Not much has changed....

I need to work harder at this, it's been 2 weeks since my last post. I'd like to say it's cuz I've been so darn busy, but I'm probably just lazy. And I really don't know what to write about.

The 4th weekend was very nice. T's brother came up with 2 of his boys. We spent way way too much money on fireworks. We went out to a farm near here to shot off the fireworks. I believe a good time was had by all. BMO loved it. Thank you to the friends for having us, your place is beautiful. The weekend was very full for all of us. In addition to spending one night out at the farm shotting off fireworks, we also took the kids swimming, went bowling, watched the professional fireworks after the races (we didn't actually go to the races) and the boys got to go fishing for several hours. It was a full weekend. And although it wore us all out, we had fun.

This last weekend was my Mom's birthday I took the kids and went back for the weekend. T had to work Friday and Saturday night so figured it would be better for him to get some sleep. We had a very enjoyable time. Saturday Papa took BMO in the roadster to a car show in Hull. Mom, GIO and I followed a little while later. They had a small kiddy carnival and a parade. BMO had fun at the carnival and in the jump houses. The parade was excellent. Tons of entries and more candy then we could ever have asked for. We came home with about 1/2 of a plastic grocery bag full of candy. He pry could have gotten a lot more too, but we stopped encouraging him so much about halfway through when we realized how much we had. It was an enjoyable day. Other memorible items from the weekend. Papa and BMO caught lightning bugs in the backyard and were putting them into a jar. They were so thick that they practically flew into your hands. And a shout out to my sister, who likes to refer to me as middle aged now. Thanks Princess, just remember your turn will come. I think I'll send BMO to your house for a week next.

Things haven't been going too well with Grandma Grace. After the surgery she was recovering well and surprising everyone. They moved her out of ICU last week and we all had pretty high hopes that she'd pull through this. However, it appears that her body is just getting tired. They will be transferring her back to the home in IA, where she has been for the last few years, today. Once she gets there, they will do their best to make her comfortable. Hospice has been called and will be helping with her care. I saw her this weekend when we were back. She was rather pale and very tired. However, she knew who I was and talked a little. I am praying for the Lord to comfort her.

Things with all of us are good. BMO started swimming lessons this morning and a new daycare. Hopefully this one will work well for him. It's a larger daycare with a preschool in it. He was pretty excited. GIO is still staying at home until school starts in the fall. We have a nice gal that comes in and watches her while T sleeps. It's been working well. T has been working a lot out at the plant as a foreman. He goes in late in the afternoon and gets home in the middle of the night. His room has really good production and he seems to like it okay. I think the hours are getting to him, I'm not sure how long he will last on nights. I'm doing okay at work. Getting settled and familiar with the way things are done. I like some of the challenges I've gotten to work on. And i get to be the demanding pushy chick that I so enjoy. LOL

Hope all is well with all of my friends. Been thinking a lot about my CA friends and the fires out there. Send me an email or a text sometime, I'm trying to respond to all of them.

Oh and I forgot.......

Because of all the stuff going on, I haven't had a chance to let some of you know, we got new cell phones with SD numbers. We still have our CA phones, and will for a month or so. But, since I can't remember who I told and who I didn't, if I haven't told you and you don't have the new number, send me a note and I'll get it to you.

