getting a tech upgrade

Not everyone knows this, but I've never been a phone person.  I'm not one who can talk on the phone for hours and usually hide when I do get on it so I don't hear the kids yelling and screaming which is what they do the very minute any mom gets on the phone. :)  It probably has to do with growing up where local phone calls were expensive and you just didn't use it to chat, it was always quick say where you're meeting and hang up. :)  So I never got into it and to this day I could care less about cell phones and most of the times I don't answer it anyway because I either can't hear it or find it in time.

So I've always been just happy with my little tract phone, paying $30 every 3 months or so.  It worked when I needed it to which is what I needed.  The last couple of years we've been talking about getting rid of our land line but mostly because I do day care I wanted to keep it.  So now that I'll be done with it, we can finally say good bye to the land line phone.  We barely even used it anyway and if I can get a calling plan on a cell phone that costs less than half of our land line bill, I'll take it.

So Ehren did the research because he's my personal tech guy for every need :).  He thought I should get a motorola droid and I agree, it is a nice phone and I love all the free apps I can get.  Although our kids love the apps even more because they're already starting to fight about who's turn it is to play with mom's phone. :)  But overall, for $12 a month and no contract you can't go wrong with it.  The only thing is, from now on I have to get better at answering it but people can always leave a message which seems like nobody does anymore.  People either want to talk to you and can't wait or they text you so they can avoid even having a conversation.  It is becoming a different world for sure, where people get together and they all pull out their phones instead of talking to each other.  And teenagers would much rather text to the friends sitting next to them than to have a real conversation.  The phones are becoming almost a part of them and if someone asks them to turn it off and place it in the basket for a while they feel like someone just asked them to strip down.   I am just waiting for the day when the time comes in our family where we have to have rules about cell phones and stuff.

And in the light of my new phone, I have to write about my morning.  So I decided today is the day I am getting up and exercise. :)  I had to try out my new phone for an alarm clock of course.  I am a very light sleeper in the morning and any obnoxious loud alarm clocks make my blood boil so I tried to pick the most mellow ring I could find.  But since the alarm clock on there had barely any choices I downloaded a new one and it seemed great.  Until I woke up to a loud GPS kind of voice saying "It is 6 o clock!" and then beeping and buzzing and something else loud 5 minutes after that.  I didn't just have one but 2 alarm clock apps going at the same time.  In a way, maybe it was a good strategy because it made me so upset I couldn't go back to sleep. :)  But I will make sure that won't happen again.  I am really glad I got outside for a bit before the kids woke up because it was a beautiful morning and just the right temperature too. :)


  

what we've been up to...

Ehren mentioned the other day how I haven't posted anything for a while.  It's true and I don't have any good reason for not posting on here.  Kind of like I have no good reason to not get my butt out of  bed early so I would get back to running and working out. :)  Getting so very out of shape and the longer the "break" the harder it is to get back to it.  But I know I need to so hopefully very soon.

We said good bye to my parents almost 2 weeks ago.  Ehren and I couldn't appreciate their help more and I'm sure we accomplished as much as we would in at least 3 summers on our own. :)  They both worked so hard and helped us in more ways than I can count.  The thing Ehren and I are most excited about is having our deck all finished.  It was a huge project but they did it all, even the steps which dad and Ehren were not sure if they could pull off. :)  It is so nice to be sitting out there, listening to the birds singing and enjoying the outside.  After about 7 weeks of my parents staying with us, it is also good to get back to normal, having all the responsibilities of cooking/cleaning/housekeeping like before and I know they couldn't wait to get back to their home, food, etc.  :)








Enjoying the finished deck:

A day after my parents left we had a huge storm that broke our swing set into pieces but luckily that and some more trees down in our woods was all the damage at our place.  Ehren did a great job turning the pieces from the swing set into a tree house and the kids love playing on there.  I think it's way better than it was before.   Thief River made the news because it looked like after a hurricane, huge trees down all over town and trampolines flying everywhere.  But not our trampoline this time - thanks to my dad who ankered it way down to the ground so the 100 mph winds didn't take it down.


