Thursday December 29, 2011

I suppose its been long enough, so I better add to this blog. I wanted to work on this yesterday since the kids are at my parents and I had the whole day to myself! Turns out what was in store for me was not what I had planned. Sore throat, chills, fever, all fun stuff to have on a free day. Today isn't much better, but at least I can sit here and throw some words onto the interwebs.

Bri had her very first Christmas concert at school. It was pretty cute, long but cute. When her grade was on stage and ready to perform, once she found us, she wanted to wave really bad. A few others in her class would wave to their family, but Bri wouldn't. We asked why she didn't wave she said they were told not to wave. It looked like it was killing her to not wave or smile at us. Here is a couple picture of the little singer.

Brianna hit another milestone this month too. She lost her first tooth! Its crazy how old she is getting. She was at my parents for the weekend and found out it was loose. She then became scared she would swallow it while eating. When she got home, she spent a lot of time in the bathroom looking at it and wiggling it. Then all of a sudden she runs down stairs because she pulled it out! She was pretty excited and I think the Tooth Fairy went a little overboard. I guess we will see what happens when Emily loses her first tooth.

Christmas came and went again about as fast as can be. This year was a little different. Kristy had to work Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the day after Christmas. Not a fun schedule. So we stayed in Omaha for Christmas. My parents came over in the morning and the girls were spoiled once again! Bri was very excited this year. On Christmas Eve she was hyper and I told her, "the faster you go to sleep, the faster morning will get here". I was shocked because she wanted to go to bed as early as 7:00 PM when Emily went to bed. That's rare for this monster. Just after 8:00 PM, she went to bed and after a few minutes, she was out. I could not believe it.

Now our game plan was to have the girls stay in bed until Kristy got home from work. Well at 6:00 AM, Emily must have rolled over and activated one of her talking dogs. She played that thing for over an hour. That woke Bri up and she was bouncing off the walls in my room to go downstairs. Finally Kristy got home and they got to see their gifts from Santa Claus. They continued to bounce off the walls the remainder of the day, but I guess that is too be expected on Christmas Day!

So a couple nights ago, Emily woke up after a couple hours screaming. I would put her blankets back on her and she would say "thank you" and I would leave. This continued every 10 minutes for a while, so I got her up. She was sitting with me on the floor and she was giving me her left foot. I took her sock off and noticed they may have been a little tight, but nothing major. I kept trying to put her to bed and she would cry. I had her in my bed and I was rubbing her foot and that would help for just a little bit, but not enough. I ended up putting her back in her bed where she eventually fell asleep. In the morning Kristy looked at her foot when she got home from work. On the bottom of her foot in between her toes was a cut that had swollen up. Not a surprise she cut her foot on something, but the kicker was a dog hair was stuck in it. We tried to pull it out and it hurt her so we ended up taking her to Urgent Care where the doctor just pulled it out but gave her some antibiotics just in case it got infected. We have no idea when or how this happened. I didn't look under her toes because I thought she was having a problem with the bone or something like that was hurting her. Just another odd ball thing to be thrown our way!

Tomorrow is the final football game of the year for Iowa State. Its hard to believe the season has come to an end. They will take on Rutgers in the Pinestripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium in New York City. There was no way we were going to go to a bowl game this year, but when ISU was selected for NYC, I thought, this would be awfully cold and not a lot of fun. Turns out global warming hit us for the month of December and it could be close to 50 degrees tomorrow. NYC would have been a fun place to go to a bowl game, but it wasn't going to work this year.

I do not know a lot about Rutgers, other than they have a really good coach that a few years ago a lot of schools wanted. Rutgers locked him up and they had a decent 8 win season this year. They did have one common opponent, Connecticut. ISU won a sloppy game at UCONN 24-20 and Rutgers lost at UCONN 40-22. Rutgers had a chance to be in a tie for the Big East Conference championship if it wasnt for laying an egg at UCONN.

Prediction: (6-6 on the season)

I saw ISU wins this one, but it will be fairly close. ISU will have had close to a month to prepare a redshirt Freshman quarterback for this game, and if the defense plays like it did the last half of the season, they pull out the second bowl win in three years.

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And lastly, a life changing event s in store for us. We have had our house on the market for a while now because we have decided to move back to central Iowa from Omaha. This has not been an easy decision because of our great friends we have out here, but we think it will be best for the kids to grow up in a small town like we did. I will work my last day in Omaha next Tuesday then I will be moving to Ankeny and start work on Thursday in Des Moines. Kristy and the girls will stay put in Omaha until she either finds a job or the house sells. I will be commuting every Friday night to see the girls the head back to Des Moines Monday morning.

