Summer :)

Well, the last day of school (and work) has come and gone, and for the next 3 months we are FREE!  Well, maybe not free, more like 'more flexible'.  Um, maybe not that either.  Let's just say the schedule has changed, and we usually won't have to be out the door by 7:15am.  That's more like it!  I do seem to have a little more time to get things done when we're actually home, but for some reason the garden is still weedy....
Ok, so since summer vacation started, Chase has had a ballgame after having had only 1 practice (I don't know who does the schedule, but they need some practice, I think!)  They didn't do all that bad, and it's always fun to see how they improve over the summer.  Chase hit every time he was up, and the poor kid always ended up with the 'big' helmet, so he had to hang onto it while he ran so it didn't fall off!  Shame on me, but all I could think about when he was running was that he kind of looked like a Bobble Head...big helmet head, little body.  I know, I'm terrible.
Last weekend we went on a family vacation up North and stayed at a cabin on a lake that is owned by a guy that Jess works with.  It is sooo nice up there!  Jess, of course, went muskie fishing early in the mornings and again in the evenings, but from about 9 to 5 we did stuff together.  Played games, played catch, went for a walk, relaxed, went for a drive looking for elk (which we didn't see), and for the very first time ever, the kids went tubing.  Not the kind where you float leisurely down a river, but the kind where you lay on a tube and hang on for dear life while a crazy man pulls you around the lake behind his boat.  Emi was all gung-ho and would barely listen to the *minimal* instructions (thumb up=faster; thumb down=slower; all fingers up, palm out=stop, keep your mouth shut and teeth together so you don't bite your tongue off, and when you fall off, let go of the tube and go limp).  Jess started out very slow, and the smarty pants girl kept giving the thumbs-up to go faster.  It didn't take her long at all to figure out how to shift her weight to keep from flipping over!  After a good while, Jess and Chase decided that it was time for her to get off the tube.  Chase said "Dad, I think it's time to ditch her."  So Jess tried to get her to fall off, only it wasn't that easy!  She was bouncing over waves, back and forth across the wake, through other boat wakes, but finally she fell off.  When we got back to her I asked her if she was made of velcro or what!?  Jess couldn't believe that she stayed on for so long, and he wasn't going that easy on her, either.  Emi said she now knows what a skipping stone feels like, and  Chase told her she hung on like a tick on a dog.  jeez.  Chase was up next, and that poor kid needs to gain a little weight!  He was flopping around like a noodle out there, mostly because his 60 lbs. just couldn't weigh the tube down much at all.  The rope would get stuck in the wake during turns and slack a little, and then jerk the tube when everything straightened back out again.  He also didn't fit very well on the tube, his hips hit right in the center of the hole in the tube, so he was bending backwards just laying on the tube.  He had fun, but didn't want to go as many times as Emi did because he said after a little while his back started to hurt.  I don't blame him!  We decided that we are going to get a tube of our own, one that doesn't have a hole in the middle!  Chase is excited about that!

So today, miracle of all miracles, Chase cleaned his room.  For the past couple weeks he'd kept saying that he didn't have any clean socks, I'd tell him to make sure they were getting into the laundry so I could wash them, and I'd wash whites but there would only be about 6 of his socks in the basket.  Well, today the mystery has been solved.  Chase came and asked me for a laundry basket, and a couple minutes later came out with about 152 sock in it.  What the heck??  I asked him what he had been doing with them, and he said it wasn't him.  He explained that it must have been those troublemaking dust bunnies that stole his socks and stashed them all under his bed.  I told him that I thought those dust bunnies should wash them all, and he told me that if the dust bunnies had been taken care (meaning I should have taken care of them) of before they'd gotten big enough to drag socks around it wouldn't have been a problem.  So, I traded him the basket of socks for the broom and dust cloth, and sent HIM to do battle.  Hmph.  

So, now we get to go to Emi's first softball game of the summer.....my summer diet of popcorn has begun!

I suck at blogging, as is evident in my posting history.  This, right here, is something for my record book, as this is my 2nd post today after a 3 year hiatus.  The first one was more for me to complain, this one should be lighter :) 

A lot has happened since Feb. 2009, or whenever I posted last, and I can't obviously do an update on the goings-on since then, so I'll start in the right now.  