 After the storm:

 

  

After the remodel:

Last week I got busy pulling out all the baby things I don't need to keep anymore.  There's a facebook page where you can buy and sell used kids' things if you live in our area and that works perfect for bigger things.  I sold 3-4 pieces for about $130.  It is a great feeling to be able to get some money back on some things and to get rid of things at the same time.  In a way, this is my way of saying good bye to daycare.  Now there's no turning back because I am getting rid of almost everything I would need to take care of infants/toddlers. :) I'm also excited to make more room in our kids' bedrooms as they are quite taken over by the little kids' toys they don't play with anymore.  So I had a lot of fun getting rid of stuff, except our jogging stroller.  Somehow, over the course of having 3 babies and taking care of more I grew really attached to it.  Maybe in a way it was because it was a gift when we were expecting our first - Kade and I loved every moment I spent running and walking with him as a baby.  The more kids we had the less I used the stroller for every day walks/runs because it just doesn't happen as easily as when you only have one baby.  So the time came and I said good bye to my buddy jogger.  The lady who bought it from me was so excited which made it a lot easier to give it up.  Their son is 3 and has a heart problem which makes him very tired walking but he's getting heavy to push in a regular stroller so this will be perfect for them.  I'm really glad it is in good hands now and it's not just sitting in our basement waiting for who knows what.

So that is a bit of what we've been up to since my parents left, skipping lots of things like Kade's big soccer tournament last Saturday (they got 2nd place after playing for over 5 hours straight), going swimming a few times, going to the parade and fireworks, then fair with Emily, and some other things in between. :) We keep waiting for a few days of complete nothingness going on but I guess that's not going to happen very soon.

a little break

Our deck is almost done now and it is so nice to see so much getting done in a short time my parents have been here.  Ehren's parents have been calling them to the cabin and this weekend was a good time to go so my parents took our kids to see Bemidji and then to the cabin to spend some time at the lake. And to give us a little break from the kids. 

I always forget how nice it is to be home without our kids.  It takes Ehren and I a while to figure out what we should do with all our time all of a sudden :) but it is such a nice little break.  I hope all the grandparents know how much it means to their kids when they do that for them.  It refreshes us, keeps us closer as a couple and the grandparents are able to build long lasting memories with their grandkids.

Little breaks like this are so important for so many reasons.  You realize how much your kids impact your life, how sometimes it's hard to think what to do on our own for fun because all our fun things involve our kids :).  It's almost a little glimpse into our empty nest down the road.  It made me think of how different life will be then.  I love spending time with our kids now, taking them places, having new experiences with them, watching them grow.  It brings so much joy to us and I hope we don't ever take it for granted.  But at the same time we can't forget about each other, finding things we can do alone.  Usually when we find someone to watch our kids we have our date all planned out and it goes by so quickly.  But this time we decided about it at the last minute so we just stayed home with no plans and in a way it was a nice change because we are always on the go, trying to do so much stuff that we don't get to do when we have kids with, that sometimes we forget to be still and just recharge together.

Today I have 4 kids coming to day care and it is strange that my own kids are not here.  This is what it's like when people keep doing daycare after their own kids are in school already.  It is very strange to me and it tells me I'm doing the right thing trying out something new in the Fall.  As the summer is trucking along, I'm getting more nervous about subing, but at the same time I'm so excited to have our house back. :)  No more baby/toddler stuff around, no high chairs, sippy cups, play pens and so on.   And most importantly, I'm looking forward to calmer evenings when I get to spend time with just our kids after school.  Doing daycare, the time from 3:30-5:30pm would be the most stressful for me as I was trying to make a quick dinner for us, keeping an eye on our kids doing homework and watching all the other kids on top of that.  So it will be very different having a quiet home in the afternoon, just us.  I know our kids will miss their little friends, they already tell me that so I'm glad that our nieces Emily and Aveah live less than a mile away and we'll be able to have them over a lot. 


