Thursday, November 29, 2007
Web address
A Green Christmas Card
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Gimmies
From PetSmart we went to Kohl's to look around. We were killing time until it was time to get Gage from school, and I didn't want to walk to get him, so figured if we just went there instead of home, that was a good excuse not to walk to the school in the subzero temperatures! Kohl's was TERRIBLE! First of all they have so much stuff in the store you can't even push the cart in the aisles without bumping into something. At one point I was getting so frustrated, partly because Emma was seriously wanting EVERYTHING she saw, that I just kept ramming a rack of clothes to get through and a bunch of hangers fell on the floor and I just kept going. I kept telling Emma that Santa would not bring her a thing for Christmas if she got things now. I don't think she cared.
I was glad to finally get home.
Gage has his second spelling test tomorrow. He has been told if he studies without complaining, he will get 50 cents on top of the $1 he gets for getting all of his words right. I'm not so sure bribing with money is a good thing? I know you aren't supposed to reward with food, but I don't know for sure about money? Any tips out there on how to get him to study and do his homework without a fit? I'm all ears!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Closing the gap
The temperature here is FREEZING COLD! I walked Gage to school this morning and I nearly froze solid. The wind chill was -6. I bundled him up in all the regular gear, plus this morning I added snow pants to the ensemble. He has a full-face stocking hat so all you can see are his eyes and mouth. I figured he wouldn't complain too much about being cold. I on the other hand did not bundle up as well as Gage. I did have 2 layers of pants, but that was not enough. On our way up the hill to the school he said his eyes were freezing. I laughed because mine were too! I had him walk behind me so I could block his wind. We made it and I made it back home without turning into a solid block of ice. It's supposed to be colder tomorrow, so I'm glad Emma has school too since we drive on those days. As we were walking across the crosswalk this morning the crossing guard asked me if I was at Target last Friday morning and I said I was. She said, "I knew that was you! I saw you on television and I said, HEY! I know that lady!" I don't know what channel that was on, but I didn't see me on the channel I watched. Thank goodness I wasn't the lady who got pushed with the cart and fell down! HA!
Monday, November 26, 2007
Cold
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Giving Tree
While we were at Walmart, Emma had a TERRIBLE case of the "gimmies". I told her over and over that we were there to buy gifts for OTHER people, not ourselves. She didn't like that idea. While we were over in the baby section getting Huggies wipes, Santa Claus appeared. He was asking all of the kids around what they wanted for Christmas. We were waiting for him to come to us, and Gage was so worried I was going to leave without letting him talk to Santa. Finally Santa made his way over to us.
Santa: "What is your name little girl?"
Emma: "Emma."
Santa: "What would you like for Christmas?"
Emma: "A Webkins." (P.S. Kysa, you certainly picked out the right gift for Coly to give to Emma!).
Santa: Santa turns to Gage, "And you?"
Gage. (He was responding to the 2 questions he asked Emma). "Gage."
Santa: "Alright."
Gage looked at me puzzled as Santa was starting to walk away.
Mom: "His NAME is Gage. Gage, tell Santa what you would like for Christmas."
Gage: "Star Wars Legos."
Santa: (I can't remember his stupid comment he made to cover up his mistake)
That made the kids' days. However, I wasn't impressed with Santa. I'm not sure what kind of gauge he thought Gage was asking for, but I guess that's what you should expect at Walmart? Gage asked as we were walking away, "Mom, is that the real Santa?" I said, "No Gage, that was Santa's helper. And do you want to know how I know that Gage?" "Yeah." "Because I think the real Santa would have known your name is Gage."
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Bee Movie
Friday, November 23, 2007
Dead
I've got to get to bed before I fall out of my chair!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Can't wait!
I am in the process of making pumpkin pies for tomorrow. I'm taking a few side dishes to Emily's for our Thanksgiving meal. I'm taking Apple-Rice Medley (YUM YUM!), my Mom's traditional apple/grape salad, 2 pumpkin pies and some dinner rolls. I couldn't find any already made dinner rolls in the bread section at the grocery store? Do they not carry them around here? We always have them in Iowa. Hmmm. Anyway, I found some frozen ones that I will bake instead. Hopefully they will be tasty. Emily is making several dishes and another friend of Emily's is bringing the turkey! It will be a great time with delicious food! We are certainly thankful for our wonderful friends!
