Another year..

Another Christmas has been survived. We only had 2 gatherings to go to this year. We got by pretty easy. It was pretty relaxing. Thursday we went to Jamie's parent's house for lunch and were home by 4:30. On Friday we headed to my parent's house late afternoon and got home around 10. Aside from the horrendous fog we had to drive home in, we had a very fun evening. The kids were happy with their gifts and now that Emma has a Nintendo DS our car rides are a little quiter =)

Jamie and I are both off the rest of this week. Not sure if we are totally sane! I had to leave the house today for a little sanity saver.. I did take Emma with me. We headed to the library and then Wal Mart...pretty exciting stuff, but way better than staying at home with 2 children whose idea of fun is beating on each other!

Stay sane this week and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Wow Sandy, that is one fine sweater. I don't remember it from your Mom though. I just wanted to drop a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!! Safe travels!!

You asked for it...

So here I am in the 1st annual PPI Ugliest Sweater contest. I am proud to say that I got 2nd place. I lost by 1 point to our I.T. guy who wore a hot pink Poncho w/ fish on it. I did not get a picture of him...but believe me when I say it was ugly!

Please take note when admiring my shirt that I found this in the dark depths of my mom's closet. You may remember it..she bought it when she worked at the High School because she thought the kids would enjoy it. Bringing back memories? =)

Have a great day and I am proud to say my outfit is much better today!

I agree! BRRRR...

Wow. It's really cold for only being December. It was -13 yesterday when I drove in. That wasn't the wind chill. That was just the temp. Today it's slightly "warmer", but we are getting quite a bit of snow, again. What will January be like?!?

O.K. Sandy, you promised some ugly sweater pics!!! Where are they? My sister-in-law and her boyfriend did that last year at Christmas with some friends. They found matching Mickey/Minnie Mouse sweaters at a Goodwill. His was a little too small which made it all the more funny.

We have a crazy night tonight. We are leaving for Iowa tomorrow so we have to get packed. Brian needs a haircut or his mom will have to complain about how long it is. We have a few more goodie tins to drop off at the neighbors and some friends. I have one more gift to wrap. Then there is the grocery shopping and food to make for Brian's Christmas party Wednesday afternoon:) I had hoped to get a few more things done over the weekend, but since I was on call that didn't happen. I spent most of the weekend here at work. At least they let me be at home during the night!

I should get to work:(
Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!!!

BRRRR

Baby it is cold outside! Donna, I sure hope you are faring better in Minnesota than us Iowans. Nothing like a little snow w/ 30-40 mph winds to make you stay inside. I am hoping the roads are doing ok so I can actually get to the highway tomorrow and get to work.

The kids and I made cookies yesterday. Nothing like Arctic temps to bring out the baker in me!

Emma wanted cut out sugar cookies. Yeah, that didn't work out so hot. I was going to cut the recipe in half (I mean seriously who actually wants to make 7 doz sugar cookies!) but in the midst of cutting the butter in half I got a phone call and forgot to cut the sugar and eggs in half so I had to add the rest of the butter after the fact. They are quite yummy, but I couldn't quite get them rolled out and able to use my very cute cookie cutters. I told the kids a circle is a shape so that should count for something =) They had fun frosting them and adding decor. Not sure who likes to eat sugar cookies with toffee bits, mini chocolate chips, swirled chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, mini york mints, and sprinkles, but as I told Jamie...some people make sugar cookies that are a work of art, our kids make abstract art =)

Stay warm!

Almost 5:00!

It is almost 5:00 and I get to go home and start my "finish all chores before Christmas" stuff! Emma and I are going to bake cookies, I have to wrap presents, and we have our first Christmas on Sunday at Jamie's aunt's house.

Jamie took today off so he has been home with the kids all day. Wonder how he survived =)
Braden called me at noon to ask what he should do. He was bored. I told him to go outside and play and he said he had already done that. I asked what his dad was doing and he told me he was asleep on the couch...I guess that is one way to deal with being at home all day! I am very envious...

We are having ugly sweater day on Monday...the person with the ugliest sweater wins a prize. I am headed to Goodwill tonight. If I can't find an ugly sweater there I don't know where to go! I will post some pictures on Monday..should be fun to see what people come with.

Have a great weekend or week if you aren't reading this until Monday or later =)

Snow Day?

