Is it the end of the year already?

Wow. Another year gone by. This one has been eventful, but overall a pretty good year. Based on my last blog post (in APRIL!), everyone knows I have a new son, now 8 months old. I think I also covered the fact that we bought a house. Shortly after the baby was born, I was laid off from Genesis, and spent about 3 months on unemployment and taking care of the kids. Since then, I've been working at Community Health Care, in the Davenport office. I stay busier, and have a lot more variety in my work than I did with Genesis, so overall I'm really enjoying my new job.

Once I started working again, Allison quit to stay home with the boys. She is also babysitting a 4 month old boy now, for one of her former coworkers. At least, she is when we can keep everyone in our household healthy enough to have the baby over.

We spent Christmas eve with the Mom, Brad, & Joda, visiting Grandpa Dunn's and Dad's houses along the way. Unfortunately, we were all miserably sick (especially me) on Christmas day, so we didn't make it to Allison's side of the family.

Connie just came up last night, and the boys opened presents from her. William has got so many toys now that I don't know how he'll have time to play with them all. Ryan got several great presents, including a project kit called Snap Circuits. It's basically a bunch of electronic components (transistors, resistors, diodes, etc) molded into hard plastic with snaps on each end. Using the metal snaps to connect various compoents, you can build all kinds of electronic projects. He played with it all evening last night, and loved it. He built a touch lamp, a radio transmitter, a motion detector, and a handful of other projects from the book last night. It's definitely a hit.

We also got a new TV this Christmas. Dad came up one weekend and helped me mount it on the wall and run wiring to a nearby closet to install the Tivo etc in. Mounting it on the wall was MUCH easier than I expected, and it looks great. We used some money we got for christmas to buy a Blu-Ray player, and it's installed in the closet too. Just yesterday I got in the remote control booster system I ordered, and tore some of the molding off to run wires to the closet yet again. At least now I can use the remote control while in front of the TV. For the last few days, every time we wanted to use the Blu-Ray player, we had to have one person in front of the TV telling the other person in Wililam's bedroom which buttons to push on the remote. FUN!

Tonight, it's New Year's Eve, and we're going to Michelle's for the evening. As I understand it, Tony has some entertainment planned for the evening. Then, another long weekend. It's going to be rough having to work a full week next week. Well, I think that about covers the last 8 months or so. :) Any questions?

Another day, another President. . .

Okay, so maybe getting a new president isn’t an everyday event, but I sure am glad it’s finally over.  It seems like the election coverage started years ago, and after that ended it went straight into what will Obama do for this or for that.  We even had about 2 solid weeks of ‘pre-coverage’ of the inauguration, which is what, an hour long event?  I’m very happy for the guy, but enough is enough.  Maybe the newsies will finally let the President settle down and get a few days out of the media eye.

As for the ‘another day’ part of the title, I guess that’s just life.  One day at a time.  I received somewhat disturbing news yesterday morning, and have spent a lot of time thinking about that.  I don’t want to say a whole lot more about here it until I get confirmation, but suffice it to say I’ll be thinking about it a lot for the next week. 

One bit of good news, Ryan had a pretty darned good day today.  He woke up for breakfast this morning without a fuss, took his pill very smoothly, and even got dressed and ready for school all with a great attitude.  Thank goodness for small things, because last night he was very ADHD and with things on my mind, I wasn’t in the mood. 

I guess that’s it for today.  I’ll leave you with a pic I snapped tonight of Ryan as he was working on his homework.

Of course, he didn’t want his picture taken, so it’s more of him hiding from the camera than doing homework.  

No school again tomorrow

Based again on the forecast for extremely low temperatures tomorrow, local schools have decided to take the day off.  Unfortunately, Fridays are a day I really need to be at work, so I’ll be going in tomorrow morning while Allison sleeps in at home with Ryan. 

With Monday off for the MLK holiday, this will make a 5 day weekend for students and teachers.  Though I’d rather they close school for actual ‘snow days’, rather than for extreme cold, but either way I’m glad they are giving the kids a couple of days off.  Everybody enjoys an ‘extra’ day now and again.

This would be a good morning to stay home from work and curl up in bed…

So that’s just what I’m doing.  After our 6” snowfall yesterday, the local schools saw fit to stay open, so Ry went to class as normal.  By noon however, they had decided to close schools for today, due to the predicted below zero temperatures and high wind chill factor.  Since Ryan was going to be out of school, I decided to take the day off as well.  He’s still tucked warm in his bed, sound asleep.  I should be in bed too, but I’ve still got this itch bothering me, and woke up half an hour ago unable to sleep because my legs itched so bad.  Hopefully these meds the Dr gave me this week will help clear it up. 

Anyway, my sympathy to all of you who had to get up this morning and go to work in these bitter cold temperatures.  I’ll be thinking of you as I climb back in bed in a few minutes and try to catch a few more Z’s before Ryan wakes up.  :)

Don't I have a good lookin' kid?

Just don't tell him, it'll go to his head! :)