Emma and I searched through the bookshelves tonight for all of our Thanksgiving books. We found 4 and read them all at bedtime. They have been watching our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving DVD. Gage turned it on this morning before school. He was all excited for school today because they were to bring something to snuggle with while they watched a movie. Well, it just happened to be A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving that they watched! He didn't mind though. He brought home a couple of cute Thanksgiving projects he made at school, along with next weeks' spelling list! UGH! I think it's going to go better this time because Scott promised him $1 every time he does well on the test. I included that he only gets the dollar if he willingly studies and doesn't throw any fits! We'll see if it works. I just pre-tested him at supper tonight and had a little spelling bee. He knew most of them anyway, so hopefully it won't be too difficult to get him to practice them. We have plenty of time to study with the holiday weekend upon us.
I hope you all have a safe trip if you plan to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday! It sounds like they are getting alot of snow at home in Iowa, so it's probably a good thing we aren't traveling there, although I do wish we could see everyone. We'll see everyone at Christmas, which is sneaking up on me just a little too fast this year! Maybe I can get alot of my shopping done on Friday, that is if I don't get cart rage and get kicked out of the store!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Black Friday
Sunday, November 18, 2007
I stayed up a little too late last night trying to load audio books onto my computer so Gage can listen to some books on tape with my iPod, and I'm way tired today. Too tired to think about what I would like to write on here. Nothing exciting has happened today either, so that doesn't help. All we've done today so far is eat breakfast, go to church and eat lunch. Scott should be home sometime soon from his "last day of duck hunting". HA!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Saturday
Gage and Emma got to go to Space Aliens today for their friend Grant's birthday party. They were very excited about that. Grant is my friend Shannon's son. Apparently soon after Scott dropped them off, Gage told Shannon he didn't feel well and she said he looked pale. Rob said he tried calling but there was no answer (Scott took me out for a lunch date at Applebees!) and she couldn't remember Scott's cell number. But, it only lasted a few minutes and then he was fine. I asked him about it when we got home and he said he thought it was because he had some diet pop to drink and he just needed to burp? Well, I'm glad that was all it was! Although he was complaining of a headache this morning and had a stuffed up nose. There have been alot of illnesses making their rounds. He wanted some more medication for his headache after the party. I would have needed something for a headache if had I been at that party for too long myself. It was WILD!
Today I got a phone call from a different transcription company offering me a job. She got my name from the At-Home Professions course I took. Apparently this lady is a graduate of this same course and she frequently hires other grads. She told me she only requests the names of the top students, so that made me feel good! It also made me feel good knowing I have options! She told me I would make more money, and she would have me transcribing for the same doctors, so once I got to know the dictators, my speed would certainly increase. AND, she said her doctors aren't difficult to understand. She told me to think about it for a few days, and she would do the same and she would get back to me. She said I could even just "try it out" for a few days if I wanted before I made any big decisions about changing jobs! She was a very nice lady, and like I said, it's nice to know there are options out there if things don't work out.
Emma was very excited this morning to look out my bedroom window to see the neighbors' roof was covered with snow. She ran downstairs hollering for Gage to tell him. Well, he already knew so that wasn't much fun. It was a very nice day yesterday so I was surprised to see the snow myself! I keep praying for freezing cold temps to solidify all of that water the ducks keep flocking to. Scott tells me that "tomorrow will probably be the last chance I get to go hunting". Yeah, right. Once the ducks are gone he'll just focus on some other poor animal that will find its way into our freezer.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Another job
I have a scrapbooking workshop tonight. My friend Emily and I are going to go, right after I take her out to eat supper at China Garden! :-) I told her she could pick wherever she wanted to go. I'm glad she picked China Garden because it's my favorite! It's her last year in the 20's so I figure we should celebrate while she's still "young". Happy Birthday Emily!
