Happy Memorial Day...

We had our first "post-school daze" weekend and as usual, there was no shortage of entertainment/drama. Daniel came back to the house early this afternoon to tell Uncle Andrew that Aaron had apparently taken Duchess for a walk "because this girl wanted to see her and have her meet her dog." Aaron has a classmate named Bailey who lives a couple blocks down towards the high school. Unfortunately, along the way he met up with some neighborhood dogs that spooked Duchess and you can probably deduce the rest. Bailey apparently took Aaron to Ben Franklin and bought him a cap gun, then they both went to Taco John's. I'm thinking the latter was Aaron's idea... He didn't have any money with him though...

Daniel went with Andrew to comb the neighborhood for sight of boy or dog while I contacted authorities and burned a CD with pictures of Aaron and Duchess to bring down to the police department. I walked over there and a local officer gave me a lift back. He said he had picked up a "boy and a girl who matched the description," but let them off shortly after after the girl apparently said she could "get out now." Aaron was still AWOL, though, so the officer drove me one last place to look as he had a small inkling he may have headed to the park (coincidentally known as "Lover's Lane"). He wasn't there, though. Somewhere on the way back home in the squad car, the pastor who lives on our street corner found him and picked him up, so all was well. Any more days like today and I'm going to be on a first name basis with the TRF PD.

The rest of the day went much better, though, with the boys playing just out front of the house with their buddies and Bailey came back later in the evening and we all had a nice game of catch with the junior Cougar football, Nick, Bailey, Aaron, Daniel, and I, before the sun went down. Now I just gotta get their laundry done. They keep pulling their Star Wars shirts they got from Lisa out of the dirty laundry to wear again as they apparently like them quite a bit and can't wait for the washing.

Aaron and Daniel gave me their report cards this afternoon and they were both officially promoted to the next grade, Aaron in third, and Daniel in first. Aaron made some improvements in his music class and Daniel maintained solid achievement in his alphabet and related skills. It was kinda funny reading the personal note from Mrs. Miller to Aaron, thinking of what she would have written to Jennifer years ago in first grade.

I discovered rhubarb in the backyard this weekend, so am picking it for Mom to prepare in July. I also took a walk around the house today and found on the South side of the house there are large green leafy plants/bushes that appear to be ready to bloom. Not roses, but they look like they may be pretty once they finally bloom. I'll have to post a picture if they turn out well. They've filled in the outside of the house nicely so it's not so barren. I also bought a weed trimmer this weekend so I got the back fence cleaned up a bit. The flowers in the backyard garden area are coming up nicely, about 4 inches tall so far.

Hopefully everyone has a safe and happy Memorial Day holiday. I've been getting over a chest and head bug with an eye infection to boot, so I'll probably be laying low much of the day just typing, but will probably get out the football later on with the boys just to get the blood flowing a bit.

A favorite activity of Daniel at any given time of the day... He likes to slide down to the bottom and "fall off" in his Dad's lap while he's working below on the computer. 

Daniel san is exhausted after a long day at the office... 

Countdown to summer with a house full of rowdy kids...

The days are numbered for the school year in TRF. The kids are about out of class for the year, which means a lot of noise around the house and hopefully just a morsel of quiet time left for daddy to get some work done. I will soon discover the true test of a home-based business. It's with somewhat mixed emotions I greet summer with to say the least.

The boys and I decided to take in some of the beautiful evening weather here at sundown and took a long walk, making a wide square to the local train tracks and back, stopping for some Mexican food before looping back and stopping to chat with an old acquaintance, Terri Cuppett, who was out with her guide dog on the corner in front of her house. The sunset was truly spectacular, with the sun being eclipsed by this single white billowy cloud in an azure blue sky with brilliant beams of sunlight bursting out of the top of the cloud in all directions. I wished I had my digital camera with so I'd have a nice new wallpaper for my computer. If nothing else, it's good motivation to make a habit of the evening walk. The only complaint out of the boys is Daniel started saying he was going to "die" if he didn't get something to eat and drink "right away." That was about halfway through the walk and was shortlived as I boosted him on my shoulders and his mind was then shifted to his "fear of heights..." The boys watched a movie Friday night at one of their friend's houses, a rather gawdy colored house in an otherwise conservative neighborhood. Imagine a whole street of white, off white, light yellow, brown/earth tones and pastel blues, then right in the middle of it all, a PURPLE house. At least it's easy for the kids to find...

I finally took a few minutes of free time yesterday afternoon to put together Aaron's half of the bunk bed, lacking my tools to finish the entire set, but I found my tools tonight, so I will likely get the rest done tomorrow and the boys can return to their "pre-Minnesota" sleeping configuration. Speaking of sleeping, I think I'll post a picture of Daniel following a LONG day of play last weekend. You can see he truly had nothing left to give that day...

Since I last wrote, we did take another trip to Grand Forks, North Dakota and signed up last weekend for Sam's Club, so I can keep the kids better supplied with snacks and other staples with fewer trips to the supermarket. We were impressed at the amount of stuff one can fit in a 1991 Honda Civic. This time around we got home before the sun went down completely and didn't have any more run-ins with the local deer population, knock on wood.

As for current vocational activities, I was just graded for my third month's work at Transolutions in Illinois and earned a rating of 99% accuracy, which means I've now gotten 97, 98, and 99% in three consecutive months. They just now switched my backup account from an emergency room in Connecticut to the University of Illinois - Chicago, so I will possibly have the potential of typing discharge summaries and consultations for a large population of residents and therefore a number of English as a second language dictators given it's status as a teaching facility. I'm actually hoping against hope I will always have enough work on my Orthopedic Associates of Hartford account so I never have to type on the secondary one. For those of you interested in who I'm actually typing for, here's their website: http://www.oahct.com/4udr2/webpage.asp?wppagename=physicians.htm&wpleftmenu=leftmenuphysicians.htm&wptitle=Physicians&g_cid=1&g_sid=270796116&chk=9643

They have some nice bios of the various surgeons and physician's assistants with pictures, etc. It's more fascinating for me as I type them all sight unseen and then match up their face with their voice later on. As a transcriptionist, you often conjure a picture in your mind that is far from reality, i.e. thinking the doctor came over on the Mayflower given their stuffy old voice, then finding out they're actually 30 years younger than you had thought. Speaking of transcription, this past week was National Medical Transcription Week and my first week I got a nice card from my employer for it. It's nice to be appreciated at least once a year as this job is mostly unsung for all the things we put up with from doctors.

That's about all that's goin' on over here. I gotta get some sleep before church in the morning. I'll try to get more pictures of the neighborhood for posting so you can see better how TRF looks in the summer. It's so nice and green here right now!

Aaron, (? 9 yo) and Nick (9 yo) on 5/8/2005. 

Daniel, Aaron, (?) and Dorion on May 8, 2005. 

Daniel, Zach, and Tyler (with Duchess) 

Thunderbolts, Lightning, and Tornado Warnings

Sorry for the delay since my last post. Been a little busy over here these days. That's getting to be the norm nowadays. Since last post, we had our combined choir performances at three different churches in two days. I've sent recordings of it to some of you. Those who didn't get one and may be interested, go ahead and e-mail me at cougalum1@hotmail.com. With that performance, the choir is off now for the summer, so we have our Wednesday evenings free again, which I think Andrew needed, working his two jobs and all. He gets a little more time to snooze that way.

The boys seem to continue making new friends all the time and broadening their play experience. Today we set up the volleball net in the back yard and the neighbor girl and another boy from the neighborhood, Dorion, played with the boys back there as well as horseshoes in the front yard. It's nice to have two yards for a change. I don't miss the asphalt jungle a bit...

The boys had Uncle Andrew take them out to the school carnival at Challenger Elementary as I had to work yesterday. They had a really good time and got a lot of prizes. The prizes are a little nicer then when Jennifer and I went to the carnival in our old country school house in St. Hilaire.

My work continues to go well with the transcription company in Illinois. They had been holding on to all my work for close inspection during my orientation period, but recently took me off 100% hold and authorized me to send my work directly to the doctors' offices, so it's nice not having someone looking over my shoulder all the time except for those few reports I am not able to understand the doctor on. I scaled my hours back a little bit so I'm just working 9 to 3 pm on weekdays and 8 hours on Saturdays. I'm already feeling a lot of pressure lifted now that the evenings are more open and I'm not "chained to the desk."

In the past week, the boys helped me plant our herb garden and some flowers and Daniel planted his tree from school for Arbor Day. I have yet to see how they do as it's been hard keeping them watered enough. It's so windy and sunny that the soil tends to dry out pretty quick.

As for the headline of today's post, we had a severe thunderstorm warning flash on TV last night, but all we got was a dazzling light show. Tonight, however, both thunder and lightning are here in TRF and in full force. I'm probably stupid typing this right now given the state of weather affairs, but I didn't want to put this off another week as there are a few still reading what's going on over here. There was also a tornado warning this afternoon for the counties of Grand Forks, Marshall, and Polk, all areas surrounding TRF, but probably a good 40-50 miles away. They just said conditions were "favorable" for a tornado. None sighted yet, though, knock on wood.

I took some new pictures today of the kids and will probably post them next, but give me a few to get around to it. We had to come inside from playtime thanks to the thunderstorm.

Hope everyone had a happy Mother's Day!

Until next time...

Jim, Aaron, Daniel, and Andrew

Combined Choir

We had a great combined choir rehearsal tonight at Zion Lutheran Church in town with that congregation's choir as well as the one from Redeemer. The three choir directors (for Dad's info) are Linda Samuelson (Trinity), Diane (Mosbeck) Johnson (Zion) and Ruth Stenson (Redeemer). Diane Johnson recognized Aaron in the church parking lot and said hi. Apparently she taught him music at Challenger a few times this year already so they are well acquainted. She remembered me as a small boy.

