2012

Life is busy and continues to move forward.  I’ve been at my work for a little over 6 months now.  Some days I enjoy myself, and others I wish I was at home.  But I’m satisfied with our family decision to have me work.  It’s balanced out a lot of things that were otherwise spiraling downhill.  Since life is busy, and I spend much my day on the computer, I don’t really spend much time once I get home.  I suppose I’d rather be with my girls than write about them.  So, I’ve decided I won’t be keeping up with the blog on an event by event basis, nor do I plan on going back in time and covering all of 2012.  Talk about anxiety attack.  Much of it is documented in my personal journal anyway. The goal of this blog has always been to give my children a record of their childhood, and I can no longer keep it up in multiple format. 

So 2012 in review:

I studied and passed the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam and started a job.

Stephen continued with his education and passed the halfway point.  (5 down, 3 to go!).  He also started in a new position at Eaton and is enjoying it  immensely.

Samantha turned 5, started at Orono Montessori School for Pre-K, and continues to make great strides in swimming.  She can do all 4 strokes (including something resembling the butterfly! She just needs a bit more strength).  She loves arts and crafts and was in heaven when her cousin, Ivory, nannied and would make believe and arts and craft with her all day.  She even got a bin of stamps, stamp pads, paper, pretty pens and fun scissors for Christmas from her grandmother and would use it every day. 

Clara turned 2 in March and also started at Orono Montessori School in the preschool class, skipping the toddler class all together.  She loves to be in class with Samantha and on days when Samantha hasn’t gone with her she’d been unusually quiet.  Clara loves to sing and dance all day.  She has yet to stop singing “jingle bells” and knows all the words, including the verse.  Clara graduated to big girl bed and out of diapers (day and night!).  We’re slowly realizing that we don’t have a baby in our house anymore.  My starting work has been the hardest on Clara.  She’s a big cuddler and we still are figuring out how to fill her “cuddle bucket” so that she can go to sleep at night time.

We had two family vacations this past year.  One was a few days to the Wisconsin Dells.  It was a great, short trip and Samantha still asks to go back to the place “with all the water slides”.  We also visited my family in Delaware the week before I started work.  It was a whirlwind trip seeing Pea Patch Island (a fort in the Delaware River used during the Revolution), the beach, and catching up with siblings.

Our one big house project this year was painting the house!  I have been wanting to paint the house since we bought it.  But always something more urgent came up (re-roofing the garage to no lose insurance, building a french drain system so we don’t have water in the basement, building a patio so we weren’t mucking through mud between the garage and house), so finally I put my foot down.

Here’s what we started with:

We fixed the fascia of the garage but it mostly sat looking like this for a while, well we did wash it one year and remove the dumb looking shutters. 

To get an idea of what I wanted I played with these pictures in photoshop.  Ultimately, after many iterations I ended up with this:

 

RED!

For some reason I just loved this.  It was bold, but by having the dark doors it toned down the brightness a bit.  There are a few houses within a few streets that are red and I loved nearly every one.  We made a plan, got paint and then.. it rained…  and continued to rain much of spring.  Then I started work.  Finally August came around and were adamant that we’d get this done.  Stephen took a few days off work, we enlisted help of numerous nephews, sisters, etc…  and in the first weekend we got it primed.  SO anti-climatic.  We pushed through, bought more paint as three sides of the house and garage are cedar shakes.  It was also a decided that we needed a second coat (of course).  I guess I’m lucky we didn’t need a third since we did such a dramatic shift.  SO… after a few months of working every weekend, and some week nights, using 1.5 times MORE paint than expected.. it started to get cold and so we had to be done.  We nearly finished, just a second coat in a couple places on the far right of the house and the only person that can tell is probably me.  We rebuilt the left garage door, put in new doorknobs, new lights and new house numbers.

I am SO happy with the results, though.  And was well worth painting it but I am SO glad my house is ONE story.  No more than an 8 ft ladder needed. I can pull up to my house and be proud of how it looks than feeling like it’s falling apart.  It had been 15 years since it had been painted last (possibly +5 years).  We gave it a new lease on life.

