Merry Christmas!

God Bless Us Everyone!

I've been busy with my two kiddos the last weeks, so no pictures going out in the mail this year. But here's The Grabers, edition 2012. Merry Christmas!

In the Bag

               I love the way God works things out. We needed a new bigger vehicle, and we didn't want a van. Old people drive vans. Besides I wanted 4x4 and towing. Through my research I decided to go for a jeep. Jeeps are tough. I looked and looked. Worried, fretted, and looked. The faithful old Grand Prix is beginning to sigh with age and it has just rolled over 300,000 miles. The tires up front are beginning to wear really funny. It is beginning to run rough on cold mornings, and the power windows are dying one by one.Such is the state of affairs with it. Oh, and we just had a baby and needed something much more reliable and a little more roomy. I actually lost some sleep over it. I would find a deal only to have it taken away at the last minute. By the way why do we do this to ourselves? Anyway last night I found an older Jeep with only 126,000 miles on craiglist, and it felt right. Still I could not help myself but look at a newer one today before I finally went and got this one. (Stupid me)
       It was a young man and his wife just like us. They were church going people with three children. I looked at the vehicle for about 15 min and decided it would stupid to leave with out it. When I shook his hand and told him my prayers had been answered, he indicated he felt the same way. Lo and behold he had been laying awake at night wishing it would sell. In retrospect I realize why all those other deals fell through and the cool part is we have money left in savings. God knows what He is doing even if we don't. He not only answered my prayers but answered the prayers of another in the process. Isn't that cool?!?!

I haven't found any rust on the paint.

.... Or Scratches for that matter.

 Anyway till later

Clark

;
         

Asher James Graber

For all of those who wanted to see pictures.

The Details

Sucking his thumb or picking his nose. Not sure which.

So Peaceful

Introducing Brothers.

Sleeping.

Awake

Big yawn.

So Tiny.

I hope to get a better hands picture than this.

I think it is another yawn.

In mommy's lap.

Looking

Get that camera out of my face, I want to eat!!

That is all for now!!

-Clark-

Things I Am Going To Do When I Get Big (and other stuff)

  1. Be the head chef at the hospital. I will cook good food from scratch. None of this boxed, canned junk. Yuck! After all, the patients are supposed to be recovering.
  2. Have an interior design business. Because I think it would be fun.
  3. Have a fabric store in our local town that sells a variety of nice, pretty, wearable stuff that all generations would like. And you won't have to pay an arm and leg for it either.
  4. Have a clothing store. With nice good quality clothing for all ages that's pretty. And reasonably priced. (I had a rather unsuccessful shopping trip (s), can you tell?)
 o 5. Have a coffee shop with pretty decor, quiet soothing music, and private little corners and booths. I'll serve cheesecakes and other dainties (Affordable pricing of course. I will not charge you $5 for a tiny, little bowl of soup.) Oh and I will have a parking lot!
  6. Have a quiet little corner somewhere in my house that's all mine! Coffee and reading and thinking and writing to take place there. This is likely the only one on the list that will happen someday.  :)

 ************************************

   In other news, we are on countdown. It's hard to believe we're in sight of the end. Yay! I've forgotten all about being up and nights and the dead tiredness, and stuff; I just want this baby OUT to look at and hold. Ah well, reality will strike soon.Nesting has been very bad the last several weeks. Poor Clark was afraid he would come home some evening to find the living room disarrayed and half painted. Fortunately I firmly told myself if I could feel like doing something big and ambitious like that, I could do something more practical like clean a corner.
  Benny is doing all the normal two year old stuff. He has no clue how soon or how badly his little world is going to turn upside down. It's not going to hurt him either. After a few weeks of horrible grouches and bad behavior I took him off milk again. Seems he does fine with cheese, yogurt, butter, and with milk in foods. He can even have milk in his cold cereal or muffins. Just not sippy cups full.
   And that's more or less our life right now. We are shopping for a vehicle but so far haven't met with success. If one vehicle leaves you sitting beside the road on a test drive, and another needs to have the battery charged before you can test drive it, well, let's just say you know for sure you don't want those. 
   And that's our life right now.  Very likely the next post will happen when there is a family announcement to make. :)

A Long Overdue Post

So our computer crashed and went to the repair shop. And we've had it back for a long time, but some how the blogging didn't happen. So here are few pictures of our summer.

  Father-Son Campout 

  

 Where big boys catch big fish,

 And little boys turn into fish.

A short work weekend at the cabin.

With time for friends too.

A picnic at a local park with the Grabers one lovely Sunday evening.

Family times in our yard. 

A weekend with the Hess family. And this is about the only people picture of that weekend. 

A little boy that celebrated his second birthday. Where did the time go?!

Youth night.

