Underwear or Panties?

Well, it's finally happened. The kids have begun to wear underwear. I refuse to call them "panties" as Peg does...I fear Olivers first day at school talking about his Diego "panties"...it begs for trouble. But as always the kids make me laugh at the things they do. Hazel is so happy to be wearing her underwear that she is not all that interested in keeping her pants on. So shirts, undies and slippers are her daily wear. I caught her doing some "dishes" the other day to give you the full image.


Ollie also seems to have his own way of wearing his as well. It's not about showing them off like the Haze. See...we have Diego underwear (their favorite show...only show really...is Diego and Dora) and he likes to make sure that Diego is in front...even when the underwear have Diego in the back....you get where I am going I am sure. He doesn't mind wearing them backwards...can't possibly be comfortable..can it? Perhaps I will let you know in a future blog.

I am healing up well from by surgery. The stitches are out. It's been two weeks now. The swelling is minimal at this point. I can't bend my knee as far as I would like but the physical therapist says I have good range of motion and that the leftover swelling is probably from the bone shaving they did. She said that tends to cause longer lasting swelling. I had a flap from my meniscus removed (pictured).


It was about the size of a pinky fingernail. I was awake the whole time so got to see the surgery on the television and ask questions. Very cool. I was not on crutches for very long (two days really) so the kids decided they could be used for other activities.


Not sure where they got the idea for this....but sometimes I just think kids are weird. :-)


Tonight we signed up for Pre-School. We really hope we get in. The place looked bright and shiny and happy. A great place for the kids. Peg had gotten lots of good feedback on it so we decided this was the place for us. The kids did not want to come home tonight. Ollie was so excited to go he tried on every pair of shades in the house before we left.


He is a funny little boy.

Holiday Hangover....

Well, the holidays are finally over. It's been up and down...mostly up though. The kids had a great Christmas and traveling down to New Ulm after the most snow in Christmas Eve History was really a breeze. It was pretty warm so the roads were mostly just wet. We've had worse travel times.



The Christmas at my parents house was great. We all got wonderful gifts and I just love being around my family. We left right after presents were opened as we were nervous about the travel. We made it down to New Ulm in near record time for a Christmas drive.



In New Ulm we did some shopping and had a really nice couple of days with Peg's family. It's always a easy hanging out around them. Lots of interesting conversation and plenty of activity. The Seiler kids were great to Ollie and Hazel again and we really enjoyed the two days there.

We were able to go sledding...which was a much bigger hill than the kids are used too. They were a little leery about the whole thing and Ollie really was more cautious than I would have figured.



Hazel also struggled due to the speed. But really as long as Emma would take her down, she was willing to go!


We had a New Years Party at the house this year. We figured we would not be doing anything so why not ask all of our other friends with kids and see if they wanted to do dinner here. Everyone came. It was a wonderful showing and we really had a great time. True to form, Kristy even forgot her purse again this year. :-)


Well, I am off to watch some bowl football and maybe nap. My knee surgery is this Wednesday so hopefully that goes well. It's been great being off this holiday and I somewhat dread going back to work on Monday...but I guess...another short week...

Fun Filled Week!

Well, it's been a while since we blogged. The kids went to the Zoo last weekend to see Santa. It was great because Santa actually comes around to each of the tables and visits with the kids. Ollie was asked what he wanted and he asked for a "star" which I found odd, but Santa reached into his pocket and pulled out a glowing Star...maybe he really was Santa! The kids did not want to sit on his lap, but it seemed OK to sit on Mom and Dad and they could sit on Santa's lap.




We also went sledding for the first time with the kids. We have pulled them around the yard before, but ye olde Yak Dad gets pretty tired much to fast for their liking. So there is a very small hill in the park by the house and they got to slide down on their own. The first run was a bit rough, a very slow wipeout,


but subsequent runs were fabulous. Tons of smiles an happiness.

Even Peg got in on the action!



This weekend was tough. Ollie got sick on Friday and couldn't keep anything down. That was horrible, but in true twin fashion, Hazel would not let him go it alone and she got sick on Saturday. Jerry and Geri were gracious enough to drive up from New Ulm so that Peggy and I could meet the Sisters and Brother in Laws for dinner and then actually drove back home. So 4 hours of driving and 3 hours or so of baby sitting. It was very nice of them to be so helpful. Dinner was pretty excellent and it's going to be hard to top that event.



Tonight we decided to make our Ginger Bread house. Having never done one before, I leaned on Peg and her strong creative skills and bountiful experience in building said homes. Peg has done Habitat for Humanity, so I knew she could build a Ginger Bread Home. Her memories hearkened back to early childhood when her father and the girls would hot glue the house together. I would say that bit of info was a savior for putting up a solid foundation for the sticky frosting and candy that went on after. It was very fun and the kids didn't even fight over the candy...well...much. Ollie's hoarding mentality kind of gets the best of him...but I would say they did an excellent job!



We are nervous about the "Snownami" coming over Christmas. We are hoping it will still be drivable as we have much traveling to do that day.

Hope all is going wonderful to everyone.

Snow!

Well, we finally got some snow yesterday. It has become brutally cold, but when I got home last night it was still tolerable and we decided to garb up the kids and tromp around in the snow. While Peg and I shoveled the drive, the kids ran around trying to make snowballs for their snowball fight! It was very cute. Eventually we showed them how to make snow angels. Might have been one of the funniest things ever to see the kids flailing around in the yard. I bet the Haze made 10 of them.



"one more angel Daddy" she kept telling me as I tried to get her in the house.

After we got in we decided to have a fire. This would be our third fire since Peg and I have been married. That's actually less than one per year. Pretty paltry, but I think we are finally going to start making it a weekly endeavor.



The evening was fun because we invited the McCullough's over for games....but really we just gabbed a bit and had a few drinks in the red room by the fire. Very relaxing and a wonderful evening.

I actually lost the pictures we took in the snow, but was able to find a software on the internets, thanks to the google, and was able to recover the deleted pictures from my flash drive. That really made the night.

Happy Holidays

Thanksgiving has come and gone and we are well into our Christmas season. We have trimmed the tree and we even put some lights on the bushes outside the house this year....they are fairly paltry but we are working on beefing them up. It's finally gotten cold and so it feels more like the winter season. We have been shopping for gifts and even sent a few out to relatives out of town. We feel very efficient this year. Peg and the kids have been to 8th floor Macy's and we plan to take the kids to their first Holidazzle down on Nicollet Avenue in the "big city".

The kids are going to be more ready for Christmas this year than in previous years and that is really exciting. They were jazzed to help put decorations on the tree. Sure, only two branches 1 foot off the ground got all of the ornaments, but it was very cute to see them excited and entertained by the whole endeavor. They understand that when a present is wrapped, that there is something exciting inside now, which will make for a great Christmas day!

New Kitchen!

Well, it's been a really long time since we blogged Lots has happened since the I last mentioned the basement. It's just about completely done now. The kids are playing down there regularly and we just have a few minor details to finish up. I am very happy to be done. We also had our kitchen refaced. We had that done the week before Thanksgiving. So after that was completed, Peg and Jerry put up the tile backsplash. They did a fabulous job and now all that is left is for Peggy to put a new color on the walls and we are finally done with our fall projects. You can see that from the old view to the new our kitchen has really brightened up!

Basement Progress

Well, we finally got most of the drywall up. Peggy and the kids went down to New Ulm for the weekend and I spent several late nights working on the basement. It thought I would put up a few photos so that you can see what has been happening.