December 23, 2012

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted. December flew by with lots of activities just like everyone else. Today was the first day a couple of friends and I went snowshoeing. With no snow last year we didn't go even once. So this is what I hope will be the first of many this year. Bring on the snow!!!!

November 22, 2012 Thanksgiving Day

Today is Thanksgiving Day and my Dad's 87th birthday. Since we celebrated last weekend today there were no special plans. So, we went with David and the Ponders to the First Reformed Church in Prairie City for our noon meal. This was the 5th Year that Lori DeBruin and her family have made a Thanksgiving meal for anyone that doesn't have special plans. This was our first year to go. The food and the company were very good. Then home for an afternoon nap as Jim watches a football game and I attempt to watch a movie between sleeping and coughing with the new cold I have acquired. Tonight zi am planning to attend worship service at the Women's Prison in Mitchellville. I think it will be quite uplifting.

November 18, 2012

I can't believe it's already been a month since I last posted. Last Friday night the group I tap dance with through the Des Moines Public Schools Adult Education performed multiple times at the East Village Holiday Promenade. It was a fun time. You can't really see me in the picture but I'm behind the lady in the yellow boa (the teacher). This weekend we also celebrated an early Thanksgiving and my dad's 87th birthday which will be on Thanksgiving Day this year. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!!!

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY ! ! !

Today is Caleb Burton Wilson's 3rd birthday. Tonight Mike, Leah, Caleb, Jim, myself, my dad and a cousin of Leah's went to Pizza Hut to celebrate. I couldn't wait to give Caleb his Toy Story cowboy boots that have cacti (plural for cactus) that light up. He loves them. The only problem, he wants to wear his pants inside the boots so he can see the lights. He had no interest in eating just relighting the candles and blowing them out over and over and over again.

October 14, 2012 - confused

When I typed the post below I did include double spacing for my paragraphs but it all came out as one HUGE paragraph. I don't know why.

It's Been Awhile October 14, 2012

Well, it's been a very busy last two months as I haven't taken time to make any posts. You've probably given up on me. Going back to school was very stressful this year. I don't know how to explain this so a person not in the field of education can understand it other than to say the way I have been delivering instruction in the past is no more. Everything changed and it changed for everyone so everyone is stressed because this is an occasion when change wasn't welcomed. Enough said. I still can't say I know what I'm doing but I'm not feeling as stressed. My fall has also been busy playing in a bell choir at a West Des Moines Church. Not sure that was a good decision on my part but I said if I committed to it I would do if for one year so I don't feel I can back out now. I also couldn't say no when asked to help start a bell choir in Monroe, Iowa. I'm not good at saying no. Let's see if I can play catch up. The month of September brought Jim's 70th birthday. Just family celebrated his birthday the weekend of Labor Day. We have actually gone camping a couple times this fall. Jim and I took time for ourselves and went to Lake Rathbun. It was a beautiful weekend. Temps were cold and perfect for sitting around a fire. There were approximately 90 spaces available and only 10 units there so we had the place to ourselves. We also went to Dolliver State Park up by Fort Dodge with two of Jim's children and our friends the Ponders. That was also a virtually perfect weekend. The fall colors were in bloom. We did some hiking. That state park is just as nice as the infamous Ledges. We are hoping to make this an annual event. It seems as though every weekend is busy with something. I gave up my tickets to the ISU game last weekend just because I just wanted to have a day at home. For instance, last week was this busy: Monday went to work at 7:00 stayed until 8:30 p.m. because of Parent Teacher's Conferences. Tuesday, left work early so Jim and I could tour some nursing homes. Got back home and was late leaving for bell choir practice in Monroe then had to hurry back to PC to lead theh lesson at U.M.W. then on to my dad's to fill out paperwork. Back to work Wedensday morning at 7:00 and stay until 8:30 for PT conference. Back to work Thursday and Thursday night an extra bell choir practice in Des Moines for our concert on the 20th and then on the tap dance class. Friday I actually had off but spent the day moving things for Mom, picking up Mom and moving her to Trinity Center. Had about 1 1/2 hours at home to relax before we moved furniture. So I think you can understand why I wanted Saturday at home. Now it's Sunday. I've been to church and taught Sunday School but now I need to get motivated to go back to school and get ready for the next week. Jim has been busy in the garden, going on tractor rides and football games. He will be cooking the 2nd annual chicken noodle dinner on October 27 at church and purchased 90 lbs of chicken this week. OK. I think I'm minimally caught up. I'll try to do better.

