Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Should I Be Mad?

We got a letter in the mail yesterday from the doctor's office. I had taken Sarah in on Sunday, December 21st to be checked out at the Urgent Care center because she had been throwing up for a couple of days and was on her third day of having at least a 100 degree temperature. They did a rapid throat culture which was negative and after listening to her breathe, etc. the doctor said he thought it was a virus and just to keep pushing liquids, give her motrin/tylenol, and make sure she gets plenty of rest.

She was feeling better... the fever went away, but she still has a cough and bad case of laryngitis. So the letter yesterday says that the normal throat culture came back positive and she has strep throat. Mind you this is now nine full days after having the culture. So we call to get her antibiotics and the nurse apologizes and gives us a bunch of excuses. But the bigger thing is that Sarah has been around many other kids. She went to school, she had functions with the family where there were other kids and Kris' parents who aren't in the best of health so I would think that they would be at risk. SO I ask and tell the nurse that Alison had been complaining last week of having a sore throat, but that it had apparently cleared up, though she too has now developed a nasty sounding cough. So as a precaution they tell me to take her to the lab and get a culture done.

An hour later they call me and say the rapid test came back positive and she too has strep throat. Nice! The nurse says she'll call in a prescription for Ali so I tell her to call it over to the hospital. As of 8:30 last night, they still didn't have it (we were notified about 6:00 that Ali had strep). So I call first thing this morning over to the clinic and they had the notes in their computer about her being positive and having the prescription called over, but no one ever did it. UNBELIEVABLE!

There are so many things to be mad at here I just don't know where to begin.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Gingerbread House





As promised, here is this year's attempt at a gingerbread house for Christmas. We had a little problem in that one wall and one section of roof were cracked in half. Then the frosting included in the kit was hard as a rock, so we had to make due with what we had, and that was frosting the roof and using colored icing for the shingles. We ran out of pink icing and had to finish with blue. It was a patchwork effort this year, but it was all Sarah and Ali making it, I only helped to keep the walls and roof together.

Pictures

I have finally gotten around to updating photo albums, well at least getting the photos for the photo albums. That is one bad things about having digital pictures I guess, you don’t need to print the photos. They get downloaded from the camera to the hard drive and then periodically put in CDs. It used to be that you would drop off your film and then pick up the photos to be put in albums. Now things aren’t as urgent, so you end up with what I have right now, almost two years worth of photos that need to be printed an placed in albums. I had an internet coupon from Walgreens for $.10 prints on orders of 50 or more, so I spent the better part of 3 and a half hours yesterday uploading photos to Walgreens to be printed (the coupon expired on 12/27). Overall I ended up saving almost $50 on them all, at least the ones I have uploaded so far (almost 1000).

I still have almost 200 to upload. You would think that they would make a feature for uploading an entire folder rather than having to do it one at a time. That is why it took so dang long, 12 pictures at a time was all I could upload, and at about 1-2 minutes per set of 12 (when things were uploading quickly), I was up until almost midnight doing it. The remaining ones are just getting put on a CD and I’ll take it in to the store to have them loaded/printed out.

Movie Day

We had a lot to do on Saturday, but we took a couple hours out to go see “Bedtime Stories” with Adam Sandler. We had some arguing since we went to the early matinee (12:30 P.M.) and the girls didn’t want to get moving. But once we got there, the theater was about half full, which was good. I HATE watching movies sitting in a crowded theater. The overall review.... Not bad. Sarah gives it 4 out of 5 stars. I’ll give it 3. The story was cute and enjoyable, but Adam Sandler played, well Adam Sandler. If you have seen him to one goofy yet endearing character, you have seen every movie he has ever done. He is sort of drifting into Will Ferrell territory. But I’ll still recommend it as a nice family movie.

There were some interesting trailers shown prior to the movie starting however that I think I’m going to have to try and go see when they come out. First is a movie called Inkheart starring Brendan Fraser. The second is Race to Witch Mountain. I saw both Witch Mountain movies, Escape to Witch Mountain and Return from Witch Mountain, as a kid and I am interested to see how Disney has updated the remake.

