TWO!!!!

Its official... I am the mother of a two year old. I was given some advice the other night. A friend told me not to think of it as the terrible two's but the terrific two's instead. Well, so far that advice is working because when I see this picture I can't think of anything terrible! (not even writing with crayon on the wall throwing a tantrum at nap time.)

Busy enjoying our summer...

Mr. Moose is on the loose again and this time it is in Bjorns room... ok not the real Mr. Moose but I did have fun painting bjorn's room this week.

These are some projects that Bjorn made at daycare. We decided to take some pictures of them before we took them down.

The Last Day!

Today is the last day that I will teach for the school year.
It is the last day that I will teach Kindergarten.
It is the last day that I will teach in this school building.
It is the last day that I will look at these four walls (except when I come back next week to finish cleaning up.)

I am surprisingly nostalgic today, it feels a little like graduation day. You know, super excited and a little nervous to be moving on from one part of your life to the next. If I were to write a speech about ending my Kindergarten teaching days. I would start with this opening line.

"It only took me five years...but I finally learned how to read and now I can move on to first grade."

Yep, that's right- I will be teaching first grade next year and I will be moving to the school in the town were we live so it will cut my driving time and hopefully increase family time. Plus, I will finally be able to just be a part of one community. I always felt torn between the two before.

Anyway, I am very excited to be starting this next venture and super pumped about the next 3 months were I get to totally and completely immerse myself in just being a Mom!!!!

Yeah! Mommy and Bjorn time, here I come!

What a whopper!

We decided to spend our beautiful Sunday evening fishing...

and check out the whopper that I caught! To be fair Casey did catch more fish than me...but mine was still bigger!

Dads and their boys...

Pictures, as promised!

Here are my pictures as I promised...this is Bjorn and I sledding about in the beginning of March.

Here is the crew checking out the baby calves at my Mom and Dad's farm.

This picture was taken March 21st. Do you see all the fun mud? Bjorn saw it up close (notice the mud on the front of his coat!)

Then the snow came back...and so did Mr. Moose. This picture was taken today, March 25th!

Dear Snow, please go away...but Mr. Moose you can stay!

Spring had sprung ...and then it bounced away.

Well after a beautiful weekend of sunshine and mud! The snow has returned. I promise I will have pictures soon. We had been having so much fun playing in the melting snow/water/mud and now our world is white again.

I want to have a very positive attitude - go with the flow - but after having a boy with an ear infection for the last few days and almost getting stuck on my way to school this morning (they hadn't cleared the streets yet when I got to town) I have to say I am feeling pretty humbug!

So here is my effort to make myself cheer-up

Top 10 reasons I love spring in central ND

10. only in ND does it seem appropriate to give a hat and mittens as an Easter gift
9. baby calves
8. at least if you get stuck in the snow/mud its not too cold to walk for help
7. I don't have to worry about the red river flooding my house - just the slough out back.
6. only 30 days of Kindergarten left
5. There is still a chance of another snow day off from school
4. I heard the geese are comming back...I've even seen a few!
3. planning my garden (the three ft. of snow on my garden will be gone before we know it, right?...right?)
2. unlike the area where we go antelope hunting we did not get 22.3 in. of snow yesterday - we only got about 8 in.
and the number one reason is...
1. faith means believing without seeing - I know that soon the sun will shine and summer will come even if it doesn't feel or look like it right now!

A night for Mommy and Me...and a Moose!

Well everyone else headed to the regional basketball tournament tonight, but Bjorn and I decided to have a Mommy and Me night at home (and when I say home -I really mean at Howard and Joan's because our road is blocked again). And boy are we glad we did! I mean yes, we missed watching the boys win another game (Go Trojans!) but if we would have gone to the game we would have missed seeing this huge creature in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard.

Yep that is Mr. Moose E. We also had fun building towers with the blocks!
Then we watched Mr. Moose some more. He got much closer to the house after the sun went down but it was too dark for him to show up on those pictures.