Here she is in December, when I finally got around to taking a picture: (We packed up the paint in October)

Thank you to everyone that helped!  Nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, home teachers.  It was greatly appreciated.

Sunday visitors and an Arboretum visit

We’ve taken to watching a couple of our nieces and a nephew every other Sunday when their mom needs to work.  It makes for some hectic Sunday mornings, but it’s been great seeing Samantha and Clara develop relationships with their cousins.

On this particular Sunday (September 30), Stephen’s sister Heather was heading to the Arboretum and we decided to join her.  It was a beautiful day and I brought the big camera along. 

The girls had a great time playing near the walls and finding pathways.

Clara’s hair was, of course, always in her face. The girls were acting quite silly for most of the evening.

Complete with some dancing by Clara

I did finally hand the camera off to Stephen to get a picture of me.  Those are my new glasses that I’ve taken to wearing, and my awesome hair coloring that I did back in June.  I’m liking being a brunette.

It’s been great to do little family adventures.  They mean so much more with the girls at school all day.  They are attending a Montessori School and love it, and the teachers love them.  The cold is enclosing on us up here, but the changing of the seasons is beautiful and I’m thankful for a little more time to be able to go outside.

Happy Birthday Samantha!

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What a joy Samantha is.  We celebrated her birthday My Little Pony style.  It was a pretty low-key day with spaghetti for dinner and a few cupcakes for her birthday cake.  She got the crown at school and loved wearing it.

She had to be sure to protect her candles from her little sister

As a gift she got an American Girl doll name Caroline.  She’s been asking pretty consistently for about 4 months that she wanted one.  She had been playing with her dolls more often and so we decided to splurge.

When Samantha gets totally overjoyed she seems to not smile.  She was just so excited she could barely keep tears in for shock.  Glad we can surprise her and make her dreams come true!

Of course, then fights ensued as Clara wanted the doll for herself and we had a wonderful jealous tantrum from her.  I wasn’t surprised by the jealousy of Clara, I just hadn’t thought about it and so it caught me off guard.  Clara still sneaks Caroline away to go play with her.

Samantha is developmentally so on track with everything any book or doctor could say about a 5 year old.  She loves friends, cousins, and school.  She thrives on routine and expectations.  If I make her a list of things to do she is overjoyed to do them and mark them off.  At her 5 year old check-up she was 45 1/2” tall (3’ 9 1/2” and 95 percentile).  So only one more foot to go and then she gets to be out of a booster seat!

(written 21 Oct 2012)

First Day at Orono Montessori School

After 5+ weeks of having Ivory as our nanny, we lost her as she had to go back out to school in Utah.  So the girls got to embark on the joys of school.  I researched a lot of different places and even had Sammi signed up for a preschool at the local elementary school.  Ultimately, I decided that I liked the idea of the girls being in one place together and I thought the Montessori method would be a great place for Samantha who is naturally very curious. 

Here are the girls on their very first day, August 22nd.

 

I got a call during the day from the school owner telling me how they were doing and also informing me that she decided to keep Clara in the ‘Preschool’ room instead of the ‘Toddler’ room since she was doing so well there.  So the girls are not only at the same place (one drop off!) but they are even in the same classroom since Montessori has multiple age classrooms.  Samantha loves the Montessori ‘work’ and Clara happily sings and does her work as well.  Samantha loves the math problems (working on multiplication!) and she likes to do spelling.

(written  21 Oct 2012)

A huge hiatus

Keeping up the blog has taken a bit of a back seat, and here is what’s been going on in my life that caused this.

About last September or October I (Stephen and I) decided that I should work.  There are numerous reasons that we thought this would be a benefit to me and our family.  In October I met with someone at my church that works in an industry that I thought I might enjoy (HVAC engineering), I loved his company: the culture, atmosphere, what they did.  Everything intrigued me.  In November I had my first interview at his company (an engineering consulting firm).  They weren’t hiring at the time, but they liked me and suggested I think about taking the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam.  I had thought about taking it, but after having this interview I realized I needed to take it to prove that I wanted to work, and that I’m just as smart as I was when I graduated (as most people take it when they graduate as it’s harder to pass the further from graduation you get).  