I'm sitting here listening to the freezing rain hitting the windows and praying for a snow day tomorrow. Mostly because I'm not finished writing my final exams that my students have to take. Of course I should be working on those now! However, I need a break. Carter and I have had the stomach flu this week and I'm hoping Adam and Brandon don't get it. Brandon's 1st birthday party is Sunday and I really don't want to cancel. I think we're ready for Christmas here. We actually had our first one last week with my dad's side. Here's a pic of all the kiddos. Ethan is on the left, then Brandon and Carter, and on the right is Aly (still can't believe that Kurt is a father :) They are posing with the stockings that Mom made for them.

Christmas is coming!

Hey everyone! Ready for Christmas yet?!? This is the only free weekend we have to get all our stuff done. Saturday we went and did almost all of our Christmas shopping. Now I just have to pick up our Christmas card and mail them out, and do all of my holiday baking. I wanted to give a little something to all the neighbors for being so helpful this past year. Taking care of the dogs, picking up our mail, plowing our driveway when we were gone so much last winter. I have Monday and Tuesday off so I think I should be able to get it all done.

We were in Iowa again last weekend for deer season. As you can see from the pic my hubby once again had a good season. We now have an elk, 2 antelope, and 4 deer in the freezer:) The elk was all processed out in Colorado, but the rest is up to us! We could a grinder and are going to try making our own brats, etc. Anybody want some meat? The food shelves won't take wild game, and we have way more than we need.

Well, I should get moving and go pick up my Christmas cards before the next storm comes through. It's supposed to bring us at least 6 inches:) It's still better than all the ice you guys get!

Hope everyone has a great holiday!!!

Hello everyone!  The Beebe's are franticly trying to get ready for christmas and paint the basement.  It was my turn to host the work Christmas party this year. So, we are trying to turn the basement into a Cubbie hangout before the first of the year.  Tonight was Christmas cards...you should be getting yours in the mail soon!

This is also my hospital week.  It was neat because my cousin Carol had a baby girl last night so it was fun to see her.  

Alison's wedding went well.  It was a very full weekend starting with spa time to opening gifts.  My dress mostly stayed put with 6 safety pins and stripper tape.  Yes, it is a great moment having your aunt and grandma's best friend getting you "into" your dress for the big day.  My grandma's friend said "Honey, you know,people pay good money for those."  

Hope everyone is enjoying the season..hope to write more soon!

Megan  

Christmas is coming!!

Pictures are: Emma and Braden while decorating the Christmas tree, Pepper enjoying the fake branches before the tree was assembled, Braden and Grant riding 4-wheelers at Thanksgiving, and Braden on his 4-wheeler (early Christmas gift)

I am a hunting widow today..and probably tomorrow. I can handle 2 days out of the year..not sure how Donna does about 50 days out of the year. Ok, probably not that many, but I am sure it feels like that..right Donna? =)

I am trying to get my Christmas cards, wrapping, the last few gifts and such done today. I can't believe that Christmas is in a few weeks. Where in the world has the year gone!

Braden is heading to a friends house today (just wait Kerry and Megan..pretty soon your boys will be leaving for playdates) and so Emma and I are hanging out doing girl things..such as the above mentioned. Yahoo.

Megan..Donna and I were talking that we haven't got the lowdown on Alison's wedding..where are the pictures and the gossip??

I mentioned to Donna that if..I mean when, Brian and her come back this spring/summer that I want to have all of you to our house for a bbq. That way you guys can see where I live and we can get the guys and the kids together.

Well Braden just left so Emma and I get to head to town to get a b-day gift for her friends party next Friday..I swear my kids have a bigger social life than I do. Oh well.

Snow!

I'm watching the snow fall as I type this afternoon. It's not even December yet! All the boys are alseep so I have a little break! We just got Carter's 3 year pictures back. He's getting so big! Brandon has been fighting ear infections so we've been getting less sleep than usual. He did decide yesterday that he's ready to walk! So now he takes 10-12 steps before he falls. Crawling is still the fast way, but walking is getting better. We didn't have too busy of a weekend. We went to my parents and my grandma's, but that's about it. A nice break before the craziness of Christmas!!! Carter is really excited this year. He is bugging Adam to put up lights on our house like all the neighbors! Here's his latest pic....

Welcome to the party, Megan!

Well, Thanksgiving weekend is almost over. We arrived in Pella late Wednesday night. Both Brian and I couldn't seem to get off work on time so it was a little later than we had hoped for. Thurday am I helped Mom with some cooking. Brian's grandma and aunt from Minnapolis joined us, and we had a great time. Mom cooked an incredible amount of food, and we didn't eat the rest of the day.

