Fine

Alright Sara, I am posting! I figured that I should post about the most interesting member of our family (at least for the last couple weeks). Doesn't Addie look sweet, posed for a photo at Blizzard Beach in Florida (Walt Disney World)? It is such a deceptive look. Lately Addie has been a terror. She has chopped off her bangs with her scissors, because her hair was in her eyes. She took Alex for a ride down the stairs on her lap. They went bump, bump, bump! Yes, I think this is all due to one person's influence. Oh, yes, you know who you are!! It could only be because of Aunt Sara, yep, I positive that is it. :) Actually, I think based on what Grandma Kris has told us about Sara growing up, that Addie is just learning from her aunt. :)

Shooting

We went to shoot at the Rittger's again over Thanksgiving, and this time Jim came along too. Ethan (from our trip to Canada, and a relative of the Rittger's) came to shoot also. Ethan uses a replica muzzle loader??? I think this is correct. Maybe it is not a replica. Just think, old-time looking gun. :) He was loading his gun and Suzy asked him to pose for a picture. When he turned to look at us he was holding his bullet in his teeth and it looks like he has a bunch of teeth missing! Very funny. Notice that Jim doesn't look at all like he was having fun. :)

Guatemalan Food Night

We routinely have Guatemalan Food Night, where Amber and Bill get together and decide on the menu, go shopping, and then cook us all supper. This GFN we had chicken that had been cooked in peppers, onions and cream (VERY good), dobladas (think Latino crab rangoon) and Amber made dessert, a raisin custard with cinnamon sprinkled on it. It was all very delicious. The next day I used some of the chicken leftovers and made some rice to go with it. It was kinda like a spicy Chinese dish.

Basketball

Amber is in a Jr. WNBA league right now until the middle of December. She has games every Saturday and she is loving the activity. She is actually pretty good and so far has managed to score most of the points each game. Now, I'm not sure if that is because she is a ball hog, she has talent, or the other team is just that bad.
Anyhow, here is a post of her inbounding the basketball to her teammates.

Magical Times

Sara's post made me think back to this summer to what I would agree was a wonderful vacation.
This is a picture of probably my favorite night of the whole trip. Bill and I decided that we would be crazy, even with four kids and we would spend our last night at Disney as late as we could. So Friday night, we stayed at the Magic Kingdom until 1:30 AM and rode any ride that our kids wanted to, as many times as we could. That way they couldn't say that we didn't get to do something they wanted. It was a lot of fun, and not something we would have planned to do, but it is a great memory for us and our kids. Before we left the park at 1:30 AM... we had to eat ice cream. That was an adventure for Bill and Addie. Addie wanted daddy to lick around her cone to stop the dripping, but when he took the cone he suddenly had to sneeze (quite violently I may add) and this caused the ice cream to fall off the cone!! Of course dad had to go find another cone. I think he actually just walked back to the store with his cone and got it in a dish and then gave it to her like it was new. And she never knew otherwise. :) Good memories!

Smashing Pumpkins

Suzy had a golden pumpkin in her house. It was a decoration. But when we came to shoot, she decided that it was going bad and that we should shoot at it. Amber hit the pumpkin 4 out of 6 tries. Then Bill decided to finish it off. It was lots of fun, but very loud.

Finally some pictures

I finally have pictures of us shooting out at the Rittger's farm. We were all there, minus Ashley, because she was with Sara, I think...
So here are some photos of Bill and Katie and Amber shooting. Bill shot the 12 and 20 gauge, Katie shot the 20 gauge, and Amber shot the 22.

Oh my swear!

Well Jennifer reminded me to post about this. It is really quite funny.
Addie was riding home from preschool the other day and talking to herself. I heard her say, Oh my God, and so I interrupted her to mentioned that mommy and daddy don't like to say that because it isn't a nice way to talk about God. It is called swearing. I didn't make a big deal about it, and she was fine with what I said. I told her that we can say Oh my goodness, or something like that. So she rides for a little longer, thinking about this. And then she says to me, Mommy, how about I say, Oh my swear??
I had a hard time not laughing outright, and then told her no, I think we will just say Oh my goodness. :)
Funny, funny!