Merry Christmas

Christmas morning began bright and early. We were up around 7:00 and Alison was dying to see what Santa brought. Ali was hoping Santa would bring her the High School Musical House. For the past two weeks she was hoping and hoping to find a big box under the tree. When she came down and saw the tree, there was one really big box, and she couldn’t wait to open it. Unfortunately, Sarah was still sleeping so she had to. After about a half an hour, she had to go upstairs and wake up Sarah because she didn’t want to wait to open presents anymore.

Santa ended up bringing the HS Musical house, a couple of the HS Musical dolls (the girls needed Taylor and Chad), a couple of Gameboy games, a radio/speakers to plug her mp3 player into, and a furry pink rug.





Sarah’s thing this year was an iPod. She got the new, iPod Nano with a docking station/radio. She also got Guitar Hero II for her Nintendo DS.





The rest of the day was spent putting things together and loading songs onto mp3 players. I am sure that there is one “universal” program for all players, but I have been trying to use the programs that came with them, I think it is easier that way, plus I don’’t want to take the time to research it all. But then that means uploading the same songs/CDs to each player separately.

The past two years we had gone to a movie on Christmas Day, but this year, Kris wasn’t feeling good so we put it off for a day or two. We’ll probably end up going this weekend instead. I’m not sure what we’ll see yet, but the preliminary choice looks like Bedtime Stories. Check back for a review.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas Eve

This year we spent Christmas Eve over at Kris’s parents’ house. Normally her family will get together on Christmas Eve, open presents, etc. but this year because of her dad’s troubles with his balance and walking, they just couldn’t go out, and since it would have been way too much work for Kris’s mom to get things ready at their house for the whole family, they just skipped it this year, though their family did get together at someone else’s house. No one told Kris and me about it so we didn’t have the opportunity to drive her parents there. In the end it was fine, because Sarah was still feeling the after effects of her cold, and actually still can’t talk. Hopefully resting her voice over break will help.



The girls’ grandparents got them a Wii system for Christmas this year. We let the girls open the game system itself at Bob and Carole’s and then when we got home later on they opened the other accessories. Hopefully it doesn’t cause too much trouble fighting over who gets to play what game, or who wants to play the Wii when someone else wants to watch TV.



Tuesday, December 23, 2008

More Snow

After watching the Packers choke away yet another game, I woke to more snow coming down. So now we are at 34" for the month of December. The snowbank at the end of the driveway is taller than I am. I thought this was the kind of thing you only saw in Buffalo.

But as I am driving home from work, there is some butthead snowblowing his driveway, shooting the snow right into the street. This is a major per peeve of mine. The chute on the snowblower is directional.... You can point it to blow to the side of your driveway. I should also add that at least here it is ILLEGAL!!!!! Where is a cop when you really need one?

Monday, December 22, 2008

Blood Bank

Sarah was feeling better and school wasn't canceled today even though the temps were still in the single digits and below zero wind chills. I am waiting for people to start ripping the school board since the last time we had weather like this (about two years ago) they kept school open and people had fits that they had to send their kids to school. Apparently the wind chills now freeze the school rooms.

But Sarah and Alison got to leave school early today to help with a blood drive. Sarah's scout troop organized it for whatever award they are working on at the moment (I don't recall exactly which one it is). but things went pretty good. About 80% of the people who registered actually showed up, but apparently not everyone was able to give blood. They ahd lots of requirements relating to various diseases and asked lots of questions regarding stuff like visiting the Caribbean in the last 12 months (apparently making you a risk for having been exposed to malaria). But I think they still did pretty good.

I actually donated a pint myself. I was all set to donate platelets as well but apparently my hemoglobin level wasn't high enough. The guy seemed bummed out when I told him my blood type was O+. Maybe next time. I think I'm going to schedule myself to donate blood again in the spring. I have to wait until at least 2/16, so maybe the early March time frame will work.

Global Warming?

