I looked out the window and what did I see.....

...snow was falling on my maple tree. We had heard it was coming but didn't want to believe it. We had snow like this last Easter also so we shouldn't be surprised. When all is said and done we should have 8 inches or so. I'm glad the kids are off school this week.

March Madness

On March 21st Emily and her band class performed at a festival. They played 3 songs for the judges and then played 2 songs they had never seen before for a separate judge. Emily felt that she had not performed very well and was concerned that the class would be scored low. As you can see they did extremely well. 1 is the best you can do. We are so excited for Emily and her class.

Jeremy's 5th grade class is studing Colonial days and we went on a field trip to a one room school house and a log home. While we were there the kids spent the morning at the school house, learning like the children of that time period would. After we had a "no litter" lunch we headed to the log cabin to do chores and see how children lived back then. The no litter lunch had to be things like meat, fruit, cornbread and cider. All of this had to be packed wrapped in cloth and in a basket or pail. We did bring the cider in plastic but the kids used tin cups to drink from. The above picture is of Jeremy dipping candles. The kids got to haul firewood, bake cookies, and pump water. It was a fun day and we had just the right weather for it.

Jeremy and his friends line up for school.

On March 7th our ward had a luau. This is how my crazy family went dressed. It was a fun night with good food and fun games.

After the luau I was busy doing things around the house and came into the living room to find this! My daughter in a "wife beater" t-shirt and my son shirtless rocking out to Stairway to Heaven on guitar hero. Where did I go wrong?

On March 10th Jeremy was selected by a performing group call Brainstormer to have a story he wrote acted out. This is a really fun assembly that the school puts on every year. Each student writes a story and enters it into the selection process. Brainstormers pull one story from each grade and then performs the story adaptation for the school. It is always a surprise as to who is picked and kids love seeing their story brought to life. We are proud of Jeremy because he really struggled with writing this story and almost didn't enter the contest.

This is Jeremy sitting in the authors chair. You get to sit there while your story is acted out. At the end each author gets a certificate and a pencil.

Fun in February!

To start off February we had our Pinewood Derby. Jeremy is giving his car to the track guy. He didn't win but was close a couple of times.

This is Jeremy getting his Artist pin. He is working hard on finishing up the requirements for his Webelos badge and Arrow of Light award.

Emily the human hot dog? On Friday the 13th I went to the Henry Ford museum with Emily and her class. They have the wiener mobile on exhibit and this fun spot to be a wiener.

These are the kids in our group, Destiny, Eric, Madison, Katie, Emily, Sasha, Chris and Kenny. For some reason the kid named Glen kept disappearing on us and didn't make the picture.

I raced from Emily's field trip and hour away from home and made it to Jeremy's school for his Valentine's party. This is his last class party as an Elementary school student. They are playing bingo and Jeremy won a huge Hershey kiss.

We are in Florida obviously not Michigan. We arrived a little early so we couldn't check in to the condo so we went mini golfing. This is a fun course with Santa and his elves. The kids are in elf sized floaties.

This is also at the mini golf. The kids are at Santa's board and the other boards are elf sized.

And of course this is our annual picture in front of Cinderella's castle. It had been 3 years since we had been here and we truly missed it. I asked the kids if they could only do one things while in Florida what would it be? They both said the Magic Kingdom.



We started the day with a ride on the Disney rail road. We always start in the back of the park and work our way to the front. Less crowds that way. We had beautiful 70+ weather and were sad to head back home. We had blinding snow and ice from Dayton Ohio all the way home.

Wharton Year in Review

I have been wanting to do a year in review but life has not slowed down around here so that I could. We started this year with a hospital run for Emily. No, not her diabetes but a second degree burn on two fingers from trying to rush dinner to go see a movie. Stupid potato's! This has got to be one of the coldest winters in Michigan's history and I don't like it! Let's move on to the review.

January 2008, cold and boring. We did celebrate my niece Erin's 16th birthday. It was super fun at her surprise party.

February 2008, cold and boring. We didn't go on vacation during winter break like we usually do but Emily and I did attend Mall Mania. It is a girl scout event where we sleep over in a closed mall and have tons of fun with about 3oo other girl scouts. Some stores stay open so we can shop at 2 in the morning. Being the ever awesome leader I let my girls eat ice cream for breakfast.

March 2008, still cold and the fun starts.