I'm tired

So, lots have happened since my last blog. I'm really bad at this, I'll have to work on getting better. Let's see. Last weekend, we met up with Tracy's family in SF. Tracy and I had joked about sending BMO home with Grandma for the week. Things fell into place and we actually ended up doing it. We sent him home with Grandma with little more then the close on his back, good thing he and his cousin are almost the same size. About 10 minutes out of SF I woke up and couldn't beleive I'd just given my baby away. What were we thinking? It was all I could do not to make T turn the car around.
It was a pretty quite week. Tracy started his job at the turkey plant. He's a foreman on a slicing line on second shift. He seems to like it, other then the the second shift thing. He has high hopes that we will get moved to days eventually. GIO and I got to spend some quality time together just the girls. It was kind of nice, got a little routine down. BMO had a good week at Grandma's. He got sick one day, either a little bug or just overly tired, but it didn't last long. He had a good week and never got too homesick.
Friday afternoon we had a company golf tournament. It was a very good time. Got to know a lot of the people i work with. Unfortunately, we were unable to stay for the dinner. We didn't have a sitter and we wanted to get to IA to see BMO and the fam.
So, that brings us to the very exhausting weekend we just had. Friday night we loaded up the van and drove to IA. GIO slept most of the way but was fussy for about an hour of it. BMO had spent Friday with his Aunt and Uncle. I'm sure it was quite the experience for everyone involved. We got to IA about 11, and even though I went in and kissed him like 20 times, BMO didn't wake up to greet us.
Saturday was a nice day. We spent the day hanging out at the fam's place and Shirley's. Saturday night after we got the kids in bed, Leah and Brad went out for a couple drinks with T and I. I was really sad to see how very sad things are there. We went out to the bar we used to go to alot. When we walked in, there were like 4 people sitting at the bar, that's it. We had a drink there and decided to go to a different bar. It isn't one we would normally go to, but our options were pretty limited and we wanted to play darts. We had a few drinks there and played some darts. After a bit, L and B decided to call it a night, so T and I went out to a birthday party of a friend. We got home about 12, I had stopped drinking around 10:30 and was pretty sober again. That's when everything fell apart.
So, it's around 1, we just got home, and we're trying to be quite and get ready for bed. And the phone rings. My first thought, was if that's T's best friend, I'm gonna kill him, what was he thinking. So T goes and gets the phone. On no, it's for his Mom, a call in the middle of the night, that's not a good sign. Shirley comes out and tells us that it's the hospital, and T's Grandma is being admitted, she's throwing up blood. Now I'm completely sober so I get dressed and Shirley and I head to the hospital.
We got there and I was a little surprised to find how bad it was. She was throwing up a lot of blood. The nurses were doing the best they could to make Grandma comfortable and take care of her, but where was the Doctor? As we sat and waited, my blood pressure went up. About an hour after we got to the hospital, the Doctor showed up. I was a little cranky, especially when I was told that she only lived a few blocks away. The Doctor came in and took a look at her chart, said that they were going to move her to a room, admit her and give her some blood and something to help her stop throwing up. She wanted to take a wait and see approach, she was pretty sure that it was from the meds they had put her on this last week. Fine, how long are we going to wait and see? Well, they'd reassess in the morning. So we got Grandma settled and we went home to bed.
Sunday morning Shirley was up at the crack of dawn and back to the hospital. Grandma was throwing up again. So they called the surgeon. He came down and they decided to do a scope. He did the scope and thought that there was a hianle hernia (sorry, I can't spell) that was bleeding. He thought he might be able to do something, but said that since they didn't have an ICU, we may want to consider moving her to SF for the procedure. So, they air lifted her to SF, and everyone in the family packed up and piled into our cars and headed to SF. Once they got her there, they did the same scope that they had done in IA. They were able to see a little better and determined that she had a tear in her stomach. By this point it was getting pretty serious, they had already given her 4 or 5 pints of blood. It was determined that the only option was surgery. The surgery itself was pretty straight forward, but at Grandma's age (she's 90) and with everything else, it was a risk. The Doctor told that more of a risk would be after surgery, during the recovery. Grandma would be on a ventilator after surgery and depending on how things go, she did run the risk that she would never come off it. Our options were limited. Before the surgery, Grandma was awake, and if fairly good spirits. We all got to see her, and tell her that we loved her. The best line ever was when Shirley told her that she was going to have surgery, because she had a tear in her stomach, Grandma looked at her and with a straight face said, 'oh is that my problem?'
So, Sunday night, around 9, they took Grandma away to surgery, T, the kids and I headed home, and Shirley, Spencer and Brady stayed to wait. Surgery took just over an hour. Everything went well. They were able to repair the tear in her stomach. So Grandma was moved back to ICU.

That brings us to Monday. I just spoke with Shirley. She spent the night at the hospital, on a couch in the waiting room. The nurses told her that Grandma is doing well. They think she has taken a couple of breathes on her own. She will remain on the ventilator for a while so they can keep her heavily sedated. We're pretty much in a wait and see patern now. This has been very hard on the whole family. I just thank God that we were there when it happened.

I'll try to be better with the blog and keep everyone up to date. Please keep Grandma and Shirley in your prayers, it looks like it could be a very long week.

I guess I'm not very good at this...

So, I set up the blog because I'm terrible at emailing everyone and letting them know what's going on. Since I've been here almost a month and I've only posted a couple times, I guess I'm not really any better at the blogging thing. Oh well.

First off, want to send out a big hello to Kari S. and Suzi H. Both of which are due this week. Kari I know is having the baby this week one way or the other, Suzi I haven't hear much about lately. To both of you, you are in my thoughts and prayers, even if I'm terrible at writing. Keep me posted!!!