A hunting we will go...

We went out to Larry and Suzy Rittger's tonight to shoot some guns. I think that some people that know us would be surprised to hear that we did that, maybe because we don't look the "hunting" part. But actually, it was loads of fun. Bill went out to get some practice in before December when he and some of the Rittger guys (and in-laws) go deer hunting. So Bill started out shooting with a 12-gauge and worked his way down to the 20-gauge. Eventually I got to take a turn and I decided to just use the 20-gauge. It didn't look like it had as much kick-back as the 12-gauge. I hit all three of my targets! :) Bill and Larry and Matt did a lot more shooting then, and before supper Amber decided that she wanted to try and shoot a pumpkin that Suzy had provided. So Amber used the 22 (think, like a bb gun, only a little bigger). She did really well and managed to hit the pumpkin 4 out of 6 times. Bill went back to the 12-gauge at the end of the evening and did really well after practicing for the afternoon. Maybe in December he will get a buck and we can mount the head and have deer sausage!!
And, I do have pictures, but they are on Suzy's camera, so hopefully she can email them to me and I will post them later. It was a lot of fun!

Garage Update

Okay, really quick. Here is what the garage looks like at this point. They are going to re-shingle the whole garage, old and new so that everything matches. Hopefully things will get moving again soon. They had to stop for a few days and finish another project.

Addie's Birthday

Okay,
So turning four was a really good day. Addie informed me that she was four and she wouldn't be crying anymore. :) That didn't last too long. She had a great time helping pick out what kind of cake she wanted and how to decorate it. She picked out Diego cake toppers and the Happy Birthday candles. She also put everything on, so if you wonder why the Diego's aren't spread out very well, that is why.

We had a special supper that she picked out: grilled chicken, french fries, corn and rolls. Very YELLOW!

Ahh, the modern world...

It is good to be back again. Our computer was running kinda slow lately and doing a couple of odd things. Nothing that would indicate imminent meltdown, mind you. So we decided to upgrade our system to Leopard OS X and in the process froze the computer. At one point a screen came up saying that there was a "fatal hardware error". That doesn't sound good. What's worse, when I called Apple to talk with tech assistance, the guy on the other end of the line said, "that is so funny. I have never had it say THAT before." Oh yeah, it was hilarious... After we had tried a couple of things he told me that our hard drive was dead and would need to be replaced. But he thought that we could get some things off the computer if we hooked it up to a firewire cable. Now, this is after we had tried a couple of "regular" ways of getting on the computer. The apple guy left me with the computer stuck on a funky screen that had an icon that floated around. On the way to Cedar Falls to drop off the computer to get repaired, the computer screen went black (I obviously had to unplug it from the wall) and turned off. This was the kiss of death.
The guys at the repair shop wrote on the ticket "attempt to recover data from hard drive". He asked me if there was anything I really needed off the computer. All I could do was smile. I mean, really, what do you think?? Nope, absolutely nothing on there that I need. I mean its just a computer, who really keeps things on it, right??? :)
When I called today to see how things were they told me that nothing could be saved, but they had replaced the hard drive for me and it turned out to not be as bad as I was thinking $$. So now I am starting from scratch with email, documents, everything. The worst part was that Bill lost all of his football stuff off the computer. We did find a lot of things on his flash drive, so hopefully that will turn out to be not so bad.
Well, anyhow. It is all over now, and hopefully things will settle down. :) (Wishful thinking)

Computer

Okay, a really quick post from school. Our computer at home has died, so I won't be posting for a little while. Hopefully we will be up and running later this week.
Until then...

Addie's Hair

Well, Addie's hair drives me crazy. It never looks good, even when you TRY to make it look good. It never stays that way. So...I permed it. She did very well and sat through the whole thing. Only a few tears because it smelled bad. :) But then we were fine. At least with it curly and wild it looks a little better than straight, curly, wavy, kinky and wild!
It does look really cute too. Her sisters really like it.