We found our places in the sanctuary pews and sat down, watching all the others come in. I saw just a few famiilar faces. Deb Fulton, Daniel's kindergarten teacher at Challenger, was there and this lady sat down right in front of Mike Lehrer and I and her face rang quite a bell in my head of someone I recognized from long, long ago... I was going to ask Mike whatever became of Nancy Fellman, my old swimming instructor from the 70's, but didn't get a chance. Our combined choirs totaled probably 50-60 members and for once we had a "real" tenor section. It sounded so great having so many guys singing at once and we balanced the ladies out pretty nicely. We sang "I'm Going Home" again from the Cold Mountain movie with Nicole Kidman. I'm going to have to rent that one to see what the song sounded like there.

Our combined choirs will be performing at Redeemer's Saturday evening service this weekend at 5:00 (practice at 4:30) and then will sing the early 8:30 service at Zion this Sunday followed by the late service at Trinity, so we will have a full three services to attend... I can't wait to see the look on Aaron's face when he has to sit through all that...

After the practice, we headed downstairs for an old fashioned Lutheran coffee fellowship with all kinds of bars and lemonade. Down there, I again saw the lady that had earlier sat down in front of me and asked her why she looked so darn familiar to me. She said her name was indeed Nancy Fellman... Good grief! At our table was Diane Johnson and another lady who apparently graduated from Lincoln in 1984, a year prior to when I would have. Her first name was Cory, but I couldn't recall her last name, unfortunately. Daniel had yet another visit to his buddy's AWANIS program at the other church in town here. The pastor and his wife who drive him with their boys obviously had a good time with him. He basically took the one vacant seat that was left in their minivan so it was truly a vanload of boys.

It actually snowed today in TRF if you can believe that. It's been in the 30s now for several days. Nothing stuck to the ground, though, so that's good. I'll have to wait another week or two before I think about starting the whole planting thing here.

Take care everyone,

Jim, Aaron, Daniel, and Andrew

Emergency Response in Thief River Falls...

I was hoping I wouldn't have reason to find out what the response time is for 9-1-1 in Thief River for at least the first year, but come last Friday, that went by the wayside. I had to call the ambulance Daniel. He had gotten up off the couch in the living room and was wearing those nylon kind of warm-up pants and had to go potty. He ran through the dining room on his way to the bathroom pulling his pants down as he went, covering his stocking feet in slippery nylon on the hardwood floor. Next thing I know, I hear a resounding crack on what sounded like the doorjam of the entrance to the kitchen followed by a bloodcurdling wail. On the bright side, I learned emergency response time here is every bit as good as Seattle's, which isn't bad when you consider Seattle's Medic One program set the standard worldwide for response time. The police were here at the house in between 20-30 seconds....all five or so officers (They were only a block and a half away when they heard the medical dispatch). They beat the ambulance, which wasn't too far behind. Ambulance services are now provided by Great Plains EMS, a private outfit. I carried him out to the ambulance for a head injury evaluation and got an all clear from the paramedic. I was just concerned becuse it swelled up to a pretty big size knot within only a minute or two of the injury and didn't know if there could be more extensive damage underneath, i.e. a subdural hematoma, given the force of impact. In any event, we all enjoyed the excitement and Daniel got a nice fuzzy blue stuffed bunny rabbit out of the whole ordeal. All's well that ends well... One other thing we found out is a former police officer's sister was one of the previous owners of the house we live in.

We spent the weekend getting some implements for working in the yard including a Garden Weasel. I'm thinking we'll plant a flower bed in the bare area of the backyard and reserve a space down one side of it for some spinach, garlic, and herbs. Seems like Martha Stewart has overtaken the entire garden section at Kmart. Incarceration does wonders for sales these days, ya know... :o)

We also took a trip up to the 80 acres and found there' s lots of mounds of dirt that have sprung up all over the field, so gopher trapping should be good this summer.

As for church this Sunday, we didn't see Ormand Johnson and we're all pretty concerned how he's getting along these days. Come Wednesday we have our combined choir practice at Zion. I met the "Samuelsons" at morning coffee yesterday. They were having a going away for the Johnstons (not sure of the first names) who are moving to Warroad.

A Nice Spring Week in TRF...

It's been so nice outside this week I haven't taken much time to update my blog lately. It was 85 degrees plus earlier this week, which was the first day the boys came inside for any length of time to cool off. I met another new neighbor this week, my parent's old insurance agent and his wife, who happen to live on the corner of the next street up and had commented that they would see me every day in the winter with the dog dropping off Aaron at the bus stop and picking him and Daniel up in the afternoon. Aaron took a walk downtown with me that day to pick up my tax return from my accountant. It was all of about 15 minutes for the complete round trip to town and back and with the flat Minnesota land, it was a bit easier to walk it than in Seattle.

We had choir practice last night where I fixed about half the problems with the youth's foosball table in the basement beforehand. I was just missing a few bolts to replace broken men on the table. Practice went pretty well, but we did have to practice a "level 4" song. I don't know if you know what a level 4 song means, Dad, but it was quite the challenge for us all. The director said it took her choir at the community college something like 2 straight weeks of 3-day a week practices to learn. We only have one more rehearsal before the combined choirs meet. It also has a rather incredibly high note for the tenors at the end, too. I suggested it was more in the range of a castrato than a tenor...

As a sidebar, Terry Soine and Steve from the auto dealership were talking about obligations for the upcoming Lincoln High prom and someone mentioned something about "anyone" getting into the prom and Terry's role as vice principal in limiting access to the prom when he was still working for the school. Terry joked, "After a while, I just said, the heck with it... Just let 'em in and charge 'em admission!"

Come tomorrow, we have to take Duchess to her vet appointment to get her heartworm preventative and other shots. Dawn Williamson told me the heartworm preventative is something like $85 versus over $1,500 to actually treat the heartworm should she contract it. I'm still considering bringing funny bunny in too to have her nails professionally clipped so we don't end up with gouges in our forearms from doing it ourselves... Hopefully we'll get a chance to run down to the 80 acres and get a look at the gopher mound situation so we can hopefully get started soon on the gopher trapping season. Unfortunately there's not much else going on that's fit to print, but in this case, no news is definitely good news... See ya all later!

Spring Cleaning

It looks like we're heading into a leisurely spring weekend here in TRF. Aaron just reminded me on putting him to bed that he doesn't have to get on the bus until a whole two hours later at 9:50. Daddy gets to sleep in!! :o) It's been a long week here burning the candle at both ends with the working at home, but it'll all be worth it when I can finally put my feet up for a little bit tomorrow. We went out to K-mart tonight so I could finally get a bookcase to replace one of the ones we gave away in Washington in order to move. I'm looking forward to getting at least a couple of more boxes emptied and books on shelves where they can be accessed.

I had the boys pick out new shoes at the store as they're no longer having to wear snowboots everywhere they go. Daniel picked out a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pair, but Aaron's feet are so big, he can no longer get those cute little boy shoes anymore, but rather has to wear the men's shoes. Aaron has jumped from a 6 to a 7-1/2 in men's and Daniel has gone from an 11 -1/2 to a 13 in boys. The next mission will be to get them both into bigger pants. Daniel is beginning to wear more of Aaron's hand-me-downs, which means he must be really growing.

When I took Duchess out to pick up the boys at the bus stop this afternoon, I saw an older guy out on a lawn tractor across the street in Fern Williams' lawn going up and down the greenbelt by the sidewalk. He stopped the tractor and climbed off when he saw me and it was Dale Folger. He's back from his trip down south for the winter. He told me all about seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls on display down in Alabama. He also regaled me with his story of being in Seattle when he was in the Navy way back when and having to call his uncle, an admiral, to get him out of there and down to San Diego. Dale said he was mowing three lawns now as Ken Murphy on the corner has his left arm in a sling these days. I finally figured out which house is which on this street. Directly across the street is the young couple Laci and Jason who are selling their house and renting the house next door to us, just to the left of theirs (my left) is Fern Williams, and the one next to hers at the end of the block is Ken Murphy's. On my right of Laci and Jason's is Dale's house. I've now identified all but one of the homeowners on the block. Fern came out of hibernation too, so I'll be seeing more of her now.

Choir went well this week, but Mike was gone, so it was a good thing I decided to sing tenor. It was just my accountant, Randy, and I in the tenor section. Ormand unfortunately was unable to attend and I didn't learn until after practice that he was in a motor vehicle accident earlier in the week, which apparently made the paper on Tuesday. I guess he pulled out in front of someone here in town. There were no details on his condition, but in the meantime, I found out he had had a heart attack more more than two weeks ago and I had never known it. Some other members thought he looked a little under the weather this past Sunday, but I didn't make much of it. We all hope he's doing much better. Speaking of choir, our choir director, Linda, said her husband is pressuring in a nice way to scale back on some of her responsibilities at the college and church. She had spoken to Pastor Hermodson and he was suggesting she take over the reigns of the new job they were batting about, that of youth program director, and the new job would be responsible for ALL music at the church. She was like, "Ah... NO!" He said, well the pay would be bumped up, of course," to which she again said, "NO!" She can't think of how she's going to cut corners as it is without sacrificing us or something else. At that point, Jerry, Marilyn, Shirley, and Carol were talking about drafting you, Dad, to return to the fold.... :o) Then Shirley told us how you liked to visit the snow in the mountains when you wanted to, not have to live in it full time and shovel. Ah well, it was a nice thought for a moment. Maybe you could guest direct when you come in September??? We're now singing "Wind of the Spirit" next. Apparently we're supposed to be gearing up for a cooperative kind of service between Trinity, Zion, and Redeemer and our choir is only going to get one practice with the music by ourselves before we join the other two choirs because the publisher didn't have more than one copy when Linda ordered them. We should do fine, though, I think...