Let's see, what's been happening here. Well things are good for me at work. The company is definitely smaller and their systems are very basic. I see lots of potential but am starting out slow. I don't want to step on anyones toes. So far, I've been doing cost analysis projects. They have told me what they are thinking, and I've been compiling the data. So far it's been pretty easy. The people I work with seem nice. I've made a couple friends, but am being real careful around the office. It seems there are a lot of women and they don't all get along so hot at times so I'm just kind of sticking to myself for now. I'm also watching my butt a bit with the boss. He's pretty hands off, but from what I've noticed he's keeping a pretty close eye on all the happenings of the office. Don't want to get off on the wrong foot. I think I'll be happy there once I get going. They do have some pretty cool perks there. The colonies sell items that the employees can buy. Last week they brought in eggs for $1 a dozen, homemade pot pies (I bought one, they were wonderful) and frozen chickens. From what I hear around the office they bring other things too, but that's all I know about first hand. We also can get sliced sandwich meat for cheap, turkey, ham and roast beef. And the company has some kind of employee event about once a month. Not to mention the scenery. My boss was laughing at me because I was standing by the back patio door the other day just staring outside. He thought I was lost. LOL But actually, I was watching to big pheasant roosters that were sunning themselves in the yard. From what I hear, the deer come right up near the building too, but I haven't seen any of those yet.

Tracy is still looking for a job. He's been offered a job at Pepsi, the post office and out at the turkey plant. He turned down the one at Pepsi, it was for a delivery driver and he thought he might like it but there were pretty strict about not allowing vacations at all during the summer and he'd possibly have to work a lot of weekends. The position out at the plant he's still on the fence about. It's a foreman position on the slicing line (the cooked side). It sounds like a good position with lots of potential for moving up. However, he's have to start on 2nd shift, and we're both a little leery about both of us working for the same company. Just sounds like we're asking for trouble if you ask me, but it would depend. He hasn't said either way yet. The one at the post office is very good money, but it's 6 pm to 6 am and it's not necessarily a permanent position. I'm fairly confident he's going to turn that one down too. He's also had interviews with several other companies in town. It's just a matter of time until he finds the right job. He's been working part time at a gas station to fill his time in the meantime. He seems to like it, but it's not something he would do long term. He's also doing a lot of fishing. He goes out most every night as soon as the kids go to bed. He's caught a few but he doesn't keep much. He's still trying for that walleye.

The kids are adjusting well. We got BMO into a very small home daycare. He seems to like it. And I love it because meals are included and he's being forced to eat new things. He actually ate goulous (I have no idea how to spell that) last week and liked it. Amazing. GIO is staying at home for now with a teenage girl we have watching her. It's kind of nice because depending on when Tracy has interviews or whatever she can come over and the rest of the time, he keeps GIO with him. BMO is a little homesick too. He's told me several times that he misses his friend from school in CA. I try to reassure him that he'll make new friends, but I know how he feels. He does spend a lot of time with the neighbor kids. And he's gone swimming with them a bunch. The pool here in town is pretty nice, and the little kids pool is free so it's a great afternoon get away for the kids.

I don't know much else. We're trying to keep busy, but there's not near as much to do here. I ran away to Sioux Falls last weekend for the day with GIO. We met up with my Mom and shopped the day away. That was nice. Tracy took BMO to see Kung Fu Panda on Friday, they said it was a really good movie. Again, one of the small town perks, the theater (that's only 3 screens, remember you all gave me crap about that one before I left) is within walking distance of the house and I can buy tickets at work ahead of time for only $5.

I don't know much else. I'd say everything is going well here. We're getting settled. I'm missing everyone terribly, but I still believe this is where I'm suppose to be. Hope all is well with all of you. Drop me a note and let me know how everyone is!!!!