Emily and Jeremy moved up in rank in karate. Emily now has her green belt with 3 stripes. Only 3 ranks to go until she earns her black belt. To achieve this level she had to break two one inch boards consecutively, one with her hand and one with her foot. Jeremy earned his purple with one stripe.
This is us in Wisconsin. We decided for the first time ever to leave home for Easter. We were hoping to ski with the fresh foot of snow but the runs had been closed and we were left to our own devices. We went to the nearest Wal-Mart to buy sleds but they didn't have any. Rob came up with the idea of using construction grade trash bags. So this is Emily and Jeremy trash bagging down the hill next to our cabin. We laughed our heads off! Later we found a cool indoor water park and spent the next two days hanging out there.




April 2008, a little warmer. Emily started running track at school and according to her she froze her yatchees off. She had a good record running the 70m and 100m dashes. She also did the shot put and tried the high jump but gave it up because she thought she would break her head. Emily also turned 13 this year. Oh My Heck! I have a teenager!!!







May 2008, a little bit warmer. Emily marched in the Memorial Day parade. Memorial day fell on Jeremy's birthday so we say the parade was for him. Jeremy turned 10 this year and grew 3 inches. He is quickly gaining on Emily. Emily left the next day for her class trip to Chicago. It was freakin' awesome!




This is the cake I made for the kids duel birthday party. This is before I added the "torn out pages" of the book. I think it was a cool cake. One of my more creative works of cake. Yes, that is Yoda and Darth Vader on Jeremy's half.

June 2008, Yeah! warm weather. The kids got out of school and we headed to Gordonsville, Virginia. We visited Monticello, historic Williamsburg and Mountpelier. The place we stayed at had a stable so the kids and Rob went riding every morning so I could sleep in.



July 2008, perfect days. July is my birthday month. 2009 will see me turning 40. Yikes! Jeremy went to cub scout day camp. I went one day with him. It was fun sharing that time with him. Emily and I, with our girl scout troop went to Michigan's Adventure. It is an amusement park/water park in Muskegon. We stayed over night in a hotel and giggled until 3:00 a.m.



August 2008, more perfect days. Emily went to her second year of church girls camp. It was at a new camp this year and the girls stayed in bunk houses instead of tents. Fun was had by all. We ended the summer by going on a family picnic and playing frisbee, we went to see one last Tigers game and we spent labor day helping aunt Jan move into her new condo. Emily was feeling crummy by then and I was very worried about her. She slept on Jan's balcony in the 90 degree weather fully clothed and under a blanket. Finally I knew something was not right and took her to the doctor's the next morning.



Well, this is where our blog starts so you can catch up with the rest of our fun from the beginning. We have had some ups and downs this year but nothing we couldn't handle. We feel truely blessed to have our friends and family close and that UPS signed a five year contract without touching our health benefits or wages. Here's to a rockin' awesome 2009!

Happy New Year!

This is the usual picture of Rob just before Midnight. We wake him up
as the count down begins. We have to remind ourselves that he worked
all the night before and has very little sleep but insists that he hang out
with us to ring in the new year.

I have taken a picture like this every year for as long as I can remember.

We all have our own hat and blower but as long as I have any say in it

there will not be a picture of me at midnight!

Christmas 2008

This year Christmas for my side of the family was at our house. So

to get the kids settled down we decorated cookies. This is Jeremy

frosting his cookies.

This year Rob and I finally gave in and bought our families first ever gaming system. The kids were so geeked when they opened it. We opted for the Guitar Hero world tour because it came with 2 guitars. Emily and Jeremy quickly laid claims on a guitar and decorated them with stickers to make them their own.

Emily tried out the game with her personalized guitar.

Jeremy is all smiles as he tries out the game. I must say that I have already heard "Eye of the Tiger" one too many times. I even caught Rob singing it in the car when we went to pick up dinner. We also picked up the motorcross game from the cheap bin at Wal-Mart so Rob and Jeremy had loads of fun crashing into each other.
Merry CHRISTmas!

SNOW is a four letter word!

Ok, so this is the back end of Rob's old truck. If you notice at the left of the picture the snow is half covering his tire. We were dumped on with a foot of snow Friday December 19, 2008.

Emily is queen of the hill! This is one of the many mounds of snow the plow guy left us. This is at the neighbors drive way. The mound puts her at about half the height of the tree.

Jeremy is showing off the depth of the snow in our driveway. It is seriously just about to his butt. I was a little peeved because it had started snowing very early in the morning and the plows didn't come until 4:00 p.m. and that meant no school and no leaving the house.