When we were at K-mart tonight, Terry and Rita Soine walked up to us and I talked them into coming out to the house soon to take a look around the grounds and suggest shrubs/flowers to beautify the front and sides of the house. I wanted to get something planted in the barrel planters out front so they're put to good use. I may be the first house on the block to do it too. I'm thinking maybe annuals this year and perennials starting next year. I'll let you know what we decide.

Last, but not least, Daniel came up to me last night and begged to go with his buddy, Tyler, at the end of the street to his AWANIS (Sp?) program at the Evangelical Free Church in town. I guess it's for adults and kids alike, so the pastor and his wife drove Daniel with them last night and dropped him off at Trinity afterwards. Daniel was full of enthusiasm about it when he got back and wants to go again next week... That's all for now... :o)

Who's Got The Hip Waders and Water Wings?

I got my first unpleasant surprise as a homeowner last night... Andrew was invited to an after-work party down in St. Hilaire and was gone until about half past midnight. While he was gone, I went to the kitchen to use the sink and found the water pressure wasn't quite where it should be nor was it normal in any of the bathrooms. I just shrugged it off and went back to work until Andrew came home. Andrew went downstairs as soon as he got home only to come running back upstairs to advise me his room in the basement was "afloat." Now for the multiple choice question. See if you can guess the cause of Andrew's newfound "waterbed."

a) We just had our first thunderstorm.
b) The water heater broke.
c) The boys with their buddies left the outside faucet on yesterday when having a water fight.

If you picked "c," you're right...

I had explicitly told both boys to turn the faucet off and not play with it after 3:00 yesterday as it was getting soggy on the lawn. I'm guessing the faucet was left on a good 9 hours or so before Andrew discovered it. He was the first to guess what was up, to his credit. The faucet is located just above Andrew's egress window that sits actually underground with a plastic leanto roof to "protect" it from snow in the winter. That was unfortunately the water's point of least resistance and it all flowed through his window into his room. Luckily I invested $250 in a Bissell carpet steam machine last Christmas that acts as a wet vac... We must have vacuumed up a good 60-75 gallons of water with that. We've got fans blowing down there now in hopes of drying it out before black mold or mildew sets in. There were a couple of bright sides to the whole crisis, though... The flood was confined to the area just at the bottom of the stairs and Andrew's bedroom and didn't extend to the other "laundry" half of the basement or sauna so the damage is pretty well contained. The other bright side is Andrew now has a good reason to keep his room clean!! It was a mixed blessing in that regard. As he had a lot of clothes and towels laying around on his floor, they probably stemmed the flow of the water somewhat, but on the other hand, he lost a nice set of collector cards. I don't think he was too pleased when I suggested the need for room cleaning in the future. :o) I think I'm going to unscrew the faucet handle at this point to prevent future surprises.

We actually had our first Minnesota rain this morning when we left for the school bus this morning. It's been overcast for the first time I can remember in recent memory. I think the sun is just now peeking through a little. We missed the thunder from further south near Fargo. It's kept the boys in today too for the first time in a long while. The nice thing is Duchess waits for her paws to dry off before she hops up on the couch.

Chinese Acrobats Act 

 

The Chinese Golden Dragon Acrobats

Well, we had another good choir performance at Trinity with "Rain Down." We sang from the balcony, without the organ this time, so we were able to hear ourselves think for a change. Jerry and Marilyn Wigness returned to the fold for the first time in several weeks. It's a good thing I switched over to tenor this Sunday as the only other guy besides Mike was my new accountant, Randy, and he was gone this week so it was just Mike and I.

After the service, Jerry came over and handed us his season ticket for the Thief River Falls Concert Association and told us to go to the Chinese Acrobat performance at 1:30. Then Ormand gave us his season ticket and after we got home, Marilyn drove over her ticket from her house so we'd have three. When we got to Lincoln High School, the lady at the ticket table saw we had the three and only needed one for Daniel so she dug in her purse and gave us her "last free ticket." It was quite a show for free, I must say. The auditorium looks great there now that they've done some refurbishing. The act was just incredible with all their physical feats and balancing routines. They came out with about 6 plates spinning on sepate dowel rods and danced around with them. There was a guy that stood on only one hand while balance on about 6 chairs stacked in a tower. The tumbling routines were pretty neat too. Aaron and Daniel just sat there with wide eyes taking it all in. We dropped them off afterwards at their buddy, Dorion's, house. They're back out having a water fight right now, so maybe a little work can get done around here...

This is "Funny Bunny..." our mini-rex bunny rabbit. 

No Child Left Behind?

Well, today was the conference at Challenger for Aaron's educational testing results. I met with Karen, the intensive learning instructor, Mrs. Miller, Aaron's teacher, the speech therapist, and Lori Warne, the school psychologist. They did a pretty thorough assessment of where Aaron has been prior to coming to the Minnesota public school system (Challenger) and how far he has come. The last time Aaron was formally assessed was in 2002 at Chase Lake in Edmonds. He continues to have challenges in areas of processing/sequencing, but has also made substantial gains in many other areas. They were all impressed with his level of growth and highly praised the school he came from in Washington, Chase Lake, and all they did in getting him where he is today. That being said, there were a couple of funny things his teacher, Mrs. Miller, related to us in the report. Apparently Aaron has a way of focusing on his immediate needs, sometimes to the exclusion of those around him. They were in a Social Studies class session one day when Aaron decided to get up in the middle of the session and go over to "look at the puppets" on the side of the classroom. Mrs. Miller was understandably surprised to see him do that and called out to him, "What are you doing, Aaron?" Aaron replied innocently that he was just "looking at the puppets." Mrs. Miller responded, "Do you think now is the appropriate time to be doing that??" Aaron simply said "no," and returned to his desk. After he got back to his desk, he looks over at one of his classmates and says, "Told you so!" I could just picture Aaron's expression too... :o) Another example was one day when they were in a particular session and Aaron decided he was thirsty. Rather than get his water bottle off his desk, he got up and walked to the sink in the middle of the session. Of course he again acknowledged it "probably wasn't the best time to get it" per Mrs. Miller's inquiry. Mrs. Miller thought it was just so funny how he got up, oblivious to the current activity, and just went about his business as though nothing was amiss. The funniest moment came, however, when Mrs. Miller posed a question to the class. Apparently a couple of kids tried responding with no success, then a tense silence followed by Aaron's blurting out, "Come on, people!! Would somebody just give her the answer??? Geez!!" I think she just about had a cow in class upon hearing that. He obviously knew that's what was holding up the class session and "wanted to get on with it!" We all had a good chuckle over that.

The long and short of the testing is that Aaron no longer meets criteria for speech therapy, having mastered average vocabulary ability and other speech skills. He averages between 3-14 word sentences, apparently, whereas the actual norm is around 18 words per sentence. She said that's not necessarily "a bad thing," though, as he seems to get his thoughts across just fine with fewer words. We all acknowledged, though, that he's nowhere near ready to just be "dropped" from all learning service support so they are doing an "override" of the Minnesota criteria for special needs and using just the "language development" criteria at this point to qualify him for services. They were in a quandary as to what to do about the upcoming NWEA and other standardized testing as Mrs. Miller figured he will just be frustrated to the point of giving up and I responded that I was aware they need to meet the new requirements of the federal "No Child Left Behind" Act, but that I suspected the Act's chief proponent was probably left behind himself somewhere along the way...

At the end of the meeting, we confirmed the boys were waiting in the office for me to take them home, but before we could adjourn, I saw the bill of a beige Mariner's cap just barely come into view in the window next to the closed meeting room door (Aaron) followed by Daniel waving real big at me.

The plan at this point is they will draw up an IEP (Individual Education Plan) based on the test results and we may meet again just before school lets out to go over it and confirm plans for next year.

Andrew's cooking some chicken for dinner tonight when he gets back home and then we're all headed to choir practice. Signing off now....

Did It Really Reach 60 Degrees This Week??

It's amazing. We've actually had at least a couple of days this past week where it's exceeded 60 degrees, yet we still have a modest snowbank remaining in our back yard. The rest of the city is devoid of snow and we actually have some green lawn, not all brown like some lawns get in Washington. We headed out to the hardware store, Andrew and I, last Friday and picked up a new rake and a child-size rake and shovel. I had intended to use the little rake and shovel for dog doo duty, but within minutes of returning home, Daniel had commandeered it with his older buddy, Tyler, and took over the raking assignment of the front lawn. While he was doing that, Andrew and I went to Super One and Andrew picked out some juicy ribeye steaks and steak fries and we had the barbecue on Friday night. We put the BBQ out on the front sidewalk that leads from the house to the street and just grilled them right there with some hamburgers. It was quite the tasty feast.

The next day, Saturday, the neighbors with the boys, the Widerski's, asked if they could trade babysitting duty with us as they wanted to get out for dinner at the Best Western and figured it would be cheaper for all involved if we did that from time to time, so I had six boys in the house Saturday night. They were all pretty well behaved, though, watching Shark Tale and playing pretty quietly, so I was actually able to get some transcription work done with little difficulty.

We made it out to K-mart on Sunday and I picked out a Darth Vader voice-changing helmet for Daniel's birthday along with a light-up sound effect Darth Vader light saber. Daniel was quite the imposing figure with his new mask and was even more popular with the Widerski boys when he got home. We got those toys (and a light saber for Aaron) as the Widerskis had them and I figured the boys should have their own so they can all play together with noone being left out. We went to Handy Farms for dinner, but an hour after we had eaten our appetizers, our dinner was nowhere in sight, so we ended up at McDonald's instead.