And lots of regular family life at home. This by the way is a "toot train". Lots of imagination going on. He inherited honestly from both of us I'm afraid.

And that's a really swift re-cap of our summer. Next I want to do a post on life in the last week.

A small update

Our computer crashed several weeks ago, so I am trying to do this on my Tab. It's not working very well. Imagine typing with one finger. Skype wouldn't cooperate with Blogger.
   So this is just to say we are healthy and happy and our summer is progressing nicely. The weather has finally cooled off, ans we can live with the windows open instead of the A.C.
   I've been dreaming of lots of interior improvements, but I have a feeling they will wait until after baby time. I have a million other things that need to happen before then
   So anyway, that's what is happening in our corner of the world. You all enjoy the last few weeks of summer!

Our Saturday Project

We live by a busy highway. Think loaded logging trucks. We have a busy two year old that moves, fast! And even though he informs me, "Road no-no," he is not to be trusted outside by himself. So, our solution.... a fenced in play area. We collected the materials and recruited help.

This is before we started Sat.  Clark had worked on it some by himself two other days. 

Mom came down in the morning as we got started. Benny was more then happy to "help" (hinder?). 

I could sit on a chair and help hold pickets in place. :)

The rest of the family trickled in over the course of the day. Lance cut lots and lots of pickets. Brad mowed the lawn. 

 

I didn't really help that much. 

 Abbey found a flower bed to weed. Francis helped her and Lance by turns. Amy found a house to clean. 

The neighbor came over with a wagon his children have outgrown. Benny was delighted with his "cuk" (truck).

And we got it finished! 7 1/2 hours of hard work. And it was hot that day too. 

We just need to make the gates yet.  Many many thanks to the family for helping.  

It looks really nice the way it is now, but I want to paint it sometime to keeping it from deteriorating. 

Clark's comment after we were done, "I feel like I got my summer back now." Yay! Maybe we can go fishing now.

PS. Photo credits to Clark and Mom.

Hello,
        The season for fishing has arrived and with it many memories. One of the distant memories I have now comes floating through the abyss of time, and if you will indulge me, I will regal you to the best of my ability with the incidents of that memory. I must confess however, details become somewhat seasoned with the passage of time, but I will do my best to stay true to the facts.
        It all started with an island on the Turtle Flambeau Flowage and a small but complete collection of my immediate relatives. This collection of relatives has an acute appetite for fishing. It was on a balmy summer evening that I, my wife, sister, and her husband betook it upon ourselves to go in pursuit of the fishes. One of the most successful accomplishments was the landing of a nice, plump bass. I will briefly mention in passing that yours truly took the credit for this piece of skill and sportsmanship.  (My dear wife says she doesn't recall that particular fish, but I do.) We caught many other fishes also, but I won't mention them here.
         After fishing ourselves to the point of insanity and to the point where darkness was beginning to show its first shadowy talons, we decided to return to the campsite. Upon arriving we showed off our great catch to the others that cared to listen. It so happened that night was beginning to come on and it would be quite late till we had rendered our catch fit for consumption. So we determined to stow them in a cooler and take the cooler to another remote island.
          My father gave me instructions as to the location of the perfect spot to store it. "You shouldn't have to get out of the boat," he informed me. "It shouldn't be any problem at all." Ladies and Gentlemen, statements like this should be banned. They are the omen of impending doom. Upon parting ways with someone who has just made this statement a person should go to a very safe spot, put on full body armer, and lock all the doors. Then he should refuse to come out until some else has completed the task that "shouldn't be any problem at all".
         Nevertheless I fell for this one. I departed to the afore mentioned location and when I saw it I told myself in my thoughts that "This shouldn't be any problem at all." This had to have been the last nail in the coffin, because the situation rapidly disintegrated from this point on. The location consisted of a couple of rocks right by the shore that were perfectly positioned to hold a cooler. I positioned myself in a strategic position and reached out to grasp one of the rocks. I concluded that if I were able to pull myself into the shore via the rocks I should then be able to easily swing the cooler over the edge and be on my way. The rock didn't come closer. Instead being rebellious in nature it decided to move away, taking the entire island with it. I am slow of mind and even slower of action so not fully comprehending the nature of the situation I continued to stay attached to the rock. I now was in a prone position above the water. The lake, not to be outdone, decided to enter the canoe. In those brief moments, I did some calculations, and I calculated that if I did not get out of the canoe the lake would get in it. There fore I must go in the lake. As I stared at the black waters below me, I had a brief thought "This is going to be wet." The thought was instantly confirmed. The waters closed over my head in a watery boom. Fortunately I entered the water in a flat position other wise it wouldn't have been deep enough to get me all wet. I resumed a standing position and put the cooler in the proposed location and seeing that it was only knee deep boarded my now partially water logged canoe. Now as canoes are not designed to accommodate water for ballast, my ride to get a change of clothes was rather tricky and again the lake and I made contact. I will explain how it happened here. I motored up to the shore and put the prow into the beach as well as any expert. I then turned to pull up the motor. Canoes are narrow, I am not. Upon reaching a certain point in my effort to raise the motor, Isaac Newton once again revisited the situation, insisting that that was far to much weight to support the current situation. Why such an action as turning around to reach the motor should have recalled this age old law of gravity I don't know, but in I went again.
       Upon changing my clothes I considered not telling my relations about the incident. There were two factors which prevented this. One was my now soaked camera and the second was the explaining of a fresh set of clothes. I need not tell you that they laughed.

