Ali’s First Sleepover

Sarah spent Sunday night at her friend Zoe’s house. Zoe and her were planning Zoe’s sister’s birthday party this coming weekend. Alison came with and as we were driving home she asked me when she could have a sleepover because she had never had one before. When she got home she asked Kris as well. Alison ended up asking Olivia (Zoe’s sister) to sleepover last night. I think she was so happy to have a friend sleep over, but she was also worried because she wanted it to be perfect. They (Ali & Olivia) were up late playing games and watching movies, and actually went to bed sooner than I would have thought. They came up to say goodnight around 10:30. I was happy that Ali had a good time.

Papercuts

Is there anything worse than a papercut? I am in my office this morning shredding all sort of papers that I don’t need anymore and I was tearing up my 2009 wall calendar. I have a cross cut shredder and it wasn’t “grabbing” the paper. This is a very heavy grade of paper, I would call it poster quality. So when the shredder finally grabbed it, I wasn’t ready and the edge of the paper cut into my pinky. What is worse, is that as I tried to pull my finger away, the paper cut in deeper. I shook my hand right away and sprayed blood on my pants and desk, Not a whole lot, but enough. I wrapped it in a tissue and went to get a band aid. Well the stupid thing bled for almost an hour! Who would have thought that a papercut would have done that?

The Princess and the Frog

We got to go to The Princess and the Frog today. The Packers spanked the Seahawks so I skipped watching the second half and got some things done around the house which freed us up to go to the late afternoon showing.

Both the girls liked the movie. It was a typical Disney princess story, so if you were expecting any surprises, sorry to tell you there aren’t any. The story was cute. It was set in early 20th century New Orleans (I would put it in the middle of the roaring 20s) and centers around a young girl who is a waitress, but dreams of owning her own restaurant someday. She is persuaded to kiss a frog, who is really Prince Naveen, who has been transformed by an evil voodoo witch doctor. But instead of making the prince human again, she is transformed into a frog also. With the help of a jazz loving alligator and a cajun firefly, they set out to find a way to become human again before it is too late. I enjoyed the jazz music and the songs were very good.

I remember seeing something when they first announced this movie a couple of years ago about it being Disney’s first “black princess”. However, I think that unless you go into the movie with some sort of preconceived notion of what to expect from the characters, you don’t even notice it. I know that I didn’t, and I was aware of all the buzz around it.

I will give the movie a good A-.

Christmas 2009

Christmas 2009 has come and gone. Alison started out the holiday sick. She had a fever of 101 on Christmas Eve and we ended up having to stay home and cancel our plans to go over the Kris’ parents’ house. We felt bad, but we didn’t want to go over there and then possibly contribute to Kris’s mom or dad getting sick. All in all it was OK, since Kris had to work Christmas Eve this year and would have been rushing to get over there after she got home.

It really was a crummy Christmas too as far as the weather goes. It was rainy and just generally dreary outside. The kind of day you would just rather stay in bed under the nice, warm blankets and sleep. Ali was up early and was eager to get started on opening the gifts that Santa had brought, but we waited until Sarah finally woke up. The girls got games for their DS’s and the Wii. I think Band Hero was their favorite, but Sports Resort was also a pretty good one. Ali got Connect 4 x 4 and Sarah got books #2 and #3 in the Twilight series. She was very excited when she opened those. The rest of the day was spent opening boxes and reading directions to make sure that we knew how to play all the games. Band Hero took me forever to figure out since the directions were really pretty bad for how to hook everything up.

Kris wasn’t feeling well in the afternoon so we decided to skip the traditional Christmas Day family movie. We were planning on heading out to see the new Disney movie, the Princess and the Frog. The updated plan is to go after the Packers game on Sunday. My review will follow (assuming we go).

It's Official

We received an automated call from the School District superintendent tonight about a couple of things, but most import was the announcement that the School District Board has approved redistricting plans. This of course officially means that Ali will not be going to Riverside next year. Alison was in tears when we told her. I think it is more the fact that the majority of her friends will not be going with her. On top of that, Ali’s Brownie Troop will also be split in half.

We aren’t sure about how she will get to school, but I know that I don’t want her walking. Right now we are approximately 1 mile from (3) schools. We are able to bus Alison because she would have to cross (2) major streets (so we are told). With Shady Lane, she will have to cross one major road, Main Street, which has a stop light as well as a crossing guard I believe. So I don’t know if bussing will be an option.

We’ll see how things shake out in the coming months. If we have to drive her to school every day anyway, then I would rather take her to Riverside. We were told that open enrollment wasn’t an option, so it may not make any difference, but we still want to make sure that we fight for what we think is best for Ali.

Trip Home

Sarah was feeling better Saturday so we drove up to visit my brother and his girlfriend for Christmas this weekend. I don’t get a chance to make it home very often, especially since my folks made the defection to Florida, so it was nice to finally get back. We got up there a little earlier than planned so I took the girls on a sight seeing trip around Neenah and Menasha. I took a route through town that I haven’t taken in a long time, and boy, have there been changes. Bergstrom Paper is gone, and there is all sorts of other buildings that have been knocked down and replaced. We took a drive past the sledding hill at Clovis Grove and I remarked, apparently as I always do, that the hill looks much smaller than it did 30 years ago when I was sledding down it on a regular basis (FYI, my brother has confirmed that the hill was indeed larger when we were kids). Kris was making fun of me for sounding old driving around and pointing out “that was so-and-so’s house” or “that’s where I went to school, or when I pointed out the window in the St. Mary’s clock tower where I climbed to in HS.

