2008 UPA NATIONALS

What a great weekend we had in Minneapolis!! Oh My, it was so fun.

The girls started on Friday morning by dancing at their school with a group of guys. It was hilarious. They incorporated the guys into their funk routine. We were surprised....some of the guys did really well! Maybe they'll try out for next year's team. hahahaha

The parents started their morning by painting on the bus windows and our own vehicles. Here is the Foxy Girl all decorated and ready for the road trip.
After their assembly they loaded into the Big Purple Bus to the elementary schools to run through the halls and gave out flowers and poms to the younger kids.

Then they headed to one of the local coffee shops where one of the dancers works to fill up on caffeine and we were off to Minneapolis.

We got there, checked into our rooms then headed out to shop at the Mall of America for a bit. Another mom and I went to Chevy's for dinner and then went shopping. The girls were supposed to go to a pizza party that night but decided to skip it to play at the mall.

The next morning they had to get up early, get ready and head over to compete with their Pom routine. They did a fabulous job and took 4th place!

During the routine, one of the girls (the little chick next to Anisa) twisted her ankle really badly. It hurt, but she managed to limp back to the hotel when we were all done watching the other teams. She iced it and wrapped it and all was ok.....or so we thought. She decided to perform Sunday on her leg even tho it was still puffy and sore. She hurt it more (it's sprained with a bone chip) , but she wasn't going to let her team down. Another girl popped her shoulder out of place, and still performed on Sunday. They took 2nd place on Sunday! What a thrill! 2 trophies in NATIONALS!!
That night, the girls had a formal banquet to go to. They got to get all dressed up and sparkly. Don't they look beeeyyyyoooottteeefffuuullll??

Here is Anisa with her team Little Sister, Sarah. My girl is gorgeous, don't you think?

Now, I'm not exactly sure, but I heard the coach saying now they are qualified for nationals next year because they placed this year. Anisa has to try-out again so as long as she makes it I guess we'll be going again next year. Sara has also said she'd like to try out. We'll see! :) Exciting stuff in our house. Here is the link to the story in our local paper...Door County Daily News

Oh, and the quilt brought in about $400.00 for our team! I was so happy. The winner was the Middle School Principal. :)

Pictures of Winter in Wisconsin

The main reason I started this blog was because I am so far away from my friends and family and I wanted a place to be able to share what my life is like here. So, with that in mind, here are some pictures of what we're living in right now. :)

This is the ship canal. I was out at the CG station at the end of the canal and shot this toward town. It was really cool because the ice was shifting and cracking and sounded really neat.

This picture cracked me up. It says Private Dock. Um, I know there's a dock in there somewhere.

Here is an ice hut. I don't know the technical name for these but they're the little huts people put on the ice and sit in to ice fish. So, Ice Hut seems like the most logical name to me. This one is sitting out in the bay.

Here is a bigger picture of the bay with more ice huts. You can see the steel bridge in town.

This was just a little stream I saw on my travels a couple of days ago. I loved how the sun was shining on it and the snow was all up on it's little "bank".

This is a little Ruffed Grouse. I was just driving along and saw a couple in a tree. I thought there were only 2, then I looked again and saw 3. They were just sitting there watching me.

Here is some sort of bee or wasp or hornet nest. I was looking for some nice canal view and happened to look up and see this thing. Right now, the bugs are probably either dead or hibernating ~ if they do that. But I figured I'd stay in the car anyway.

These were taken last night. We had a big winter storm blow in Saturday night. It started with some freezing rain, then we got snow. They called for around 8-11 inches. We ended up with about 9 inches by the time it was all over. The first picture is my driveway about 10 minutes after I finished shoveling it.

This second picture is the side yard. The piles of snow are piling up high. We have had snow on the ground since Dec. 1. We had a little warm spell at the end of December and a lot of the snow melted, but not totally. Then we had another storm and we haven't had it melt since. I don't mind since I think it looks so pretty.

This is a picture I just took today. It is our backyard chairs. We're not going to be sitting in them anytime soon. :)

And now, More Weather...

Well, I figured I'd better post SOMETHING or I'd put you all to sleep. Time has been flying lately, and I'm not sure why. I don't feel like I've gotten a whole bunch accomplished, but the family is happy and the house is, well, kind of clean.

The thing that is on everyone's minds around her is the weather. We've had a pretty cold, snowy winter. Most people say it's worse than the last few years. I can only compare it to last winter, but it IS colder and snowier than I remember last year to be. Here is a picture of the bay with the Lakers in the shipyard. The bay is pretty much frozen. Every once in a while, a ship comes in through the canal and breaks up the ice and it makes me mad. The flat, snow covered ice is so pretty. Today I need to go take pictures of the little fishing huts out on the ice. They look cool.

