Updates (finally!)

Once again, it's been an entire month since I've posted anything here!! Time just gets away from me ;) That and I was busy with teaching classes... Finals week was last week, so now I may have a little more time for blogging...

Updates on the kids:

Maria is doing great, getting good grades as usual :) She scored well on the Wisconsin tests, so she gets a day off of school, but as usual she decided to go that day anyway because there will be food and a party or something :) She's starting to get pretty excited about going to camp this summer!

Duncan is doing good too, potty training is going pretty well. And Maria and I have been working with him on his ABC's, counting, shapes and colors and he's getting pretty good! Here's a video clip of him singing his ABC's ;)

Here's another one where Beatrice joins in a little at the beginning. I was going to cut the video because then Duncan starts pretending like he doesn't know the alphabet song, but I'm not too skilled with the videos yet --- something to work on.

Every morning when Duncan gets up and says he has to go potty, Beatrice will jump out of bed and race him to the potty chair. We got her a potty chair of her own and she has been joining him in the mornings anyway. They may end up being potty trained around the same time!

It's just amazing how fast they grow! Beatrice started climbing up the slide on her own the other day, and she just loves it! She's starting to say a little more, but then she has her little interpreter, so she's been a little slower in talking.

And we only have about 5 weeks to go before my due date now! With the gestational diabetes I have to go in weekly for non-stress tests, ultrasounds and Dr appointments... 3 hour extravaganzas! We had our first one yesterday and everything is looking good! Baby weighs about 5lbs 11oz right now (completel average), so it looks like baby won't be huge ;) Probably somewhere around the high 7s or 8lbs?

The weather is finally turning here! Last Sat and Sun it frosted and it actually flurried Sunday morning!! But then it got up to almost 90 degrees a few days ago! Crazy weather! But it seems like the next week or so should be in the 70s! :)

Other than that, we are just looking forward to all the visitors that will be up here within the next couple/few weeks!

Easter and other things...

Finally decided to sit down and take the time to upload some photos! Tons of them! ;)

These first couple are from Maria's birthday. Duncan joined in singing Happy Birthday :)

Sugar high from the birthday cake!

Duncan curled up on the couch napping with Sally.

Now here's an interesting sleeping position.

Mike and Maria got to go see some boiling of the sap - Maple sugaring time. This first picture shows an older method of boiling.

And this one is a newer method.

Mike and Duncan sitting in the tree.

Look at all those eggs!

And the Hunt is on!

Maria's Easter Basket had a saxophone playing bunny ;)

Easter candy sugar high coming on!

The kids have been really digging playing in the yard!

We spent Easter weekend and the whole following week outside! It got up to 74 degrees on Friday! Then of course went down to the low 60s on Sat, and Sunday this weekend?? Yep, it was below 30 and snowing!!! Crazy! But we're hoping that's the end of it! Looking for warmer weather to stick around from here on out. Until at least October ;)

The Latest Greatest ;)

Has it really been that long since I posted??? Time is just absolutely flying by! Most of the reason I haven't posted anything in so long is because I am still having issues uploading photos, which got much worse after I upgraded to IE8... I think it has to do with our internet service provider, so one of these days when I have an hour or so to spare I will have to call and try to figure it out!

In the meantime...

Maria has been busy with school and Twilight and being bored (as per her usual myspace status updates, which usually say something about being bored!) :) She turned 12 at the beginning of this month! I tried really hard to upload photos the next day, but turned out to be a big disappointment... She had a very Twilight birthday, which she enjoyed. It seems like just yesterday she was turning 11!

Duncan is about ready for his summer hair-cut! Its amazing how fast his hair grows! We are working on potty training, and its going fairly decent. I think he's pretty ready. He's been just loving playing outside! Its the first thing he asks about every morning. And he never seems to want to come in.

Beatrice.. well she's still as full of attitude as ever ;) She's starting to talk a bit more. And harrass her big brother. She's getting some curl to what little hair she has :) And she has also been really digging the outside play! I always have to drag her kicking and screaming inside when its time to come in.

Mike is busy preparing stuff for his big research trip at the end of May. He did a guest lecture at Purdue a few weeks ago. Actually, we all went with and visited a family friend. It was a really good trip. And with the purchase of a portable DVD player, the kids did excellent on the trip!

Me? I'm just pretty much big and tired :) Already at that "hard to get comfy" stage of pregnancy. Its just hard to believe that I only have about 2 months to go! This pregnancy has just really flown by.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures soon! Until then, hope everyone is doing well!