All in all it was a fun trip. It was nice to be able to spend some time with my brother. The girls love going up to visit. The only drawback was not getting over to see my other brother since he was gone all day coaching at a basketball game. Maybe next time.

Puking

Wed. night Sarah went to bed saying she wasn’t feeling real well. I told her to go to bed and get some rest and she would feel better in the morning. Well she was up around midnight complaining about her stomach hurting. About 45 minutes later she was tossing her cookies all over. Then Ali woke up and had to get put back to bed. Sarah ended up throwing up at 2:50 and at 4:50. It was strange that is was almost 2 hours exactly in between vomiting episodes. So when I had to get up for work, I told her just to stay in bed and sleep. We are hoping that she gets better because we have plans to go visit my brother back home in Menasha this weekend and would hate to have to cancel.

Student Of The Month

Ali was awarded the Student of the Month this month for Mrs. Weber’s class. This month’s trait was responsibility. After hearing about Ali at her conference with Mrs. Weber, I can’t say I am surprised. She had her lunch with the Principal last Friday, which was a big deal. She was so proud, and Kris and I are very proud of her.

Trip to the Mall

Saturday after we got home from Sarah's meet we decided to take Alison to the mall to see Santa. She wanted Sarah to come with, but Sarah said she was too big to sit on Santa's lap (plus it is sort of creepy when you get to be that age). We got to Brookfield Square around 4:00 PM and proceeded to drive around the parking lot for about 15 minutes looking for a parking spot. It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the buttheads who decide to park in the middle of the aisles waiting for cars to leave their parking stalls, backing up all the traffic behind them.

When we finally got in, we had to literally push our way thru the crowd to get to Santa. Apparently no one told these people that there is a recession going on. Either that or they have bought into the Obama message that the recession is over (tell that to the over 10% of Americans who are still out of work... but I digress).

By the time we reached the middle of the mall it was almost 4:30. We were worried that we would be getting there just in time for Santa to take his dinner break. I asked and they told us that Santa usually takes hi break between 5:30 and 6:00, so we had at least an hour, closer to 90 minutes of waiting. We were at the VERY end of the roped off lines, but we figured that things would move pretty quick since there were a lot of adults in line. We were sort of right. There were a lot of adults in line, but there were also a couple of groups of adults who wanted their pictures taken with Santa. That's right, you heard me... ADULTS. And not just adults, these were grandmas... all sitting on Santa's lap and sitting on the arms of his chair. Nice! We want to just have our 7 year old tell Santa what she wants for Christmaas and we have to wait for a bunch of old bitties (who I hope aren't drunk) to sit on Santa's lap, not once but twice because they weren't happy with the 4 or 5 photos they took the first time. Unreal!

We finallly got up to see Santa after about a 45 minute wait. They were broadcasting the images via a streaming webcam so we had to sign a release. Unfortunately, we didn't know this ahead of time or we could have called a few people and see if they were interested in seeing Ali tell Santa what she wanted.


In the end, we bought the minimal package. We only wanted a small picture for out "Santa and Me" photo frame. As we were leaving the mall I mentioned to Kris that I really don't miss the Christmas shopping season, and she agreed. We have been doing the majority of our shopping online where we don't need to drive around forever looking for a parking spot or muscle our way thru a crowd. And the Santa pictures were usually done right at the start of the shopping season (in many cases before Thanksgiving) on a Sunday morning after church when the crowds were minimal. I think it must be something like 5 or 6 years since we actually fought the crowds at the malls at Christmas time, and with any luck we'll be back on an anti-crowd schedule next year.

Watertown Spirit

Saturday we went to Watertown for a big poms/dance competition. Sarah's squad was one of (6) middle school level, large (over 15 members) that was competing. The meet started at 9:00 and Sarah's squad was set to perform at 9:45. Then we had to wait around until 2:00 for awards. This was just for the younger girls. Shortly after 2:00 the high school level competition started. Sarah actually left at 7:00 with the high school cheer squads. That must have been a long day for the high school girls. Luckily we had the release form so that Sarah could come home with us, otherwise she wouldn't have been home until about 9:00 at night. Now that would have been a long day!

More from St. Nick's Day

Since I am putting up a few photos, here are the girls with their stockings the morning after St. Nick came:

Have I Mentioned I Hate My Neighbors?

Well, have I? Here is the latest that they have done to pi$$ me off.

We had our first big snow on Tuesday night into Wednesday. I got up early to snowblow the driveway so I could get out to go to work. It was still snowing when I left and when the plow cam through Kris had to go back out and snowblow/shovel again.

