This blog is my "online" journal of my family's life. My husband Hans and I have one son, Jacob who turned 3 in mid April, and another son due in Mid October! Hans works as a system operator for a electrical company, and I work from home. I finished my college degree in December of 09 and couldn't be happier and more proud of myself. Working, having a baby and going to school was hard and some days made me want to pull my hair out. But I stuck with it and completed it!
We moved from Alaska to South Dakota in May 2011 for Hans' new job, and have settled nicely. He finished his degree in December 2010, and is now working in his new field. In June, he decided to go back to school to get his bachelors degree in the same field, and is currently working on that and is scheduled to finish in May 2014! Now that we are here in SD, we took the leap and bought our first house and love it!
To learn more about us click on the about us tab and keep coming back to read about our adventures!
Wow, it has been awhile since I have updated (Sorry Nana!). Lots has happened in the past 2 1/2 months, so I will try to do a quick recap!
Hans and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary by going on a cruise while Jacob spent the week with Hans' parents in Colorado.
Hans surprised me with a trip to North Dakota to go and visit Megan and Mike while they were in Bismark!
November brought the start of the busy holiday season, and with that visitors! My mom and youngest sister (Sara) came to visit us for Thanksgiving.
December came and I went to Minnesota for Megan's baby shower on the 10th. We had a great girls weekend, and I can't wait for baby blueberry to come into the world sometime in late February or early March
The following weekend, Hans had a "boys" weekend in Minneapolis with some friends. They went to the NHL game on Saturday night, and the NFL game on Sunday. This was his first time seeing a NFL gave live, and it was is favorite team playing as visitors (The New Orleans Saints)
This bring us up to Christmas!
Jacob enjoyed coming downstairs this morning to find the family room full of new presents! He has enjoyed playing all day with all his new stuff!
Tonight we had a great time going out to a local pumpkin patch! I have never been to one since they are not that popular in AK so this was a great new adventure for all of us! Jacob had a blast walking through the patch trying to pick up all the pumpkins. :) He was so cute stopping at one and trying to pick it up, and then saying help get it! He was able to find 2 small ones that he could carry and brought them home along with 2 larger ones.
The beautiful pumpkin patch!
We had a great time, and I am looking forward to making this a yearly tradition!
Now for an update!
Tomorrow our kitchen update will be completed! We order new cabinets in late August that match our current ones and they have finally come in. So tomorrow the installation company will be out all day to do the install. I am really looking forward to having an actual pantry cabinet in the kitchen!
Next week Thursday, after Hans' is off work we will start our drive down to his parents house in CO to drop Jacob off for the week that we are on our anniversary cruise trip! I am so ready to be on a vacation that we are completely unplugged! I know that I will miss Jacob while we are gone, but we are so ready to have a vacation that is just us! We will get to Mark and Diane's on Friday and then we fly to Tampa on Saturday. Then Sunday we board our cruise ship and sale away for 7 glorious days to the Western Caribbean! Then once we fly back to CO, we will start the drive back home that same day since Hans has to leave that Monday night for a class for work for the remainder of the week. So needless to we have a busy October!
I know that I haven't posted in awhile, but I would first like to pay tribute to the men and women who lost their lives 10 years ago today due to a horrible terrorist attack on our Country.
9-11 is the first large even in my life that someone can ask me "Where were you when it happened?" and I can tell them from my own memory where I was and what I was doing. Because of the time difference between NY and Alaska (4 hours) I first heard about the attack when my alarm went off for me to get up in the morning for school. I have just started my Senior year in high school. I am a avid snoozer when it comes to waking up in the morning, so I didn't even think twice when my alarm when off that morning. After laying in bed thinking to myself, I didn't just hear what I think I heard, no it couldn't be I must have been dreaming it. I waited for my alarm to go back off and sure enough the DJ was still talking about the first plane hitting the tower. At this point, I jumped out of bed, ran and turned on the TV. I then went and woke up my mom and we watched in horror as the second plane hit the second tower. I remember sitting there thinking that my life as I knew it had changed. I remember my mom wondering if she should send me to school and I told her "mom, this is Palmer, Alaska there isn't anything here that anyone would want to blow up, I will be fine." She eventually agreed and I ended up going to school where my classmates and teachers huddled around the computers to listen to the news reports as we all watched the fateful events of that day.
On one hand, it is hard to believe that it has been 10 years, on the other it isn't. Time goes by in the blink of an eye. I still think about that day often, and am most touched by the song Alan Jackson wrote "Where were you when the World Stopped Turning"
OK now that I have said my piece about 9/11/01 onto our update!
