Many Years Have Passed...

Many, many years have past since I did a post on this blog.  I guess we've just gotten busy.  Keegan is in middle school now and Lyle and I are still working.

Lyle works from home full time and has for the last couple years.  This has been very nice.

I am still working for 3M, although I've change jobs internally a few times.  First I took a job as a Project Lead for Electronic Lab Notebooks.  This was in an effort to gain more flexibility and be able to work from home more.  With the copious number of meetings I had and the strange requirement that I had to be in the office for a lot of my conference calls, it ended up being much less flexible.  After realizing I was getting very depressed, unhappy, and gaining a lot of weight....I decided to seek out another lab job.

I landed at a job in the Commercial Solutions Division.  They were looking for a formulation chemist/engineer to work on the organosol process used to create vinyl films.  The bulk of their business is in car wrap films.  I've been in the new job about 9 months and it's been good.  The people are really great, the work is challenging, and I get to be in the lab quite a bit which I love.  I am down 10 lbs from last year and pretty happy.  I still struggle with the horribly long commute (45 min each way).  I get up pretty early to get into work so that the commute isn't longer than that.  I do still wish I could find some good work closer to home.

Right now I am at home on Short Term Disability because I had to have a hysterectomy a few weeks ago (almost 6 weeks now).  I had a number of issues going on: heavy bleeding, chronically aenemic, polyps in my uterus, and severe adenomyoisis (where uretine cells grow into the surrounding muscle).  I was in a lot of pain a couple weeks a month at least and having a lot of trouble managing the bleeding.  Recovery from the surgery is going well and I am looking forward to having a more pain-free life!

I am also still doing a lot of work on my blog (http://hiddeninpages.com/) and ramping up my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIIFPu2AhLpDWOPT6svPGsA?view_as=subscriber) so check those out if you are interested.

Keegan is still involved in many activities.  He is doing hockey all year long; for off season right now he is in a 3 on 3 league.  He is also continuing with swimming.  Additionally, he is participating in the table top game club after school.  He decided to call karate quites shortly after he got his black belt.  He spends a lot of his freetime playing Fortnite on the PS4 with his buddies from school and playing outside with the neighbor kids.

 

Keegan Playing Hockey

Keegan has been doing a pretty darn amazing job in middle school.  It was a lot of changes this year but he adjusted well.  He's been on the A honor roll every trimester, is in advanced math, and has continued to stay in the mid to upper 90's percentile-wise on all his standardized testing.  He has grown so much both in responsibility and attitude this last year.  While we are getting a bit of the pre-teen attitude...he does his chores mostly without complaining and he was an enormous help to me while I was recovering from surgery.  He didn't complain a bit when I had him lugging around laundry bins and picking stuff up off the floor when I dropped things.

Keegan and Lyle have also been helping Lyle's dad replace his deck this spring.  This has been a really great learning experience for Keegan.  He's learning how to use a miter saw, measure and cut boards, and just some general carpentry.  It's great for him to learn all these life skills.

Jubei passed away nearly a year ago from a combination of bladder cancer, heartworm, and possibly digestive cancer.  He was an awesome cat and shared an amazing 14 years of life with us.

A Young Jubei

We weren't going to adopt another cat, they usually live 15-20 years and we want to retire to live in our camper in 10-15 years.  However, Keegan talked us in to going to PetSmart and they had just gotten in a ton of kittens.  We ended up with a wirey orange guy who we named Raviti.  He has been an amazingly fun addition to the household and I am really really happy we adopted him.

Raviti gets along with all of our other cats great, is very loving, and crazy fun all at once.  He's been getting into places our other cats never dreamed of and loves being around his people.  He's very smart and talkative and a perfect fit for us.  We've been trying to ease him into becoming a camper cat by getting him used to his harness and walks, as well as going for car rides in a special screened in carrier.

Crazy Raviti or "Kitten" as he gets called a lot.

We took an amazing trip over spring break out to LasVegas and then through Death Valley, Zion, and Grand Canyon National Parks.  We ended up in Sedona, AZ which was incredibly beautiful.

Highlights of the trip were an ATV ride through sand dunes outside of Zion and Antelope Canyon in Arizona.  I really enjoyed Sedona and would love to go back and do more hiking there in the future.

