Christmas 09

We're back from vacation! It was absolutely beautiful-- only one day was super nice weather, but there was no work, no dishes, no worrying or thinking and lots of family!
Below is the day we spent in Cozumel MX (the super nice day)

John and I at dinner one night

The entire family (minus Grandma and Baby Cosette) all strapped in for the zipline in Honduras.

Suzy, Kristen and Me waiting for the comedy act.

Christmas with my family the day after we came home from the cruise. I think each of those stockings were stuffed almost entirely with candy of some form. Our freezer is now full of chocolate.

It was such a nice vacation. It's such a blessing to get along with and enjoy John's family so much. It helps so much that I knew all of them as friends beforehand.

Now it's back to real boring life. FYI John hasn't heard anything back from that job in Texas.

Happy New Year everyone! :)

countdown to vacation time!

I've been sick for about a week with an energy-sucking head cold. The laundry hasn't been done. John has made dinner the past two nights. Good luck finding whatever you're looking for if you left it on the floor because it's a popular place for everything from tootsie roll wrappers to coupons that fell off the table to cranberries from stringing cranberries and popcorn the other night. Working six days this week may also have contributed to me wanting to just sit on the couch and sleep. John has been a trooper though and has run errands for me, not complained about wearing the same clothes to work days in a row, and gotten me medicine when I don't feel like moving. And now he's coming down with it. It'll be my turn to take care of him next :)

We leave for vacation in 13 days. SOOOOOO excited. We're so busy until then, I think it's going to fly by.

John has an interview this upcoming Wednesday morning, and we would appreciate any prayers people would be willing to give on our behalf. It would be such a great career move, but as with last time, leaving our friends, family and home would be difficult.

I think that's all. Just for fun I counted the pairs of shoes that are on the floor in our living room and NOT in the clost-- 5 pairs of shoes. Think we're lazy?? :)

changes

Lots of changes in 3 months... or at least there should be.
First of all, I turned 21 woo-hoo!


And John's birthday is next week but it's Thanksgiving so we celebrated together early. I made him pose with his candles... I think he hates it.




The picture below is his birthday LAST year. I thought I would post it to show how pathetic I am... not much has changed since then at all. I used the same pan to make him brownies two years in a row... I really need something new.


Other than lots of birthdays we've just been working, visiting family, John has been hunting and killed a deer, I've been shopping and killed the bank account-- the usual.

Oh-- I love Christmas even more than I love back-to-school shopping in case you can't tell.

I have been learning to be proficient in driving a stick shift lately. My car has some gas pressure problem, and so until John fixes it, on days that is is feasible I drive his car. It started out very jerky and tense, but I think it's going well... I am going appreciate my automatic car so very much once I get it back.

Our next door neighbor/friends had a baby this past month, and he is so so so cute. We get to see him through the window sometimes.

I signed up for a mini-marathon with my cousin Kaitlyn. Now, before you get impressed and think I'm some fantastic runner I should let you know that I can barely run 3 miles right now. And that's a big barely. It included a lie-down-on-this-bench-to-cure-my-side-ache break, and some stops at traffic lights (Kaitlyn if you read this don't worry, I'll keep training!).

Other than that... John is constantly looking at and applying for jobs so if one day I post that we're moving to Puerto Rico, or Texas or Alaska don't be surprised. I married an adventurer to be sure.

And to end this post... Some pictures of John and my sister Taryn... I think they get along in their craziness very well...

Kettle Corn

John and I were going to have a movie and popcorn night Wednesday night, and John decided that MAKING kettle corn would just make the whole experience more memorable. Someone gave us real popcorn kernels as a wedding present, and we had everything else so I didn't object too much (I believe "but it takes sooooooo long" came out of my mouth several times). John started heating the oil and sugar and all was going well-- I was getting just a tiny bit excited for the homemade popcorn that I was waiting so patiently for. Then I heard a pop and John screaming. Like a serious scream of pain. I went over to him and the oil had popped and a big chunk of sugary-oil had landed on his toe. Layers of skin instantly came off his toe. It was gross.

End of the story-- I went to Target while John sat on the couch nursing his toe to get burn cream, gauze, and microwave kettle corn.

And to think he says he would try it again...

Back to School Shopping

It's that time of year again. The seasonal section of Target is filled with bins of markers, crayons, pencils, and highlighters; Hannah Montana and Hello Kitty notebooks fill the aisle also. Ahhh I used to love looking at it all. Being homeschooled I never needed much... maybe 2 folders that I only needed because I said I needed them for cuteness purposes. John is going back to college this fall, and I thought maybe, just maybe he would need some supplies (think really big scheming smile on my face). My dreams of filling a cart with notebooks, highlighters, pens in every color, post-its, paperclips and on and on were on the brink of coming true!! I turned to John and asked him if we could go back to school supply shopping and he said "oh, I probably only need one notebook."