I have some sewing I COULD BE doing, but haven't felt motivated to start the project. I bought some really cute stuff to make some summer dresses for Anisa. I have a while before I NEED to make them. I think that's why I don't feel that much of a need to get them started.

Today is sunny and cold.....7 right now. I think it's supposed to get to 10....woo hoo! I hope you are snuggly wherever you are! :) Oh, yeah. A week from today we head to Minneapolis to NATIONALS with the SBHS ROCKIN' DANCE TEAM!!! :)

Deja Vu

This LOOKS like the same quilt I made before, but this is a new quilt. I just finished it to raffle off for the Dance Team. We're trying to raise a little money for the bus to Nationals in Minneapolis in a few weeks. Everyone is getting really excited about going. The coordinators of the competition have a ton of fun things lined up for the dancers. I'm looking forward to watching our girls compete AND I get to go to Ikea, which is a huge bonus. :) Hey, I'm shopping deprived here!

The weather here today is splendid. The sun is shining, it's 28 degrees and gorgeous. There is plenty of pretty white snow on the ground to cover the mud and dormant grass. They SAY it's supposed to get colder this week, we'll see. Maybe we'll get some more snow.

I hope you are all snuggly and warm, or staying cool wherever you are. :)

Our fun weather

Today we're having a warmer day than yesterday. Right now as I type it is 6 and with wind chill feels like -3.

SB schools do not have snow days. It snows here too often, they'd be off all the time. They DO call "cold" days. When the wind chill is below -25 degrees, they call it. Yesterday, the temperature in the morning was -12 degrees. But our wind chill was more impressive. It was -39. When it's that cold, you just want to stay in the house warm and snuggly under a quilt. So, that's basically what we did for most of the morning. Later in the afternoon, Travis and I went out to snow blow the driveway. We helped our next door neighbor who is 89 years old so he wouldn't have to be out there too long. By the time we were done, we finally had warmed up, but we had to take several breaks to warm up our fingers.

They're calling for more snow tonight, but I don't think it's supposed to get soooooo cold. I'm still enjoying winter, but these frigid temps I could do without. Luckily, they don't last too long and I have a warm house, with lots of quilts and blankies. :)

I hope you all are having weather to your liking wherever you are!

She's WHAT???

She's 17!!!!!! I seriously cannot believe my baby girl is 17 years old! How can this be? I'm only 29 myself. :) tee hee With Christmas just behind us, her gifts weren't that thrilling, but she was happy. Jones Soda, Watermelon Laffy Taffy, a Volcom Purse and some fancy schmancy lip gloss. We'll be going shopping at the Mall of America next month when we go over for Dance Competition.

She was born on Monday, January 21 way back in 1991. She had a ton of black hair and was as gorgeous as she could be. She was such a good baby. She rarely cried and when she did, we knew she needed something. She smiled all the time. She has grown into such a fantastic person. Sure, we have some moments, but mostly we get along. This is our Princess the day she was born. She's a little taller now. :) Isn't she beeeyyyyoooootttteeeeeefffffuuuulllll??? :)

Even Colder

This morning when we woke up our little temperature thingy said it was -4. The lowest it got last night was -6. The weather channel says with wind chill it's -23. So basically, we won't be sitting out here enjoying the sunshine. We'll stay in the house, thank you very much.

And this is what cold windows do. Yep, that's a nice little layer of ice on the bathroom window upstairs. The house isn't very airtight, so this isn't too surprising, but the glass is very cold and since there is a lot of humidity in there this is what happens. It is a gorgeous day outside, tho. The sky is a gorgeous blue and it's BRIGHT! The weatherman has predicted snow, but when it's this cold even the snowflakes don't want to fall! It's supposed to warm up this week to the teens. We'll see! :)

brrrrr

It's cold out today. When we woke up this morning it was 6 degrees. It's warmed right up, tho. It's 15 now! :) The sun is out so it is beautiful outside. The snow is all glittery and sparkly. It's very bright out too. Here is our front yard with all our accumulated snow. The big piles in front are from the plow and the driveway. Unfortunately, yesterday was in the mid 30s so the roads were wet. Today they are covered with ice. The salt trucks have done a good job covering the roads with salt, but it's all over the car now. Darn!

Tomorrow our high is supposed to be 6 and our low is forecasted to be -1. Good thing we have lots of quilts in the house! Kickoff temp in Green Bay on Sunday is supposed to be 1 with wind chills around-15. Yeah, the Frozen Tundra, baby!