Garage

We almost have a roof. This is where we are at in the process.

Halloween

Now that Halloween is over, ahem, Ellem, ahem... I will post pictures of our children in their costumes. We went downtown and trick-or-treated at the businesses and got a lot of candy. Then we came home, had supper and walked around our neighborhood a little. Then the girls wanted to come home and hand out candy and that is what they are doing right now.

Amber was a princess.

Ashley was a Barbie kitty cat.

Addie was another princess.

Alex was a giraffe.

House

Well, since Ellen thinks I don't post enough, I will update again, since my last post was 2 days ago. :)
They have started framing up the walls of the garage. You know, there is just something about watching a structure being built. I don't know what it is, but it is just cool to see things come together.


Now, they actually have the header up, but I didn't get out to take a picture of it today, but I will tomorrow. They also brought scaffolding and set that up this afternoon. I am guessing that is for the roof trusses. That will be interesting to see.

Pumpkin Carving

This year I decided to try something a little more interesting. So I bought one of those kits to carve pumpkins. We used it for Amber, Ashley and Addie. By the time I got to Alex I figured that he could just have a regular-Joe pumpkin.
Amber chose a spider, Ashley chose a bat, and Addie chose a really scary face. I think that my arm is going to fall off tonight after all the sawing.

Weekend Fun

We spent the night in Story City on Saturday after the birthday weekend. We had some friends from Hubbard/Racliffe come down and swim with us. It was a LOT of fun. Our kids had really missed their friends and it was fun to see some real smiles on their faces. We went back to the Houcks house and had pizza after swimming. Then Amber stayed at Noelle's house, Ashley stayed at Lily's house and we kept Addie and Alex at the hotel with us. Then the next morning we all went to church in Radcliffe at our old church. It was great to see people and talk. After church we went to Pizza Hut with the Cook's, just like old times. It was a much needed weekend with some much missed friends.

Addie and Ty


Amber and Noelle


Ashley and Lily

Addie's and Alex's Birthday

We celebrated Alex and Addie's birthday in Gilbert this last weekend with the Heubner side of the family. Addie was very happy to receive a scooter and a "real doll" as she calls it. Alex was also thrilled to receive a set of four motorcycles from his Aunt Sara. He wasn't so thrilled with the clothes he got, but his mom was.

Birthday Pictures

Happy BIrthday Alex!!

Today is Alex's birthday. He is two years old. There are many times that Bill and I reminisce about going to Guatemala to visit and going back to pick him up. It seems like such a long time ago, but was really only a little over a year ago that we did it. It is hard to believe that he is two and it feels good to see the growth, physically and cognitively. Slowly we are seeing vocabulary emerge. He has always had a great sense of humor, always laughed at everything. You know, when Alex came home last year at 11 1/2 months, he wasn't really crawling, just doing the army crawl. He could sit, but he couldn't pull himself up on anything, he couldn't walk, and wasn't even close. He has made so much progress and now is running and climbing and jumping and roughhousing with Dad and his sisters. It is good to see!
Tonight we are going to have a little cake and do a few presents just from our family. He will have birthday with both grandparents later. I will post pictures of his party later.

Weekend

We are really excited for this weekend. We are going to go back and see friends in Hubbard. Bill's side of the family is doing the October/November birthdays this weekend in Gilbert at his brother's new house. After that is done in the evening we are going to drive back up to Story City and stay at the hotel there and have some friends come and swim with us. Amber is going to spend the night at one of their houses, with her friend Noelle. They are both pretty excited about that. Noelle went to a different school this year too, they just stayed in the same town and open-enrolled to another school. On Sunday we are all going to go to church at our old church in Radcliffe and see old friends. Then, the traditional Sunday dinner at Pizza Hut in Iowa Falls with the Cook's. We won't have a ton of time on Sunday after lunch to spend with anyone because Amber has a piano recital back in Independence later that afternoon, so we will have to head back, but it is going to be a lot of fun.

