Sharon's family

Just talked to Jennifer Carney and heard what was happening in Moorhead. Sharon's neighborhood was evacuated last Wed night. David's family shortly afterthat, so David took Jenny and children to the lake. Sharon is at Jodi's house with the grandchildren (Jodi's house is in the middle of town and safe). Jennifer and Rich got water in the basement so will have to redo the basement, and has sand bags in the front of their house. Their neighbor lost the battle a couple days ago, so it is getting closer. But as of right now, everyone is SAFE.
Jennifer was also saying how they dug up the playground (at the school where she teaches) to fill more sand bags. And that soccer fields, etc are being ripped up to use the dirt for dikes (is that the correct spelling?) It must be pretty emotional to see everything that is happening in your home town.

Bob's Pictures

whelping shed

whelping bed

Abbie by the deck

Stevens' family update

Everyone is doing great at the Stevens' household. When Zach started school this year, both Zachary and Dakota started at a new daycare in Kasson. They both love their new daycare, but miss Grandma's house too.

Zach is in Kindergarten and enjoying school very much. He's been on a couple field trips with school. He recently finished another year of hockey - which he enjoys! Zachary is very excited to try out T-Ball this spring.

What to say about Dakota....she strives very hard to get under Zach's skin and irritate him. She's getting really good at that. Keep telling Zach that his little sister loves him very much and only wants to be with him 24/7.....she has a hard time understanding that she can't always go with Zach to a friend's house. She's definately my little helper - most days!

There's no school on Friday - I'm joining the kids at daycare on Friday and we're going to the water park in Owatonna. Both kids are really looking forward to that!

We also found out recently that Aunt Becky (Spencer's Sister) and Uncle Jeff are expecting their second child in August. The kids are looking forward to a new cousin to visit and play with.

Have you noticed the photo yet? Look closer.....Zach and Dakota are pretty excited about the upcoming addition to our household too :)

Bob's Weekend

Well this has been a really busy weekend. Bob's dog, Abbie, is going to have puppies in a couple of weeks, so we spent the weekend getting her whelping shed and bed all ready to go. It was a lot of work, but we think it turned out really nice. Bob is really honing his carpentry skills lately.
It was a gorgeous weekend to be outside (it was over 60 degrees yesterday, and the same today. The bad thing is we are supposed to get a snowstorm starting tonight and on into late Monday or early Tuesday. We are supposed to get about 6 inches of snow with the wind blowing at 25 to 35 miles an hour. Talk about a change in the weather! Maybe it will snow so much that they will close the roads and we won't have to go to work!!!!Oh well, it will melt and be out of here by next weekend.
Hope everyone is good.
Bob and Julie

PS. there are pictures and I will get them up later today, sorry

Pickled Fish and Birthday Wishes

Our update this week is about Mark. A few weeks ago he made a batch of pickled fish and it was time to open it this week. He did an excellent job!! He took about a half gallon to work and it was all gone at the end of the shift. When he told us it went over well, we opened the jar that was in our fridge and found out it was good! Mark and Nicholas plan on going to the Eagle Center today to see Eagles and get in some spring fishing so he can start another batch.
Don't want to forget to wish all the March birthday people out there a Happy Birthday (some are belated). Thought about each of you on your birthday just neglected to call or send out wishes to some. So hope you had or will have a bessed and happy birthday with many more to come.
Happy Spring to us all!!!!

More Pictures

All of the pucks on the ice

Jordyn Bowling

The ball!

Shawn and Alex bowling

Alex's Birthday

Yuumy Cupcakes!

I am not very good at posting the pictures, so bear with me on that. This past weekend Alex turned 12.........hard to believe he is that old already! And that makes me even older (yikes). We had the family over to our house Saturday night for a little get together and here are some pictures from then. The next day, Sunday, Alex had a friend party at the bowling alley in Byron. For Christmas, Alex had gotten a bowling ball and this was only the 4th time he had used it. Some of his friends were using it as well and when one of them threw the ball down and it hit the pins, the ball broke!!!!! The guy working at the bowling alley had to climb in by the pins to get the pieces. It broke in to 3 bigger sized pieces. Noone had ever seen that happen before. Crazy!!!!!

After the bowling we went to an Owatonna Express Jr Hockey game. It is like the Ice Hawks (if anyone is familiar with them) except a lot cleaner hockey. They have a game that you can play between 2nd and 3rd period. You buy a puck and then throw it on the ice towards the 3 buckets they have out there. The 3 closest pucks win some kind of gift certificate. They also have an on-going competition to get a puck INSIDE one of the buckets. The jackpot grows each game until someone gets it. They said noone had gotten it yet this year. Well.............not anymore! As I was helping Jordyn throw her pucks, Alex is jumping up and down telling us that his went in. Me, being the nice mom, didn't believe him at first. But, it did.........Happy Birthday Alex! He decided to save the money and put it away for next summer.

Alex was selected to go to Fort AP Hill in Virginia next summer to be with close to 42,000 other Boy Scouts at the National Jamboree. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for him to be gone for almost 3 weeks. There are 36 kids from all over SE MN that will board a bus and go out East. On the way, they will stop and be tourists! So, Alex has been fundraising and trying to earn extra money to pay for his trip.

I will post some more pictures of the bowling and hockey game. Hope everyone has enjoyed this nice weather. Hopefully this afternoon is nice, too. Jordyn has been wanting to get her bike out, so Shawn is going to take off the training wheels while she is at daycare today and they are going to see how that goes this afternoon. I will see if they are still trying the 2-wheel thing when I get home and get some pictures of it.