Dance Team Video

Here are the girls performing at half-time tonight. The video is just off my little camera, not great quality, but you can get an idea of what they do. This is their new routine. They have always done a routine like this, but they've changed it and improved it. It's more competitive now. Watch at your own risk.......I'm telling you, it's not the greatest quality! :)

Winners

Well, as several of you know, the Green Bay Packers won last night and are one game closer to the Super Bowl in 10 years. I don't REALLY care about football, but when you live in Wisconsin, you better LOVE the Packers. The played the Seattle Seahawks, and of course, being from WA, I figured I'd better cheer for both teams. :) The final score was Packers 42, Seahawks 20. If you watched the game, you saw the snow they got in GB. Yes, we got the snow too. I cleared the driveway last night around 10:00. There was already about 2 inches. This morning it warmed up and the other 4 inches we got was wet and HEAVY! We broke out the snow blower.

The other winners and more important winners are the Sturgeon Bay Dance Team!! Oh yeah! They competed yesterday in Appleton and won 1st in Pom, 1st in Funk and got the Grand Champion trophy for scoring the highest in the whole competition!!! They got 3 very big, pretty, glittery trophies!! :) Here is a picture of the team with their trophies.

Here is one of some of the chicks - Anisa is in the middle. :) We're quite proud of the chicks.

Skittle the Squirrel

This is Skittle. She's our favorite squirrel. We named her Skittle because she's so tiny. She's been a daily visitor for a long time now. About a month ago, she came into the yard with her tail messed up (all the fur was flat like it was wet) and her back legs not working very well. She was hopping along like a bunny but her tail was just flopping behind her. We think she got hit by a car, but just smacked in the back end. A couple of weeks with a floppy tail, the fur close to her body started getting fluffy. Eventually the end of her tail fell off and now she has a little fluff. She can run full blast and up and down the tree. She hops more like a bunny instead of a squirrel. We love watching her because she gets crazy sometimes and does little flips in the yard. Squirrels are way better than tv! :)

All the Goings On!

Wowee! I can't believe how long I've been slacking. It's already the 8th of January and this is the first post I've made. Sorry to all you who have been waiting to see what adventures we've been having. Time flies when you're having fun, and also when you're lazy. :)

Anyway, well, Christmas. It was wonderful and WHITE. Here are my lovelies by our darling tree. We were going to go to a tree farm to cut a tree down, but we didn't get the tree until the 20th of Dec, and I hated to cut a tree down that had made it all the way to the 20th without being cut. This little tree had already been cut and I didn't want it to die in vain. I know, I'm a freak. Oh well. I don't know what kind of tree it is. It's some sort of fir, maybe a fraser. I DO know it is a cute tree with very soft needles. We didn't get poked at all AND we had it in the house until today and it only dropped a small hand full of needles. We'll be getting the same kind of tree next year, hopefully. The girls got spoiled as usual.

BEFORE Christmas, we had some visitors. My mom, sis and niece. Here are the chicks playing in the snow. My neice wanted snow while she was here. Well, she got it. We were out shopping and it really started snowing. It was great!

We went sledding on Incinerator Hill. Yeah, it's at the dump. That's where we sled in Sturgeon Bay. Eh, whatever. It's fun, even if it is a junk pile! :) Here are Anisa and her auntie Wendy flying down the hill

Travis has gotten a bee in his bonnet (I just like saying that). He has become obsessed with cross country skiing. Hey, it's great exercise, I'm not knocking it, but the girls want to go snowboarding! So, I told him I'd go cross country skiing, but we're taking the chicks snowboarding! He said ok. Here we are all decked out. Check out my cool Napoleon Dynamite boots. :) We had fun, but we were sore the next day. It's amazing which muscles you find you need to work on more.

As I type, it's snowing again. We've had a few days in the 40s and all the snow melted, well, all the snow except the huge piles out on the edge of the yard where it had been plowed or shoveled. The snow tonight is HUGE, GIGANTIC flakes. I had to pick up Anisa from school (band thing) and I shoveled tracks so we don't get ice. I was gone, about 5 minutes and the tracks were almost gone when I got back home. Anisa and I took pictures of the snow and played around a little bit, until I got cold. You can kind of see how big the flakes are in this picture.

So, that's all the latest news from our house. We had a nice New Year's celebration. Anisa went to an overnight party, but came home so she could bring in the New Year with her family. Awwww. :) I was happy about it, since it would have been the first New Year without her. I'll have to post about our little squirrel, Skittle. But that will come in a day or two, when I get a good picture of her, and this can serve as a warning to Wende! :) Hugs and wintery wishes to everyone!!! And I hope you all have a wonderful 2008 with plenty of successes and dreams come true. :)

Merry Christmas 2007

We just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Or a Happy Hanukkah! And we pray for a SPECTACULAR New Year for everyone!

