Naming all the people she knows. . .

I try hard to help you know who she means . . . I always wondered how parents knew what their kid was saying . . . . guess it comes from practice.

dinner . . at our house . .

Our visitor . . .

wogoman weekly - volume 2 issue 30

I have to start out our email this week with tonights story. Oh there is always a story at our house! Tonight we did our regular routine. Read books, brush our teeth, say night night to everything and everyone. When we said night night to eddie (the elk) the strangest thing happened. He said night night back. Except he sounded just like something high and squeaky. I called J in and sure enough it made that noise again. So we put Tenille in bed and decided to open the attic door. After getting a flash light, a broom, a hammer, and J's shoes, climbed up into the loft and into the attic. After saying what in the world, J showed me a huge nest of leaves and twigs. And then the bat came flying at his head. After a swat and some colorful language the bat was put in a zip lock bag and headed out the door. I will post a video of that. We should just say. . . Harry was outside too. In the end everyone was fine. J worked everyday this past week and weekend so he has been busy. Tenille made a video where she says everyone's name she can. will try to post that too. Tenille has now mastered the art of taking off her shirt. She mostly does it when she wakes from her naps. Some days she does great potty training, Other days not so much. :) Well this seems short but that is about it! Have a great day!

wogoman weekly - volume 2 issue 29

We have survived a crazy week of midterms. Can you believe it? The school year is half over! I can smell summer vacation and sitting on my sun porch in the air! Or maybe that is snow . . . Not sure there was tons of excitement in our house this week and that was FINE by us! My eyes are awesome and I marked the occasion with the process of throwing out all my contact stuff. Kind of liberating. I saved my glasses because I know that I can donate them but wow is it different not having to worry about all that crap. :) Really truly if you have great vision now, count your blessings. It is the most wonderful thing to be able to wake up and see. I took a nap on the couch yesterday and didn't have to worry about my contacts drying out in my eyes. ahhh what sweet relief not to worry about all that anymore! Jason started his HAZMAT class this past Saturday. J will have class for the next 9 weeks in South Bend. I know he doesn't like school but I am proud of him for continuing to learn new stuff. That just makes me all the more confident that he will come home after every shift. Tenille got a booster chair this weekend because I was tired of eating on the floor with her. So far so good. Now maybe our family can eat like a family again! :) There is a picture this week of Tenille playing with one of her favorite new/old toys. Empty shell casings. I am sure every good parent lets their kid play with those. I think she just likes the noise they make but it is still pretty funny none the less. Aunt Brenda will be happy to know that Tenille has finally learned to wink. Both eyes at the same time. I hope to load a video online of it. Aunt Brenda has been working on that skill since Minnesota last summer. Aunt Angie sent another box of toys and clothes which is always so nice. Tenille proceed to open it up and put everything on that she could. Theny we sat down and read books about learning to use the potty. Tenille is doing pretty good on the potty front She even peed in the super big girl potty while we were at church. Isn't that awesome. I think it is working so well because other kids at daycare are doing it. Tenille did get TWO new teeth this week. There another one that close that I hope will come in soon! She gets so CRANKY. She also survived sleeping on the cot this week at daycare. Not sure I am ready to do that here at home! Well that is it! Have a great week!

Winking

Just for you Aunt Brenda!

The bell that always tolls

Mom took this and I sent me both of them. Here is Tenille with this bell that sings:

Here is me with that same bell and My grandma and grandpa at the Lake:
(those names look so weird when typed but that is what we called them!)

Weird huh?