Sunday Walk

Wow,
Finally we have/had a nice day. It was so nice today that Ken and I decided to go for a drive and long walk. We chose Forestville State Park as our destination. One of the reasons we chose Forestville is that the Peters family is having Thanksgiving Day dinner there this year, and we wanted to see what the warming house is like. On the drive there we stopped and asked Ann & Roger if they would like to join us....Ann joined us, Roger chose to stay home. We had a nice walk, saw some robins, the afternoon was just beautiful. I hope you all had a chance to get out and enjoy it.
The warming house is really nice, it has a wood stove in it, and attached to it is restrooms with flush toilets, and a picnic shelter. It would be an awesome place to have the family picnic this summer (if it is available). The river is close by, there are trails to enjoy, but no playground equipment (so would have to bring outdoor games for the children). I'm sure the guys have already decided to bring fishing poles if we chose to have it there. The biggest drawback would be every car that drives in would need a park sticker. Park stickers cost $25 and is good for 12 months from the time you buy it. I'm pretty sure you can just buy a day pass also. Of course, we could car pool, park outside of the park, and have someone pick you up etc. If you think this would be a good option for the family picnic........let us know, so we can see if it is available.
Enjoy the next couple days, sounds like we should be having some nice weather.

What have we been up to?

The first picture is of Bob working on the deck for James' house. The old one was getting pretty rotten so we decided that a new one was needed. We had to tear the old one completely down and start from scratch. We had hoped to just be able to replace the deck boards, but when we got into the tear down process we realized that everything was rotten. So we ended up building it from the ground up. I think we were able to save ONE of the posts, but that was it.
The next few pictures is of our road trip to Cabelas. Bob has been wanting a new varmint gun, so we decided to drive down and see what they had. BAD IDEA (for me at least). You will see that Bob got a new Thompson Center Arms gun in a 204 Ruger caliber. And of course he needed to get a new scope to go on his gun, so he got the Leupold VX1 4x12x40. I don't know what that all means, but he is happy with it. I got a new set of dishes, so it wasn't a complete loss.
That is what we have been up to for about the last two to three weeks. The weather has been pretty nice here. Up into the 50's and 60's for the most part.
Hope everyone is doing well.
Bob and Julie

Ann

It's Saturday so Ryan showed me again how to add pictures. Sending pictures of what is left of Matts barn and the addition to his house. It is a beautiful day out today, I am really looking forward to spring!

For Kim

These are mostly for Kim..........it's pictures of Debbie Macomber signing Kim's book. This took place in the MOA on Feb 14 at the Knit Out. Enjoy them Kim.

Shawn's Family Update

Now that hockey season is behind us, we have a little bit of "down time" if there is such a thing. So, I thought I would give an update on our family.

Shawn - is still looking for a job. For those of you that don't know, Shawn was laid off last November. Since then he has been playing Mr. Mom at home. Jordyn is liking it since he gets to take her to school and pick her up. He has also taken on some extra Boy Scout work and is now the Lodge Advisor to the Order of the Arrow. That, along with helping Spencer at Copy Cat when he needs help, tends to keep Shawn out of trouble.

Alex - Hockey is done. It is kind of a bitter-sweet thing, though. It is nice to have some extra time with the family, but yet for 5-6 months of the year it is your life and you make some great friends. It is like saying goodbye to them. In the next month or so, Alex will start soccer and also have tryouts for baseball. He is also active in his Boy Scout troop as well.

Jordyn - what can I say about Jordyn…………..she is a social butterfly. She loves hockey season since that means she gets to go to Alex's game and see her friends. She is in preschool 3 mornings a week and loves it. She also does dance once a week.

Heather - same old, same old. Still working at the credit union and trying to keep up with who needs to go where and when.

BLOG CHALLENGE

Good Morning Family,
This is a blog challenge.................every family reading this is challenged to put an entry out at least once a week for the next month. This is a family blog - a good way to let everyone know what is happening. It can be something as simple as .............."wow, I saw a great sunset last night" or "let me tell you about the funny thing I heard last night". If anyone is interested, I can tell you how to post or just send it to me and I will do it.
Let's heard from some of you and let's get this blog moving with information.............
you can send your posting to
hayesfamily9@gmail.com
then it shows up on my homepage and I will post it asap

Drive Home

The drive home was the type of drive that Ken and I are getting used to whenever we go to Chicago.

We left Chicago in the rain, by the time we hit the Illinois/Wisconsin border we had driven thru a couple heavy downpours. Shortly after getting into Wisconsin it started freezing rain, then went to sleet, and finally snow. By the time we were in Madison it was snowing pretty good. Drove in snow from Madison, thru the Dells and into Tomah. Since we had left Brian's late morning we thought we would stop and see Aunt Therese in Tomah. When we got out of the car at her place there was 4-6 inches of snow on the ground. We stayed and visited with her for about an hour (maybe a little longer). The roads from her place to I 90 were still snow covered, but when we got to I 90 it was clear and smooth sailing. That was a relief after seeing atleast 6 cars in the ditches.

When I would get tired of watching the snow and counting cars in the ditch, I would start knitting. I have been finding that is a good way to pass time in the car. This green knitting is a sweater for Dakota.

OUR WEEKEND

Since we were able to get away early on Friday, Ken and I took off and spent the week end in Chicago with Brian and Sarah. Sarah is fixing dinner for us in the picture above. Thanks Sarah....it was delicious!!

Rain, rain, rain was the weather for the week end, so we spent alot of time indoors. Brian decided it was just the weather to do a puzzle. As you can see, everyone got in on the action. And the puzzle was finished a couple hours later.

Ken and Brian enjoying a cup of coffee at Starbucks! We did manage to get out a couple times. Most of our walk were dry, but we did get caught in the rain a couple times.

Sad News

Dale received word yesterday, March 3, that Uncle Shorty (Jerome Salber) passed away at home on March 3. Don't know what arrangements have been made yet, but will post as we find them out.
We are working on getting an address if anyone would like to send a card.