  

      

Canada trip

Wow, what a trip we've had this last week!  It seems like we've been gone a lot longer because of how much we've seen and done.  It has also been our longest road trip as a family and as nervous as I was about the kids, they did awesome even when we had to drive about 24 hours going back home.

We stayed with my parents' friend from Slovakia, George and his wife Ruth who live in Edmonton.  They are such a warm, loving couple and they treated us as if we were a part of their family.  We spent a few days in Edmonton with them and after that we went to the mountains.  George and Ruth joined us which was so nice because they know all the good places to stop at so we had our own tour guides.  The bummer was it rained almost the whole time so there were places we didn't stop at but even so we saw a lot and almost every time we would stop at a place the rain would stop so we were able to walk around without getting soaking wet.  We didn't do any longer hikes but I don't know if we would be able to anyway because we were all pretty pooped after each day.  When we first got to the mountains the rain was coming down pretty good so we decided to go to the Hot Springs pools by Jasper.  It was a great experience, the pools there are very hot and they have a couple very cold pools which people go in and out of.  I didn't try the coldest one but the cold pool I went to was enough and I was barely able to go in up to my neck.  But since all our kids and everyone else did it I had to try. :) 

Our second night in the mountains we were supposed to stay in Canmore which is very close to Banff but just as we got to Banff that evening, the flooding in the southern Alberta was getting bad.  Canmore was pretty much cut off from every road so we had to find a hotel in Banff.  It is a beautiful town and I was bummed it rained the whole time we were there.  As we were watching the news that night, the situation was getting worse and there were almost 100,000 people evacuated in Calgary.  Which, of course, was going to be our next stop and we planned to visit some other friends from Slovakia that lived there.  By the morning there was no way we could have gone to Calgary or any other way for that matter.  Roads in all directions were closed because of flooding for the next 2-3 days except one road going West.  That meant going way west and crossing the US border in Idaho.  So, it meant a lot longer drive home, but I was excited to see the Glacier park in Montana.  However, since driving through the mountains was hard on our van as it was and our breaks weren't in the best shape, we decided to go the lower road, so we didn't get to see the scenic route I wanted to see.  But, we were already tired and had many hours of driving ahead of us so even if we saw some cool places we wouldn't have time to stop.  But even though we tried to avoid the mountains, we got a whole day's worth of driving through beautiful mountain peaks, being only a mile away from the Yellowstone park's entrance at one point.  Every time we thought we're about to leave the mountain area, we would see more snowy peaks around us pop up.  They just go on forever it seems like and now I really want to go back to Montana to be able to hike some there and for sure we want to go back to Jasper and Banff area.  Ehren and I are already thinking it would be the best 15th anniversary trip next year :) but we'll see.

Overall, it was a very fun trip.  We met a lot of wonderful people and saw such beautiful places.  Ehren and I are glad we were able to do that with my parents too, it was a great time no matter the weather.  Kids loved it too, even though Kason and Anika were more excited to see a big playground than the mountains.  Kade loved everything though and he wished we would do more hikes so I think when they're all a bit older they will appreciate that part more.  We saw some wild life too, even though most of the animals were hiding because of the rain.  A black bear crossed the road in front of us, we got very close to a few elk, and saw a couple mountain goats.  Kade was very excited about that and was wishing we could see more wild life but that's ok.

And now here are some pictures for you.  Between the 3 cameras we have a ton of pictures so it's hard to pick just a few to put on here.  I can't wait to play around with some of them and see what they look like printed.

In Edmonton:

our anniversary dinner

one of the many great dinners with their family

Edmonton mall

Edmonton mall

               Around Jasper

the guys

 Lake Louise

 

mom and dad in the rain :)

Saying good bye to our friends

 On the way home

all 4 girls

park in the mountains

we took a ferryboat across the lake