The boys spent all but about 10 minutes from the time they got off the bus to about 6:15 pm playing with the Widerskis tonight. They apparently were having a "battle with the 6th graders" today, something to do with water fights. Daniel got some more bike riding in too today. Aaron turned his dad's alarm clock off (again) this morning, so he ended up missing his bus this morning. He rode Daniel's bus with him to Challenger this afternoon. I'll be heading to his school tomorrow afternoon to discuss the results of his educational testing and determine how they will proceed with his educational plan from this point forward.

That's all the news that's fit to print since last Friday. We'll see what happens this weekend... :o)

Everybody was Kung Foo Fighting... 

(Front Row) Daniel and Tyler (Back Row) Drew, Dorian, and Aaron 

Tyler (9) and Daniel (6) on yard duty... 

Anybody Speak African Around Here???

Geez.... Just when we learned how to sing a fast song acapella, the choir was handed some African piece entirely in a language I've never seen before. We took about 10 minutes per 3 bars to figure half of it out. The song before that was pretty cool, though. It was apparently written for a New Mexico church's 1992 confirmation class. I think it's written by David Poole if you've heard of him, Dad. It has really nice 4-part harmony and is in a "Cantor" style or something like that. About halfway through, though, I was swayed over to the tenor part and enjoyed it actually much better than the bass line. Of course then Steve, the guy from the Ford dealership, felt "sandwiched between tenors" that way. Maybe I should offer to sing either/or depending on which the director needs more of because we often seem short of tenors and a bit bass heavy. I just can't wait to see the look on Ormand's face when he sees the African song..... :o) I think he forgot about practice tonight, lucky for him.

Dinner at Danny's Pizza was nice. It's a pretty nice little place by Subway and across from the city park by the high school. It has a juke box and a video game room in the back. We had a family sized half supreme/half chicken alfredo pizza and managed to get to choir on time. When I was at Danny's though, I spotted a really nice looking leather Gophers jacket and was admiring it. I asked the lady wearing it where she got it, "because my dad is a Gopher and he'd look good in one of those..." She responded by saying, yeah, I know your dad... I must've looked like a deer in headlights then trying to figure out how she could possibly know my dad without knowing me. Then she clarified that she had seen me in church and she used to have you for a teacher a long time ago. I didn't catch her name before she left, but she did tell me that she was the original owner of Charlie, our little old terrier on the farm....

We picked up some Shark Tale cupcakes at Hugo's after choir tonight (Daniel's choice, of course) and got caught up on our grocery shopping. We took Andrew's little 1990 Honda Civic. You may think I look cramped in a Chevette, but you should see me find my way behind the wheel of a Civic... Not a pretty picture, I can say that much. I asked Andrew if I could just rip the front seat out and sit in the back, like Bubba Smith did in the Police Academy movie.

I'm thinking I could use some gardening expertise this summer when you get here, Mom. There's a patch on the side of my front walk that's pure black mud, the greasy kind. I'm thinking perhaps I could plant a little bush there or something so the neighbor boys don't end up tracking the mud in, not to mention the dog. One last thing... It's a good thing we're living here in backwoods TRF. Aaron's been leaving his nice new bike out front on the sidewalk for hours on end and tonight, just after we got back and stocked the frig, I walked around back to find Daniel had left the back door WIDE OPEN.... Ordinarily in Seattle I would have freaked, checking every dark corner of the apartment before allowing anyone inside. Here, it was more of a "ho hum" response. We do the best we can to keep things secure, but....

Six Short Years and Counting...

Well, at long last, Daniel's birthday has arrived. Hard as usual to believe six short years ago he was sleeping in his little bouncer seat at my side of the bed so I could stick a foot out at 3:00 am and rock him back to sleep. I'm reminded of that time every time I see another baby with a binky in their mouth as Daniel was permanently attached to his for so long. First Aaron is halfway to his driver's license, now Daniel is 1/3 of the way to emancipation. If he could only stay as cute and contankerous the remaining 12 years....

This past week has been pretty fun for the boys. On Sunday, we had our dinner at the Grochow's and then Dusty spent the night that night since they didn't have school on Monday. During the day on Monday, there must have been about 80 entrances and departures of multiple boys at the house. They spent most of the day outside riding their bikes (or learning to at least) and over at their house on the corner.

Andrew took the boys to the Jose Cole Circus in town here last night and a good time was had by all. I guess the humor of the clowns was somewhat ribald from what Andrew was saying, but they had fun nonetheless. It was a nice warm day for the circus, almost seeming to get into the 50s. I didn't get a peek at the thermometer that day. The snow has almost completely melted from at least half of my lawn, clearing what I didn't realize had been a path underneath the snow that leads from the back steps to the gate by the garage. I had been thinking all winter of what to do about a path because I was envisioning having to ruin the lawn. The one there looks like it was made of bricks, though many of the bricks have sunk too low, I think, to be of much utility. The sandbox is now completely cleared of snow and the whole front yard is now down to grass. I can't wait now for the green in the grass to return, not to mention the leaves on all the trees around here. Andrew and I are mulling the idea of possibly getting some paintball practice at the old farm this summer, time and weather permitting. Neither of us have tried it and the paintball course back there looked like fun. Unfortunately I'll be about three times as big a target as Andrew, though... :o(

Daniel came home today with a birthday crown on his head and a birthday certificate from his teacher. We're heading to "Danny's Pizza" as previously mentioned at about 6:30. We have choir practice at 7:30, so will have to eat faster than usual. He's out playing with the neighbor boys before we have to get ready. That's pretty much all that's happening around here other than the recent car problems and the need to do a little housecleaning after all the boys... Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend and enjoy your collective weeks wherever you are!

Jim

God Rolled The Stone Away...

We're back home now after Easter services at Trinity. We sang "He is risen" and a personal favorite, "God Rolled The Stone Away." It was the first time since moving here that we received applause. We sang up in the balcony and it sounded great. Mike did a trumpet accompaniment with Dee Wollenzine at the organ for a couple of the hims. Special music at the 8:30 service was Joe Drevlow's boy, Brett, on the piano up front. He was pretty cute. We had an Easter breakfast of scrambled eggs, fruit, and sweet rolls down in the fellowship hall between services where I met Ward Sinn. They are celebrating their 48th(?) anniversary this Sunday. Ward's brother unfortunately passed on this past week. There was no Sunday School today. The boys are getting some video game time in now while I get some reports typed before we head to the Grochow's. We'll head over about 2 0'clock, I figure. Even more snow has melted out here, so Easter has somewhat of a spring feel to it. Aaron just commented that he spotted the sandbox in our back yard. That should be fun keeping him out of it until things dry out in April or May.

Catch y'all later...

AND ON THE THIRD DAY...

Just a quick note to wish you and yours a most happy Easter today. Spring is definitely upon us here in TRF, with most of the front yard cleared of snow now and the streets bare and dry for more than two days in a row. I thought it would never come. I've even managed to clean out Funny Bunny's cage in honor of Easter. She's definitely content laying on her cracked corn bedding taking a nap tonight. We'll be heading over the Scott and Kristi Grochow's place for Easter festivities/dinner tonight followed by a relaxing remainder of the evening at home, hopefully. Sorry we can't be there with you, Jen and Mom/Dad, this year as we experience our first Minnesota Easter since 1982... Thanks again for the flowers, Jen.

AJ, Duchess, and DJ 

Aaron, Dusty, Casey, and Kung Fu Daniel... 

Palm Sunday...A Musical Day...

Palm Sunday has just about come and gone and Easter will soon be upon us. Yes, the backyard is still piled high with snow, though a nice slushy path has melted through the lawn to the back gate. Pretty soon we'll have to lay some stones or tiles down to get to the car without hip waders. Today was a fantastic day for music at church. We attended both early and mid-morning services as it was the choir's turn to sing again. This time we wore robes for the first time, though they were emerald green and had stoles of gold with ivory trim this time, not the old blue ones. Andrew looked mighty dapper in his, I must say. By the way, Mom.... The choir is in dire need of some new stoles....How's that sewing machine of yours workin' in retirement??? :o)

It was a pretty cool service (both, actually) in that we started it out with the choir up at the entrance to the sanctuary and the congregation lined the ramp all the way down to the lobby/narthex with everyone holding palm branches. We heard opening words from Pastor Hermodson and then proceeded, choir first, down the center of the church singing the opening hymn. I dropped Aaron off in the very last pew at the back before heading up front. We (the choir) stood up in front of the altar looking out at the congregation where we sang our two anthems at the start of the service. For Dad's edification, we sang "Ain't No Rock" and "Sing to the Lord." The first piece was pretty up tempo, kinda like something you might hear in Sister Act with some real nice chord progressions and four-part harmony for the men. The second piece was a little more traditional, though Pastor Hermodson would point out not quite "Lutheran," but enjoyable to all nonetheless. Mike Lehrer had a nice solo while we hummed in the middle of the piece. It almost sounded, though, like something the Vienna Boys' Choir would sing with a high soprano solo.

After the first service, we had our congregational meeting in the fellowship hall downstairs where we all brainstormed on what we would like and need in a new senior pastor. The call committee has only begun their work and Pastor Hermodson worked with us to identify those things we have as strengths and those we need work on and how we think a new pastor will help us achieve our goals. There are a couple of different staffing models on the table, the first being a "couple" team where one would be senior pastor full-time and the other (wife?) would be part-time and focus more on youth whereas the second would be a senior pastor and then a youth pastor from the seminary who would give at least one sermon a month. Both options would run around $90,000 to 105,000 a year total package. We just need to figure out what we want. Some interesting ideas we had were beefing up the acolyte program so kids get a better idea of what it is and why it's a privelege to serve in that capacity, etc. Also, making Trinity a place you can go to any day of the week just to "hang out," not just on Sunday's and Wednesdays. In other words, a more "open" church model where the great facility assets we have are put to good use.