Someone needs to let Al Gore know that if he is worried about the polar bears, all he needs to do is move them to WI. We are now, in the Milwaukee area, experiencing the #2 all time December snowfall. Last Thursday night into Friday we got 12 inches of snow in about 12 hours. In fact, the weathermen called it thundersnow as we had thunder and lightning along with the snowfall. This was followed up 24 hours later with another 4 inches. Then came the cold! The high yesterday was only in the single digits with 30-40 below zero wind chills. BRRRRR!

The girls got school canceled Friday, which was fine since Sarah came down with something. She spent Friday with a fever of 101 and throwing up. The same thing Saturday. In bed (or at least under a blanket resting) taking tylenol and motrin. Saturday night she was up every couple of hours with dry heaves. I took her to the Urgent Care clinic Sunday just to get checked out. Her fever was dropping, but still over 100 and she still had a sore throat. The doctor said the throat culture came back negative and it was most likely a virus. So Sunday was spent much like Saturday. By Sunday night she was feeling better except for the sore throat, so she helped with decorating this year's gingerbread house. Pictures later.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Busy Week So Far

This has been a pretty slow week for everyone but me. Beginning Monday I am going through daily meetings at work to try and salvage our business with GE. Unfortunately, the people I work with don't have the same foresight as I do. While I am trying to focus on satisfying and correcting the concerns that were relayed to us in our meeting last Friday in Atlanta, everyone else is focusing on other, more minor issues thinking that will solve their problems. I told Kris that it is a lot like a drug addict not being able to get better until they admit there is a problem. No one here wants to admit that there is a problem. They are focused on doing the same old stuff and just trying to smooth talk their way out of things. Well the business world is changing, or rather has changed, and you just can't do work with a multi-billion dollar company with a handshake and a nod anymore. You need to provide objective evidence of what you are doing. There, I feel a little better after venting now.

I finally got the girls' Reflections projects submitted. Looks like they win again by default. We had 6 total entries for the school, and only one category/age group had competition, so everyone who entered gets an award. I need to redo Sarah's project however, since Walgreens made the picture too dark. I know when we edited it, it wasn't that dark. As soon as I have them done I'll post the pictures here.

We (Kris and I) had lunch with Sarah and Ali yesterday at school for the annual student-parent lunch week. We had tacos, mmmm. But man, talk about grease! I wasn't feeling the best for the rest of the day, and either was Kris. When I got home, Mallory had come over to help Sarah with a project for school, so I had to help record a mock "news interview" she was doing with a character from one of her books.

That's all for now, since we have a big winter storm on the way and the prediction is for 10"-12", so I have to go make sure we're all ready for it before leaving for work (gas for the snowblower, enough salt, etc.)

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Business Trip

I spent almost five hours on a plane Friday traveling to and from Atlanta, GA for work. There is a lot of stuff going down at work and GE, the largest portion of our business base, is trying to sever ties with us, so we were down there meeting with people trying to salvage things. Hopefully we can still come back. Let's just say I'll be putting in tons of hours at work in the next four to six weeks.

But as I am leaving our gate in the airport on my way to the parking garage so I can get home and get some rest, I happen to notice standing at one of the gates on the way out is Sammy Llanas, co-founder and singer for the Wuakesha band the BoDeans in case you don't recognize the name. I had to do a double take to make sure it was him, but I was positive since I have seen the BoDeans several times. I wanted to walk up and ask for an autograph, but then thought that would be tacky. Besides, who wants to be hassled in an airport? Everyone there has already had to go through a hard time with security checkpoints, etc. He didn't need me bugging him. Still as I think back, it would have been pretty cool to just shake his hand, maybe find out what is in the works for the band. Oh well, maybe next time.