Questioning...

Have you ever had a moment in life when you questioned everything you did, and you wondered if you made the right decision? That is how I feel. I have so many thoughts that go through my head everyday on this subject. Do you make decisions with your head or with your heart, or both? If you pray and feel God's leading in something, and you follow that leading, can you ever feel as if you made the biggest mistake of your life? And how do you fix that, or do you? Too many thoughts... I am an emotional person, more so since I have had my children. Something about childbirth and babies has made me much more of a cryer, someone that I never was pre-baby. In fact I used to think that is was silly to cry about anything. Not now, oh, no. I am a constant fountain, well maybe not constant, but I am more emotional as a mother. This just adds to the questions in my mind. Not only do I question, but I FEEL things and that makes everything more difficult. I think that the only thing that will help me is time. Time to chew things over and hash them out and cry about it and figure out how I truly feel. But I am not sure if how I FEEL is a very good measure of whether something is good or not. So maybe that was the wrong way of wording things. Time will give me the opportunity to step back and look at the bigger picture and not have frustration and emotions of the moment interfere.
Oh well, this is all just ramblings, but I feel a slight bit better.

Ode to Crypto

Oh yes, there is sickness once again in the Heubner house, or at least that is what the daycare thinks. Many of you might have heard about the latest Iowa outbreak, crypto. This is a lovely parasite that cannot be killed by bleach, is found in stools and is a pain in the neck to deal with. Anyhow, earlier this year the daycare thought Alex had this because he had a "funny" diaper. So off we went to the doctor and low and behold he had an ear infection. Thus, the diarrhea. So back to daycare we went. Today, I get a call that he has had a diarrhea diaper and I have to take him in again and this time he must be tested. So I had to collect stool samples, fill vials (oh, you know it sounds fun) and then run those into the office where they will be sent to Cedar Rapids to be tested. Now, if that was all there was to it, I wouldn't have a problem. But this testing can take up to a week, and you guessed it, they can't go back to daycare until the results come back negative. So I have a child who looks healthy, acts healthy but doesn't poop healthy evidently. Actually he has a runny nose, which makes me want to argue with the daycare and ask them, do you think maybe he has a cold???
Now, if it comes back that he has this crypto, then fine, we will be on meds and stay home, but I am really irritated that any "funny" diaper means that I am running to the doctor again. The nurse today told me that if this comes back negative that we should just have the doctor write a standing note for Alex at the daycare and tell them that sometimes Alex will have "funny" stools and that is normal. :)
Fun, fun fun! That's what we have here.

On a side note, Alex has really clearly been saying "I want it". Usually it is in a whiny voice because he can't have something. But today, at the doctor's office when we were dropping off the "sample" he wanted to play with the toys. Now, being the good mother that I am, I told him he couldn't go over there on the odd chance that he actually has crypto. He wasn't too thrilled and looked at me and whined, I want it! I want it! :) Very cool.

So I am really really bad at this!