After the second service, we were all downstairs putting our robes away when the guy that runs the Ford dealership in town, a bass, mentioned he had complimented me to Ormand and some of the other guys in that he has grown to like standing next to me because I "nail all the notes DEAD ON..." The choir director also complimented the choir as a whole that we "really sound good." Not to downplay previous choirs, but we really did sound every bit as good as we did back in Trinity's glory days.

In other "non-church" news, the boys had one of the most recreational weekends if not thee most hours spent the entire winter with the Widerski boys down the street. Yesterday alone they spent a good 10 hours or possibly more playing nonstop with them. Much of the time was spent over there and outside so Andrew had some peace and quiet to watch a "grown-up" movie. To give you an idea of how much fun they have, when I woke up, Aaron was already gone to his buddy's house, having woken up early. Daniel wasn't far behind either. Today was somewhat of a repeat, but they played from around noon until after dark at 7:00 p.m. I told the mother of the Widerski boys that it was "too bad our kids don't get along with one another" and on Friday when Aaron was begging inside their house to stay and play Playstation a little longer, I jokingly commented, "It's not like you're never over here," which Mrs. Widerski had a good chuckle over.

That's all for tonight's blog installment. Good night everyone! :o)

The Many Faces of Minnesota Hotdishes...

Wow. That's about the only way to sum up last night's lenten dinner at Trinity. I'm quite certain I've never seen so many variations on a goulash theme in one place since I left TRF almost a quarter century ago. For Norwegians/Swedes, they have the Hungarian food business down pat. I had no idea lasagne could be made in so many different ways either. I'm thinking they used just about every species of macaroni imaginable on the store shelf... It was all good, though, especially the garlic Texas toast on the side.

I was sitting at a table with the boys by ourselves over by the stairs leading up to the sanctuary/narthex, actually with just Aaron as Daniel had already gone exploring after eating about two macaroni pieces and two brownies he snuck by me. A guy I thought had looked familiar in the food line came over and introduced himself, saying he didn't think he knew me, but shook my hand and said his name was...Terry Soine! I responded, well... I sure do know you! He and his wife are apparently members at Trinity and Terry is actually in the choir too. He hasn't been at choir lately, so was pleasantly surprised to hear I would be at practice. He's gone a bit grey/white with a goatee and appears about Dad's age. He was happy to hear the update on the family and that Mom and Dad will be visiting again this summer. He said they didn't really tell people where they needed to be at the all school reunion last year, so he and some other old teachers/administrators showed up late.

I don't know if I mentioned it earlier, but Andrew got a third call for a job yesterday at Pamida. He says he's plenty occupied now, though, with his full-time job at St. Hilaire Seed (which incidentally is just outside of St. Hilaire on your way down to Red Lake Falls) and working at Pizza Hut. He worked around 8-5 at the seed company, then came home and changed and left for work at Pizza Hut until 9 pm last night. Apparently they're talking about giving him some overtime coming up soon at the seed company and perhaps through the summer, so he's looking at a princely sum per month, it would appear. It's great to see him busy and enjoying himself at his new jobs. It beats pounding the pavement with applications at least. He seems to be making new friends too and mentioned last night he doesn't miss the Seattle rain (not Reign).

I guess Keith called Shirley recently and said he'd be coming out again this summer for the marathon he's been running the past few years with Steve Dalager. They've made a bit of a ritual out of it, I guess. I guess he was surprised to hear from Shirley that I was out here. Dusty is still sick, but may return to school by tomorrow.

In other news, I think I actually found a record-breaking icicle on the building across from Trinity's backside last night, maybe even two. My eyes had trouble comprehending it's size at first and it must've weighted about 5 pounds when I pulled it off the eave. It was approximately 4 1/2 feet long!!! I used it as a walking stick to church. The boys had eyes like silver dollars too, taking in its grand appearance. I'm looking forward to the next melt/freeze cycle so I can maybe take a picture for you all to prove it... :o) Well, back to work for now. Catch you later....

Better late than never, right?

Oh boy... TEN WHOLE DAYS without an update. Sorry for the siesta. Things are busy as always around here. There really hasn't been much newsworthy stuff to report, though. We have been enjoying more winter weather, large snowflakes lazily drifting down from the sky tonight. I'm wondering when Spring will come, but I'm happy with the weather we have. The big drumroll news to announce is regarding Andrew.... He's been working at Pizza Hut since last week, but at about 8:15 or so this morning, I got a call from a gal at St. Hilaire Seed Co. down in St. Hilaire. She wanted Andrew to come to work for them TODAY. She wasn't impressed when I told her he was sleeping, but I managed to dig him out of that hole I had dug by clarifying he was working another job, hence the different hours of sleep, but assured her I would have him call her. Since she said she was just "going down the list" until she found someone, I rattled Andrew's cage and in about 3 minutes flat, he was hired at about three bucks more an hour than Pizza Hut was paying him. The funny part is the job is even easier for more pay. He spent the day sweeping today, though, as their machine was broken. Apparently he's supposed to be bagging up some kind of beans or something, so she wasn't kidding when she said it was one of their "more simple jobs." Andrew's happy, though, as it's the equivalent of $10 an hour in Seattle since the dollar stretches a little farther over here.

I continue to greet the boys every afternoon at 3:00 with Duchess taking me for the walk. Today was surprising, though. When the bus stopped, out popped about 6 boys and half of them gathered around Duchess and planted a kiss on her snout while giving her a vigorous pet. She has quite the fan club here. Last week, a couple middle school-aged girls slid their window down on the back of the bus to yell, "What's the dog's name??"

I've been busy with the transcription work, burning both candles at both ends most days. I have Fridays and Sunday's "technically" off, but end up usually filling them at least a little with contract work out of Texas. I get a break in the evenings too when the pastor's boys come over and play with Aaron and Daniel.

Oh, I should mention that Daniel's birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. I'm considering taking him to "Danny's Pizza..." Nice name for a restaurant at least. Hard to believe he's gonna be 6, although sometimes Andrew and I quietly muse to ourselves whether he has an extra two 6's hidden after that, given his penchant for mischief...

Sorry the update is so short. I'll try to update sooner than 10 days next time. I hope not too many people are having problems viewing the blog. I've heard some errors have been happening out there. Only thing I can suggest if it happens again is to "refresh" your explorer window to reload the page. That has worked for me a few times. Take care all...

The Minnesota Hustads (I thought that sounded better than Minnesota Fats...)

Danny's night out...

Well, we had a nice relaxing afternoon with Kristi, Scott, and their kids here at our place. Pretty much just sat around and chatted over Domino's pizza while the kids played all around us. It's amazing how loud the noise can get in a short time. Funny thing was they kept playing with our walkabout radios and their daughter and Dusty kept screaming back and forth as if they couldn't hear each other and they were only 20 feet away. I'm thinking those can telephones may have been a better idea. They all left a few minutes ago and took Daniel with them. Yep, it's Daniel's first "non-family" sleepover, I think. He was all excited to go with Dusty and Casey. One less boy to get ready for church now! And Andrew can breath a sigh of relief now that he finally has some peace and quiet to watch All in the Family and Three's Company while I sit and work here at the computer.

I got your request for pics, Jen, but I need to track down the cable to upload them to my computer first before sending. I'm thinking you're one of the ones with more updated pics than others, though, as I usually CC you on my e-mails to dad. I'll send a couple along, though, including one of the Grochow's 5 yo daughter, Kaylyn (sp?) wearing santa christmas stockings on her feet and a Santa hat on her head. By the way, Mom and Dad and Jen: Go to http://www.google.com. Above the search field you'll see tabs with hyperlinks for "Web, Images," etc. Click on the "Images" hyperlink first, then type Keith Grochow in the search field below. You'll see his picture at the University of Washington Computer Science Department. I surprised both Scott and myself with that one... :o) Well, back to work now. Got church bright and early in the morning too. It got well past 40 degrees today, melting almost the whole path from our back door through the back yard to the back alley. It was actually TOO warm inside today...

A quick update...

Last night the Grochow boys, Casey (11) and Dusty (9) came over for a playdate with the boys. They all played Playstation well into the night amongst other games and Dusty spent the night with us. They both came back today, me picking Casey up at his home this morning. Scott stopped by after work and chatted with us. When his wife, Kristi, came over last night, we made plans for a party of sorts at our house Saturday night. Since the boys had a couple days off of school, it seemed like a fun thing to do, though I'll have to work through a good portion of the evening. The boys have become fast friends with the Grochow kids and both eagerly look forward to each chance they get to play together.

In other news, Lisa was offered a part-time position with an assisted living type facility that serves clients who work in the ODC for the disabled. Now for the other shoe to drop... Her direct supervisor will be...Jodi Dallman........ Jodi said she commutes from around Grand Forks every day to TRF and every time she goes by, she says she looks at our old farm on the cutacross. It will be less than 30 hours a week, but will give Lisa an opportunity to get out and about during the week. It's time to hit the sack for now, though. Will update as I'm able over the weekend/early next week. If anyone reading this blog would like more updated pictures of the family/town, feel free to e-mail a request to cougalum1@hotmail.com. Take care everyone.

Allstate Selma should get a kick out of this...

Hi all. The week started out with a bang (and a whimper) on Monday. I took Duchess out to the bus stop yesterday to pick up the boys. As I stood there with Duchess sniffing the neighborhood, I realized how beautiful the day really was. I was under the most pristine azure blue sky with not a whisper of a cloud present and a most bright sun directly overhead. It sparkled off the snow on the lawns and eaves like a picturesque Leavenworth (WA) in winter. I'm beginning to pay closer attention to the architecture around here, noticing striking similarities between houses that sit right across the street from one another. It's like they were built by the same person with very little variation around the turn of the century. As for Selma, we had a visitor yesterday to inspect the furnace and wiring of our house for the insurance company. Wouldn't ya know it...It was Dale Langevin, Jenny's husband... I got his number before he left so you can look them up when you come to visit this summer. They went someplace else during the All School Reunion, so they missed you then.