Lots to do and nothing getting done

Well, we've officially been here for 10 days. It's actually gone pretty fast. There isn't much new to report. Last week was good. I started on Wednesday and pretty much sat on my hands. Thursday and Friday they had me spend most of my days in the plant observing. It was interesting but honestly, how long can you watch someone slice turkey? I spent one day on the raw side and one day on the ready to eat side. After my first day on the raw side, I was pretty sure I would never eat turkey again. Have you ever actually seen what goes into a turkey dog? To be completely honest, it wasn't near as bad as I expected. The plant is exceptionally clean, and most of it is automated. However, I have to say, the smell of caps being made was much more appealing. Oh yes, and did I mention how flippin cold it is in that plant? Freezer jacket? Sure wish someone would have told me about such a thing the first day out there!! The ready to eat side on the second day was much more appealing. Watching them slice the turkey lunchmeat was rather fun. Although, around lunch time, it was all I could do not to grab a few slices off the line. Can you imagine the scene if I had pulled that one? I'd be back in Cali before you know it.
Back at the office I've been learning lots too. They have been showing me lots of potential projects for me. Mostly I'm just doing data collection right now, and learning how everything is done. Nick would be proud, looks like I'm still gonna have to do landed cost.
Things at home have been going okay too. Starting to get settled. Tracy has been working hard to unpack and clean up the yard. Actually, it's starting to come along. I feel a little bad about my original reactions. The house definately has issues, and it wouldn't be some place I'd want to be longterm, but it is a cute house and it's got lots of potential.
So far everyone has been adjusting to the small town life pretty well too. I can run to the grocery store and back in 5 minutes flat. And work, if I leave at 7:30, I'm there by 7:35. Guess I might get to sleep in a little.
Friday night I wanted to do something special for BMO. I took him downtown to the theater, we were going to see Speed Racer. Yes, the huge 3 screen complex. Unfortunately, the no longer had Speed Racer. BMOwas disappointed, but given the choice of just going home or seeing Narnia 2, he voted to stay. So we got some popcorn, pop (we're in the midwest now, no soda here) and loaded up on candy and headed in. The movie was good, but it was a bit over BMO's head. I felt bad for the people that sat right in front of us, BMO was asking questions and talking through the whole thing. Oh wait, I don't feel sorry for them, the place was practically empty and they still had to sit, directly in front of us.
Saturday I got a lesson on the weather here again. I was out mowing the yard and the empty lot when a small afternoon thunderstorm came up on me. I tried to get as much done as possible before it started raining but forgot how quickly they can come. Not to worry, there was no lightning, I'm not that crazy. Saturday night we found out just how close to the fair grounds we live. Every Saturday night during the summer they have stock car races. Saturday nights could be interesting at our house from now on. It was pretty loud. GIO did not want to go to sleep because of the noise. Tracy took BMO and the neighbor boy to the races. He came home with some pretty exciting stories of car wrecks.
Don't know much else. BMO is going to bible school this week, he seemed to have fun today. Tracy is on the prowl for a job. He must be doing okay, he already has 2 interviews set for tomorrow and another one on Wednesday. We are still having trouble finding daycare, but we have a temperary fix. One of the girls at work has a teenage daughter who babysits and doesn't have a summer job. She will be helping out until we find daycare.
Hope all is well with everyone. I miss talking my friends, and especially miss my lunch buddies!!!

The First Day

My first day was pretty uneventful. The people seem really nice, and the office is beautiful. It's hard starting a new job, I want to do stuff, and I have to sit on my hands and listen and try to understand. For those of you that know me, I'm not real good at not just doing it. Anyway, they gave me the manual for the manufacturing system and let me "play" in their this afternoon. That was kind of fun.

In other events.... BMO is very fond of our new neighbors. Turns out they actually lived in the big Shel town at one time too. What a small world. Sunday they were taking their kids to the park and offered to take BMO along. We jumped at the chance to unpack somemore while GIO was sleeping. About 15 minutes after they left, i turned to Tracy and said, "are we too trusting, we just let total strangers take our son?" He reassured me that it's a small town and since they lived next door, it was pry okay. I still felt guilty.

Don't know much else. I know this is short, but I'm tired and it's late. I want to say Thank you to my favorite sister for helping me get the blog set up. You know I'm pretty sure my home computer hates me. Go figure. Hope all is well in sunny Cali, when you're all enjoying summer, think of me freezing my butt off here.... do they even know it's almost June?!?!?

The big move

Hello all! Gonna try my hand at the blogging thing. Now, please don't be disappointed, I'm definately not as entertaining as my sister. And of course, she can spell. For anyone I didn't send this to, below is a recap of our trip..........

Hello all! Hope you had a nice weekend! We made it to SD in one piece. It was a quite exciting trip, but I'm glad to be getting settled. Being homeless is really no fun.

We left Saturday, and we stayed in Reno. BMO was very disappointed when we got there because the hotel we were staying at was doing remodeling and the pool was closed. So much for my bribery that he could go swimming. We were a little concerned when we left Modesto, the truck was full and there was still the corner piece of our couch. The driver told us it wasn't going to fit and they would have somene pick it up in a week or two. No biggy, we'd deal with it. So we let our renters know that it would be in the garage for a week or two.