When I got home I was informed that our wonderful neighbors, the ones who can’t clean out the garage to park their cars, has a snowblower this year. The past few years he would just shovel his driveway (if he decided to do it at all). Most times he would just leave it and drive over it. Then when it got cold enough to ice over you could hear him (or her) drive up because of the loud crunching of the ice under the car. From time to time I would be nice and snowblow their sidewalk, but after a while I just gave up. As I said, he has a snowblower now. And at about 8:30 am (just before the power went out) I was informed that the house was being pelted with wet snow. So now he apparently doesn’t know how to direct his chute. I mean how rude is it to simply pelt someone else’s house with the snow from your snowblower?

Then when I got home, I needed to do a quick shovel job on some of the snow that was starting to blow back over the areas that we had previously done with the snowblower. As I get to the end of our sidewalk, I hit a large area/chunk of ice on the pavement. Apparently the rocket scientist just blew the snow across the already cleared portion of my sidewalk with the wet, slushy mix when it was still warm and then as the temp dipped it turned to ice and froze to the concrete. Again, how much of an idiot can be you to shoot your snow into a cleared area on someone else’s property and then just leave it? If that ever happens when I am snowblowing, I will either go back and shovel or go over it with the snowblower.

If this keeps up it is going to be a long winter. The next time I see him outside I will be mentioning this to this butthead.

Who Turned the Winter On?

Starting last week Friday, it is official; winter has arrived. The day started out good, but by the time I got home from work to take Ali to swim lessons the temp had dropped to the low 20s and had gotten very windy. Then we got our first snow that stuck on Monday. It was just a trace amount, maybe a half an inch, but it was something. Then Tuesday we got our first big storm. I thin we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 6" - 8" of snow in the Falls.

It was enough to cancel school on Wednesday. It was a wet, heavy snow too. Enough so to down trees and power lines. Our power went out about 8:30 am and it didn’t come back on until about 4:30. Kris took the girls over to her parents’ house for the day, and when they finally go back, the temp in the house was down to 61 degrees. I should also add that once the snow stopped falling, the temps just dropped. We were in the single digits Wed. Night and Thursday, and more today; all with wind chills in the neighborhood of 10 - 20 below. Looks like it is going to be a long winter. Someone tell Al Gore to come live here for a year and then tell me more about global warming!

As Promised

Here are a couple of pictures of Alison from her Christmas concert.



I may be partial, but Ali was the cutest one up there.

Happy St. Nicholas Day

Or is it Merry St. Nicholas Day? Ali was so happy this morning because St. Nick brought her the Barbie ornament she had been wanting. It was so fun seeing her face light up when she saw her stocking and said St. Nick came, and then pulled out the ornament. I'd post photos, but I had a long day and don't feel like hooking up the camera, so as soon as I feel motivated, I'll post them. Enjoy the evening, I have to go finish work on Alison's powderpuff derby car. We have two days to finish it, and I have to go and spray on the clear coat. Once that's done I can attach the wheels and sand the wood filler on the bottom. This year's car is going to be aswesome.

Winter Weather

Dec. 3rd and we finally have our first winter weather advisory. Looks like we’ll be getting snow with some high winds tonight. Living in Wisconsin is just great! The good thing is that at least we didn’t get any snow in October or November. I'm betting we don't get much though.

2009 Christmas Concert

Last night we had Alison’s Riverside Christmas Concert. Since this will most likely be Ali’s last concert at Riverside, we wanted to make sure we got a good seat. So we got to school an hour before the concert started. The concert is split up into two parts, K-2nd grade and then 3rd-5th grade. This year we don’t have to sit thru both of them, and the parents are usually crazier for the little kids, so the first half is usually crazy. And guess what? There were already people there and all the front row seats were taken. It is really annoying that you can just throw a jacket on a chair, and then leave for an hour, come back, and just expect to get those seats. I wouldn’t have a problem with saving a seat if you were actually there! But we figured we’d suffer through it. We were actually directly in front of where Ali was standing and we were on the aisle, so we figured we’d be OK.

The second complaint is with respect to the parents. Now I don’t want to sound as if I think we are better than any of the other kids/families at Riverside, but what is the deal with getting there early, and then just letting your kids run wild all over the gym, all over the risers, and in and out of all the seats? Apparently behavior is not a big priority with these parents. We let Alison go talk to a couple of her friends but she was not allowed to go running all over causing trouble.

My next question is why do we always seem to attract the losers? For what seems like every single year (though I am sure I am wrong) we always sat by many of the same parents, and they were the epitome of the white trash stereotype. They were parents of kids in Sarah’s class, so I thought this year we would be safe. Well it wasn’t to be. The other parents who sat near us all smelled like a dirty ashtray, or looked like they hadn’t bothered showering, or had hair-dos straight out of about 1992. Nice look people. By the end of the show, I was feeling sick from inhaling the smoke fumes off of the family that sat in front of us!

Finally, I realized that with Alison, we have really nothing in common with most of the families of the kids in her grade range. Sure there are one or two families, but for the most part, I couldn’t care less about the families. With Sarah and her class, Kris and I always mingled/talked with her friends’ parents and it was always fun to go to her school events. Not so with Ali. We had no one there to talk to last night. It was really sort of depressing.

I'll pot a picture or two of Ali once I download them.