Emi just attended the 6th Grade Camp Out.  Talk about a weird feeling!  I remember going to the Camp Out, and not like it was 24 years ago.  Wait, 24 years?  Did I do that math right?  Yes, it has really been 24 years since I was in 6th grade.  CRIPES!!  Anyway, Emi going on the Camp Out brought back a lot of memories, for sure!  Meeting and spending time with the "Pigeon kids", sleeping in a leaking tent, those horrible pit toilets, snipe hunting (lol), "boring" nature hikes, and the infamous Ouija board incident of '88 that resulted in the ban of Ouija boards at all future Camp Outs.  

Things are a bit different now, but still memory-making for the 6th graders.  They have a lot more 'classes' that they do while there, and have actual bathrooms with SHOWERS!  They now have a "family visiting night" on Thursday night, which I think is for bringing anything to the kids that they might have forgotten and so we can bring home the 'outdoor' craft projects that they've done that might not travel on a bus very well (this year it was a decorative concrete stepping stone and a painted T-shirt, both of which were still far from dry).  I haven't gotten too many detail from Emi about it yet. Why, you ask?  The girl talks all the time!  Well, she is a girl who needs sleep, and she didn't get much while she was gone.  When she gets tired everything is terrible, so I didn't want to ask too many questions because I knew I'd only hear the 'bad' stuff.  From about 5 minutes after I saw her on Friday to the time we got home, she was crying.  She was talking about some girls who got in a fight, and I asked her if she was involved in it at all.  She said no, and started bawling.  I asked her why she was crying if she wasn't in the argument with the other girls, and all she said was "I'm so tired," and continued to cry for the next 45 minutes until we got home.  She went into her room, crawled into bed, and didn't come out for 23 hours.  And let me tell you, I was not going to make her get up and interact with us if she wasn't ready. No sense in going looking for trouble, I say!  She did say that she liked the campout, but she wished that the other girls would have "left the 'drama' at home."  lol 

Chase is Chase, I just never know what's going to come out of his mouth.  I'm glad his teacher has a good sense of humor!  I think his latest thing is his "cool walk".  I can't figure out how to explain it, but it's hilarious! He says that he can't do it very often and has to be careful where he does it because it makes all the girls go crazy!  I have no idea where he got that from....certainly not Jess!  The kids is also a walking mess maker.  You can see exactly where he has been by the trail of stuff left in his wake.  I asked him recently what his deal was, why he left stuff all over?  He just looked at me and said, "I'm only a kid, I don't know how I could keep track of all the stuff I do." Hmm.  

I do have to say that everyone here is looking forward to summer vacation.  We'll be busy, but I have a few plans....

So, it looks like it has been more than 3 years since my last post.  Wow, I suck at this!  Oh, well, what can I do?  I'm writing now because I figure it's worth a shot.  I have been stressed at work and it's starting to leak out everywhere, not just at work.  I feel like I have less patience with my kids at home, with most everything at home, and the littlest things get me fired up.  And it's not just the person at work that's bugging me, it's me, too.  I'm crabby at ME for allowing this person to get to me so much.  I tell Emi all the time that she has to learn how to let little things go, but I'm having trouble with that myself.   I have people I talk to, but I don't want them to start dreading seeing me and having to listen to me complain...again.  So, I guess this is an attempt to decompress a little, to have somewhere to go with all this.  Sorry to anyone reading this...you may want to find better reading elsewhere.
So, I'm irritated to no end by someone at work.  Not a student, an employee.  Someone who had been subbing but was then hired as extra help in January in a long-term sub position....except not technically.  She can't technically be hired as a LTS because she doesn't have a teaching degree.  She has a 4-yr, so she can sub, but not long-term.  She has 2 reading groups (where kids do their AR reading (silent reading)  or read aloud with her) and has 2 math groups with kids that I had been working with.  Basically she is a Title 1 aide, but she's getting teacher sub pay.  Why?  Because she had been subbing and they wanted her to take this position, but why would she if she could make more doing the other subbing?  So, they pay her teacher sub pay.  She does what aides do, but less of it.  4 groups a day, 2 recesses a week, and plenty of time to check Facebook, search for great ideas for her imaginary wedding on Pinterest, and play with her awesome, incredible iPhone.  This is enough to annoy me, but there's more.  She knows more about everything than everyone.  Just ask her, she will tell you how great she is, and how not great everyone else is compared to her.  She will willingly and freely talk about anyone, even if they are relatives or friends of someone she's talking to.  And she doesn't have very many nice things to say about anyone...except herself, of course.  The other day I walked in to the room and she said to me, "You're friends with so-and-so, aren't you?"  I told her yes, I was really good friends with that person.  She then starts ripping on that person.  After I just told her I was good friends with them.  I said what I wanted to say, trying to remain civil while imagining punching her in the mouth.  At least someone else was in there to witness this, which had never occurred before in any other situation like this.  All I could tell myself was that she couldn't help it, she's just that stupid, and that I was the better person for not getting mean back OR punching her.  She has a "better-than-everyone" attitude that she can't actually live up to, but I don't think she realizes it.  Miss Mighty Know-It-All constantly asks me how to do things...like subtract fractions.  Find the area of a circle.  What is an 'operation', as in Order of Operations?  And just asking how to figure out random problems that she can't figure out, even with the teacher's book.  WITH THE TEACHER'S BOOK.  She's a piece of work for sure.  I could go on and on....and on.  But I'll try to take my own advice and let it go.  Take a deep breath or two.  She just can't help it, poor thing.