Busy-ness ;)

As usual, we've been really busy! ;) And amazingly I haven't taken too many pictures this month... I usually average somewhere around 250-300 pictures a month, this month its been more like 100.

This month has been all full up on appointments... It took 3 appointments to get our taxes done... then well child check ups and then ultrasound up in Duluth and my regular dr. apts... Beatrice's well child went great, she's gained about 6 lbs and grown 4 inches! She's in the 50th percentile for height and weight now :) Funny, beacuse she doesn't seem like she's grown that much to us.
And the ultrasound in Duluth went well, everything is looking good :) And for those that haven't heard the news yet, new baby DeMarr is a boy. And he is measuring right on with the due date: June 27th.

I will have to have Mike post some pics on his blog of the fieldwork he's been out doing. Maria's been going with him on Saturdays up to the forest to set up camera stations. They've had to snowshoe, and they've been having a blast.

Duncan is still holding tight to Christmas! :) He's been singing Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the "shiney" nose... but he's also been singing a lot of other songs lately, its too cute ;) He'll sing about just about anything! And even though we rarely watch it, he knows pretty much the whole Barney song! ;)

Anyway, here is a few pics I've taken lately:

Cheers!

Maria was picked as student of the month!! :) We're so proud of her. She got a nice certificate and a $10 gift certificate to the local convienience store. She was thrilled.

Practicing for the new baby. We're big on child labor around here ;)

We've been visited by a wolf a few times this winter. The first couple of times we only saw the tracks in the snow the next morning. Then one morning while we were making coffee we saw this huge black animal standing in the middle of the road. It was so big that we both first thought of a bear, but of course the bears are still hibernating... it was a wolf. And then we saw him again last night in the middle of our big snowstorm, he was running across the road just down from our house. One night we set up one of the motion activated cameras, that Mike is using for work, to see if we could catch him on camera - but of course he didn't show up that night.

So, that's what's been going on around here these days ;)

Loads of pics ;)

Just thought I would share some recent pictures... We've been pretty busy around here with classes starting up and such...

Mike was interviewed by someone at News from Indian Country, you can read the story and watch the interview here.

Looks like someone's plotting something...

Of course Beatrice will not leave a hat on if someone else puts it on her, but if she puts it on herself she thinks hat wearing is pretty cool

Maria reading one of the Twilight books :)

Look at that cheesy grin! :) He's posing.

Duncan trying on Daddy's socks ;) They're a little big.

Total blackmail picture for when he's a teenager ;) trying on baby sister's tights!

Double drinkers

If ya got an extra drawer hanging around, here's something fun you can do with it

Beatrice just loves the Mr. Weenie we got with Open Season 2, she's been carrying it around ever since. Of course she calls it Sally as it looks just like our little weenie dog Sally :)

Snow, Glorious Snow

I promised some pictures of the kids playing in the snow last time... and yes its taken me forever... but finally here they are! And now of course we have about twice as much snow... these were taken a few weeks ago before the temps plummeted to the -20 to -36 range... yes -36 is our low so far for this year. At least the schools were closed that day. I think they close when it gets below -24.

Other than being cold, we've been pretty busy lately with the semester starting back up at the community college. Mike is teaching an Environmental Science course as well as doing his research, which will take him back up to the forest in a week or so. And I am teaching two classes this semester, one an English Comp class and the other one is Intro to Higher Ed, which is study skills and such.

We hope everyone else is doing well! And staying warm!! :)

Maria showing Beatrice snow :)

Getting tired and wondering what to do next

Of course Duncan was all over the place having a ball!

Maria showing Beatrice how to make Snow Angels

Attempting to walk around

Remind anyone of "A Christmas Story"?

Learning the fine art of eating snow.

Just about done

Yep, totally done

Rice Lake Makes Headlines

Too funny. On Monday's Jay Leno show one of his "headlines" was from Rice Lake (about 40 miles from us - we go there for shopping once in a while) about a dog on the freeway that kept outrunning the police. They featured the story on the local news here on Wednesday, and you can read it here.

Other than that, things have been pretty calm and relaxing around here. Maria has been completely obsessed with reading the Twilight series of books. I hate to admit it, but she's got me interested in the series too. While the writing is a tad on the substandard side, the story is pretty engaging... if you like vampires that is ;)

One of these days I will get around to uploading more pictures... its just such a slow going process. I have some really cute ones of the kids playing in the snow, I will try to get them up within a few days here :)

Until then, I hope everyone is doing well and that you all have recovered from the holidays! :)