I know, I know. It has been months since I last posted. I even let Ellen blog for me a couple of times because I just wasn't up to it. So I will try to be better at this. I can't promise much, but maybe I can do one here or there. :)
Life has been very busy for the Heubner family. We have moved to Independence, started school, started football (Bill), started more classes (Katie) and finally started to feel like things will be okay here. It was a very tough decision to move to Independence. We had been in Hubbard for 6 years of our lives and it truly felt like home. Amber and Ashley were little when we moved there(3 and 1) and we really thought that we would grow old there. We loved the community and the friends that we had. We had added on to our house a couple years ago and then decided to adopt Alex, and that was fun, bringing him home and making up a room for a boy. If you haven't figured it out, we really loved Hubbard. Long story, short, things became really crazy for us in Hubbard, with Bill losing football, and job uncertainty. We applied and were offered jobs in Independence and after a lot of prayer, and tears, we decided that this was where God was moving us. Let me say that this was not always easy. There are so many things about Independence that I love: the conveniences, our new church, being closer to the river and my mom...But we miss our friends, we miss feeling that we belong-that we are somehow connected to people and that we have "place" that we fit. We are making new friends and at first it was almost a daily prayer, God please help us feel like we belong. Help us connect and meet the people that we were meant to meet. And if you know me I am not patient. It is my biggest weakness and something that I battle daily. Our kids struggled a little, although I will say like in most things they are resilient and they are doing well now. And life is beginning to be "normal". We have routine and that has helped. One of the biggest blessings was finding Jesup Bible Fellowship, our new church. We have always felt that the church is where you connect with people, and feel as if you really belong, and that is how it is beginning to feel. We have made new acquaintances that will hopefully turn into good friends and we have gotten involved as much as we can in order to get to know people.
So God is answering our prayer. We are starting to feel a little less disconnected, and a little more "normal". It is going to take time, but enough time has passed that we can see what the future could be like, and that is encouraging. We have been back to see some of our friends in Hubbard, and it is refreshing to see them and have that comfortable, old shoe feeling. You know, that feeling of just fitting right, and feeling right? And as Bill reminds me, we aren't that far away, and no, they won't forget all about us. :)
So what have we been up to in Independence? A lot! We have painted a little in our house (if you didn't know, we still own the other house in Hubbard-lovely market right now!). But the big stuff is that we have started a garage addition. The house only had one stall, and the house was smaller than our previous house, so you do the math- we either have too much stuff, or not enough space. So we are adding two stalls in the hopes that we will have extra storage in the garage and be able to bring storage stuff from Hubbard eventually. A by product of the new garage is more driveway and the girls are thrilled with that. It gives them more room for playing, bike riding and basketball, plus now we won't keep hitting the curb when we pull in the driveway.


We decided that we are going to start taking the kids to a "farm" to pick out pumpkins. Now I have nothing against Wal-mart pumpkins, but there is something about taking everyone out in the weather and grabbing a wagon to pick out a pumpkin that isn't the exact same size as everyone elses. There is a place in Independence that has the pumpkins and some other things that go along with that stuff- a big tree swing, places for picture taking, and then a little store that sells decorations and gives away free popcorn. We had a great time doing this and afterwards Bill and I both thought that this was one of those things that makes it feel like home.


Well, I think that this post is probably one of my longer ones, and hopefully makes up for the months of nothing. Hopefully I will remember to do this again. :)

More river Fun

Here is Amber riding on a new tube that the family got. It was fun! Ellen and Kate had a pretty fun ride as well, but Amber had to spot so we didn't have anyone to take pictures!
Here is Alex. He loves the sand and the water. He walks right into the water and loves to eat the sand!
Here is Alex playing Badmitton. I wish you could hear this yelling noise he made with it!

Here is Addie. Isn't she cute????

It was a great river day! Swimming in the morning, tubing in the afternoon, playing outside in the grass in the evening..finished up with the adults and big kids (everyone except Conner and Alex) watched Night at the Museum. It was a wonderful day.

P.s. This is Ellen posting still!

It is ABOUT time!

Since Katie won't post on her blog, I am doing it for her (This is Ellen her sister-in-law). The Heubners are at the river with Jim, Ellen, kids and Grandma B for the weekend. This morning was a great swimming morning. See Above. I will try for some pictures of Alex and Addie later.

We have purchased a new tube and Amber and I are anxious to try it out, but the ski boat is having some electrical issues. Maybe we will have pictures of that later!

All is well with Kate and Bill. They had a lovely time in Disney. Just ask Kate..she will tell you all about it! :) Bill is has been living in the small motorhome in Indpendence. Lots of people have looked at their house in Hubbard, but no offers yet. This next week, they hope to look at some rental properties in Indee. Kate has a half time job for this fall so that will help.

Both Amber and Ashley went to camp in the last couple of weeks and have had a great time!

So there you go folks a new post on behalf of the Heubners!