Friday Brian and I spent most of the day going through Stan's garage. We took pictures and wrote down model numbers of a lot of the power tools. Wow. We have our work cut out for us! Stan had so much stuff. I think Donna is ready for us to start selling some things, so we will be back in Pella to work on that after the first of the year. I'm sure it will take us multiple trips so I will try to be in touch when that is so we can get together sometime.

Now it's Saturday, and as I am typing this Brian is returning from pheasant hunting. (Can't live a week without doing some type of hunting!) We'll see how he did. I think he just has fun taking the dog out. Mom and I spent the morning decorating for Christmas. It was kind of nice because I won't do hardly any decorating myself. Soon we will head into town to do a little shopping, then Brian and I will have supper with his aunt and grandma. She's making her famous fried chicken!!! I usually don't eat fried chicken, but her's is amazing. She doesn't make it too often anymore. She's almost 91, and has a hard time cooking that big a meal. So when she does make it we are pretty excited. (Brian just poked his head in and said he got one bird. Brutus was a very good dog too, so Brian is proud papa).

We are heading out first thing Sunday am. We have to pick up Donna at the airport tomorrow evening, and we want a few hours at home before the work week starts.

I hope eveyone had a great Thanksgiving!!!

Wow I finally figured this out!

Megan has finally entered the world of blogging  (with a little help from Brad).  

We just finished preparing our first turkey.  I had compiled a lot of information about turkeys from all of the Moms of patients at the clinic.  I settled on using butter, mustard, and seasoning salt in a turkey bag.  Hopefully everything will turn out!  We are having Brad's family over for Thanksgiving tomorrow.  Hope everyone has a fun Thanksgiving with family!

What a weekend!

Hi there! I read today that the Hawks beat the Gophers 55-0 and I thought to myself "Hmm...I wonder if Donna decided to cheer for the Hawkeyes" =)

Today was the first day that I was of the living. Last Wednesday Emma got the flu so I was home with her all day and again on Thursday until 12 when Jamie took over. Then about 2:30 on Friday morning I got the flu and it knocked me flat for 24 hours. I slept for 20 hours..no joke. I had water and about 3 crackers on Friday. Saturday I finally was able to eat a little more and actually stayed awake to watch movies, but was asleep by 8 and in bed at 9 on Saturday night. Today I left the house and feel so much better. What a crappy flu.

That was all I was up to this weekend. Hopefully this coming week and weekend are better...of course it is Thanksgiving so I can make up for that lack of food I got the last couple of days. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!!

Go Hawks!!!

Wow! What a game. The Hawks beat the Gophers 55-0. Brian's mom, aunt(Donna's sister, can you tell?), and uncle came up for the game. Marla and Gary live just outside of Iowa City, and are HUGE Hawk fans. Thank goodness the Gophers were still playing in the Metrodome. It would have been way too cold to sit outside and watch it. I wish the pic of the football field was a little closer so you could see all the cute football guys' tight ends:)

Donna is staying with us until Monday, and then she will fly out to Seattle to spend Thanksgiving with Amy, her boyfriend, and his family who are from the Boston area. Brian and I plan to be in Pella with my parents and Brian's grandma and aunt from Minneapolis. We will be back the next weekend too for deer opener. Lots of stuff going on, but it should be lots of fun! What are all you up to for the holiday?!?

Catch up

Hey there. I have no pics either. The past week I have done nothing but work 12 to 15 hour days. I was so glad when Friday came. Saturday morning I headed up to our friends' cabin. Brian had headed up there on Friday, and was doing a little deer hunting. And yes, he got another one. He has gotten 2 antelope, an elk, and 2 deer so far this year. He still has a deer tag for Iowa too. We might make an attempt to make our own brats this year. Some friends of ours tried it, and said it wasn't too hard. So we took off from the cabin around 1pm so we had some of the evening left. I worked all last weekend so the housework that I normally do on the weekends still needs to be done before Brian's mom, aunt, and uncle come this Friday. It wouldn't be so bad, but I have something every night this week except for Tuesday. I think we are going to eat out more than originally planned. Saturday we are tailgating with some friends before the Iowa vs. MN game which should be a lot of fun. Hmmmm... who should I cheer for. I'm from Iowa, but work for the university hospital. Brian's aunt said I have no choice but root for the Hawks. What do you guys think? :)

Hope everyone has a good week.

Here I Am!