 

Above are images from Antelope Canyon

Above are pictures from our ATV ride outside of Zion

By the Bellagio Fountains

At Badwater Basin in Death Valley

Hanging out with Cow Mules at the Grand Canyon

Hiking in Sedona, AZ

Anyway, it was an amazing trip!  I think that's all I am going to say about that :-)

We also love our "new"...now three years old house.  It's been perfect.  We love the neighborhood and the school.  So, nice to be able to sit out at the fire ring and I enjoy the outside work.

I hope everyone is having a great spring.  I would promise to update this blog more....but that's probably not going to happen.  We're just very busy with work and activities!  It would be nice if we could do a post more than once every three years though...

In the New House

So you get two posts this year!  In as little as three months! What is happening here?

Well we are in our new house and it is just as awesome as we hoped it would be.  The neighborhood is great.  There are a lot of kids Keegan's age and a few hockey coaches nearby that Lyle coaches with.  It's got that whole good ole' neighborhood vibe going on.  Kids are in the streets playing hockey or basketball.  Kids are in and out of each others houses making mischief.  Everyone is very friendly and easy to get along with.  This is truly a house and neighborhood where we feel like we belong and will be able to spend many long years.

Beginning of September was insane.  The closing on the old house went fine (2nd time we sold it).  The closing on the new house was almost delayed because of some issues with getting the appraisal of the new house done on time; but rather than being delayed until the Monday after the weekend it just got pushed back to Friday afternoon.

In addition to all that my sister had her baby.  An adorable little boy named Jorden; he had some complications early and ended up in NICU; but he is now doing well as is his mom.

And Keegan started at his new school.  Yep all the above happened in about three days in September and it was absolutely stressful.  But we got through it all.

I took the week off after we moved in and unpacked everything.  We got all our rock delivered and spent 3 weeks shoveling rock around the house and now that is done.  We also bought some new furniture and got everything all decorated to my liking.  So we are pretty set.  Which is good because we are having the whole extended family over for a baby reception for Jordan in a couple weeks.

Keegan loves his new school.  He's made a number of new friends and is participating in chess club there.  He'll be doing a chess tournament in early December.  He did crazy good on his MAP testing again this year (was over 95th percentile for Math and Reading) so that is good.

Keegan is still doing karate.  He's probably going to be a brown belt for awhile; this level is a lot more challenging for him.  Hockey season has also started.  Keegan moved up to B Mites, so he was very excited about that.  Lyle is assistant coaching this year (we are both releved he doesn't have to be a head coach this time around).

We made it through Halloween which was low key but a lot of fun.  We had my parents and some friends over and went trick-or-treating.  Keegan knew a lot of the kids in the neighborhood and it was fun to walk around and see everyone having so much fun.

Now we are getting geared up for the holiday season...hoping to get our Christmas lights put up this weekend and do exciting things like cut up some more wood from the downed trees in our backyard (they are down from when they did construction).

Anyway, we are loving the new house.  It's amazing how nice it is to have certain things fixed that bothered us in our old house.  For example we have a spacious mudroom now and so there is room for coats and shoes and we aren't all tripping over each other in there like in our old house.  The walk-in pantry is amazing and has made it so easy to organize food.

Having the washer/dryer upstairs has been awesome and made it so easy and convenient to do the laundry.  I am also enjoying having an office of my own where I can have a table set up for recording videos and space for all my books.  The master bathroom is also very spacious so we aren't bumping into each other when we are getting ready in the morning.

It's just amazing how having some of these space issues fixed reduces day to day stress.  Anyway, I will leave you all with the below video links to youtube videos giving a tour of our new house.  Enjoy!

Time for my yearly personal blog post...

Again it's been a really really long time since I wrote on this blog.  As per the norm now I spend most of my "free time" either reading or writing book reviews for my Hidden In Pages blog.

It's been a truly hectic year and an even worse summer.  We are building a new house in Ham Lake.  It is a beautiful two story house on a 1 acre wooded lot with an awesome outbuilding for our camper and toys.  The neighborhood is lovely and we already know some of the families that live out there so we are super excited.  The house is supposed to be done early September.

Of course with the excitement comes all the other bad stuff...well not as much bad as just stressful and annoying.  We've been living with my parents since May...mostly because we have 4 cats and needed them out of our current house to sell it.  Mostly it's been fine and working out great.  However it is hard not being in your own house and it is hard having to keep the cats in the basement where they can't interact with us.  It's hard not knowing where things are and trying to cram a house worth of stuff into a couple of spare bedrooms and a bathroom..it's just hard.  We are lucky that I have such wonderful parents that are willing to let us squat here...but it's still a bit stressful and...well...hard.