And ofcourse, what Mommy and Me night would be complete without a self portrait and a little tickle torture!

Dino-mite Friday!

It is just a lazy Friday around here. It is 20 below windchill so we are stuck inside, but as you can see everyone is well taken care of...even the dinosaurs!

My favorite scene from the winter of 2009

This is a scene I pass every day. It is the road between our house and our neighbors. Yep there is a road under all that snow. It has been blocked since sometime in November and who knows when we will drive it again. It makes me giggle when I see the poles all lined up and all that snow inbetween.

Scenes from a Winter Wonderland

I thought I would share a few scenes from the last few days. We have been having lots of fun adventures at Hotel Anderson and we have even discovered a new rare species. We call it Roadus Maintainus!

These babies just keep getting longer.

Life is a highway I wanna ride it all night long...well not this highway!

A baby, A ballgame, and A birthday

So I have not been feeling very bloggy lately and I am a lot behind on my updates...but I am going to blame it on all the snow again. Thats right ladies and gentlemen we are snowed out AGAIN!

Its ok though because somehow this time it feels more like an adventure. Anyway we had a fun weekend. I took Bjorn to his first basketball game. I know he is 18 months old - well last year we couldn't take him anywhere for fear of him getting sick and this year the weather has been to crazy to think about going...but this weekend I finally did it and Bjorn loved it. Then we had a birthday party for my brother inlaw and my nephew at the bowling alley! It was great fun. Wehad the place to ourselves so each of the boys got their own lane.


Finally I would like to introduce you to Bjorn's new cousin...the first baby girl on the Anderson side. Here she is

Zella Jo... isn't she a doll!!!!

A Matter of Perspective

I wasn't able to get to the computer on Friday and I wanted this to be a flashback friday post, but maybe I will start a new trend and call this Sentimental Sunday. You see a year ago this week, I was in a very different place...

sure the snow was still blowing and it was cold where we were...but last year at this time we could not afford to grumble about the weather... we had much bigger fish to fry! January30th, 2008 was the day that Bjorn had his heart surgery and as I sat and watched the Superbowl today (My favorite team won by the way. Go Stealers!) I couldn't help but remember that the last Superbowl I watched was from the cardiac ICU at Mayo.

Now here we are an entire year later, and I have a very important lesson that I would like to share with you. The lesson that I learned started with trip to Bismarck. I was so excited to go and do a little shopping, get out and be with other humans older than the age of 6, and all I had to do was get through a doctors appointment and the rest of the day would be filled with fun...right?...wrong! Let's just say taking a little boy just getting over croup and an ear infection to get his 18 month shots is a bad idea and then if you think you are going to take him shopping afterwards...forget about it. Don't worry he got me back, by peeing all over my leg at Bob's photo and begging for every toy at Walmart...and if that wasn't enough...it was one of those days where I just couldn't find anything on my shopping list. What a bad day!

So there I was feeling all sorry for myself, driving home, and then it hit me...duh! A year ago I was sitting in a waiting room praying, pleading, even making deals with God if He would just let Bjorn make it through surgery...well Bjorn did make it through surgery and now I have an 18 mon. old who is just starting the terrible two's tantrums, making every developmental milestone on time and beginning to talk my ear off and compared to last year it was a good day. It is all a matter of perspective!

In or Out!

Well we have been able to be home all week now -it is so good to be home...when you can get in and out. But I have a question for you. If you knew the road to your home was going to be blocked would you rather be snowed in at home and not be able to go anywhere or snowed out of your house and be able to go pretty much anywhere you wanted except for home? Just wondering what you all think...


*Pictures of more snow coming soon!

Snow Day Fun!

Well the blowing snow from last night caused a NO SCHOOL snow day today. So Bjorn and I get to spend the whole day with Julius and Owen. We thought what better thing to do on a snow day than to play in the snow with your cousins!

Casey's brother Juel made this awesome snow cave for the boys! It was toasty warm out of the wind.

