he was happy to see them eat it.

Charly made a bird feeder at school on Monday by spreading peanut butter on a bagel and dipping it into birdseed. We hung it on the hook that we normally hang our wood feeder and put the wood feeder on the picnic table. Jackson filled birdseed into the wood feeder yesterday. On our way out the door this morning, we saw the feeder was under the picnic table. We thought a bear came last night. We looked for tracks and found the deer had came to the table and pulled the feeder off.

Today is Ashley's big day! Hello braces!

Can you tell she's annoyed by me? :)

We were so happy to see some birds that we haven't seen since last fall. Okay, I guess I was little more ecstatic than Ashley and Jackson. The robins came back, the red winged black birds, and a whole mess of junkos. It's so nice to see them back and hear the birds chirp again as the snow drips away slowly.

Comparison shot from the yesterday. A little more snow gone.

Can you imagine? Hhmmm. Let's just use this one as a deep thought today too.

Here she comes, miss America..............

She chose green and blue colors and it actually doesn't look bad at all.

We knew her mouth was going to be sore tonight so we had already planned a "mush" menu this morning. Metal Mouth's choice of menu was:

ApplesaUCSH, minus the pork chAWps.

Brusslesprouts.

Seasoned mashed potatoes.

Cheese tortellini with roasted garlic sauce.

Hopefully the pain will ease as the night goes by. Her biggest problem was the wires poking into her lips, but once she put the wax the orthodontist gave her on those poky spots, it helped a lot.

We had to do an after to go with the before.

Goofball.

Jackson wasn't feeling so hot yesterday morning. He woke up with a sore throat and was congested so I kept him home from preschool. Later in the day he felt a little feverish and his nose started to run and I could tell he was bumming a little. By evening he told me he was just a little but sick, not a lot because we were supposed to have a date night. He was pretty bummed until I explained to him that if we didn't do it tonight, we will do it another night. I felt so bad. I was sorry we missed the 6th grade play too. That's always pretty fun to go to, especially since Ashley is the stage manager.

So after our trip to town for juice and soup, we checked out the ice situation at the public accesses and drove up the road to check out the river through the culverts. It really feels like spring is coming.

                Tulips.

Fragments of our ice rink.

Jeromy and Charly are coming home today. Can't wait to see the video of Jeromy and Brian's turkey hunt. Jeromy shot his bird on Wednesday and Brian shot his bird on Thursday. Charly was with them when Jeromy shot his so I can't wait to hear her story of that.

Mom is scheduled for surgery on Thursday. Brian and I will there with her. We'll keep everyone posted the best we can. Thanks again for your thoughts and prayers. We're pretty confident with her surgeons and hope the whole procedure goes very smooth. Mom is a little nervous like anyone would be but she's keeping a good head on her shoulders and has maintained a sense of humor.

Every now and then you get an email that just cracks you up. I just had to share this one because I found this hilarious as I can kind of relate a tad with our moose dog. He scares the heck out of strangers but is our big baby.

DOG FOR SALE!!!!  Even if you don't own a dog at present, you'll appreciate the efforts of this owner to sell her dog. Read the sales pitch!!!
Dog for sale!

Dog For Sale
*Free to good home.
*Excellent guard dog.
*Owner cannot afford to feed him anymore, as there are no more thieves, murderers, or molesters left in the neighborhood for him to eat.
*Most of them knew him as 'Holy Shit.'

The clarity isn't so good but this is the only picture we have of Jeromy and his turkey right now. This was taken by Brian's phone. Good job Jeromy! Good job Brian! Send us a picture if you can!

Sounds like there was a whole mess of turkeys everywhere this year. Hope the weather continues to cooperate with the rest of the hunters next week! Good luck Em! John! Bud! And anyone else that I've missed.

This is a shot of Jackson's ratty shoes that he is allowed to run wild in. It's okay if these shoes get dirty, scratched up from climbing trees, scraped from crawling around on the pavement, etc. This is the way that he likes to keep the shoe strings. I didn't realize it until after untying his shoes a couple of times and I heard his frustration when he went to put them on one day. "Urgh, Mom! please stop moving these! I like them this way!" Remember some time back when he laid his clothes out to remember which they go back on? He doesn't do that anymore, but shoes are kind of iffy as this is how he remembers which shoe goes on the right foot and left foot. He has only two pairs that he does this with. The others he has no problem identifying which is which.