Christmas Concert

Thursday night was the annual Riverside Christmas Concert. Once again Kris and I were lucky enough to get to sit through the whole thing. K through 2nd grade was first and then 3rd through 5th. Unfortunately, I didn't bring the camera. I decided to videotape instead, so the stills I took were with the video camera. The quality isn't as good as the regular camera for still photos. Plus, I had a hard time holding the camera still and hitting the still photo button. But here are the best I was able to get:

Alison sang Hanukkah is Here, Decorate the Tree, and Feliz Navidad. Then the whole group, K through 2nd sang I've Got a Hunch.



Sarah's grade sang Winter Wonderland, Papa's on the Housetop, and O Christmas Tree. At the end, all the kids, 3rd through 5th sang Hope's the Thing.



We (the Riverside community) also held a food drive for the Menomonee Falls Food Pantry. They are desperately low this year. last year they helped something like 80 families around the holidays and this year they are estimating having to help about 300. So if anyone reading this cares to help, Riverside is accepting donations for the next couple of weeks.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Powderpuff Results



Last night was the first Riverside Girl Scout Powderpuff Pinewood Derby. After a long design process for both girls, we managed to settle on the car style, color, and adornments. What a hassle! I think next time if we do it I’ll present (2) or (3) choices and that’ll be it.

Once I had the cars painted and assembled, wheels and all, it was time to add the weights. We took the cars to the hobby store to be weighed and figure out how much weight to add. Ali’s car weighed in at 3.7 oz. and Sarah’s was an even 4.0. We got 1 oz. of weight for each car. The weight limit was 5.0 oz. so Sarah wanted to go just under that since we didn’t want to get DQ’d for being too heavy. Ali’s we didn’t have to worry about since we were more than an ounce off. Sarah’s car went pretty good, though I messed up the clear coat (it was still a little soft) when I was holding it to drill the holes for the weights. On Alison’s, I ended up drilling THROUGH the car and messing up the paint and stickers. I WAS MAD! Luckily the damage wasn’t too bad and I was able to repair it and get it pretty close to the original condition. Can you see the repair?

In the end, both cars worked pretty well. They both averaged in the neighborhood of 2.380 seconds per run. Awards were given for first through 10th place. Alison took 10th place and Sarah took 4th. Both girls received medals. Sarah was .007 seconds away from getting a trophy. While they were happy (relatively speaking) with their awards, it was fun just making the cars with them and seeing how they reacted watching their cars race.



Monday, December 8, 2008

Powderpuff Derby

We finished up the Powderpuff Derby cars this weekend (pictures below). The clear coat made the color on the numbers run (bum deal, but nothing I could really do). The race is Tuesday night and all I need to do is adjust the weight. Hopefully they have a good time. I know Ali really wants to win, and Sarah wants an award, whether it is for one of the categories they are going to give out like Best Design, Most Original Design, etc. or an actual winning car. I did my best so we’ll see what happens. Keep your fingers crossed for them.





Sunday, December 7, 2008

2008 Christmas Tree



After getting a call from my mom and dad in Florida asking about my tree, I thought I would post a picture of the 2008 tree. I started a few years ago taking a picture of the tree to see what it looked like every year, since I take an entire day to get it put up and decorated. Here is this year’s tree complete with about 75% of our ornaments and all 2050 lights (yes, it will actually make the room warmer when the lights are on). Not a record though. I forget the year, but if I recall correctly, the record light count for the Hahn Christmas tree is 2400. Maybe next year, I’ll buy a few extra strings to be able to beat it.

St. Nick's

St. Nick came last night and left the girls a few goodies in their stockings. Some candy canes/peppermint sticks, tootsie rolls, chocolate Santas, and a couple of DVDs. The DVDs were The Nightmare Before Christmas deluxe 2 DVD edition and Wall-E. They were very excited by his visit (Ali more than Sarah, since the myth no longer exists her her). Both were very happy with their stockings full of goodies though.

Sarah didn’t have time to enjoy her stocking though since she had volunteered to help with the annual Riverside PTA Breakfast with Santa. I got the driveway cleared (yes it snowed again.. more on that later) and got her over to school. She was helping with wrapping gifts from Santa’s Shop. The kids who come to the breakfast get the chance to go to “Santa’s workshop” and buy little gifts for their parents, siblings, etc. They are generally little trinkets that only cost a few dollars, but it’s the thought right? The kids are usually excited just to be able to give a gift. But Sarah and a couple of her friends would help the children put their presents in gift bags and tag them for whoever was getting them. She did a very good job and had fun too.