There's not much else on the docket to report thus far this week, so I guess no news is good news. Andrew has his interview today and Lisa has one tomorrow for some part-time work. I'll be making my first ever mortgage payment later this afternoon and will stop by Kezar Music afterwards to pick up my Harry Potter book for the cello. Perhaps I'll actually get a chance to practice a little bit? Tomorrow is our next lent service and choir practice, so I probably won't get back to the blog until Thursday unless I hear another interesting story to impart.

Remember me?

Just kiddin'. That was the second song we sang at church today. We had to sing at both services and sit through both sermons as the song referenced above was to be sung during communion. We sounded great from the balcony, if I don't say so myself. We did without robes, but we get to wear robes on Easter, the green ones. Aaron had a great day at Sunday School today. He was straggling behind in his classroom when the second service was going to start, so I went up to get him. His teacher was up there and just beaming about Aaron's performance in class. Apparently she was going to give a lesson today about Moses, the water, and a rock and she said Aaron already knew the story, trying to blurt it out before she could tell the class. She was quite impressed at his retention of that story from our old church in Mountlake Terrace. She got him to zip his lip, though, before ruining it for the rest of his class. He was quite proud of himself, I must say.

Fellowship was nice between services with tons of banana bread and other bread I couldn't identify, but not zucchini, I don't think. Mike Lehrer was regaling us with stories of flying his plane into the Crystal airport near Minneapolis. He says he's going to have to take me up with him sometimes... I had never heard of an airport in Crystal, but he said it's tucked into a residential area nice and tight. He was commenting on that airport as Jerry Wigness was saying when the airport board met here in TRF, they voted to prohibit any and all air traffic within like 4 miles of a residential neighborhood. He thought that was funny they'd allow the airport there in Crystal, but nothing near the houses in TRF. Go figure.

Scott Grochow came down during fellowship and firmed up today's plans. We're heading over to his house so the boys can play with their kids this afternoon. Their PS2 is on the fritz, so we'll bring ours along with the Eye Toy so everyone can dance, but I imagine they'll get plenty of outdoors play too. It was lightly snowing during church, but I think it's stopped for now. It's still pretty balmy, I would guess in the 20's somewhere. Hope all our friends and family are having a great Sunday and hopefully as relaxing and enjoyable as ours.

Love,

Jim, Lisa, Andrew, and boys

The cable guy...

Hey, Dad. Remember a former student of yours named Nate Stroh? He would have been in Bill's grade at Franklin. He came over to work on our broadband connection today and recognized the last name. He had a good laugh as he asked a much younger technician at Sjoberg's (a 23-year-old) if he knew whether the Mr. Hustad at 716 Duluth was an older or younger type and the other tech said I looked "older." I guess in relative terms I would be "older." As is usual around here, he said you were probably his favorite teacher. He got a kick out of recounting how proud you were of the new stereo system at Franklin that was like four-channel with an 8-track and you would play the sound from one speaker to the next to demonstrate, etc.

We had a good time at Trinity last night for lent. They had a chicken noodle soup and homemade bread dinner before the service. No communion, so it ended a bit faster than usual. We had a great choir practice singing my new favorite piece, "I'm Going Home." We're apparently singing this Sunday in the balcony. We also found out they apparently still have the robes we all wore in the 70s and 80s. We had a good laugh as there was an argument on whether they were really blue. Everyone thought they were purple, I think, except Marilyn Wigness. The boys had a great time during the practice too like I used to a long time ago with Jennifer. Daniel pretty much explored every possible nook and cranny in the sanctuary and up in the balcony area. At one point we were all singing in the front four pews on the right side with Cathy Hagen at the grand piano off to the front right side. Daniel walked right up to the piano off to Cathy's left in the middle of the song with his hands in his pockets much like an old farmer might pose when inspecting a tractor engine and stuck his nose right in the open top of the piano to see the parts moving inside. Cathy was obviously amused, but I was just hoping he wouldn't break her concentration as I was laughing to hard to keep singing myself. He then headed up to the balcony to do some accompaniment of his own on the piano up there.

I asked Ormand how he liked the CD and he told me it's apparently "on it's way to California with another daughter." Speaking of Ormand, I noticed for the first time last night that our nice black choir music folders are stamped in gold with the words, "In memory of Iola Johnson" who passed away in 2003. Shirley Grochow was feeling much better and returned to the fold whereas Donny is still laid up a bit at home. Scott Grochow's wife, Kristi, invited the boys over for a playdate on Sunday and from what Shirley was saying last night, they want to get together with us to head to the Seven Clans Casino so the boys can go swimming, etc.

In more mundane news, I finally got the Blazer parked in the garage the other night. A couple days later, though, the garage door opener conked out and even after changing batteries in the controller it still wouldn't work. I may have mentioned it earlier, but when we first moved in, I was unable to get the stupid door open and waited several days to get a hold of the remote, thinking it wouldn't work without it. Last weekend, though, I reached up and pulled on the rope to disengage the drive on the opener and sure enough, it slid right open... Go figure.

I've been keeping busy with transcription this week, training by day and working by night. Tomorrow is the last day of training it looks like and I'll be thrown to the wolves. My personal coach, though, teaches transcription at a local community college and has been a very valuable resource and mentor thus far. She said the quality of my work indicates I'll go as far as I want in the field.

Hope everyone's doing well out there. I don't know if you're on the internet at all in Japan, Mom and Dad, but figured I'll keep updating the blog as much as possible just in case you check in now and then.

New Horizons in Transcription...

Today was a momentous occasion. The equipment arrived in two large boxes from Transolutions, the new medical transcription company I'll be employed by based out of Lake Bluff, Illinois. They sent me a computer, keyboard, modem, 5 thick binders of information including a whole mess of information on medical terminology, pharmacology, directories of local medical facilities, etc. so I'll be able to understand what's being dictated. They have assigned a group named Connecticut Physicians for me to start on and training begins tomorrow morning at 9:00 am. I'm updating the blog here now as I may not be able to give a regular update during the week what with training and all. I'll be maintaining my evening transcription schedule from 8 to midnight as well with e-Transcription.net out of Texas, so I'll be rather busy, I figure. We got Andrew busy too it looks like. I picked up an Eye Toy game on clearance from K-mart yesterday named Eye Toy Groove. It's a webcam type camera that sits on your TV and projects your image on the TV for the PS2 (Playstation) game system and you are essentially "inside" the game. This particular game is dancing, so Andrew's been groovin' to Kool and the Gang, Jackson 5, and a few others. It can really burn the calories when it's too cold to head outside and it looks kinda funny when you get to see a replay of your dance moves on the screen.

Well, that's pretty much all to tell. The boys are in bed and I'm about to head back up there a third time to open up a can of whoop #!@ on them again to get them to go to sleep. Hope all of you out there have a great week in the great State of Washington or wherever you happen to be... :o)

A Nice Day at Church

We had a nice respite this Sunday from choir duty as they didn't sing today. The boys did great throughout the service and Aaron was kinda cute up front when it was time for the Children's Sermon. Gerry Eggers had the kids come up for the message and was asking them about butterflies and how they are "born again." Aaron piped up with a little statement about caterpillars and what he did with them in kindergarten or something like that. He was pretty cute up there... I gave Ormand Johnson the CD of his daughter, Dad. He was pretty darn happy if I don't say so myself. He made a point of thanking me/you twice for it in short succession. I could tell he's really going to enjoy listening too it and he said he would be letting his daughter know he has it. Mike Lehrer sang a nice solo, actually I think two different solos, both accompanied by Marilyn Wigness. I forgot how nice of a tenor voice he has from when he sang that solo, Oh Rest In The Lord when we did The Elijah. The one he did during the offering begin with a variation of Jesus Loves Me This I Know. He had admonished me to be sure and hum during the song. Other news you might be interested in, Mom and Dad, is Jerry Wigness' birthday is tomorrow/Presidents' Day and it's going to be the 20th anniversary of his 49th birthday...

We got some more of the main living area cleared away of some items and managed to get some more pictures mounted in the living room. I noticed, though, Jen, that I don't have any decent sized picture of your family I can frame and mount. I only have a 3x5, I think. If I could put a special request in for the next photo shoot, that would be great! I have a nice portrait of mom and dad and grandpa at this point. I also cleared the garage a bit tonight, actually it's about 1:30 am Monday. I wanted to finally get the Blazer under cover so it may start a little easier and hopefully I don't have to scrape the windshield as much. It was kinda funny last week as I was sitting in the Blazer waiting for it to warm up and noticing how the windshield appeared frozen on the outside. I even got out to scrape it, but when I started scraping, I noticed there was no ice whatsoever on the outside, this time it was all on the inside... I don't seem to remember that happening when I was growing up over here. Since Presidents' Day is today, the boys don't have any school. For those interested in the weather, the boys have more than enough snow to play in now. It's been snowing the past day and a half so there's a fresh blanket on just about everything except the roof of our house. The snowmobilers should be happy...

Update on TRF education...

We had a meeting with Aaron's teacher and some of Challenger Elementary's support staff, including the staff psychologist and a couple of therapists yesterday. It's been a couple years since Aaron had a formal evaluation at Chase Lake. They're going to go ahead with another eval and see where he's at now as they think the results from a couple years ago are probably inaccurate. It should take up to a month to complete the testing and then we'll meet again to go over the results and formulate a game plan. They do it a little different here in Minnesota in terms of intensive learning/education support. They have Aaron in his regular classroom instead of separated in one for intensive learning with a home room for only part of the day. They appear to use a few more screening tools as well for identifying learning disabilities. Who's to know if it's "better" than what's been done thus far, but one thing's for sure, how committed they are to kids here.