First I am sorry I didn't update about this much earlier, but I actually didn't break my ankle! After my fall and ER trip, I went to the doctors for a follow-up that following Monday. They determined that it wasn't actually broken, I just tore the ligaments. This was great news as the healing time would be a lot quicker and I could be move from the big black walking boot cast and crutches to a air cast with no crutches! It has been pretty good and healing very well since then. I have has a few days that I have over done it with the walking (went to the State Fair and walked all day and it was hurting me a lot after that)
Since I did not break my ankle, I was able to go with Hans this weekend to Minneapolis! He had to go for a work conference and Jacob and I went to have fun! On Friday while Hans was busy all day, Jacob and I started our day off by going to the Zoo! We had a great time! The bears were pretty cool and were playing right at the glass so we got some cool pictures of them! Here is one of Jacob and I with the bear behind us!
After we left the Zoo, and Jacob decided that the nap in the van was good enough for him we went to the Mall of America to look around! We had fun looking at all the stores, and Jacob enjoyed being able to pick out some stuff at the Disney store! After the mall we drove out to our friends Megan's parents house to have dinner. Hans was not able to join us as he was still busy with his meetings. We really enjoyed having dinner with Walt and Terry and can't wait to be able to go back to visit them in the future.
On Saturday, Hans had stuff in the morning so Jacob and I just hung out in the hotel room playing on the computer and watching movies. Once Hans was done, we headed back over to the mall to do a little more shopping and looking around. Saturday night, Hans had a banquet to end his conference so he went to that, and Jacob and I went out to eat and then to go and find the craft stores!
Today we got up and packed up. We hit the road to make out 6 hour drive back home. We made a stop at the outlet mall to try and find some new clothes for Jacob as he is about to move up to 3T and we have nothing in that size! We lucked out and were able to get him almost everything he will need (at least for now) for just around a hundred bucks! I thought that was a pretty good deal!
This week I am really looking forward to the mom's group (MOPS) that I have found here in Huron to start up their regular meetings!
Another thing that I am looking forward to is our Anniversary cruise that leaves in 5 weeks from today!! I can't believe that it is only 5 weeks away!
In October, Hans and I will be celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary! I have been kicking around the idea of us going on a trip to celebrate. We both enjoy cruises (we have been on 2) and we have the itch to go on another. Without telling him, I have been looking into them and found one that I really liked. I got all the way to the purchase screen and then asked for his opinion. He liked the one that I picked out, but is hesitant due to him changing jobs and not knowing if he will have the leave time available. I asked him if he would be up to booking it if the cruise line still had the cancellation policy that would refund all the deposit up until the "pay by date". He said as long as this was still in effect that we could go ahead and book!!! I called to verify that if we needed to cancel, we would receive the $500 deposit back and we would as long as we cancel by August 2nd!
We will be cruising on the Carnival Legend for 7 beautiful days! We are leaving out of Tampa, FL and will be stopping at Cozumel Mexico, Belize, Isla Roatan, and Grand Cayman! We are NOT taking Jacob, as this is a mommy and daddy trip! We plan on leaving him with either Hans parents, or my mom (we will let them fight over who gets him for the week!)
I am so excited...October can't get here soon enough! I really hope that we don't have to end up canceling this as we are both looking forward to it!
Today Hans and I celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary! I can't believe that we have already been married for 4 years! We have been together for 6 years as of next month. In the past 4 years we have had lots of changes, and we look forward to the changes to come for our family!
Since we married in 2006 we have seen job changes for both of us (me with different employers and opening my own business - him changes within the same company). We have bought new cars, furniture, been on a handful of vacations and most importantly started a family by welcoming Jacob into the world.
In the next year I hope to accomplish Hans getting a new job! Moving for that job and getting settled in a new place. Depending on when that actually happens, I want to then buy a house in the area within a year of us moving. Next I want to get Jacob into some kind of preschool program to allow him socializing time with kids his age and allow him to start making friends where ever we move to. Next (will somewhere in the mix) we hope to add to our family by two little feet (no I am not yet pregnant!) but we hope to be by this time next year!
To celebrate we went out to dinner last night with Megan and Mike. We had some great food with some great friends! We will miss them a lot when we move away. :( After dinner we came home and had some Cheesecake for desert! My sister Kim (she is up visiting for the week) watched Jacob for us so we could go out adults only! Then today Hans and I met up and had lunch together!
