It's Sunday, are you ready for some football??

One of Keaton's gifts, I believe from Santa Claus, was a uniform and helmet for the Seattle Seahawks. Yes, not Viking attire, that's true, but Keaton tends to watch a little Seahawk football with his dad, so it was inevitable.

Keaton looks like a natural, and check out the follow through of his right arm in the one photo. D-I all the way!!!

Christmas break means more sledding and ice skating

The whole family had the opportunity to participate in some outdoor sports this past week and it was a lot of fun. We've added a couple little snippets of video from the day to this post. The first is of Kelsey and Kari sledding, note Keaton is in the foreground. The other, which doesn't have a preview picture of it for some reason, is Kayleigh sledding.

Reindeer can sing!

Keaton had his holiday program at "Packer Playland" in West Fargo last week. With a little inclement weather and it being held over Christmas break, the attendance was low, but the kids enjoyed themselves and performed about 8 songs. Keaton didn't sing a lot (ok, perhaps not at all), but he stayed on stage and had fun. Perhaps that was due to the cookies afterwards!!

It's Christmas Eve - beware of flying gift wrap.

Christmas Eve started with our customary church service at Hope Lutheran Church in north Fargo, the same site where we were married back in 1991. The kids thought that was kind of interesting, and we almost weren't able to find a spot in the church. Despite being 15 minutes early for the service, it was already standing room only; which negated our belief that with a south campus built years ago to help with a growing congregation, space wouldn't be a huge issue. Plus, they had 4 services that day and we thought the 3:00 PM would be slow. Proven wrong!

After the service, we ate dinner and opened presents. Keaton, at 3 years old, was very much into the whole process this year. We had Daniel's sister's Denise and Deb over for the evening, and the kids really enjoyed it.

Christmas Tea for you and me!!

Today was Kelsey's Christmas Tea Party at Jefferson Elementary. All parents were invited, yet weren't told much about the function other than cookies, juice, and songs would be present. Most parents were amazed to see not their kids, but a pack of reindeer singing songs to the whole group. Luckily, when they took off their antlers, we were able to see they were actually kindergartners dressed like reindeer. Parents each got to read a Christmas book to their child and spent some time with them enjoying the refreshments.

Sleds, snow, and kindergartners

Kelsey is very lucky to have a great group of Kindergarten teachers. They have a lot of activities and another parent remarked last week how we have so much fun stuff going that they miss out on. Today, Kelsey had a gift exchange at school in the morning, and in the afternoon went sledding. Approximately 80 youngsters hit the hill!!

The Tree is built!

The kids enoyed putting up the Christmas tree and are excited for Santa to show up. Keaton, in particular, is really in tune with the season at 3 years old, and will be a whirlwind when it's time to open presents.

Christmas this year will be in Fargo with Dan's sister Deb coming from Bismarck to enjoy the festivities and watch the madness of present opening.

The kids took a great photo at the local nursery with Santa Claus and we took the opportunity to shoot a few photo's on their train caboose that was decked out with trim for the holiday season. A highlight for Keaton!

Halloween 2007

Halloween was again a hit with the kids. Kelsey was a witch, Kayleigh was an "American Idol" and Keaton was a lion. Lots of candy for the kids! Nice weather to boot!

Kayleigh was impressed that she eclipsed the 100 units of candy mark. Evidently, she had 101 last year, and she brought in 106 this year.

Not sure why she remembers this or cares, but she keeps careful stock of it.

We had the photographer at Dan's newspaper shoot photo's this fall around Faribault. Some good shots of the kids. This photo was done at the Shattuck St. Mary's campus.

It is a prestigous prep school reminiscient of "Dead Poets Society". Marlon Brando is an alum.

First Day of Kindergarten and 2nd Grade

Kelsey officially started Kindergarten today! She was excited to join "Big Sister" Kayleigh on the bus. As you can see, Kayleigh is a bit taller than her bus mates.

Extreme Home Makeover - Walock Edition

I hope you are sitting down!

Eeeks
Awww...much better
Dining area
View from front foyer
Livingroom
Livingroom

Garden pictures for those who are interested. Yes, I only planted 3 zucchini seeds!! It is hard to find everything in there, but it is definitely producing some veggies for us to enjoy.

Finally, a picture of Keaton in the pet parade last week. The theme was books on parade, so we dressed up his tractor for his favorite book. John Deere ABC's. The trailer contains items from the different letters of the alphabet that are in the book.

And finally, please pray for our friend Garrett who was involved in the 35W bridge collapse. His car was the red Ford Focus shown on many news reports and in many papers. http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/inputSiteName.do?method=search&siteName=garrettebling

Where has the month gone?

Wow, did July fly by fast!

The kids are doing great. Keaton had his last speech session of the summer last week and is starting to put together 2 words. He had a BLAST at the fair a few weeks ago. I don't remember how many times we went through the barns. He loved going to pet the horses and we even watched a little bit of one of the horse shows. He was able to see the sheep getting sheared, which he then proceeded to put his hands in a clipping notion by his cheek because they were using hand scissors to cut the hair. It was cute and only lasted about a week. He thought the show where they catch the alligator was "scary". Connie did buy Keaton a blow up guitar that has given us hours of entertainment from Keaton. The pet parade is this week and I think we are going to have Keaton ride his tractor with some animals in the back.