Don't worry Sandy! You're not the only one. I have no pictures this time. My kids and Adam have had the most horrible stomach flu ever and then all the boys got horrible colds and Brandon now is refusing to sleep. So I have no pictures right now! I'm the only one who has been healthy! Carter just turned 3 and Brandon will be 1 in less than a month. I can't believe how time has flown! Other than that, nothing too exciting over here....

Here are the other animals..I couldn't get them all on the last post.

Hmm..are you guys using this blog because this is starting to look like the Sandy blog instead of the 4 of us =) So, I decided to post a few pictures of a few of the animals we call family. We have Sugar, our yellow lab mix that we adopted from the pound last summer. She is with Lucy, the cat we all adored and I ran over...yeah, not a good day at the Tyrrel house. Buster is our newest addition, a sheperd/lab mix that we adopted from a friend. He is very lovable and very ornery! Pepper is our inside kitty...affectionately known as Big Fat Pepper. Oreo and Garfield are on the lawn mower. Oreo was inside until he drove me insane now he is an outside/garage kitty. Garfield is the stud of our farm...he hasn't been doing so hot lately! The goats are supposed to be getting pregnant so we can sell the babies to those that like goat meat. The ram isn't doing so hot on that front yet. I am seeing a pattern here with the males on the farm =) Teddy is our Paint and Trigger is our good old horse that just wants to eat and not have to work anymore. He used to be a ranch horse and I do believe he is used up. We also have a bull calf, 2 rabbits-male and female (gee can you say great Easter gift for your kids...what is better than baby bunny =), and numerous other cats that are around to keep our farm mouse free.

That is all of our animals. Now someone else needs to be adding something so I am not the only one blogging. I don't want to read about myself anymore...LOL!

Halloween part 4

Oops...forgot to post the last time! Jamie and I went to our first costume party at the new Bar and Grill in New Sharon. I found out 1 hour before we were to leave to take the kids trick/treating that this was a costume party. So I dug deep in my closet and found this getup...ok so I actually dug deep in Walmart's closet, but all in all I didn't think we did too bad for pulling getups together in 1 hour.

Halloween part 3

Halloween part 2

Emma decided she wants to be a cheerleader in high school...so we found her a rah rah costume and off she went to spread joy to others =)

Halloween

Here are my precious children awaiting the time to come when they can go door to door and get candy from strangers....oh isn't Halloween just grand! Braden decided he didn't want to be anything gruesome this year and went as Darth Vader.

Great pics Sandy! Oh, the memories. Here are my little guys for Halloween. Carter is going through a huge Thomas the Train stage. Brandon had fun riding in his stroller.

Look at us!

So I decided that we needed some oldie buy goody pictures of us in our youth. I went searching for some pictures and found these. I think they sum us up pretty good =)

Look for a new post from me tomorrow..hopefully. Jamie and I attended our first Costume party last night. Oh yeah...me in costume. I didn't think I would ever say that!

The four of us!

O.K. Here we go! I'm a little new to the whole blogging thing so I am just trying this out. Since I don't have any kid pics to put on (and it's too dark to go get one of my puppies) I thought I would post this one from Megan's baby shower. I don't have much news to share. All I have done since we got together is work, so I am ready for a break! I think Brian and I are actually going to spend some time together this weekend! I think we are going to leave the house Friday night so we don't have the trick or treaters. Maybe I can get some Christmas shopping done too. This is the only weekend Brian and I really have free until shortly before Christmas. Can't believe it's barely over 8 weeks away.

Well, I hope I did this right. We'll see... Bye for now!!!

My first post!!

Took me a while to get here, but I am finally going to try and post. Kerry says it is easy to do..we will see =) I am including a picture of the kids at the State Fair. This is the only vacation we took this year. Hoping that once our house in Monroe sells we may be able to take them somewhere a little more exciting. Of course we have our multitude of animals to think of so we will see what happens.

Adding pics

Ok, I'm messing with uploading pics. It's easy! Here's one of Brandon!!

Here we go!!!!

All right guys, so I took the liberty of setting up our blog! I think I'll send you guys an invite, then if you reply back I can give you the ways of posting yourselves. So basically you'll all have the rights to add pics, posts, whatever you want!

The title is The Four of Us Now at www.fourofusnow.blogspot.com

That was one of the few options I had that wasn't taken and I didn't want to put our names in the address for privacy reasons. Hope this is ok!

Anyway, sign up and post away!!!!

Kerry