Sunday was a long day. We got up early with every intention of making it to Salt Lake City by mid afternoon and calling it a day. We left about 4 hoping the kids would go back to sleep in the van, GIO was very cooperative, but BMO was wide awake and had no intent of sleeping. We made reservations at a hotel in Park City, UT, just past Salt Lake and figured from the time we were making we'd be there by 4. We were just pulling into Salt Lake City when we caught our moving truck on the interstate. You can imagine our surprise when we saw that they had actually tied the last piece of our couch to the back of the truck. And I thought I was stubborn. It was all shrink wrapped and covered with blankets, but it was ours. Looked really funny, I can only imagine what the other people on the highway must have thought. We were only 6 miles from our hotel in Park City when we came acrossed a bad accident that had just happened, maybe 5 minutes before we got there. They closed the interstate down. There was a big rig blocking all the lanes. They sent us back down the hill into Salt Lake. We did some checking and there wasn't really anyway around so we decided to wait. We ended up killing about 4 hours and going back up periodically to check if the road was open. We went to a park for a while and walked through a store and had dinner. Finally we decided it looked like it would be closed for a lot longer so we decided to take a detour. We ended up going north to Ogdon and staying there for the night. It was only about 1/2 hour to an hour out of our way, but we had wasted a lot of time because of the accident. We found out later what had happened, made some of the things we saw make more sense. When we had been going up the hill we had seen several cops and a couple miles before the accident we actually thought we saw cops putting out spike strips on the road going down the hill. Come to find out there had been a high speed chase coming down hills towards Salt Lake. They said on the news that they believed the guy decided to commit suicide because he cut acrossed the median and aimed for the only semi truck on the road. I felt so bad for the truck driver, and was very thankful we hadn't been just a little further ahead.
Monday we decided that the early morning thing wasn't going to work, so we didn't get up early, we just got up up normal and had breakfast and hit the road. We had another long day. We crossed all of Wyoming and spent the night in Sidney, Nebraska. It was a long day and by the end everyone was dragging.
Tuesday we didn't get up early again. We were all getting tired of being in the car by this point and that was the longest day of all. Taz developed a new nickname of pigion, because he was making the strangest noises all day long. Speaking of the dogs, the stupid creatures. We bought them 2 kennels and have been training them for weeks and wouldn't you know, but the second stop they had decided that they wanted to share, so they rode 90% of the trip in the big kennel togheter. That was a waste of money and space. Was sure glad we got the kind that fold up. We made it to Sheldon on Tuesday night around 5:30.
We spent the next couple of days trying to recover from sitting for so long.
Thursday afternoon, T and I loaded up the van again and headed out for SD. The kids stayed with the Grandmas for the next couple of days which was a big help. We got to Huron in the early evening and went and got the keys from the landlord. The first time we walked through the house, was a disaster. I wanted to cry and T was panicing.
All the rooms were way too small and even though they had redone a couple of rooms, there was still a lot that needed to be done. The stairs are awful, they are very sharp and steep and everytime I go up them I'm feel like I'm going to fall down. It's very drafty, nothing is straight, including the doors and the floors. It's an old house, and it was filty. We promptly got a list of available rentals in town and started driving around town. We were desperate but most of the others that were available were worse. So we went to dinner, had a few drinks and decided to make the best of it. The next morning we got up early, and went to the house, Tracy stayed and met the movers and I headed for Wal-mart for cleaning supplies. It was a long day of cleaning and moving. The truck driver, John, had his wife, Peggy, bring us over lunch and then she took me away for a couple hours. She is very nice and we got along well. It was a nice break and she showed me around town and introduced me to a daycare provided she knew. Friday night after we got everything into the house, we called it a day. John and Peggy took us out for a nice dinner at a nice place on the lake and then took us over to there lake house for a while. It was nice to unwind a bit.
Saturday was a rat race. My folks brought the kids up in the afternoon, and until then, Tracy and I were working our tails off to at least get a path through the hosue and get the kids rooms ready before they got here. We ended up with the kids in the 2 bedrooms upstairs and we made the dinning room into our bedroom. Not ideal, but it will work.
Sunday and today have been busy. Lots of trips to Walmart and cleaning while we go. We are starting to get settled now, and the house isn't so bad. The bathrooms and kitchen need work, and the stairs are very steep, but it had potential. It's definately a challenge trying to get things unpacked and working around the kids. But BMO has made friends with the neighbor kids and has been playing outside a lot. It's nice to have so many windows and such a quiet neighborhood. We can let him play out there with the other kids and not worry to much. The one neighbor actually lived in Sheldon for a couple of years and knew a lot of the same people we knew, what are the odds of that.
I don't know how things will work out after I start work this week, but so far it's been okay. It could be quite a challenge for Tracy to find work. There are lots of jobs but most want to pay $6-$8 per hour. It's crazy.