August 7, 2012

It's been a little over a month since my last blog, but July has been excrutiatingly busy. So let's catch up.... 1) Alicia brought ice cream cake to celebrate her change of jobs. Next year she will be teaching at Altoona Elmentary. She will also be working on her Master's through Morningside College. The 2012-2013 school year will have all three of the Walker/Wilson ladies working for Southeast Polk. I will be at the 6th grade center for my 3rd yeard and Leah will be a 1:1 associate with a bd 2nd grader at Four Mile Elmentary (where I use to teach). 2) The weekend following the 4th of July Jim's niece and nephew and family came down from Minnesota and camped. All the kids went to our pond at the farm (which is filling extremely slow because of lack of rain and snow) to cool off. If you remember that was a very very hot weekend. 3) On July 9th my Dad had hip replacement surgery. He came home on Friday the 13th. That should have been an omen. The next day he developed huge water blisters on his leg. Because it was the weekend they just told him to keep his leg up and come in on Tuesday. They put him back in the hospital to keep his leg elevated 20 hours a day. He came home again on Thursday and was on bedrest with his leg elevated for the next 12 days. I became a part-time nurse; twice daily changing the dressing on his leg. I'm not changing professions. Anyway when Caleb came to visit on his first stay in the hospital, he took over great-grandpa's bed. Mom has been having pain for over six weeks and while Dad was in the hospital one night I took her to the emergency room. I'll just shorten that story by saying on Sunday, July 22 Jim and I transported her from the hospital to Courtyard Estates an assisted living facility that is strictly a Memory Care facility. It's been a difficult transition for her but on her good days she states the food is good, the people are nice and it's a nice place, just not home. It is a very nice place and another lady from Prairie City is there and that has been a very positive help.

Then came a bizzare wind storm. It didn't really seem like a wind storm, but it was windy outside. Jim and I were sitting on the front deck watching our maple tree blow around. It never rained. The next morning I looked out the window and saw our major shade tree on the west side of this laying down. Never heard a thing so don't know when it happened. Thank goodness the temps cooled down and on Friday night several friends plus David and Alicia and our next door neighbor came and helped with cleanup. We are blessed with friends. I brought Daddy out to watch to break up his boring days. So now I have one week left before I go back to work. Oh, I forgot, last weekend Jim and I went to Minnesota for the weekend. We visited his brother Roger on Friday. Saturday we went to the University of Minnesota Arboretum. That is a fabulous place and we highly recommend it; and kid friendly too. Saturday night we went to our favorite place, the Plymouth Playhouse to see the current Church Basement Ladies: A Mighty Fortress is our Basement. It never fails to delight and entertain us. Jim was told there is suppose to be a fifth play coming out next year. Something to look forward too. Because this was longer than my usual posts I didn't proof read it, so excuse my errors. :)

July 4, 2012

I haven't posted for a long time. A lot has happened since June 19 (the last post) I doubt I can remember it all. Jim has had a second tractor ride, the WHO ride which this year was out of Centerville. I didn't go down with him this year, but he came home every night and drove back each day. Prairie Day were held in Prairie City and our church had the pie stand this year. Jim and I cut so many pies getting ready for the event I'm not sure we ever wanted to eat one, but, of course, we did. Sorry, I don't have any pictures, but I had my first "dance recital" so to speak. Last fall I started taking tap dance lessons through the Des Moines Adult Education. We performed at the Arts Festival at the Fairgrounds on June 23. I was really, really, nervous, but didn't do too bad for my first public appearance. If I was brave enough I would give you the link to watch but I'm not that brave! We, like everyone else, are tired of the extreme heat. I'm glad we have the pool to escape in. I find a couple hours every day to cool off. Even though it was very hot we made a trip to Webster City to watch Dalton and Mallory play in their last baseball and softball games for the summer. It really wasn't too bad sitting in the shade and the games were at night so the sun was going down along with the temps.

June 19, 2012

Father's Day weekend was full of activity. Mary Ellen and Mallory were down to attend Finley's dance recital. Jim has spent many hours adding a "lift" to the back of my little Ford tractor to take grandkids for rides. Mary Ellen tried it out this weekend and it worked great. While here we always put her to work. One of her work tasks included getting the pool set up. The picture from Finley's dance recital is a little blurry but I thought it was a good one of how expressive she is in her dancing. The proud Mom and dancer are the next photo. Sunday afternoon we had a long over due family gathering of my Mom's side of the family. Of course, I forgot to take a picture. Guess we'll just have to do it again. The pool picture of Caleb and me is thanks to Mary Ellen helping us get the pool up. That picture wasn't taken until the Tuesday following the weekend when it was in the high 90s. However, the sun went in and out and with a stiff breeze we actually got cold. Caleb was shivering at one point.