I caught up with Howard Thorson, my old principal from the country school I went to, St. Hilaire. He ushers quite a bit for Trinity Lutheran and I also see him out at Challenger now. I think I now have an update on all of our teachers, Jen. There should have been 6 teachers total, K - 5. I think I already mentioned my fifth grade teacher, Tom Schaefer, is still teaching in the school district, still teaching fifth grade at Challenger. Sue or "Mrs. Froiland" who taught fourth grade at St. Hilaire now teaches at Challenger, though it may be third now. Our old third grade teacher, Mrs. Poole, is retired and apparently living in the St. Hilaire area. She's getting up in years now and Mr. Thorson mentioned she's been in failing health and perhaps some memory problems. The second grade teacher, Mrs. Cerkowniak (sp?) who taught me how to sing "Do your ears hang low," and "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" was killed approximately 13 years ago before her 40th birthday in Arizona, the result of a head-on collision with a drunk driver. She unfortunately had children of her own left to grow up without their mom. As for the first grade teacher in St. Hilaire, Mrs. Miller, she's Aaron's second grade teacher at Challenger now. I didn't recognize her, but she remembers me and all the times Mrs. Froiland would drag me up to her classroom by the ear and force me to do my homework with the first graders. She was good friends with my second grade teacher. Sharon Iverson, the kindergarten teacher, is now still teaching at Challenger.

It's been snowing today, though the temperature is back above zero at 15.8 degrees. Aaron has a half day at school today and I'll be meeting his bus at 1:15 instead of 3:15 whereas Daniel had no school today, so he's home with us and playing racecar games on the PS2 with Andrew. Other than church continuing to be a fun activity with Lent services and choir practice, there's not much else to update on at this point. Just counting the days til spring is all.

Ye Olde Farm House...

Andrew, the boys, and I went up to the old homestead about 3 miles out of St. Hilaire, MN and 47 miles east of Grand Forks, ND. The place looked a bit different than in 1984, the last time I visited, but in many ways it was still the same. I took Andrew and the boys on a mini tour of sorts after talking to the current owners for a bit. The current owner is a lieutenant in the Minnesota Highway Patrol and his wife coincidentally (for me at least) is the head of the RN nursing program at the local college, Northland Community. She told me I could finish an LPN program there in only 3 quarters… (Don’t get any ideas, Wil) Something to think about in the future perhaps... Their son was team captain, I think, on the high school swim team in town. The whole family is just the nicest (like just about everyone else around here) and one of the first sentences out of her mouth was "No, you can't have the house!"

We went through the old path in the woods to the back 40-acre field and checked that area out. The old farm equipment was gone, but I think I made out the handle that I used to engage the plow sticking out of the snow. It may be the same plow I used on the field at 11 or 12 years old. The current owners have built a huge fort out back with a tree house and dozens of barriers to hide behind for paintball including some discarded car hoods and plywood sheets. The trees I planted with sister Jennifer way back when at 2 feet tall are now well over 20 feet and a good 8 inches around at the base. The current owners expressed great appreciation for us having planted those there. We also made it out to the 80 acres further back and met the owner of a new cabin that's been built right next to it. Last name was Hansen, but I didn't remember his first name. He apparently has been living in Nancy Mosbeck's and Tony Ricci's old house a couple farms over. He had plowed the access road with his tractor so we didn’t have problems driving on the snow.

He’s been clearing out a lot of trees on the land out there and the current owners of our old farm wished it wasn't happening. They said he's a retiree, so he probably makes money that way, though they wished he wouldn't destroy so many trees out there. As for the rest of the place, the old barn/shed we used to have at one edge of the front yard is gone, replaced by a newer building and the garden is gone as well. I think I also found the exact same birch tree, though, that Jen and I used to eat lunch in way back when on a lazy afternoon. Pet cemetery is pretty much gone too, or covered by the new building. I'll have to bring Lisa out there later, once the snow's gone perhaps and we can see more. I was thinkin’ for an adventure with the boys this summer we could head to the ditch on the opposite side of the highway from the farm with a metal detector and see if we can find the wrench or vice grip dad threw over there when he got injured putting the dual tires on the old tractor a quarter century ago… J

We had a good time at church this Sunday and this time Daniel walked straight into his Sunday school classroom and let the teacher take off his coat, etc. with not so much as a whimper or whine. We socialized downstairs with some of the senior choir members and older members of the congregation. We sat with Don and Shirley Grochow and Ormond Johnson. The choir did great singing from the balcony and I can’t get over how good the acoustics are in that old church. They have a new soundboard and color TV system there to in order to televise services on Sundays. They have communion there every Sunday now too.

Dawn came out from the Humane Society and gave Duchess her latest shot and transferred ownership officially to us today. We also will be picking up a new bunny from her this week named Funny Bunny. It’s a mini rex. We’ll be putting her out on the covered porch in a spacious cage so the neighbor boys and Aaron and Daniel should enjoy that. So once the fish tank is up and running we’ll look like a pet store… That’s pretty much all that’s happened this weekend that’s worth printing. I hope I don’t repeat myself too much on this blog as I don’t go back and read my old posts. Feel free to add a comment, though, if I do. Take care, all, and I hope everything is well with all of you as it is here.

Jim, Lisa, Aaron, Daniel, Andrew, and Duchess

We're dreaming of a white Easter...

Time to catch up a little more here... We attended Ash Wednesday services at Trinity last night and were officially inducted in the senior choir. Many of the other members were there the last time I sang around 1981/1982, i.e. Ormand Johnson, Shirley Grochow, Marilyn and Jerry Wigness, etc. We made some new friends and didn't do too bad considering we only had 30 minutes to practice prior to performing. We ended up staying after the service to practice for Sunday too. We'll be singing from the balcony that day.

As for today, it was another eventful one. I am no longer self-employed... I pretty much secured a position with an online transcription company that will pay me an hourly wage plus a bonus for every line over 175 an hour I type (piece of cake). I'll also get benefits that are extremely affordable for a family including medical and dental for well under $300 a month. They should cover the Dakota Clinic here in town too. I will set my own hours and they'll provide a computer, phone line, and software as well as medical references. They're based in Lake Bluff, Illinois. They also pay holidays too. Finally...a job where I have a boss, but I get to set my own hours and don't have to worry about paying self-employment taxes, finding my own insurance plan, etc. Hooray!!

It snowed a good inch to an inch and a half today, so the boys were out with the neighbors playing after school today. Makes for good after school recreation. That's all for now...

Back above zero (for now)...

We had a relatively productive day today. I tested for an online transcription company based in Illinois and think I did pretty good. It will take up to 7 days for the results though. The nice thing is if I'm hired I'll get vacation and sick leave even as a home-based typist and perhaps even a health plan of some kind. A guy could do a lot worse, right? We made it out to Fleet Farm and Home Supply today out by the old Huck Olson arena this afternoon and spent our gift certificate (thanks Mom and Dad!) and got some good stuff for the house. We also picked up a whole house console humidifier as the dog's fur was beginning to look like a porcupine's quills after petting it. I think we could have hooked her up as an extra electricity source if we waited much longer. The eyes and skin already feel much better... We made it over to Wells Fargo today and I noticed the high school boys' swim team's last home meet was tonight against Moorhead, but wasn't able to make it over there, unfortunately. Always next year, I guess. Tomorrow we'll be heading to church for choir practice it looks like, so hopefully Daniel will do okay without us for a little bit. As for Aaron, he's all cheeky smiles as usual as we bought him a rabbit fur lined camouflage Elmer Fudd hat with the ear flaps and all. He looks a lot better than his dad in it, I must say. Couldn't talk Daniel into modeling it for more than 10 seconds though. He'd have nothing to do with it... That's about all to add other than the neighbor boys at the end of the street came over tonight after dinner and played with the boys for a while. Their dad is the pastor at First Baptist here in town. Take care everyone!

A post for Wil...

Yes, that was cold the other day alright, but last night was even colder (8 below zero with a "feels like" of 23 below). The inside of the windshield can get more frozen than the outside. Unfortunately I realized yesterday that I had left our inkjet printer out in the back of the car all this time. I'm hooking it up today to see if the cartridge exploded or not.

Trinity is just about 3 minutes from here or less than 10 if you're walking it. Yes, everyone pretty much does know everyone or at least someone who knows someone, etc. You can't get far without someone recognizing your name. Oh, and we've identified the better of the two Chinese restaurants in town too and both are within walking distance. We can wait for summer for you to visit, though, if it's too cold.... :o)

You know you're not in Seattle anymore when...

you have to get out your credit card and scrape not only the outside but also the inside of ALL windows on your vehicle. As I write this update, it's minus 3 degrees with a "feels like" temperature of 19 degrees below zero!! The dog was begging to come back after only a two-minute potty break...

We went to Trinity Lutheran this morning. Had to almost drag Daniel kicking and screaming into his Sunday school class. It was on the upper level for those of you familiar with Trinity. Aaron went in all smiles to his class and had a great time. By the time I picked Daniel up afterwards, though, he was all smiles to get a little brown sack with goodies and a little Twix bar inside. Who said a little bribery was against the rules?? Perhaps next Sunday will be easier. One of his fellow classmates at Challenger Elementary also is in his class, perhaps two.