I'm anxious to hear how Gage did on his spelling test yesterday. We have had many arguments while studying for it. He wanted to study, but when I would tell him he got something wrong he would get very mad and very rude. He pointed out to me yesterday on the way home from school that "while" was not one of his spelling words and that it was "white". Ooops. I apparently made an error when I wrote the list down on a sheet of paper and sent the original sheet back to school. I asked him if he got it right. He thought so, but he wasn't sure. This is going to be a weekly ordeal. Each Friday he will bring home a list of spelling words for a spelling test on Thursday and then there will also be a dictation test on each Friday that consists of 2 sentences that are on the spelling word list. We are going to have to implement some kind of reward system, i.e. each time he does homework without griping, he gets a star and then after so many stars, he can pick out a surprise of some sort? I'm tired of fighting him on the homework thing! It would be different if it was hard and he wasn't so smart! Maybe that's why he doesn't like doing it, because it's so easy? Who knows? If anyone else has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Blessed
Tonight I attended the Ducks Unlimited Women's Banquet. It was fun. Although I was a little irritated that I didn't win anything! I spent more money than I have at a banquet on raffle tickets and came home with nothing. There were 3 raffles that I was just one number off. The past couple of years I have won a couple different things so I guess that's a good thing to remember for next year! It seems like each year there is one woman who is lucky lucky lucky and wins big. They had a new raffle this year which was fun. They had 5 fancy shmancy purses to raffle, and one lucky purse was holding a ticket for a free rifle. One old lady won 3 of the 5 purses! AND, the odds are pretty good to win the rifle, and she did. I don't think she knew what was going on, or that she had won BIG! LOL! It was pretty funny. One man that works at the DU office won one of the other purses so that was pretty funny too. The MC gave him quite a hard time and I'm sure everyone will know about it tomorrow at work!
Boy Scout popcorn has arrived so I will be seeing some of you within the next couple of days delivering popcorn! Thanks for supporting Gage and his Cub Scout group. (By the way, the caramel popcorn is delicious!)
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
"stacy stephens Your the winner"
"Congratulations stacy you won Two Free Disney Theme Park admissions.Sometime ago you signed up at one of our free offer giveaway sites. This email is to notify you that when you submitted the following information:corvis1@aol.com stacy stephens **** * street bismarck nd ***** You have won an all expense paid trip for two to Disneyl Orlando. Please update your information at the winner's site and we will promptly ship out your Disney Theme Park tickets."
"Thanks, Sue MaddenTravel Getaways, Inc."
I fwd the email to Scott and said, "OMG, do you think this is real?" He told me not to do anything and he would check it out. When you click on the "link to package" it takes you to this page where you fill in your address, etc. It does ask for a credit card. It also asks for an income range. Now, I am not retarded, and wouldn't enter that information, but how does a person confirm this to be a legitimate email?
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Finally!
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Say Cheese?
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Saturday
Gage just asked me a little bit ago, "Mom can you change your working hours?" "To what Gage?" Gage replies, "To be during the day when I am at school."
Well, that is what they are supposed to be, but I can't seem to get it all done in those hours, so it spills over into "his time". I'm working on making some changes. We'll see how it goes.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Days off
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Today
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Better day
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Uff-dah
Monday, November 5, 2007
Parent-Teacher Conferences
After supper Gage and Scott had a Cub Scout den meeting. It was at one of the other scouts' house. Only 2 showed up out of the 4, so it was a fairly quiet meeting.
Emma starts Preschool hockey tomorrow. It goes from 11:45a-12:30p. She is very excited. We had to try her gear on her today to make sure she hasn't outgrown anything. Everything looked good, so hopefully we'll get by cheap with her?
I have 774 lines to type in the next 2 days. Not sure how I'm going to fit that into the schedule, but I will have to get it done some how, some way. Keep your fingers crossed for me. If I can get good dictators, that will be helpful. (Ones that speak English!)
Scott is going out to hunt in the morning but has to be back to work for a meeting by 1:30.
Oh, and before I forget to mention it, we had some SNOW this morning! The kids were very excited. It started snowing a little before we left for school. Emma was trying her hardest to catch some of those wild and crazy blowing flakes on her tongue on her way into school. Scott picked her up from school and said she was quite upset to get outside to see the ground was not even white and it had quit snowing! It won't be long and they'll be sick of it! North Dakota definitely has 4 seasons, but winter is the longest. You can tell it's getting cold because at Gage's school they already have 2 banquet tables out in the hallway full of lost mittens, hats, sweatshirts, etc. I should have gone and picked out a few extra mittens, as I'm sure Gage's will be lost soon.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Hockey
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Ballet
I wanted to share a video I took today of Emma at ballet class. This is the second of two videos. I am having problems uploading the first one and I think it's because the file is too big? I hope to figure it out and get it posted for all of you to see. Emma's ballet class is getting ready for a holiday recital and the instructor asked the parents to take video so they can watch it to help them learn the routine. It is very cute, so I hope to get it added to my blog. I want to apologize for the video being sideways. I didn't realize that the camera wouldn't turn it right side up. So, you will either have to put your monitor on its side, or turn your head, risking a kink in your neck! :-)