The worse part is the selling the old house.  It sold two days after we listed it.  The buyer wanted some of our furniture which was okay.  However, he also delayed the closing three times because of lender issues and in the end (7 weeks after we sold it) the whole thing fell through.  So we were looking forward to a stress-free summer without house payments and instead ended up putting the house back up for sale the end of July.

This meant the 2K we spent to stage it was down the drain.  We had to move furniture back in and restage it.  It was a huge pain.  The good news was it sold again in 6 days.  The bad news is that we aren't supposed to close until the end of August now and the new buyers have a bunch of professional cleaning (ducts, windows, etc) that they expect us to do.  Not a huge deal but difficult given we don't live there now.  Basically the selling our current house thing has become a full summer event.  We have moved furniture out of that house twice now and are praying and hoping that this time we actually close.  It's been incredibly stressful and soul-suckingly depressing.  There are a lot of times when I think it's not worth it..but then...

I go and visit our new house on this beautiful quiet wooded lot.  It's in a neighborhood where the kids are all near my son's age and he is already making friends.  It's a neighborhood where we know people and in a school district that is awesome.  Then I take a deep breath and close my eyes and repeat over and over "Yes it will all be worth it!"

As for other news...

Keegan has stopped piano lessons (he actually told me he had tried it for 2 years and hates it and I said he only had to give it a couple years...apparently he was keeping track).  It makes me a little sad, but I am also glad to have an activity go away.

Keegan got his brown belt a couple weeks ago; we are super proud of him.  It was a lot of work and was very challenging for him.  Now he is working his way to black strip and then to black belt.  He's learning tornado kicks and learning to use kamas and a bokken and of course keeping up his bo work.

Keegan is thinking about stopping swimming lessons.  He is all the way up to the where he can join the junior swim team and we are discussing whether he wants to do that or not.  He's leaning towards not right now but we are going to take the fall off and reconvene in the winter.

Keegan is also still doing hockey year round.  He is hoping to move up to B squad this year.  His skating has improved a lot over the year so we will see what try-outs bring.

He is also starting 3rd grade in a month...at his new elementary school...so hopefully that will go well for him.  He did an outstanding job on his MAP testing last year.  He was 95% for math and 99.9% for reading (tenth grade reading level).  Pretty awesome scores so we are proud of him.  However, he needs to work a bit more on focusing in class and showing his teacher how smart he is by really pushing to do more and better on his homework.  He's getting average grades in class, but he could do so much more.

As for the rest of us.  I am still at 3M, I got a promotion this spring so that was exciting.  It came with a big raise in pay which was welcome.  I am making now working at 80% time what I was making working 100% time before...so yay for that.

Lyle is working at IDeas as a contractor where he commands a bill rate that still stuns me a bit.  We still have our LLC and he contracts to IDeas through our company.  I am always nervous about him contracting but somehow he always makes things work out (knock on wood).

My sister, Kimmie, is due to have her baby any day now too...so that is exciting.

We took a very fun trip out to Northern California/Southern Oregon this spring with some friends.  We saw lots of wonderful things like Lava Beds National Park, Oregon National Caves, the Redwoods, Crater Lake, Crescent Beach, and the Table Rocks.  It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it.

We haven't been doing much else this year.  I guess we went up to the North Shore camping over the 4th.  We also went camping outside of Chicago to visit my sister in early  June.  However...mostly we are just building this house.

I hate to wish my summer away...but I will be soooo relieved when we have closed on our old house and are in our new house.

Hopefully I will update more in the future but I am not going to promise anything.  Take Care.

Keegan's First Piano Recital

Keegan had his first piano recital yesterday.  All of the 1st graders from Hovland Music Conservatory got together and performed their solo pieces.  He had a bit of a rough start, but then he recomposed himself and went on to play a beautiful recital piece.  I was very proud of him

Here is the program, Keegan was the second kid to play:

Here is the video of him playing:

Here is the link to the video if the above video isn't working.

Keegan's recital

Here is a picture of the first grade group of performers:

Here is a proud Keegan displaying his first recital pin:

Uh...wow...long time no blog....

So yeah, it's been over a year since a single darn thing has posted on this blog.  Not sure what to say about that other then we are busy.

Everytime I think we are busy we get busier.  There's been a lot going on at our house.  Keegan keeps us super busy, as do our jobs.