wogoman weekly - volume 2 issuse 28

I hope this issue finds you well, warm, and relaxed! My father says that everyone needs a good cat story. His involves a dog and a Siamese cat that met an unfortunate end in front of 3 little kids in their living room. If you would like to hear about it, I am sure he would love to tell you. Our cat story involves a couple of days background knowledge. The first weekend of the year, Harry and Sasha had cornered something under our porch. It was nicely constructed with one open end and one closed end. . . nice! Both dogs sat in the snow and waited all weekend long. Sometimes they tried to dig through the wood but mostly they just sat there waiting. I was thinking to myself, why doesn't whatever is in there leave when the dogs come in for the night? But apparently, it wasn't that smart! On Monday I get home to find J and t in the kitchen and J looks a little unnerved. He came home from work with Tenille and let the dogs out. He made t a snack and got her a drink. Just then the dogs start barking like they have never barked before! Growling and barking so loudly that J went out to the sun porch to find them both smashed under the porch. He went out there to find the biggest nastiest cat at the opening of the porch. It was hissing and the dogs were barking and t was in the sun room pounding on the windows yelling, "Harry, Sasha!" The dogs would not budge and the cat was inflicting wounds on Sasha's nose when she got too close. So J did what any good upstanding man of the house would do . . he protected his fur children with his right to bear arms! In the politically correct world, let us say cat is no longer with us, the hot tub was not hit, and I will remind you that Sasha HATES cats and thinks they are chew toys. So by the time I got home all this had happened and if you asked Tenille if there was a big cat she said yes! :) On the potty front, we have the morning potty down like clockwork. After that . . well it is a different story. I have to rearrange my morning so I have enough time for Tenille and all her dollies to pee. I didn't plan for that one morning and was almost late because 3 dolls had to "pee" before Tenille. J took her the other day and she instructed him that he needed to wipe. He thought that was pretty funny. Tenille got another tooth and I am SO hoping the rest will come in because she is in pain. Poor thing. She stayed up last night and watched desperate housewives with us. Not what we wanted her to but she just wouldn't sleep. So she made us snacks out of her new kitchen and learned "off" and "on" with the light switches. We had the truck crew over this weekend for our Christmas party. We had a lobster bake with lobsters and calms and clam chowder. We were so FULL! I swear Maine lobster tastes better than any other! On the bird front I now have confirmed 3 different types of woodpeckers in our woods. (thanks for the book mom and dad) The one we saw this weekend was HUGE. He must be the one that is eating our house. This fall J and I were talking outside and I started screaming "stop it" and jumping up and down. J thought I was nuts until he saw the big bird fly away. I think I will assign that job to the dogs this year. For 2010 I have decided to sew! I got a machine and am resurrecting those 7th grades skills. I made Tenille a scarf last night. It looks ok for a first attempt at anything. It did take me 2 hours to watch the video on threading the machine, to fight with the bobbin, (there where things NOT shown in the video!) and cutting the fabric. I am next attempting mittens for the girl! Ahh to new years resolutions! As for the pictures this week. There is one with Tenille and the lobster. She really didn't like him. There is one with her and a swim suit bottom on her head. (What can I say, the girl likes hats) and the last one is from daycare tonight. There is the new scraf I made her and the hat uncle mark got here. She put them on, grabbed elmo and was ready to go .. . don't worry about the coat! Until next week!

wogoman weekly - volume 2 issue 27

There is nothing better than Christmas vacation. I love that you get to spend time with family and friends and you actually get to slow DOWN if you want too! What a novel idea! With this snow this week we have gotten to use the sled and the plow. It is awesome because we have hardly had to use a shovel here and my back is so THANKFUL! (As is Jason's) I should say mostly Jason's because last winter I was taking care of Tenille and the winter before that I was so tired from being pregnant that I just sat on the driveway while J worked. :) The big news here is two fold 1): we found Bart! While packing up our Christmas decorations I found him in a box of baby toys. So you will see how much she has grown compared to him! 2) my eye surgery went well. I can SEE! If you don't have glasses you have no idea how cool this surgery is. It was a little scary but so awesome. I can currently drive and read. My far far away vision is a little blurry but it is supposed to heal and get better. If not they can go back in there again and mess with them. It does look like I have big hickies on my eyes. So that will be fun explaining to my students. I need to come up with a great big story because they will eat that up and no one will remember I told them that I was having lasiks. I actually had a procedure that is called intralase {pretty sure that is NOT how you spell it}. My night vision is better than it was before with glasses. So cool. If you ever have thought about it let me know and I would love to talk with you about it. The way I talk about it, I kind feel like I had plastic surgery done or something. But I don't care. :) Not necessary . . .bam hum bug. If people say that, well then, they have never been blind! :) I woke up this week and thought, oh my I can see the fan! Last night I thought to myself, ugh I have had these contacts in for a long time, then I remembered no, no contacts! Ahhhh so cool. I can't say enough. :) As for everyone else in the house, we tired out some of the hills around our house and Tenille can really get going. She can even push herself down the hill. It was nice because then I could take a video of her. I got to skype with J this week for like 2 minutes before he got a call. So we got to try out our new computers for like 1 min because I could figure out how to turn my camera on. :) Tenille got to make her first snowman. She is not to sure about him. It could be the fact that his nose is made out of pool liner that I found on the ground. :) You just never know what you are going to find out here! So far the weird items are pool liner, hammer in the pasture, and vial of animal medicine. At least that is what I am telling myself it was. :) I am trying to gear back up for school next week. Not really happening though. I love spending all this free time with my family. I guess that is a joy of being a teacher. Jason and I both swear that Tenille has matured so much this last two weeks. Today she told me, "me ride" when I picked up the laundry basket. I didn't know she knew either of those words! I am sure that you if you have kids it isn't THAT amazing but it she feels like it to us!

Sledding in our front yard.

Here is Tenille first day with her sled. You will notice I am out of breath from running up and down the hill! She LOVED it! It is so nice that we can sled and NOT run out into the street!