Pacific Northwest

Please pray for all those affected by the horrible storms in WA and OR. The town of Chehalis has been basically wiped out. I just got these pictures from a friend. Here are a couple that you can really see the extent of the flooding.

These were taken along the I-5 freeway. We would drive by these places on our way to Seattle.

I also talked to my friend, Monica, and she said they had terrible damage on the coast. Trees are down on houses, no power since Sunday, highway access in and out closed. They had 100+ mph winds. A Sitka Spruce tree that was one of the nations largest was snapped 75 ft from the bottom and they say it will now die. I saw on the news a story about farms losing hundreds of cows. So many people all over the PNW are homeless, lost businesses, and some have lost their lives. It makes me realize I have NOTHING to complain about.

The calm after the storm

We rolled out of bed late this morning, but got dressed and went outside to clear the driveway. Here is Travis with the snowblower. We did ours, then I went to help my neighbors a little tiny bit and visit. It's funny, everyone comes out to do their driveways and then we all visit in the street. It's fun.

Here's the plow that always comes by AFTER we do the driveway to push up all the snow back into our drive. Darn guy! It has now turned warmer and started with a mix of snow and rain. I have to run to Target to print out Christmas pictures!! It will be nice to get those out early, hopefully. Now to go warm up my feeties. :)

Milwaukee Bucks Dance Competition

Today was the Milwaukee Bucks Dance Competition down at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. The team performed their pom routine and pulled a 2nd place!!! Well, they got a 3rd place trophy, but one of the judges was totally biased and after checking into it, their totals got them a 2nd place. They also performed their funk routine. This was the first time they performed this routine in competition, and they did really well, but they also found things they have to work on. We are very proud of the chicks. They ROCKED!!!!


When we left the Bradley Center, we came outside to several inches of snow and ice pellets. We buzzed home in the Element going 30-40 mph and the normally 2.5 hour trip took us 5 hours. I took a couple of moms with me so it was ok. We just visited the whole time. Here is the Element's back end covered with snow from the road.

Here is snow in our yard. It's still coming down. We have about 8 inches now, and are expecting a total of about a foot by morning. YIPPEE!! :)

Now, to get into my comfy flannel pants and chill. Have a snowflakey day/night!! :)

Jingle Jolly Runner

No, I don't mean a person who is running. I mean a TABLE runner! :) This pattern was designed by my splendid friend, Monica It's called Jingle Jolly Runner. I whipped it out in a few hours. Super fun, and super easy, and super cute! Thanks M!!! :)

I used Peppermint and Hollyberries fabric by Benartex (the green). I bought it a while ago, and figured this was perfect to use it for. I think I was right. :)

Ta Da!

Well, just as I said earlier, here I am posting my first of 2 NUJD quilts. I'm so glad it's done. I can throw it into Foxy (the Element) and we can stay snuggly warm. :) The top was done with 4" squares that I found at a thrift shop for $4 (and I got 2 tops). The back is 11" squares that were leftover (see last post) from several quilts that I've already made. I even pieced together the batting from leftovers! So, this quilt cost me a whopping $2 bucks! Yippee!!!

Now I'm planning to work on a table runner designed by my very talented friend, Monica. I need (yeah, right....NEED) to go get some fabric at the quilt shop, so I'm off here for a little bit. Hugs and kisses to all! :)

It's been a long time......

It's been a while since I posted last, and I've been meaning to. But here I am today!

Thanksgiving was great. We spent the day lounging in our jammies, watching TV and eating, of course. It was just the 4 of us, just the way we like it.

We woke up to a dusting of snow. Since then, it's snowed on and off. It was supposed to snow last night, but it looks more like we'll get it later today. The temperature has risen from 20 degrees, when we went to bed last night, to a balmy 30~ The clouds are bluish, so I'm guessing they're full of SNOW!! :)

I've been trying to get my NUJD quilts done, but since I was using scraps on the backs I had to cut flannel. I dug out all my scraps from quilts past and cut squares from 11" to 6" depending on the strip. Here are my piles. I have a ton! Well, not LITERALLY a ton, but a lot. :) I have one NUJD quilt in the machine today. I hope to post it later this afternoon. I'm just quilting across and up and down just to get the batting all nice and snuggly inside.

Here is my new Walking Foot! I know, I know. I should have gotten this years ago, but I never wanted to spend the money. I'm glad I did. I just got used to not having it so I didn't know what I was missing. If you don't have one of these for your machine, I encourage you to get one. It is very nice! :)

Now, off to the drop the kids off at school and come back to SEW, SEW, SEW!!! Have a fantastic day!! :)