Staying Afloat

Many apologies for the long lapse in posting. Life at the Studer house has been anything but boring the last few weeks. The picture above is of our basement, and yes, that is an inch of water covering the floor. This is our first spring in Huron, and what a wonderful initiation to the flat plains of East Central South Dakota we have received. Massive amounts of snow this winter melting in a short period does not make for a great situation, and we are now the proud owners of an in-house wading pool!

Chris was out of town for work when the water problems started, so thanks to some wonderful friends and their giant Shop-Vac (Hi, Justin & Allison!), we got the carpet ripped up and started the water removal process. Our problem seems to be of the seeping-water variety, so despite our almost daily use of the Shop-Vac, by the next morning we are greeted with an inch of water lining the floor again. The waterproofing contractors have been out for an estimate, and they are confident that the problem is fixable (at no small cost, of course!) but since this is their busiest season, they cannot return to fix it until April 19th! So we continue to plug away with the Shop-Vac and thank the good Lord that 95% of the stuff in the basement was just Rubbermaid totes full of baby clothes. Seriously, if I ever meet the person who invented those things, I just might kiss him/her right on the mouth. And although this would not have been our method of choice to inspire a full-scale basement remodel, we will certainly not be sad to see the nasty dark wood paneling go far, far away. There was only one room of the basement that was carpeted, the remainder was just concrete-floor storage space.

And when we're not busy removing water from the basement, we are busy dealing with this...

Yes, that's right, he can fully escape the crib on his own. Full-fledged battles of the will occur daily at naptime and bedtime, and I am confident that Alex will soon learn that Mommy means business! What's funny about this is that every time he climbs out of the crib, he gets a swat on the behind. And Maguire is there to provide colorful commentary EVERY SINGLE TIME. When Alex cries after a spanking: "Alex, he's very sad, Mommy." Or, "Is it ouchy, Alex?" Or my personal favorite, "You gotta learn, Alex!" Good stuff.

Maguire, surely spouting his knowledge on the evils of crib escape.

And here's some other random pictures, just to amuse and satisfy the grandparents...

Lord, Help Us!

I am SO not ready for them to give up naptime! The little monsters darlings just turned two!

Winter. I'm Officially Over It.

So this is a picture of one of the drifts in our backyard. We've got piles of snow like this all over our yard, easily 4 feet deep in some places, courtesy of the lovely SD wind and snow. Doesn't make it very easy to play outside with your children when the drifts are twice as tall as they are!

The other day we (finally!) hit a stretch of warmer temperatures with not much wind, so we headed outside to play. The boys were both a little skeptical, and pretty much bawled through the entire getting-ready portion. Chris suggested that maybe, just maybe, Maguire was crying because he had to wear Ellie's hand-me-down powder blue snowpants, but I beg to differ.

Little dude rocked those baby blue pants.

Once we got outside, they had a blast.

We made snowballs...

And taught the boys the finer points of catching snowflakes on your tongue....

This is the view of our front yard and street. Since we took this picture we've had no less than 4-6 more inches of snowfall. There's our lonely giant Christmas card still buried in the yard. Maybe by May, the snow will melt enough for us to take it down.

The kiddos were having so much fun playing outside that we decided to go sledding at THE hill in Huron. Really, there is one hill in this town. It's pitiful. When we go over a highway overpass these days, our children all scream with delight "Wheeee! It's a hill." Seriously. Pitiful.

The boys were much braver than I expected they'd be, and took turns piling on the sled with Chris or Ellie. Maguire took a flying faceplant off the sled one time, but he jumped right back up to get on again.

There they are, waaaaaay down at the bottom of the hill (on the far right).

Poor Chris, I think he hauled kids up and down that hill for an hour. My feelings were only the teeniest bit hurt when they all wanted to ride with Daddy every time.

But I'm pretty sure I got over it.

Christmas Post....WARNING: Picture Overload

We started off Christmas vacation in MN with (surprise, surprise!) a craft at Grammie's! Check out these angels we created -- can you guess who made each one?

Here's Ellie & Doug all dressed up for Christmas Eve church.

After church on Christmas Eve, we had a big Eiesland gathering out at Uncle Tom & Aunt Julie's. But before the eating and presents started, we wanted to remember my Dad & my aunt Nancy, who died of cancer last year. So we broke out the sparklers and used them to write messages to
Dad & Nancy. It was pretty cool. A good way to pause and remember them, to acknowledge their absence, and to grieve together as a family. And to play with fire, which my dad would have been so happy about. Seriously. For a fireman he was a bit of a pyromaniac.

I promise under normal circumstances I don't allow my children to play with fire.

Even Grandma Alice got in on the sparkler messages.

Then it was inside for mass chaos gift opening and lots and lots of eating.

And lots of cars.

Christmas Day we headed over to Chris' brother's house for the Studer Christmas celebration. For some reason we have almost no pictures of Ellie that day, but the boys were happy to make the rounds of lap-sitting and being photographed.

All the Studer grandkids.

And the whole Studer clan (minus our niece Bri's fiance, James).

The rest of our time was spent watching the Weather Channel and trying to figure out when we'd be able to return to SD. It snowed a lot.

We built a snowman and Ellie got a kick out of having the snowman wear Papa's big fur hat.

And then we ate some more. I am being totally serious when I say the majority of our event planning revolves around making sure we have time to eat all of our traditional Christmas foods. Including Mickey's Pizza. Yum.

So that was our Christmas, in an extremely large and picture-filled nutshell. Hopefully by springtime I will get around to blogging about Alex & Maguire's 2nd birthday party.

ABC's

Check out Maguire's version of the ABC's. Apologies for the giant string of drool that escapes his mouth midway through the song -- recent behavior and excessive drooling all around (well, not Chris and I) lead me to believe the 2 year molars are just around the corner. Anyway, enjoy.

Show Yourselves!

So apparently, January 12th is National De-Lurking Day (a lurker is a person who reads a blog but does not actually comment). I saw this on another blog I read regularly and it made me laugh...and then it made me think....how many lurkers do WE have?

Maybe you've thought of commenting but did not want to leave your personal information out there on the internet for everybody to see. No problem! We allow anonymous commenters, and that way you don't even need an email address! Maybe you have thought of leaving a comment but don't know how (not that I would call anyone out or anything...Grandma & Grandpa Eiesland!) All you do is move your mouse so that your pointer is over the words "Post a comment" or there might just be a number and the word "comments" like "3 comments". Then just click on it. The instructions are easy from there!

If you decide to post anonymously please just leave your name in the comment box so we might have an idea of who you are. If we know you already, nice to see you here. If we don't know you yet, it's nice to meet you. We want to know who reads this blog -- we know you're out there, so please leave us a comment!

Dance Party 2010: Cabin Fever Edition

The weather has been ridiculously cold and snowy for what seems like years. Okay, so it's really only been since Christmas. We've got 3-4 foot high drifts in the yard from the last snowstorm, the temperature hasn't cracked the zero mark in about a week, and we are getting desperate. Hence the Taylor Swift dance party. It had better start getting warmer soon, or we are in some serious trouble. I'm just glad I was the one holding the camera.