June 11, 2012

Jim's first tractor ride of the season. The WMT (a sister radio station to WHO out of Cedar Rapids) sponsored this trip. It started in DeWitt then to Clinton the first day. That evening 500 tractors parked on the levy of the Mississippi river. That evening we traveled north 20 miles to have supper with Frank, Lauree and Carolyn. We had never been to Lauree's house so that was nice.

Dam to Dam, June 2, 2012

Saturday, June 2, was a beautiful day. Temps were just rigtht and it was race day for David. He ran the MetroWaste Dump run last fall. Today was his first try at a half-marathon (I think) a 20K which I think is about 13.1 miles. David was never an athlete in school. Sometimes you figure out your "loves" when you get older. He finished 194 out of what was advertised as 8,000 but some of those might have been 5K runners. He came in at 1 hour 25 min. and 59 sec. and he was hoping for under 1.5 hours, so he made that. Alicia and I met him on the route and then after he ran past us we packed up and drove downtown, found a place to park, walked to the finish line where there just happened to be a couple places for us to stand. We waited about 20 min and then he crossed the finish line. Today was also David and Alicia's 5th wedding anniversary so I label the picture at the finish line "Happy Anniversary Honey, now give me a sweaty hug". I might add that the next weeked (June 9) David ran a marathon called the Marathon to Marathon. It started in Storm Lake and ended appropriately in Marathon, Iowa. He did that race in 3 hrs. 20 minutes and was reportedly sore, but finished the race.

Memorial Day, May 28, 2012

A nice hot memorial day with a strong breeze. Today I started with a trip to the cemetery for the Memorial Day Program and then walking past the graves of loved ones. A couple of days ago Jim saw a baby possum crawl into the garage. We left the door open so it could crawl back out. Coincidently a couple of days later an odor started in the garage. As it continued to get stronger we finally decided we needed to do some cleaning in an effort to find a remove the smell. The odor seemed to continually move. One moment we thought we had it and while not seeing anything decided it could have been a small mouse in a pile of leaves we scooped up and tossed that had been caught under the storage shelves. Then the smell seemed to move. Finally after about 2 hours, we found the baby possum. It had crawled into a 5 gallon bucket and died. But at least one of 3 walls in the garage is now clean :).

Tonight we attended pre-school graduation for Finely Marie. She will be entering kindergarten in the fall. It's such a cute ceremony. They even played Pomp and Circumstance. Today was also my last day with students. I still have 1 1/2 days of inservice but at least I can dress down and have quite to work in. This is the earliest I can ever remember getting out so it should be a nice long summer but I'm sure it will go by fast.

May 13, 2012 Many Updates

Lots of updates. This weekend we made a trip to Webster City. We took the camper and spent tbe weekend at Briggs Woods County Park. It is fabulous. I never knew it was so nice. We should have been spending time camping there a long time ago. It is 555 acres and beautiful 70 acre lake for fishing, a paved bike trail that goes into town lots of hiking available and even some very nice waterfalls. Anyway, Saturday was spent enjoying the outdoors and the evening at Mallory's dance recital. She does a great job and makes it look so easy. On Sunday Dalton was confirmed at church. A very very nice service. Upon returning home in the evening we held an impromptu mother's day campfire with hotdog roasting, macaroni/cheese, green bean casserole and chips. The weather was perfect temperature wise and not too much wind. I had purchased Mike and Caleb and missle shooting "thingy" and Mike, Caleb, David and Jim and fun aiming at various targets in the yard. It was a good purchase.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Today a neighbor, friend of the family took Caleb to the Drake Relays bulldog contest. He doesn't look thrilled but I'm sure he liked seeing the dogs. He was probably just confused why he wasn't seeing the traditional red/gold colors :)

April 13, 2012

Today's my birthday and on a Friday the thirteenth. It wasn't unlucky! And look I'm only 1 year old (according to the candles). I'm now getting old enough I'm starting to count the years until I can retire. I'll have a big party on my birthday that year!!!

