"Jack" new addition to the family

He is a puggle 14 weeks old

The Value of Fun!

After having a wonderful conversation with our new neighborhood friends, the reason why I'm having a difficult time getting used to Northern Wisconsin is that FUN is not of value to the majority of people here. Serious, hardy, no-nonsense, etc. is of utmost value.

Fun made up most of my life in California, I worked with kids, thought up fun things to do all the time. I thought that fun was my job in life.

Appleton, Wisconsin is a very fine city, with very fine people, who work hard, volunteer, hunt, ice-fish (why? I don't know), and unless they are all liquored up you can barely get some of them to smile. Even the children are a little serious. I'm determined to not have the fun sucked out of me. It is challenging to find fun here in the winter 'cause you have to make your own fun, but I am determined to find it.

Maybe since we are new here we don't know how to have fun, it's a different kind of fun, we probably don't laugh at the same jokes, or socialize the same way. I'm beginning to get a clearer and clearer picture of the social clash in Iraq, two completely differnt tribes. You know what they say, if you are having a problem, you probably need to point that finger right at yourself. SO, I'm going to try harder!

If you want to see the great things about WISCONSIN go to:

www.cheeseheaduniversity.com



Please prove me wrong, Anyone want to have fun??

Strep

Does anyone (from California) remember whenever your child got sick you went for a strep test? Since I've been in WI I would wager to say 25 people have asked me when my children are sick "did you get a strep test?", it's like a regional disease. Well, today I went and had two children with strep. People have said that because it hasn't been cold enough to kill off all the molds and germs there is more than usual sickness.

All I can say is "Calgon, take me away", I definitely need a kid break. I have the kids all full of antibiotics, breathing treatments, etc. So maybe I'll have a day alone soon.

I'm starting to get a bit of the cabin fever, today was the first time in 4 days I left the house. The high today was 23 degrees and when we went out to the doctors people were out in T-shirts! What's up with that? We look like such wimps, hat, gloves, scarves and we were still freezing.

Mosaics

I have been enjoying making mosiacs; I've attached some pictures.

How were your holidays? I've slowed down on my blogging because I've got a myspace too and this takes a lot of computer time. My myspace name is waitingfororders.

Our little church is fun; I'm attempting to help a little with the communication at church. We'll see, they might not want to communicate too much. I've always wanted to be a cruise director/artist and a cruise director lets everyone know what is happening which I like to do, and then for my artist side I do mosaics or I saw this other cool idea on HGTV: making glass houses with a soldering iron and inlayed papers and pictures. They were really pretty - I might try that too.

Well I better go clean the house....again.

Big Day for Sam

Today was the Pinewood Derby for the Cub Scouts. Mike and Sam have been thinking and working on Sam's car for a month (there was a lot more thinking than actually working). This morning, Sam's car came in 3rd place out of all 30 cars in his age group! We are so proud! Even though Sam did say this was taking up way too much of his play time in life, he thinks it was worthwhile.

Other than the Derby, it's been pretty boring here in Wisconsin. We took down the Christmas tree yesterday and put away all the Christmas stuff, had a few dinner parties, and painted the master bedroom and the basement. We are waiting for some snow; it really must be different here with snow.