And two more pictures incase some of you warm weather friends think I am exagerating about not being able to get into our house. These two pictures were taken looking out our front door around Dec. 30th and we have gotten almost a foot more snow since then...and we are suppose to get 2-4 more in. tommorrow.

If you look along the telephone polls that is where our road is "suppose" to be.

Snowed Out!

Well we managed to get about 8 in. of snow over the weekend and it is blowing like crazy tonight so even though Bigbird is back from icefishing...

we are unable to go home because we are snowed out of our house. So as I sit at my in-laws tonight I thought I would fill you in on our exciting weekend. Friday morning I set out with Bjorn, Howard, and Joan to meet Casey for one of his very best friend's wedding. We set out at about 11 in the middle of a snow storm and made it down the road about 10 feet before we got stuck. Now some people might turn around and give-up, but not us! I was bound and determined to get to that wedding and so we turned back (after we used the snowblower to clear a path back to the house) for a couple of hours and started out again. This time we made it the whole way!!!! It was a beautiful wedding and it was so good to see old friends...plus we were lucky enough to have Grandma and Grandpa along to watch Bjorn so we could dance the night away... and we did...my feet are making me pay today.

and finally I want to give you my "Christmas Update part two, the final addition" The rest of our Christmas was filled with fun and family! Here are some pictures to prove it!

Three Boys, Two Dogs and a pile of ...!

So this week at my in-laws has turned out to be a RELAXING event free week so I want to tell you something that happened over Christmas break that I have been meaning to share with all of you.

During break, I told my cousin that I would take care of his puppy while he was on a snowmobile trip. Well one of the days that I had the puppy I also told my sister in-law that I would watch my two nephews for her. So there I was with three boys and two dogs. What better thing to do in 10 degree weather than dress up a one year old, a 2.5 year old, and a 5 year old and take them outside to play in the snow with the dogs. Well as I gathered up the kid's snow gear I remembered that my sister in-law did not bring snowpants for the boys. I have a pair that are too big for B so I decided I would put those on Mr. O the 2.5 year old. and "J" the 5 year could surely be somehow rigged up into a pair of my pants.
After 15 minutes of gathering all the gear, as the puppy was yelping to be let out, and B and O were running around the house screaming for joy, I began getting J dressed up in my insulated sweats...cinching them around the waiste with the drawstring and tucking the bottom of the pant legs into his boots. 10 minutes later I had him dressed and ready to send out the door just in time to see B pick something up off the floor, it appeared to be a small rock sized object and we all know how much B loves to put rocks in his mouth so I hurried over to grab the "rock" away from him...As soon as my hand grabbed the "rock" I knew what had happened and it was not a rock at all.

Oh did I forget to mention that we are smack dab it the middle of potty training Mr. O...thats right fokes, my B picked up a piece of Mr. O's doo-doo that had somehow wondered out of his underwear and then I grabbed it away from him. YUK! YUK! YUK!

Well 40 minutes after I started gathering the snow gear we were all in dry clean clothes having a blast in the snow for about 15 minutes before everyone got cold and we had to go back in! Yeah!

Life on the Cold Prairie!

So I grew up in the country, I know what it is like to live in the sticks, in North Dakota, in the winter. I lived through the winter of 97 when the snow banks were higher than the bus on my bus route to school.
I have never, however, lived through a North Dakota winter with a one year old while my husband is off on a week long ice fishing/bachealor party trip with his buddies! And that ladies and gentleman is what has brought me to my in-laws for the week. No this is not an "oh my goodness I have to put up with my in-laws" post. This is a "thank our Father in heaven for my in-laws" post. You see, of the 31 days in December, we got snow 25 of those days. This snow has left the 2 mile gravel road to my house looking more like a snow tunnel that one of my students built than an actual road. I wish that I had pictures of my neighbor coming down the road with his snow blower (and by snowblower I mean large tractor blower blowing the snow 50 yards away) to open our road after being blocked in for almost three days. It was like the calvary coming! (We love you, Steve!)
So here I am, at my inlaws - I am sure I will have another good story for you before the week is through!