Easter, April 8, 2012

I'm sure everyone had a wonderful Easter day as the weather was gorgeous. Sunrise service with breakast. We didn't end up having any of our children for lunch so we had "adopted" kids Paul and Sue Ponder and their children for lunch as they also had no plans. The menu included grilled hamburgers and chicken breasts, potatoes/onion/peas in a peppered gravy sauce, corn on the cob from last summer, green beans with bacon, raspberry salad, ceasar salad and cherry cobbler with ice cream. No need for supper tonight. After they left I got the dishes done I went to Mom and Dad's with Mike, Leah and Caleb and after that they come to our house where Caleb got to fly is new kite for the first time. A pretty perferct day even though we didn't get to see the entire family.

March 23, 2012

For the past couple of year in the month of May I have taken a personal day from work and we have gone to Kalona in eastern Iowa. This year we really mixed it up (living dangerously) and we took the last day of my spring break to go to Cantril, Iowa. It is a Mennonite community that has a bigger scale store like those that you would find in Kalona with many grocery items sold in bulk. After shopping we ate at a local establishment. Upon leaving town we came across a farmer with two camels in a pen along side of the road. A very unusual site for Iowa in March. Our next stop was Lacy Keosauqua State Park and after leaving there we made a brief stop in Eldon, Iowa at the famous background of Grant Wood's painting American Gothic. The day started out very foggy but the sun did come out and we had an enjoyable day.

March 22, 2012

Everyone knows how unusually warm it has been this spring. Tonight Mike and David joined Jim and I for a supper of cleaning out the cooler of anything we can find. David took sticks I had picked up in the yard and got a fired started. It was a beautiful night outside although we did start to get a little chilly. David said he mowed his yard yesterday (March 21). That's crazy but we'll probably be mowing parts of our this weekend.

March 16, 2012

Had free tickets to the Iowa Energy game tonight. That was an experience. They played terrible, not impressed. And I suppose because it was St. Patricks Day tomorrow they wore green uniforms with purple numbers outlined in orange. Really??? it was butt ugly. The evening was beautiful (80 at game time). After the game we did the river walk downtown. That is a very cool bridge and a fantastic March night for being outside.

March 10, 2012

Attended a trivia night. I don't know the official name for it but they are used as money makers for various organizations. The PCM school district is holding one later this month so I think a group of us went to one in Newton last night to get an idea of what was going on. WOOOOH! It was fun, but........... there were 21 tables of 8 people. There are set categories of questions with ten questions in each round and ten rounds. The categories last night were entertainment, politics, sports, potpouri, Seinfeld, popular movies, popular songs, Firsts, foods and another one I can't think of. It was hard and I think there was some serious cheating going on. You can't convince me that people knew that much and could guess the "in what year" exactly without being a year or two off. We came in last place, but we still had a good time. One person at our table did when a door prize to Old Chicago. Lucky them! If you have never done this and want to try it, join us on March 31st for another attempt. Don't know what the categories will be that night. Our group included Paul and Sue Ponder, Glady Burns, Elmer Blythe, Dan and Brenda Downey and Jim and myself, the picture taker.

March 9, 2012

Today we made an impromptu trip to Webster City to visit granddaughter, Mallory. She broke her foot last Sunday (they didn't determine it was broken until Tuesday). She will be on crutches putting no weight on her foot for 3 weeks. She was suppose to participate in dance competition this weekend. Hopefully she will be good to go for her dance recital in May.

February 18, 2012

This weekend was the 2nd annual Walker/Wilson weekend. This year we went to Ames again. First was a stop at Hilton Coliseum for the ISU men's game vs. Oklahoma. It was pretty exciting and the day was made complete with a win. I was pretty impressed Caleb wasn't scared of all the noise. It can get very loud in there. After the game we checked into the Holiday Inn and headed to the famous Hickory Park restaurant for supper. After supper was a trip to the pool. I picked this hotel because we were there for the Walker Christmas last year and they have a cute 6 inch pool with a fountain I thought Caleb would enjoy. Again, he surprised me (relief) that he wasn't scared off by the water fountain spraying water. However, we all agreed that the pool water was cool and the hot tub water was extra warm. After showers to get the pool chemicals rinsed off Caleb entertained us by crawling into drawers and other tight places we would never consider. Winnie the Pooh helped make him sleepy while the rest of us played UNO until 11:30 p.m. Sunday morning we enjoyed a breakfast buffet at Hy-Vee followed by a trip to Reimen gardens to see the butterflies and for Caleb to chase the geese outside.