That is all for now!!

Hope you enjoyed.

Clark

Sort of Breaking the Silence

   This blog hasn't been very active lately. But I have an excuse, a really good excuse. You see, I've been sick for the last several months.  And I kept hoping I'd get better. But I haven't, at least not like I was planning to. With Benny's pregnancy, I felt really good after 1'st trimester.  Not this time. So maybe I"ll have one of those be-sick-for-nine-months deals. And no, peppermint, ginger, vitamins, and even nausea meds. don't really help me. Ugh! Anyway. But we are happy and excited about the new baby. So in the end it will be worth it, hopefully. I keep reminding myself that I'd much rather have this "problem" then be facing cancer or Lyme or something like that. We got to see our healthy, active baby via ultrasound the other day. For anyone having a rough pregnancy, do an ultrasound. It makes the bad sick days more bearable.
   And so I am learning to pace myself very carefully. To work on the days that I feel well, and on the bad days, to be ok with not doing. Which means my expectations have to be kept very, very low, because there are more bad and middling days then good days so far. To make sure that I save enough energy to take care of Benny all day if nothing else. And people were very kind and took good care of us when I was at my worst.
   Benny had a few rough weeks of adjustments. But the last month has been much better. And it did help when I got through the worst of the sickness and could intelligently take care of him again. He's just pretty sure I should be able to understand everything he babbles. He loves being outside, and goes nuts on days like today when it's raining too much to go outside.
   Speaking of rain, it's been raining a lot this past week or so. I've been enjoying it. But my poor garden is looking like a jungle. Perhaps on a sunshiny day if I feel well enough, I can do something about that.
  And now I must see if that pile of clean laundry can be tackled, and my wardrobes changed out. I need to bake bread too, but that's going to have to wait for another day.

Little Boy Meets Mud Puddle

What Fun!

Summer Is Here!

1:30 am

I was putting Benny back to sleep, his last stubborn molar is bothering him. I heard the wind chimes, and couldn't figure it out, because there wasn't enough wind in the trees to be shaking them. I stood up to put Benny back in bed, and looked out the window. There was a black thing out in the yard.  I figured it was the neighbors Black Lab that occasionally gets loose and roams. Then it lifted it's head and I saw it was a bear. A little one, but still a bear none the less. It was by the bird feeder, which explained the wind chimes. The bird feeder is about five feet from the house. I got Clark, but by the time he came out it had disappeared.
   My brother was staying here overnight and sleeping on the couch. I asked him how it felt to be sleeping eight feet from a bear. He said he didn't know because 'til he woke up the bear was gone. I think he was disappointed he didn't get to see it.
   This morning the bird feeder is in shreds. The post it was hanging from is bent to the ground. A bag of trash was dragged to the ditch behind the house and scattered.
   In the four years we've lived here, we've seen a wolf, deer and now a bear on or close to our property. Yeah, even though we technically live in a 'village', we are way more in the wilderness then I realize ( the highway running by my front door doesn't help reality). But I like my wilderness.

From the Back Deck...

    It's springtime! We're loving it! Benny and I are currently on the back deck enjoying warm weather. I was having trouble making him understand why he has to stay on the deck. I went to uncover something in the flower bed, and of course he followed. We still have a few inches of snow in the backyard, and he was barefoot. He's content to stay on the deck now.
   So I'm sitting here dreaming of yard improvements. What I'd love is a screened in porch, a fire pit, a sandbox for Benny, a raised strawberry bed, a stone walk, a clothesline, an arbor.... Dreams are free at least. 
   Life has been nice and normal lately. Benny is saying new words everyday it seems. We are enjoying having Dru's around for a few weeks. 
   And that's really everything that's going in our lives right now. Not much and normal, but those times are nice too.  Enjoy spring!

A Real Snow Storm

This what I saw out the front door this morning. 

An attempt to clear some snow. 

This is what I got done before the snowblower died. 

A good size limb down. 

More snow shoveling. My dad is coming down with his big blower to finish. 

It is still coming and so I left a corner to measure it when it is finally finished snowing.