Keegan is in first grade now and enjoying it.  He's doing really well in school.  He joined the black belt club for karate which means he's committed to spend the next 3-4 years getting his black belt.  He is currently a blue belt in karate and is working on moving up to purple belt (then it's red, brown, black).

He's also been in hockey still and is enjoying that.  Additionally there's been some swimming lessons and piano going on too!  He is getting ready for his first piano recital this spring.

My sister got married in October in New Orleans, so that was fun.  Last September we took a camping trip up to Grand Marais and then drove up to Blue Point Amethyst mine in Canada.  It was Keegan's first time in Canada.  We also hiked up to the top of Eagle Mountain (tallest point in MN).  It was an awesome little fall trip.

Lyle started up an LLC again and is working from home full time.  I am down to 80% time at 3M.  I spend my Fridays volunteering with Keegan's class and catching up on stuff around the house so we don't have to do as much shopping and wash on the weekends.

Volunteering with Kee's class has been fun, I spend 2 hrs on Friday morning just helping with reading group or doing whatever needs doing.  I have also been teaching a Math Plus course on Thursday nights for a bunch of high-achieving 1st graders (Keegan is in it).  The session get a little crazy some times, but overall the kids seem to be enjoying it and I have been hearing good things from the parents.

We got a new camper last year and are looking forward to taking that out again this year.  We have a trip to Yellowstone planned in September and I think that will be a lot of fun. We aren't doing a ton over spring break, just going to go to a waterpark resort for a few days in the Dells.  We are trying to get all the financial changes with the LLC and me going part time figured out.

Work's been going great for me and I've been enjoying it, I had a great year last year and am looking forward to another great one this year.

I moved my blog over to wordpress mid last year as well.  It is now called Hidden in Pages.  I continue to do a lot of reviewing and have been enjoying it.  The blog is doing well, although it has taken some time to get back up to the level of readers I had before I moved.

Let's see....we also adopted a couple new cats over the last year.  Sprocket and Cheza.  We lost Loki, he died in April last year.  Ruby (at 13 years old) passed away right after Thanksgiving.  So it was definitely a hard year of loss.  However the two new additions to the household have helped.  And there are some things we have been enjoying about being a dog free household.

K, well that's your update for now.  Hopefully I will be better about posting updates on here.  Although, I doubt things will be calming down anytime soon.

Keegan's Robot

Lyle let Keegan help take apart an old hard drive last weekend and Keegan was fascinated.

Last night Keegan asked me when we are getting a new computer.  I was all like "why exactly do you want to know?"

He said "Well mom, I would really like to build a robot with the old computer parts."

Uh, okay.  Like he has any idea how to build a robot.  I asked him if he wanted something like looked like a robot or actually was a robot.  He wants one that is REALLY a robot.

I asked him what the robot would do...he said flips.  Such is our life at home, my 5 year old would rather build robots than play with his toys.

 I mean really that is kind of cool and I would love to help him build a robot.  But seriously where did that come from?!

Tech and Kindergarteners

Okay so it has been an absolutely embarrassingly long time since I have wrote on this blog.  What can I say we are busy people over here.  The summer was a blur with Keegan in soccer, swimming, and karate.  The fall not much better with hiking trips, karate, Keegan starting school, and me and Lyle working a lot.

Keegan is loving school.  He is really getting into reading and loves learning his letters.  Even more though he loves math problems.  When we got his first report card it said he was doing satisfactory in all but a few areas.  In math he was absolutely exceptional and has his teacher very impressed. Now in paying attention and following rules...well I guess he needs to work on that a bit.  I am not surprised Kee is a very spirited kid, who has a very "strong sense of self" as his daycare teachers used to say.  He is not a bad kid, he just has a very strong idea of what he thinks is right and what he thinks is stupid...he is learning though.

Keegan has also been doing hockey (which has been crazy) and karate this winter.  He's finally tested up to the Advanced Little Dragons level and is only three belts away from moving up to the adult class.  He picks this stuff up so fast it's amazing.  He has improved a ton as a skater as well and is really learning some strategy in hockey.

Okay enough for the update.  I am here to write about something else that happened today that was a bit...well... of an eye opener.

Keegan is a pretty down to earth kid.  We do a lot of sports and camping and cycling, so he doesn't get much screen time.  He gets up and watches an hour or so of cartoons on the weekends.  Occasionally we have a movie night and watch a movie as a family.  In the winter the screen time is a bit heavier and he plays Skylanders on the PS3 for an hour here and there.