It was a bittersweet month when I got the job because living in Omaha has been a great time. Thankfully this new age of Facebook, blogs, etc, it will be a lot easier to stay in contact with friends than it would have been even ten years ago. I am sure we will continue to make plenty of trips out here, especially if Kristy finds a job where she is off weekends.

Overall, we are excited. Its just going to be pretty stressful, especially entering a time where houses do not sell well. Thankfully we have friends and family able to help us in a number of ways for the next few months!

Thursday December 1, 2011 - The View From Section EE

In my opinion, if there is ever such a thing called a moral victory, Iowa State had one last week in Norman, OK. ISU was once again a four touchdown underdog and they only lost by three touchdowns. That sounds pretty bad, but for a team that lost in Norman 52-0 last year, a 26-6 loss is nothing to be ashamed of. The defense once again played as well as any team in the Big 12, only giving up 3 points in the entire second half. If the offense showed any signs of life, they very well could have won the game, or at the very least, made it a one possession game. One more game to go, until the bowl game.

Last weekend Kristy went out and bought the girls an Elf on a Shelf. I had never heard of it before, but its a really good idea. It is a book that comes with our very own Elf. A few of the rules are that we have to name it and kids can not touch him, or he will lose his Christmas magic. Each night, the Elf, reports back to Santa Claus and comes back each morning to watch the kids. As luck would have it, the show was on the same night we opened the book. Brianna decided to name ours Fred. She wants to touch or pick him up pretty bad and its funny. The first night he slept in her room, then bright and early the next morning, she was up searching all over for him. This trend has continued, ALL week. Today he was in her room on her bookshelf and when she found him, she said "finding Fred was easy-peasy!". Its been pretty cute and a very good idea. I am just waiting for her to be naughty some day and he doesn't re-appear some morning. She will be devastated, therefore, it may be a bad idea on my part to traumatize her at age 5. I may wait on that plan.

Here is what Fred looks like. A little creepy? Yes. But a really good idea. This is not exactly Fred, but I currently do not have a picture of him. I am sure we will get a few in the next 25 days.

Here is a pretty funny story that happened today. Bri gets home from school today and she has a note from one of the neighbor girls. Here is a picture of the front and back.

The note reads (In the best way I can decipher it.):
to bree

from Eden

Stop the mean stuf pea

Dear Bree

Rillie your bing mean on the 1 day of schol to the 1 day of school could stop you please i dont like it

So, we talked to Brianna today and asked her what she did to this Eden girl that may have made her upset. Bri said she did not do anything and went to her room and cried. Later on I spoke to her and Bri said she told Eden "secretes dont make friends", so I am guessing that is the trigger for this whole ordeal. Bri said she wanted to give her a letter that said she will never talk to her again and that letter hurt her feelings. So the girls fighting on the bus continues. Who knows what will happen next.

On a little side note, Brianna is not ours at all. Tonight Kristy took the girls to Bri's school for an Christmas Tree event. Kristy said some of the kids there had the opportunity to go up front and sing some songs. Who is front and center with the microphone in her face? Brianna. Next Thursday will be interesting at her concert! Here is Bri right next to the piano and I assume the music teacher:

My prediction: (6-5 on the season.)

Now back to the final game of the regular season for Iowa State. Its hard to believe that the last game is here. Most thought this team would be lucky to win three games. They have doubled that and being a Cyclone fan, six wins is a good season! The last two seasons, ISU played Kansas State in Kansas City. Now the games have been moved back to campuses and ISU makes the trip to Manhattan. K-State has surprised almost everyone this year. They sit at 9-2 and with a win over ISU Saturday and an Oklahoma win over Oklahoma State, K-State will have a share of the Big 12 title with the Oklahoma schools. Old man Bill Snyder, in his second term coaching at K-State, can work some miracles. There is definitely a level of jealousy from me on the success that program has had.

Enough about that, I think Saturdays game will be an entertaining one. ISU's defense has played outstanding the past five weeks and I see that trend continuing. The offense, once again, needs to step up and hold onto the ball. Early turnovers hurt last week at Oklahoma, and with the K-State running game, they will eat a lot of clock and make it difficult to overcome turnovers. Sounds like the weather may not be very cooperative in Kansas, so it could be a low scoring game. I think the defense plays very well again and the offense corrects some mistakes from last week and puts some points on the board. Vegas has this game as K-State favored by 11.5 points. I say ISU pulls out the win and finishes the season beating three Top 25 teams this season!

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