school and dog food, what a combo!

This post is going to be some very random stuff. Remember, my mind does not travel in a straight line!

Last week we had Parent/Teacher Conferences, and heard pretty much the same things we've been hearing. No big surprises, which is good. Both Emi and Chase are doing very well in school. Chase tends to be silly and talk with his friends, and Emi tends to get so into whatever she's doing that she doesn't pay attention to anything else going on. Chase is reading really well, and seems to love math and social studies. Emi is one of the better readers in her class and in a special group for that, but tends to have a bit harder time with her math now that they have started multiplication and division. All in all, pretty good reports!

The whole PF school had their second vision and hearing screenings done. I got a note that said Chase had failed his vision screening twice and should have a "professional evaluation." I made an appointment with my eye doctor, and for the next week had nightmares about Chase needing to have glasses, and how in the world were we going to keep him from constantly trashing and/or losing them? Oh boy. Well, his "professional evaluation" showed that he has perfect vision. THANK GOODNESS! I know of one other child who has been to the eye doctor because of a failed screening, and his vision was fine, too. Come to find out, there were between 35 and 40 kids who failed vision screenings. Maybe the little machine being used needs to be calibrated or something? I'm glad I know for sure, but I really could have spent that $60 on something else! Like dog food, perhaps....

I'm getting a little disgusted with Scout. We buy him the good, healthy, no grain dog food, but the ungrateful, unappreciative, hairy beast can't seem to eat it without scattering and dragging a bunch of his food all over the floor. It wouldn't be so bad if he would then eat it off the floor, but no. He leaves it for us to step on and have to clean up. Oh, he will walk by it and give it a sniff, and look at me like "I can't eat this food..it's on the floor." I estimate that about one-fifth of all his food gets sucked up in the vacuum. So out of a $40 bag of food, $8 gets dumped in the garbage. That's a nice thought.

Here's one for the "Funny things that come out of my children's mouths" section:
Last Sunday we went to my parent's house for dinner. We were talking about something that had to do with Jess getting chased by things. He was saying that he had been chased by a mad horse, a nasty poodle, a crazy woman who thought he was her husband Johnny Cash (HAHA), and a mad bull, among other things-like police, which I'm glad he kept out of his story. Anyway, Chase sat there for a second or two, and then says-very seriously- "yeah, and I get chased by girls all the time at recess." Like there is nothing in the world that could possibly be worse or more dangerous than girls. We all sat there for a second, and then burst out laughing. My mom laughed so hard she had tears 'leaking' out of her eyes, and Jess just about fell off his chair. Chase, on the other hand, could not figure out what was so funny about his life being put in such danger during his recesses. I think he thought that we didn't believe him because he kept saying things like "Really, they do" and "Mom, you see them do it, right?" It just made us laugh harder, poor kid!

I suppose someone will want something to eat tonight, so I better go figure out what that might be! Something terribly delicious, no doubt. ha

Blog, Interrupted

I just looked and saw that my last actual post was on Nov.19. Wow. I didn't realize that it had been so long. Maybe because I have been trying. I have started many, but have not been able to finish any. So, here's some of the topics included in posts that didn't make it to the PUBLISH POST button before some crisis came up:

~Lorie Line Holiday concert in La Crosse

Here's part of the almost-post from that trip:
Way back in November (seems like more than a month ago!) my mom, Emi and I, along with other "Windjue" ladies (and Nick) went to see Lorie Line and her Pop Chamber Orchestra put on their great "Holiday Extravaganza" show in La Crosse. It was a great time as usual. I never thought that I would be one to get all excited about sitting for a couple hours watching a woman play the piano. That was before I saw this particular woman playing her piano. And it's really so much more than just her playing. There's the rest of her 'orchestra', Mr. Line-MC/Santa/whatever other characters he play, audience participation (singing, clapping, ringing bells, etc.), and I think my most 'favoritest' part-when the kids are invited up on stage. This year they all got animal costumes, and Emi was a Christmas seal. My mom and I laughed so hard...the head of the costume kept falling forward and Emi kept pushing it back up, all while trying to keep ringing her bell and singing along.