Kelsey has started speech at MN Children's hospital and has had 2 sessions. The first session she seemed to get frustrated a little, but the 2nd session went really well. Now she has homework to do for next week. T-ball is over and the last game with the parents was hilarious. The coaches made the parents spin 5 times around the bat with the bat on their forehead...t-ball bats are not very big and some of them had a hard time bending over to do it. Dan was 2nd in line and gave us all a good show. 5 short trips around that bat ended up being a little much to maintain any kind of balance and the ball seemed to move several times from the tee before he finally connected. I can make fun of him because I wasn't out there....ha ha ha. I was disappointed to see my pictures didn't turn out well of the team. :( This week is the last week for cheer camp and they will be doing a performance during the pet parade on Thursday and also a different performance after the parade. Kelsey had fun at the fair this year too, and of course we made several visits to the horse barn. Kayleigh is definately ready for school to start...or is that me?? She is also in cheer camp and will be in the same performances as Kelsey. She had fun at the fair doing all of the rides, several times. We bought a weekly pass and made it out there every day. Connie stayed with us that week and was a big help watching all of the kids. Kayleigh doesn't get sick on anything so she hit almost every ride each day and with the short lines we made off good with the weekly passes. Kelsey rode the rides with Kayleigh this year, which was nice. Kayleigh collects pigs and so we had to go see the real ones numerous times, she was able to go into one of the pens. Her Sunday school teacher had several of the pigs out there and they were cleaning them the one time we went through. That made her day. Slow pitch is also over and again Dan had a good time playing (missing a few pitches) with the kids. I shouldn't be so tough on him, I couldn't have done any better.

As I mentioned, Connie came and stayed with us for a few days a couple weeks ago. She helped me remove all of the nasty wallpaper in our kitchen. YAY!!! This week we are painting the kitchen and living room...trust me you are not going to recognize it! I am so relieved to just have that nasty wallpaper gone, the white wall underneath it is easier on the eyes and makes the kitchen look huge in comparison.

Sorry for the long post, I will try better next time. Too much going on at once it seems.

Zoo and other fun

The last few weeks have been busy. Kelsey had her first appt at Minnesota Children's Hospital regarding speech. Her results are back and she falls in the 6% range for her age and her score was 75, range for her age was 85-115. So what does that mean? She has qualified to have one hour speech sessions each week at Minnesota Children's Hospital. Luckily the tests the pathologist performed indicated that her issue is a learned behavior and is not a medical issue in part due to having her adenoid removed. WHEW! Her speech teacher here was concerned that she may not be able to close the flap since her nasal sounds had increased after her surgery.

On to other events. The kids have went to the zoo, again. Dan and the kids visited the MN Zoo yesterday to be there for the opening day of the MN trail. They also made their first visit to Como Zoo in St Paul. They had a blast while I sat at home running our second garage sale of the summer (first time we were rained out). We are planning on going to the zoo(s) again when Kelsey has her first speech session on the 21st so I will get a chance to see everything.
Last night Gary, Mary, Amy, Jamie and Blake came down. Gary, Jamie and Dan practiced the song they will be doing for Stacy's wedding. The kids had fun running through the sprinkler and playing on the Jeep and tractor. It was obvious Keaton still needs help with sharing his toys. :) The kids are excited to be part of Amy and Jamie's wedding and Kelsey is already practicing her "kiss".

The "kiss"!!!

Who cares if it is pink...it rides like a dream.

We Miss You

June 2005

November 2006

Happy Birthday Mom

6/23/31 - 2/18/07

We Miss You

A trip to the zoo

The weather was beautiful today, so I decided the kids and I would head to the MN Zoo. Although Kayleigh decided to sleep in today, we did make it to the bird show this morning. It is the first time the kids have watched the show and they really enjoyed it.

Then we ventured over to the farm at the zoo and went through most of the barns. Keaton made it known that the barns were stinky by plugging his nose most of the time.

After we saw the wolves, tiger and moose we decided to have lunch and a snack before hitting the next show. The kids enjoyed talking to the zoo volunteer that was near our table; he had all of the tiger touch and feel items.

From there we went to Discovery Bay where they have the tide pool, touch pool, dolphins and sharks. Keaton was even able to touch a corn snake! (shiver) We went to the dolphin show again today and it was awesome. Keaton was a little freaked out that the dolphins were spilling water into the walkway. He kept saying, "water" and "spill".

On our way home we stopped at Barnes and Noble to pick up a much needed sign language book in the hopes we can help Keaton "talk" better. He had his first speech session last week and next week the therapist will be here again. He said "chicken" really well for her and we have continued to use that word, but he still does not put two words together. He waits between words for us to respond and then says another word. He uses his hands and his own gestures to communicate most of the time, so hopefully teaching him some universal sign language will help him communicate better with others until we can get grow his vocabulary. Today when the dolphins would spin in the water, he would stand up and spin trying to tell me what they were doing.