In January I began to study.  2 hours a day.  with 2 kids at home.  Usually studying happened during Clara’s nap (Samantha doesn’t nap), other times it was at night after they were in bed but Stephen was at school.  There were missed days here and there.  There was an entire week that I had migraines that I couldn’t even read the words on the page.  Some days were good, others I struggled to put back the neurons in my brain where they were suppose to be.  It was hard to realize some things that used to be so natural were now so hard.  But I did get them… eventually.

The test was April 14th.  two-4 hour sections using a 250 page book of equations.  I was at the Minneapolis Conference Center for nearly 12 hours.  I came home exhausted, and sick.  (anxiety sick, fortunately it let me finish before hitting full on)

After the test I updated this company that I had taken the exam, and thought I’d done decently well.  I had another interview but they were still not hiring, but could possibly be soon as work was ramping up.  So I decided to spread far and wide, and applied to many jobs.  I didn’t hear back, it was extremely discouraging.  I did hear back about my test though.  I had passed!  What a relief.  I’m glad I don’t have to sit through that again!  (Until the next round to become fully licensed….)

And to cut this story short, on July 16th I will start working full time at this company.  Their call (email) came from out of the blue as I was waiting to hear back from another company at the time.  I went in for a third interview and at the end, I had an offer.  I’ll be working with the Fire Protection Group, designing the sprinkler system and such that go into the buildings.  I’m not totally sure what I’ll be doing; but using fluid dynamics, thermodynamics and heat transfer are all a plus and those were my specialties in school.  I’ll be using AutoCAD and AutoCAD’s Revitt.  I am very excited.

So that’s why I haven’t been updating the blog.  The girls are still as cute as ever, growing, talking.   And I still take pictures and I take them places.  Clara is in the midst of potty training, Samantha on the cusp of reading.  Both are still way too big for their ages.  They are both little fish and we’ve spent a fair amount of time at pools and lakes.  Samantha loves cutting and drawing while Clara loves cutting Samantha’s drawings and drawing on herself.  Samantha loves doing her chores and Clara loves crawling out of her crib.  They both watch way too much My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake, they loved their Aunt Maraina’s and Uncle Danny’s “big iPod”.  I’ll hopefully start backdating some things soon.

Here are the girls on Sammi’s last day of Preschool.  May 17th.

Legoland! Discovery Center–Chicago

We drove out to Delaware this year for Christmas.  We wanted the trip to be a part of the vacation, so we left bright and early on Wednesday the 21st to get to Chicago where we were going to Legoland Discovery Center.  The girls were  pleased to get out of the car.

The girls enjoyed their time being able to roam and play.

   

We went and saw a 4D movie!  (4th dimension being they sprayed us with water!)

Samantha went on her first carnival ride.  (She didn’t want to go on it for a while, but after seeing different kids go on it a few times she asked me to go with her.  Then she went on 3 or 4 times)

 

Daddy helped Samantha build a really cool racecar to go down the tracks

 

 

Clara played there for a bit, but then we found the Duplo section

  

 

 

They spent much of their time in the slides and climbing section.  There was even an area with GIANT Legos. 

 

There was a building class where they taught us how to make an eskimo.  It cost $4 to keep, so we opted for the memory of a picture instead.

 

There were tons of pretty cool Lego sculptures

 

And within minutes of leaving both girls completely zonked out in the car while we drove the last bit to our hotel somewhere in Indiana.

When we got to the hotel, each girl got a Lego present.  Clara got a Wheel Loader and Samantha got a knight and castle set.  It was Samantha’s first Lego set and she studiously followed the instructions (and with some help) was able to make her little castle by the time our pizza arrived.  The girls crashed and we rejoiced in having a bed to sleep in, and breakfast in the morning.