~Christmas and Christmas vacation (which included some really fun times like cleaning up a living room that has been covered in a fine layer of Gold Bond powder, and spending 6 hours cleaning up the kitchen after the refrigerator got tipped over. Fun times at the Hanvold house.)

Here's part of the post I was typing for the "powder incident":
Well, this place looks vaguely familiar...I think I've been here before. Oh now I remember. It's all coming back to me now. It's been so long that I've forgotten! It seems that all I've been doing for the past however long is trying to avert disaster, or cleaning it up if I can't stop it.
How about this...I go downstairs to throw in some laundry. I'm down there for 5 minutes. I can hear feet pounding on the floor upstairs and just figure the kids are playing and running around with Scout. I get upstairs and enter a winter wonderland. In the living room. Turns out that the kids were running around...they were trying to get the Gold Bond powder container away from Scout, who had stolen it from the counter and was running everywhere with the OPEN container in his mouth, spreading powder all over everything.

So now, the middle of February, things seem just as crazy. There are approximately 77 days of school left before summer vacation, and I'm about 50% sure that I still have a job next year. Considering that my job this year changed half-way through this year, I consider those odds decent. Some things are starting to piss me off, though. I have had to prove, in a way, that I am earning my keep, so to speak, while another employee spends most of her time emailing and chatting on the phone, then complaining about people asking her to do things that are her job. Grrr. I have to make sure to cover for her so she can get her breaks during the day, then I get in trouble for not having a break on my schedule. I really want to say that I think the other person is confused. Instead of working for 8 hours and having an hour worth of breaks, she's working for an hour and taking an 8 hour break. But I don't. And probably won't. I'll just bitch about it. I think they already know anyway, and I'll just seem like a tattletale. Lots of budget issues going on, position switching, grade moving, building problems, etc. Things are uncertain, and that's the only certain thing we know. Comforting. I guess I'll take my 50% chance.

OK, I'm going to end this now before something happens and I have to hit SAVE instead of PUBLISH. Mission accomplished!

long time

It has been soooo long since I posted anything. I'm a slacker! Halloween has come and gone, and all those pics are trapped in my old camera because I took pictures without first checking to make sure there was a card in it. Of course I cannot find the USB cord for the camera, and the other 2 cords we have don't fit. Of course. So, I just ordered a new one for a camera we don't use very much anymore. Why did I use it in the first place? Well, because I can't find my newer, better one. Of course.

My cousin got married Nov. 8. We went to West Bend for the festivities and it was pretty darn fun. Emi is quite the dancer, and Chase is still Chase....he still gets tired at 7:30pm, and he still dislikes anything louder than he is. Chase and Jess didn't stick around for much of the dancing portion of the evening, but Emi got down! Emi and Cousin Tyler had numerous contests to see who could "go lower", and Emi won all. I don't know what he was thinking, taking on a very flexible 8 year old girl. ***Ty, you're not as young and limber as you once might have been...even as 'lubricated' as you were at the time! haha Overall, it was a good time, and even Jess thought so, as reluctant as he was to go in the first place. It was really nice to just get away for a night! We did pay for our absence when we got home, though. We were met with a very excited dog, and a large area of chewed-up destruction. Jess's mom had been coming over and letting Scout out and feeding him, and she had even cleaned up other chewed up things on her previous visits. I guess next time he goes to a kennel, even if it's just for over night.


Maybe he was expressing his frustration with us that we chose to go away instead of staying home with him to celebrate his birthday. November 8th marked Scout's 1st Birthday. Emi wants to have a party for him, and I'm still trying to dissuade her. I told her we could make him a doggie-friendly cake and take pictures of him with a funny birthday hat on, but she wants to invite Scout's doggie friends over. That girl would do anything for a party!