Our snow is almost gone. I looked at the weather report and saw chance of snow next week and into the weekend. Don't know if "that will stick".

Small patches of the ice rink.

Charly's bird feeder. The "woodpickers" have been enjoying it.

Another word Charly has a hard time remembering how to pronounce is deck. Maybe because we don't have one yet. Actually, she does the same thing for dock. So if someone goes out on the deck, or a dock, Charly will say, "they went out on the dick." In most cases, the person she is speaking to says, "What?" It won't be long and she'll remember that one.

After the kids and I came home from school yesterday, they were so excited to play outside. It was seventy-two degrees here! They played outside for a little more than three and half hours. They haven't been able to really do that since last fall. I handed them each a small paper bag and asked them to do a scavenger hunt. I asked them to grab ten different things from our yard that would fit in the bag, reminding them to stay away from animal poop. They both filled their bags and were off to play again. Today is a rainy day and I'm busy in the house so it will be a perfect day to pour those bags out and see what they found.

The kids were so happy to finally be able to dump their sand box toys out, and dig into our ball bin in the garage. Later in the day Jackson and Charly come tromping into the kitchen, Jackson holding our slightly deflated football, Charly grinning ear to ear behind him. Jackson says, " Are you ready to play some football?!" How can you pass that up? Jeromy headed out there and kicked the ball out into the yard for them to race to, fight each other for and run back. I had to get my turn in to kick as well, not too shabby considering all of the years that have passed since playing in the streets with my neighborhood friends. And since Jeromy played football in high school you can imagine his kick was quite a bit better than mine.

I missed the shot, but at one point Jackson was running back with the ball in his mouth like a dog and dropped it on the ground. Jeromy told him to stick it back in his mouth so I could get a picture, unfortunately it didn't work so good as the ball had dirt stuck to it. Yuck.

Charly was so upset when I told them to come in for dinner. Bottom lip stuck out, crocodile tear dangling from the corner of her eye, "But I wanna keep playing football." After dinner and bath, their eyelids looked pretty heavy. Welcome back spring.

I am scrambling around the house today trying to get things situated here so Jeromy and Ashley can have an easier time holding down the fort as I leave for Mpls in the morning. Mom's surgery is this Thursday am and can last from six to eight hours. I think that will be a little bit of a nerve racking journey for Brian and I waiting at the hospital. But mom says good news, she thinks they have Yatzee. lol. We LOVE Yatzee. The staff encourages family members to read books and play long games like Monopoly to pass the time away. I don't think I've played Monopoly with Brian since we were kids and it happened on rainy days at the cabin. I wonder if we'd still fight.

I'm glad it is cloudy and rainy outside as it makes it easier not to drop everything and head out the door with the kids. Charly has asked to play football three times already this morning. Hopefully later today we'll get the chance to toughen her up some more.

As far as mom's procedure goes, Brian and I will try our best to keep everyone posted. I don't know when the next time I will be able to hop on and if Jeromy will have the time as well. I suppose if you haven't heard anything from us, everything is going fine and you could call Jeromy at our house for an update. Thank you to everyone that has offered me a place to crash, and all of the well wishes, support, and offers of help. We really appreciate it.

So, with all of that said, here's some fun to end the day with.

Deep Thought By Jack Handey

If a kid asks where the rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why is God crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did."

Hey everyone Mr. Mom here. I was going to type an entry a couple of days ago but time has not allowed. When my wonderful wife tells me she has had a long day I now have a new perspective on what she means. If some of you don't know Kim has been in the cities since last Wednesday and I have been home trying to hold down the fort. Jan is doing much better and hopefully will be released from the hospital today, if all goes well. She can not travel for at least three days. After that she is coming up to our place for a full recovery. All of us here at 6 in the sticks will be glad to have her back to 100% and to have my sweetie and mommy back home again. Things just don't run as smooth around here when she is gone. I do admit I am having fun with the kids though. If I get a chance I will blog more later. Hope everyone is well that reads this. Bye for now.