.........

We HAVE one notebook sitting somewhere in our desk. So much for back to school shopping. Our kids are going to have school supplies coming out of their ears and noses someday.


Aside from that not too much is new. We've been traveling a lot, our dryer is broken, we're addicted to watching Gilmore Girls, and John and I are having a race to see who can lose 5 pounds first. Not sure what the prize for winning will be...

Boston Day Trip

John has been wanting to take advantage of the free standby ticket air travel offered to employees for a while, so this week when our days off coincided for the first time ever (it seemed that way at least) we took a day trip to Boston! This was us at the start of the Freedom Trail (above).



This is the Bunker Hill Monument. It has 294 steps, and for some reason I wanted to climb it. John wasn't super excited about it, but he went along with it... and got to the top twice as fast as I did.


SOOO not worth it :)
John and his yummy clam chowder.


It started raining around 1pm and since we were getting around the city almost entirely on foot, we decided to head home rather than be miserable, wet and grouchy. However, the storm delayed all flights in and out of Boston... with a 2 hour delay on flights, all of the people on the later flights were going standby for the earlier flights that were leaving when theirs were supposed to. This is a line of people waiting for rebooking for connecting flights.


So John and I sat at the airport from about 2:30 to 8:30. We had a good time though. buying Starbucks always makes the time go faster. Next time we're going to check the weather first guaranteed :)

sunburns in april

It's finally spring! John and I have been out walking this week enjoying the weather. It was absolutely GORGEOUS!


John planted some flowers a couple of weeks ago when it was nice.

John went fishing with my Dad, Gramps, and Uncle today. It was the opening day of walleye fishing. My mom and I went to the Freeland area garage sales, but after about five stops, and the sight of a traffic jam of fellow garage salers in a one stop-light town we gave up and went to Applebee's where Christi works.

John is doing two more weeks of training, but in Detroit this time rather than Minneapolis. He gets out every day by two, so it's like two whole weeks of vacation. One more week of the day training schedule and then it's back to nights for him!

The end.

hurray for the library!

John and I went for a drive today. Not really to do anything or go anywhere... just out for a drive, looking at houses, seeing what there is to see in Canton. I remember when my parents would do that with us and it would drive me crazy... :-O We ended up at the library where they have internet!!!!

John and I both have this entire weekend off, so today we're trying to get some stuff done around the house. We're trimming an insanely ugly and thorny bush, rehanging a mirror, planting some flowers, moving a big comfy chair out of our kitchen and back upstairs where it belongs... lots of little stuff. We'll probably move out of this house before we have everything painted and hung. OH! Completely unrelated -- John bought me wii fit :) :) :) SOOOO happy.

We're going on a family vacation with John's ENTIRE family next month. It was a blast last year without Suzy, Jim, 0r Krissa, so it can only be better this year.

John is going to be working third shift for another six months for sure. He's slowly (I think) getting more used to the schedule and able to get better sleep during the day. He's even stopped taking pop to work to drink on his lunch! I still love working at Panera only for the people I work with. I am SO not cut out to be in a service industry of any sort, other than serving children. I get way too irritated when people behave in a way that I don't think they should. I really do like going to work though.

--Amy

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year... and everything else I missed

So... it's been a while. It's really a bummer not having the internet, and Panera's wireless is kind of iffy so this is the one thing that has fallen through the cracks. In the past two months John and I celebrated our first anniversary (with a trip to Florida... picture below) and that's about all. See! No one missed much.

I also make John babysit with me sometimes. The kids kind of liked him and wouldn't let anyone else hold him. And I can't figure out how to make this NOT underlined.


We babysat FOUR kids and I don't think John freaked out once. He's actually really good at it.

I'm still working at Panera Bread and actually really like it. It's not very cool, but I love the people I work with. Last week some of us girls from work went out for dinner and ice cream. The employees at this Panera actually become friends :)

John and I are figuring out how to make the night working thing work a little bit better for us. I stop making him feel guilty for sleeping and leaving me all alone and he sleeps easier, better and longer. He spends a couple minutes talking to me, and then I'm okay to be without him for the rest of the day. Too bad it took us almost four months to figure it out.

John has an official title at church now. He's the sound system man twice a month. Now, he already missed his one Sunday because we were in Florida, and the Wednesday night because he had to work... but I'm sure he'll actually run the sound system one of these days. I think MY objective for the lunch hour at church is to snatch as many babies as I can. Am I right Caitlin? Detroit has an abudance of children under the age of 5 who are super cute and have mothers who are willing to give them up for a little while.

We leave for California Saturday to visit the family.

That's all. I'll post again in June :)