Just before the service, we bumped into family friends from long ago, Don and Scott Grochow. Shirley was working at the hospital. The service was nice and we met with other friends afterwards including Jerry and Marilyn Wigness. They talked us into attending choir practice (I think) on Wednesday. Should be fun. I also met the former principal of Lincoln face-to-face for the first time, Frank Hammerlink. I told him I would have recognized him if I had ever been sent to his office as a Freshman and he said, "I would have remembered you too in that event."

After church, we went out to the Pennington County Humane Society to donate some cat food and fended off a request to take on a bunny rabbit. We figured we need at least a few more weeks with a dog under our belt. After that, we figured we'd head out to Don and Shirley Grochow's place on the river (frozen solid) and just pop in to say "hi" for 5 or 10 minutes. That was around 3 or 3:30, I think. We just got home 7 hours later... Shirley brought out the frozen pizza and hotwings and cooked us up a nice meal. She even provided cake and ice cream for dessert! Scott and his wife, Christy (sp?) came over too and the boys played with their kids. They have a daughter around Daniel's age in kindergarten and at least one boy around Aaron's age. Aaron went over to Scott's place since they're next-door neighbors and played video games while we visited and watched some of the Super Bowl. Shirley looks just as she did 20 some years ago and was ever the gracious hostess as always. A great time was had by all. That is, until we got home and realized how unbelievably cold it was outside. My thumbs froze within minutes outside of my gloves. Well, here goes our second week in Minnesota. Wish us luck!

Our second weekend and more snow...

Greetings once more... It's now supposed to be 9 degrees outside with a "feels like" temperature of 10 below zero. It started snowing earlier this evening and has pretty well covered what grass had begun to show in our backyard this past week. It was warmer for a good week with snow melting in both the backyard and on the front walk from our porch to the sidewalk and street. Aaron and Daniel went out to play today a couple of times with the boys down at the end/corner of our block, Drew (9) and Tyler (7?), as well as Drew and Tyler's friend Dorian (just have to think of Dorian Grey to remember him). The boys invited their older friend over last night for a sleepover who's presently in 6th grade at Franklin Middle School, Kevin Omdahl. He's apparently the nephew of Kathy, Greg and Vicki (Phil Hartman's wife) Omdahl. The small world continues to grow ever smaller...

The boys played in the backyard with Duchess and their friends much of the afternoon while I got some transcription work done and went through some more boxes. I probably went through some 20 boxes or so today in my ongoing search for the missing wireless router so I could get Lisa's laptop to work upstairs. Come midnight, there was one box just resting by itself in the dining room wrapped in packing material that I had seen earlier, but discounted as I had seen it in a prior move and thought I knew all its contents. I went ahead and opened it anyway and lo and behold, there was the router and DSL modem. That solves our biggest mystery of the week.

Tomorrow (actually today as it's 1:28 a.m.) we're planning to attend Trinity Lutheran for the first time since I think sometime in 1982, with the boys attending Sunday School at 9:25 a.m. Should be fun, especially if we see many people I knew growing up.

Duchess continues to become a more permanent fixture in our household with each passing day. She's a very polite dog. So polite, that if someone comes up to her on the sidewalk, she will stand on her hind legs and just barely touch them with her front paws. She doesn't jump but more like just stands in greeting. She's been well received by those who've met her thus far and we think enjoys her new home. I may have mentioned earlier she's a lousy guard dog, but she actually started barking this week when hearing strange sounds at the door, so perhaps I was mistaken. We still wish she'd go potty faster when we're standing out in 10-degree temperatures rather than sniff the standard 4-square block area first.

The plan for tomorrow is to install the two remaining smoke detectors and two carbon monoxide detectors in the basement and upper level (larger house than I thought). I also noted the former owners apparently left us a large hose reel on the side of our house out front and I need to shovel some snow off that side of the house where the vent is for the clothes dryer to make sure there's adequate ventilation. The rest of the day will probably be spent in transcription and supervising the boys as they hopefully play some more with the neighborhood boys. That's pretty much all there is to update for now...

Lots of news to catch up on!

In case you haven't heard the news yet, we did make it safely to our destination. We drove straight through on Thursday from Missoula to Bismark, North Dakota. We figured what the heck as it was only another 120 miles or so. We didn't get there until close to 4 a.m. on Friday morning, though. The roads were bare and dry most of the way with speeds reaching an average of more than I care to admit to the general public. Not bad for a 6-ton truck with an auto transport on the back, though. We hit snow once we got to Fargo and it was slower going from Fargo northbound on I-29 to Grand Forks, North Dakota. There were close to 3-foot snow drifts along the roads where the snowplows had done their work in Grand Forks. We took a rural cutacross on County Road 3 (now named something else) to St. Hilaire, MN. The truck went into a skid just at the last intersection to turn North and head into Thief River Falls. I managed to stop the truck in time thanks to anti-lock brakes (go U-Haul)... That was about the only unsettling moment in driving the moving truck.

We pulled into Thief River Friday night last week around 5:15 or so and the nice lady at the bank stayed late especially for us to complete the mortgage loan paperwork. She handed us the keys to our house and we were walking into our house by about 6 p.m. that night. The house was more than we could have imagined with only the digital pictures we had seen from afar. The home inspection pretty much pointed out the major stuff we had already expected, but there was so much more space than anticipated and the condition of the house is pretty darn good for being built around 1905. The back yard we found to be much bigger as well. The picture we had was of only one corner of it and didn't do it justice. The fence all the way around comes to about 6 feet or just shy of it, so plenty of privacy and security. We arrived to the sight and sounds of many snowmobiles (mostly Artic Cat) going back and forth through the streets of our town. We obviously weren't in Washington anymore as snow covered everything in sight. The temperature wasn't bad at around 20 above zero.

It took us about 3 days to unload the truck as we took our time and enjoyed ourselves getting use to the town and local eateries, etc. Uncle/brother Andrew spent time in the back yard with the boys building a snow castle and palace and got the novelty of snow out of his system. Aaron made his first snow angel there last Saturday. Daniel was bundled up like the abominable snowman. Daniel had an unpleasant surprise when he went to the backyard and promptly fell waist deep in the snow back there. Quite the new experience for him to say the least.

Saturday morning I got a call from Bob, my godmother's significant other in Thief River, offering to go ice fishing with him sometime in North Red Lake or Lake of the Woods for walleye. Later that day, I got the U-Haul stuck in the alley behind the house, turning too tight into a snow bank with the right rear tires almost off the ground. We had a typical Minnesota sidebar with a few guys coming over and pretty much just standing around talking about the predicament and how best to get out of it. Six of us got behind the truck and eventually pushed it out. That was just a few minutes after I had pulled a native out of his driveway with our S-10 Blazer (he had an F-150, so go Chevy!). We got the truck unloaded by very early Monday morning so it could be returned. That morning, I found my next door neighbor across the street named Lacy had gotten her little sport coupe stuck in her driveway, bottomed out on snow. I tried pulling her out with the Blazer in 4-wheel drive, but it just spun tires. An older lady came out to help by spreading kitty litter under my tires and in the process found out who I was. She turned out to be the mother of a girl who had babysat me growing up here some 30 years or so ago. To make the world even smaller, we got a visit yesterday from another neighbor right across the street who happened to be my favorite PE teacher at Franklin Middle School here, Dale Folger.

Over the past week we've been unpacking, but also taking time to have fun and explore/re-explore our surroundings. Andrew and Lisa are getting a handle on what directions are North, South, East, West, etc. and where things stand in relation to each other. We've enjoyed shopping over here, finding only a 6.5% sales tax compared with Washington's 8.9% or higher. It's even tax-free to eat out over here... In those moments of enjoying ourselves, we paid a visit to a former classmate of mine who runs the Pennington County Humane Society here in Thief River and she had picked out a dog just for us named Duchess. She's a 4-year-old yellow lab who was given up due to an allergy in her previous family. She's a beautiful dog just the right size so Aaron enjoys being around her. His fear of dogs has almost been erased thanks to her. It's our first dog as a family and we think we got a pretty good one to start. We may add a purebred Yorkie to the mix later, but we'll have to see as we don't know how Duchess would act around another dog at home.

We took the grand tour of our kids' new elementary school, Challenger, this Tuesday, meeting old teachers of mine from elementary (5th grade with Tom Schaefer and Franklin Middle School with Ms. Knuttila). Many of the people were as nice as I had remembered and then some. The boys started school today with Aaron attending Mrs. Miller's 2nd grade class and Daniel in Mrs. Fulton's afternoon kindergarten class. This morning when dropping off Aaron at school, his teacher asked the class "who would like to show Aaron where his locker is to put his things" and almost the whole class raised their hands in unison and begged to be chosen for the honor. When I picked Aaron up after school, he had only three words for me to go with his customary broad smile: "I made friends!"

Aaron and Daniel will be taking the school bus tomorrow. I'll walk Aaron to his stop in the morning a block away on Knight Avenue and Daniel will be picked up right in front of our house. Tomorrow will be my first undivided day to allow me to focus on my work from home. It should be nice to start to get into the real swing of things here.

As for the neighbors, I've met quite a few already. The house on the end has four boys, at least two of which are Aaron and Daniel's age. Andrew and I were invited next door for a beer and chit chat with "Mike" who owns the "gingerbread" looking house next door. He works as a machinist for Artic Cat making snowmobiles and ATVs. Quite a freewheeling individual, he told us of the neighborhood barbecues they regularly have around here where they have a good 3 to 4 grills going at the same time with people throwing their own meat on if they want. Sounds like a good summer is on the way...

Sorry we weren't able to update our blog site for so long. Our house wasn't completely wired for cable internet access, so yesterday was pretty much our first day of access and I've been working since. We all miss you there in Washington, particularly those of you at Chase Lake in addition to family. We are having a great time on this "permanent vacation" as it were and look forward to reporting more good news in the near future to update you all.