Saturday After Christmas

Our neighbors George and Carmen made us blanket for Christmas. It is just beautiful. Carmen sews all the pieces together and then George quilts it together.

Here you can see the detail work in the white that George did with the quilting machine.

Here is the blanket laid out on our bed.

We were finally able to head out of our house on Saturday to get down to Mankato. And we did the Shaw Christmas that day.

Kathy and Jake waiting for the presents to be handed out.

Josh, Jamie and Kyle.

Here I am checking out which present to open first.

Poor Cheryl. She kept opening her presents and trying to figure out who she was with when she saw the item. We finally told her on her last present. Then we had to explain that her sister Melanie got everything, Corrina and Joe picked them up on there way to our house, and we brought them back down for Christmas.

Uncle Dennis got Jamie and Josh a Game Hauler for when they are deer hunting. I guess they had Jamie come back to get the snowmobile to pick up a deer this year. And as Jamie was driving out there he kept breaking through the ice. So he brought the snowmobile back and then had to walk all the way back and drag the deer back. Both boys were pretty happy about the gift. Oh and I got bacon and dang if it's not good. : )

Once Seth was done opening he just sat in the middle of everything and played his DS.

Since we also missed Christmas Eve at Grandma Shaw's house we got to open those gifts too. Here is a new piggy bank that said New Boat Fund on it. We all got a kick out of that.

Kyle and Cory discussing something. : )

Josh's new t-shirt that says don't Josh me. I saw it and had to get it for him.

Jamie got a Muskie pole from his mom. He's pretty excited to try that out this summer. I don't think I will go with him for that. Those things freak me out. Yuck.

Cory's new beer sign for his bar downstairs. This is from Joe, Corrina and Cheryl. Joe and Corrina got it at the Coors Distributor in Denver. They also got free samples while they were there. I guess Joe said that was the best Christmas shopping he had every done.

The boys also got toy guns from Cheryl this year. They run around here and play army all the time. I can't wait until it's summer and they can go outside with them.

Here is all our stuff we got this year. It also has Grandma Shaw's gifts in there.

Taylor even got a Christmas present. Here she is with her new life jacket for duck hunting. There are even handles on her back so you can just grab her and lift her into the boat.

Cody and Kyle helped Seth put together his Lego toys.

And of course Jake finally got his hands on Seth's DS and was gaming also.

On Sunday we drove down to Austin to see my sister and here are a couple pictures I took.

Christmas Day

Christmas Eve the boys tried to negotiate when they could wake us up on Christmas morning. So Jamie told them not until 5:30 - 6:00. It was 5:31 when they came up to tell us Santa had arrived. So we headed down to the tree in the basement.

Here is the tree with all the presents.

The boys got Uno Flash as a combined gift.

Seth got a Dinosaur adventure play set.

Yes I bought Jake the Call of Duty 4 game to go with the Playstation 3 Santa bought him. But the rule is that if I hear him repeating any of the language on there he would get the PS3 taken away for a year.

Santa also gave Seth a DS and here is one of the games to go with it.

I got Jakob the Guinness Book of World Records book. He is always looking at this book at school so I thought I would get him his own.

The boys also like to play army out in the woods and they have to use sticks as guns. So I got them different guns to run around in the woods with.

Seth had Jamie open the present he made at school.

It was a snowman ornament.

Seth got a Lego cop and cop car set. He looks real happy about that doesn't he?

Now this is from Jakob to me. He remembered that the zipper thing broke on my coat and he saw this at the movie rental place we go to every Friday. So he had Shelly and the girls at the store help him out and he got this for me. It makes me smile that he would think of something like that for me.

Jamie got three different shirts for work from me and the boys.

I got all the stuff to start making my own Lefsa. I'm super excited to start. I also got a FM/AM radio that I can plug my ipod into. And speakers to go to the ipod or computer when we travel.

As one of the gifts we had the boys go on a scavenger hunt. Jamie wrote out a bunch of different clues that had them running around the house.

The gift was a basketball hoop for this summer.

And the clue had them getting there coats and boats on and finding it in the back of the truck.

Hopefully everyone had a great Christmas.

Update: I am now over halfway done with treatment. I am now starting a different drug and this one is not suppose to give me the stomach ache anymore. Which I'm very happy about. It may make my joints hurt and maybe a little more tired. But I will take that over the stomach ache. So I now only have 3 more treatments left!!!!! I'm very happy about that. Again thank you for all the thoughts and prayers.

Christmas Tree and Programs

Wow. Has time really gotten away from me. Let's see I finally got the tree up. Seth has been asking for me to do that ever since Thanksgiving got done. I was able to dig the box with the tree in it out of the storage room and get that set up. But when I tried to get the box with all the lights and decorations I realized it was behind two other boxes and on the floor. So I passed that on to Jamie to get. He was able to get that out a lot easier then me.

Here's Jamie trying to get the lights on before the boys take over.

It's always fun to watch them take ornaments out and talk about when they made them.

Jamie helped out with the other ornaments that are not the boys. He tried to even the tree out a little bit too.

And of course finally my angel from Germany. I love that thing so much.

This is Jakob's new ornament for the year. I got it cause he is always playing some sort of game.

And I got this one for Seth cause this summer he was always drawing something on the driveway in chalk.

Here is the tree all done and decorated. And no it's not leaning, that was me taking a bad picture.

Then it was on to Christmas Programs for school. I didn't put to many pictures of that in here. They are always in the gym and the lights are off so the pictures turn out really bad.

This is Jake and his friend Tommy. Tommy also goes to the same church we do so they have gotten to be pretty close. Jakob has also had Tommy over night and they are trying to figure out when they can do it again.

Jamie went down to get a picture of Jamie and finally made him laugh.

Here are all of the second graders in Hayward.


Then it was Seth's turn. The principal introduced them as the class of 2022. It was so strange to hear that. Which means Jakob will be the class of 2020. Here's to hoping it stays that way.

He was harder to get pictures of . All the parents rushed up to take pictures.

Then when I finally got close enough the kid beside Seth was waving to his mom and Seth got ticked off. He actually told the kid to knock it off cause his mom was trying to take a picture of him and his hand was in his face.

They did great just like every other year. I'm very proud of them.

As for me, after this Thursday I will be half way done with my chemo treatments. So happy about that. I'm going to talk to the doctor about getting a different medication to help with the nausea. The stuff I have now knocks me out for about 4 hours but my stomach still hurts when I wake up. Plus I really don't like the idea of not knowing what is going on and being knocked out like that. Thanks for all the prayers and support.