That was over at 10:15 so from their we made the trek to the mall to see Santa and tell him what the girls wanted from him this year as well as get the annual picture on Santa’s lap. One of these days I need to put all the Santa pictures on one page. It really is amazing to see how the girls have grown over the years. Kris mentioned that this year Alison has lost her “little girl look” and after looking at the picture, I have to agree. It makes me sad.



But after the Santa stop, we did a little shopping. The girls had gift certificates that they got for their birthdays that we finally got around to using. When that was done and we had stopped at home to put things away and have something to eat, we had to run around to make sure that Santa had the stuff in his bag that the girls had asked for. Boy, what a fiasco that was! Details to come shortly.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Forgot to Brag

One thing I forgot to report was that we had Sarah’s and Alison’s teacher conference last week. Sarah’s teacher didn’t have one specific thing to have her work on, he had to give her the “always work to improve” because she is doing so well. Sarah is reading well above her grade level. I can’t remember what he said her reading level equated to grade level wise but she is a couple of levels above where the average fifth grader is reading. She is also ahead of where the average 5th grade math level is. Sarah attended the conference as well and she said that right now her favorite subject is math. Let’s hope that continues.

Ali also had a stellar conference. Her reading and writing is really improving. Her writing is getting better, especially over the start of the school year. Ali is also reading above her grade level and is already showing the desire to do second grade work in math. I guess that’s a good thing about being in a multi-age class. I have to admit I had my reservations when she started the multi-age class, but so far it looks as if she is setting in very well.

Monday, December 1, 2008

First Winter Storm Warning

Last night we had the first winter storm warning of the year. Of course all the local weathermen were falling over themselves. It started on Friday. They began with forecasting 1-3 inches. Then Saturday it had changed to 2-6 inches, and yesterday morning they had amended it again to 3-10 inches. While I will keep from ranting about how local news/weather tries to hold you hostage with the severe weather warnings, I will say that it was pretty crummy last night with blowing and some drifting.

So this morning, I get up early and get out at 5:30 to fire up the snow blower and shovel the porches. It went relatively quickly. I finished at about 6:15. I come inside to take off my wet coat and jeans to toss in the drier while I get ready for work. As I am walking up the stairs to get showered, I hear the snow plow come through, not more than 5 minutes after I finished. So now I need to go back out and blow out the end of the driveway so I can get my car out. I go back and forth between wanting to curse these guys. I know that it is their job to plow the streets, but why is it that they always seem to do it right after I finish clearing out my driveway?

I went back out after I finished getting ready and fired up the snow blower again. Luckily it wasn’t too bad so it only took me 5 minutes to clear out. Usually the plows come through a few times during the day so I am sure that by the time I get home tonight I will have more work to do.

This makes two years in a row now that there has been snow (and several inches of it at that) on the ground come December. Wasn’t global warming supposed to have prevented this?

Winter Wonderland

Last night was the annual Menomonee Falls Christmas parade, and as we have for the past 3 years, the Riverside Girl Scouts marched. So after watching the Packers blow yet another game in the final two minutes, we set out for the parade. The snow was coming down nice and heavy, but hey, what more could you ask for, it’s a Christmas Parade right? Well it was miserable! It wasn’t a nice snowfall with big flakes coming down softly. It was more like a mixture of frozen rain and snow. Plus, the temperature was right at freezing so it was half melting and half icing over.

And to top it off, there was about a 20 mph wind blowing, so the flakes that were hitting you in the face actually sort of stung. The parade didn’t start until 4:30 p.m., and we had to be there at 3:45. By the time we started walking, it was probably 4:45 or 5:00, so we got to stand around on the street in the staging area for a good hour beforehand. By the time we finished walking, we were soaked and freezing. The hot chocolate when we got home really hit the spot!