Let's see....Boy Scout Popcorn and Girl Scout Cookies have taken over. The sales of both Scouting organizations take place at pretty much the same time, which isn't all bad for the selling portion, but delivery gets a bit much. Only so much can fit into my trunk, and there are precious few "safe" places in the house in which to keep the rest of it. Safe from the dog, and safe from the husband and kids who think if it's here, it's fair game. grrr. Needless to say, I am sick of both popcorn and cookies. OK, maybe I could stand a few more Thin Mints :-) yum.



We also had the annul "Windjue Lefse-Making Day" this past weekend. The kids surprised me! Emi can roll out a fine piece of lefse all by herself! Garrett and Chase were working as a team for awhile, and Garrett is pretty darn good on his own! Turns out that 60 pounds of potatoes equals over 200 pieces of lefse. Those are the ones that made it into a package. Not counting the 'oops' ones (ones that didn't make it to the grill), the 'eaters' (the first ones made by the kids and the ones that didn't pass inspection to make it into a package, and were sacrificed to the hungry bellies) or the ones that just plain got snatched. That's a lot of lefse. Let's just say (for easy math purposes) there were 200 pieces made. Each one of those is cut into quarters for eating (with or without sugar, I won't hold it against you!), so that makes 800 triangles of yummy potato goodness for rolling up! I guess that might get us all through 'til next November. Maybe. (probably not, though!) Besides the fact that we all get our share of lefse for helping out, it's just a great time all around! There was less flour-flinging this year (at least while I was there) as it seemed that Erica was on her best behavior :-), but some of the dough did get tossed around, mostly at Jennifer in her black clothing. Silly girl!


Jess and I went to see the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, last Saturday night. I thought it was great! Lots of action, and never boring, of course. My birthday always happens around gun deer season, so we usually do something for it the weekend before. It seems that that last couple of Bond movies have been released sometime in November, which works out great for me since I love 007 movies, and Jess doesn't complain one bit that I want to see an action movie (instead of some mushy girly movie.) And as it always happens after I see a 'theater movie' I now have a list of other movies I want to see just from watching the previews. One is Defiance, another movie with Daniel Craig, and another is Seven Pounds with Will Smith. Let's see if I get to see them in a theater or on my own couch.....

That's about it for now...until later!

how old?

I just never know what is going to come out of Emi or Chase's mouth at any given time. I just never know what they are going to come up with. For instance, the other day Emi was singing something quietly to herself, and I asked her what song that was...thinking it was something from school. She surprised me when she launched into what I recognized as "When I Grow Up" by the Pussycat Dolls. First, I wondered where she had heard that song enough to even know any of the words. Then she got to the part "...when I grow up, I wanna see the world, drive nice cars, I wanna have boobies..." . At first I was a little dumbfounded, and then I couldn't help but laugh a little, which maybe isn't the correct response from a parent, but what do I know? I couldn't help it. I have heard that song a few times, and I was pretty sure that the word was supposed to be groupies. I told her that, (so she wouldn't go around singing that and proving to people what a super job we're doing as parents that our 8 year-old knows Pussycat Dolls songs) and then she wanted to know what a groupie was. At that point I was thinking that maybe 'boobies' wasn't so bad...after all, we all want 'em, right? Then when I went online to find the lyrics, and it seems there are a lot of other people who think that they say 'boobies' too. (Anyway, a groupie is now defined as a big fan...and that's all.) So, after I recovered a bit, I asked her where she'd heard the song. Some of her friends sang it at school and they would do performances of different songs at recess, kind of like American Idol, I guess. ugh. Like she's not growing up fast enough. I feel kind of overprotective in a way about some things at times, like what they hear on the radio. I will change the station if a song comes on that I don't think they need to hear (songs with swearing, other things they don't really understand or need to be hearing), but I can't edit everything and I sure can't be with her all the time. I haven't completely decided if it's a good thing that most of the things she repeats that she's heard she doesn't even understand. But they still sound pretty bad coming out of an 8 year-olds mouth.
I need the Parenting Guidebook more now that they are getting older then when they were babies.

Now last night she sounded like such a kid. I walked into her room, which is in it's typical disastrous state, and asked her how she could even walk in there with all the stuff all over her floor. She just looked at me with those big blue eyes and said, "My feet are littler than yours," and then smiled such an innocent smile. We had a good laugh together about that one, and I want to remember that silly little moment when she comes home singing the next Pussycat Dolls song....
Lord, please help me, I'm not sure I'm going to survive this parenting thing! We haven't even gotten to the teenage years yet. yikes.