But...he loves playing games on my cell phone when we are out.  When we are driving somewhere, waiting to eat in a restaurant or waiting at the dentist's he loves games!  I see no problem with that, he learns from them and doesn't have to sit through the mind numbing boredom of just...well staring out the window on a three hour car ride.

This year he got a VINCI Tablet only because I was offered one through the Amazon Vine program to review.  He was soooo excited.  It was his own thing to have his games on and his own thing to read his books on and do his math on.  It was his...and it was a piece of utter crap.  Games froze constantly, the thing crashed multiple times a day, the battery wouldn't charge, and it was frustrating for all of us.  The thing just totally sucked...you can read my review of it here...  This thing was so bad that Amazon doesn't even sell it any more.

So when I got my new  Galaxy Note II cell phone, we cleared out my Nexus S and loaded some games onto it and gave it to my son.  He likes it okay, he plays games on it.  But let's be honest I got rid of it for a reason...the battery is shot and the OS needs a reinstall because it runs very slowly...

Today we were walking through Best Buy wondering what to buy with our christmas gift certificates when Keegan stops and looks at me and says "Mom, I really really want a tablet for my birthday."  His birthday happens to be in a month.

A week ago he really really wanted the Lego Mine Set.  A tablet or the Lego Mine set are about the same price...expensive.  So I asked him which he wanted more.  He said..."Definitely the tablet.  I can read books on there, do math on there, watch movies on there, and play Angry Birds."

My 5...soon to be 6 year old son...desires a tablet of his own.  Does he know how to run one...hell yeah he does.   Did he make a well thought argument for wanting one?  Well yeah he did.  Can we afford to get one?  Sure we can, we'd be spending money on a birthday present anyway.  But should we get one?  Should our 6 year old son have a tablet to call his own?

I am big fan of tech.  I love my Kindle (of course I love my paper books too) and would never give it up.  Want to see me in an absolute fit?  Take away my phone.  If my phone fails my life fails...I don't know where I need to be, how to get there, or how to contact anyone without it.

Keegan is fascinated by our phones.  When he wants to know something he can ask the phone.  He just hits the microphone button on his dad's phone and says "How did the Badlands form?" like he did last week.  That phone has told him if coconuts are fruits or nuts (kind of both) and how far it is to the moon.  He is in awe of the phone's knowledge base.  When I couldn't answer the question from him of "whether or not our whole solar system including the sun when combined would be as big as a black hole"...he said "well, mom ask your phone."

But do I get this little kid a high tech device?  I am leaning towards yes.  Just for the reasons he gave me.  We go on trips a lot.  We struggle with the stupid portable DVD player and the darn DVDs that fall everywhere, skip, and get scratched on road trips.  Wouldn't it be awesome if he could watch movies on his tablet instead?  Wouldn't it be cool if we could "pack" along a ton of picture books that he could read in full color instead of making him pick 4 (that constantly get wet during camping trips)?  Wouldn't it be awesome for him to be able to take his own pictures and play games on his own device instead of always stealing mine?

Some of it depends on where you are financially too.  If he destroys this device it's on him.  He's not getting a new one.  But we also aren't in a spot right now where it would wreck us if he did destroy it.

We looked at a variety of options.  Kid based (like the VINCI Tablet or the NABI2 and std tablets (like the Kindle Fire HD or Nexus 7.  All are around $200.  The problem with kid-based ones is the specialized OS that doesn't get regular updates and can have stability problems.  Right now I am leaning towards the Kindle Fire HD because I am so tied to Amazon (by participating in the Vine program, ABNA, Prime, etc).

Is it okay for our kids to be so hooked on these devices?  Right now I think it is a good thing.  He is learning a lot and getting info he wants from our phones.  I get sick of him stealing my phone all the time to do things on it so maybe it's time for him to have a tablet of his own.  I think as long as this tech is balanced with other things in life like sports, play time, and outdoors activities it's a good thing.

We use Google Sky Map to identify stars while we are camping.  We use Geobeagle to hunt down GeoCaches in state parks.  So maybe we can blend this tech with natural life and have some really interesting and good things happen for our son.

As of right now I would love to grant Kee's wish of getting a tablet for his birthday...of course who knows if he will still want this next week.  By next week he may want a pony....which is sooo not happening...