Some of the parade-goers decided to pass their time by building a snowman.


Riverside's Daisies carrying the girl scout banner.


Troop 2671 getting ready for the parade.

Tree Trimming

As promised, here are some pictures of decorating the tree (note the grass in the window... that's under about 4 inches of snow right now)




Sunday, November 30, 2008

Busy Day Again

Today was another busy day. I went to work for a few hours and when I got home I spent two hours doing some outside Christmas decorations. We don’t do much, just some lights on our bushes in front of the house, a grapevine reindeer, and a snowman on the porch. We have some small, grapevine snowmen as well, but after taking them out I couldn’t put them out without a little bit of work. The metal frames are painted white and they have spots of rust bleeding thru the paint. Plus, the paint that was on the grapevines is chipped and peeling off all over. Maybe I’ll make a project out of it after Christmas and touch them up with some rust-o-leum so we can use them next year.

The one thing I don’t like is running cords all over the yard. My short extension cord is about 3 feet too short to use, and I’m not about to go buy a new cord just to be able to get the exact length I need, so I settle for a coiled, bunched up cord along the side of the house. The other problem is that I have to run a cord around the back of the house. When the new garage was built, I had an extra outdoor outlet installed so I wouldn’t have to do that, but I realized yesterday in order for the lights on each side of the house to go on and off at the same time, I needed them to be on the same light sensor. This was something I didn’t think of when I was planning out the lights this year. Maybe I can still see about doing something because I really don’t want to have a cord running around the porch where someone could potentially trip on it.

After that was finished, we piled into the car to see about getting some stickers for the girls’ powderpuff derby cars. We didn’t get real creative with the design, just a plain Mustang look. They thought they could customize it with paint and stickers so we hit Michael’s to see what kind of stickers they had in the scrapbooking aisle. When we got back home we primed and applied the base coats. They are drying right now. Hopefully I can finish the base coats today before we leave for the Christmas Parade.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Christmas Time Again

The annual adventure of getting the Christmas tree up has been completed. Once again, I believe I have gone overboard with lights on the tree. Every year I tell myself I am going to tone it down, but yet every year it seems I use more and more lights. I will say that I am still under as far as the record goes (which is in the neighborhood of 2400).

This year we have 2050 lights on the tree, though I tell myself that isn’t quite the case as there are a few lights that are out here and there. That way I don’t feel so bad. We have to be careful with how long the tree is on because the heat from the lights will actually warm the room a degree or two.

After getting the lights on we spent a couple of hours unpacking/unboxing the ornaments and hanging them. The girls love this part the best, taking out their ornaments, hanging them, and then just looking at them. It really is cute to see Alison on her knees looking at the lights and the ornaments. The only problem is that we put the tree in a corner of the room so we lose about a third of the space of the tree because no one ever sees it. The result is that we have many ornaments that don’t even make it out of their boxes. One of these years we’ll figure out a good way to arrange the room that will allow us to have it more in the middle of the room so we have more actual hanging space for ornaments.

Pictures of the tree will be coming shortly, so look for them.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Last Minute Shopping

Last night I had to stop at the grocery store for a couple of things for Thanksgiving dinner (veggies, biscuits). What is the deal with people getting their last minute supplies? It was almost as bad as being out at 5:00 a.m. on Black Friday! People rushing around, banging their carts together... It is only food people! I mean it isn't like you are fighting to get an HDTV for $50. You are buying milk, pie, veggies... Get real! Kris told me she didn't want to step foot in the grocery store the week of Thanksgiving and I poo-poohed her. I guess she was right, although I can't for the life of me figure out why people would be so ridiculously crazy just buying food.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

November 25th

I have finally gotten around to starting an online journal for my family, and this is the very first post. please bear with me while I arrange my settings, etc. Soon you will be able to read all about the happenings of our family and what is new in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Admit it, you know you're curious now.

I tried to make the name of our blog unique as well as fun. What do you think?