Starting 2015 blogging in my consistent over-achieving fashion!
1/9/15 - I got to meet Jason's cousin's granddaughter Ripley - who is also my best friend's niece! I love that I am related to her now!
Here's the last picture we took with Grandma Regehr before she passed away. We saw her one more time after this picture, but SO glad we snapped some photos on this day! She's wearing a hat that I had just finished knitting for her.
1/18 - we had our last family Christmas. By the way, Christmas in January is way less stressful! This is my Grandma Lucy with her great-grandkids.
1/19 - Jason picked up a (new to us) stock trailer that he bought earlier in the month. This will make it way easier for us to buy and sell cattle!
1/30 - we had our house appraised. We decided back in November to refinance our house, so I had been working with the bank on it since then. More on this later.
2/8 - Grandma Mary (Regehr) passed away. I spent a lot of time with her over the past 3 years, so it felt like losing a grandmother I'd known my whole life. She was generous and loving and we will miss her, but we're so thankful for her 89 years of life and that she is with Jesus!
2/10 - Jason's birthday! Apple pie - his favorite! Not very fun to be mourning on your birthday.
2/12 - family picture after Grandma Mary's funeral.
2/14 - weekend trip to KC to visit Lego land! This was their Christmas present from my parents. They loved it!
Building race cars and getting ready to race!
2/16 - playing in the snow :)
Other big news in February...we got a new TV! This is big news because it only happens once every 10 years.
3/1 - more snow! They built a cowboy snowman.
Jason built them a snow fort and then attacked them with snow bombs. It was pretty funny to watch!
3/5 - Josiah lost one of his 2 front teeth! We went to jump mania and he dove over a wall (which he wasn't supposed to be doing) face-first and came up with his bloody tooth in his hand! It scared him a little but was still pretty amusing. The one he knocked out wasn't even the loosest one!
3/7 - messing around in the barn while the vet was here checking our cows. We have 8 pregnant cows this year as compared to 5 each of the previous two years!
That evening Jason's mom took us all to the circus in Joplin. The kids got to ride an elephant (seen in my blurry cellphone pic below) and loved seeing all the high-wire performers. They had a blast!
3/12 - Josiah's remaining loose front tooth continued to dangle in his mouth, but he wanted to lose it at school (to get this dazzling tooth necklace), so he wouldn't let us pull it. With all the snow days we had, the tooth was pretty much sideways in his mouth (we called him scraggle-tooth) before he finally got it pulled at school! Success!!
Also on this day, we finally closed on our loan. Long story short, the appraisal I mentioned earlier came back way lower than it should have. So we ended up working with the bank to use our original appraisal and then we had to pay down the difference to get us to 80% loan to value (we were only off by 4% but that is still a big chunk of cash to part with!). So we are very thankful that it worked out because we got the original interest rate we requested which had gone up by the time we closed on the loan! God definitely worked out the details for us. We are now paying a little higher payment every month, but cutting our loan term almost in half and saving $100K in interest. Grateful!
3/15 - a fun impromptu zoo visit with some friends who happened to be in Springfield.
3/28 - Josiah got to do an obstacle race! It was a 1-mile course on a VERY cold day. This bouncy maze was the final obstacle after having a wall to climb over, balance beam, army crawling under ropes, and some random crab walks. He had a fun time!
After the race, we went out for breakfast and then to Bass Pro to "drive" boats and check out the toys.
Then we went to Toys R Us where they had a Lego Ninjago event.
Then they spent part of the day climbing on daddy. It was a really fun day!
3/29 - we met my parents in Lebanon so they could pick up the boys. Josiah's spring break was 3/30-4/6, so they got to spend a couple of days with my parents.
3/30 - we took advantage of the kids being away by having a date night!
4/5 - Easter! I was crazy and sang a solo at church. I was insanely nervous but I survived and didn't even trip or pee my pants. Then we had Jason's parents and grandparents over for lunch. It was a great day of family time.
4/6 - Josiah's last day of spring break! Jason took off half the day, and we went to the Smallin Civil War Cave. We were the only ones there at the time, so we had a private tour which was nice.
Then we went to the Springfield nature center and hiked around. We thoroughly wore these little dudes out!
4/11 - Josiah's first soccer game! He has fun playing with me at home, but isn't very ambitious about playing with this many kids. I think he's a little afraid of getting kicked. He's being very polite though!
4/12 - after church we surprised the kids by finally getting to use our Silver Dollar City passes that we got for Christmas. This is in line for Levi's first semi-roller coaster experience - Fire In the Hole! He was not a fan of being in the dark, but now says that he liked it.
On one of the new rides at Fireman's Landing.
We happened to be there on the same day as our nephew Chandler, so we met up with him for a few water rides. The kids had a blast!
4/13 - Josiah got pink eye in both eyes. It was going around his class at school. He got 2 days off of school and really didn't feel that bad, so he rather enjoyed it! The nurse practitioner prescribed an ointment for his eyes, and that didn't help much, so the next week we started on some drops. His eyes are looking much better now!
4/17 & 4/18 - I dropped the kids off with Jason's parents and we headed to Branson for a marriage retreat with our church. It was a great weekend! We rode go-karts, played mini-golf, ate ice cream, and did a little shopping. The couple from our church who were the speakers did a wonderful job with teaching and challenging us. Very thankful we got to go!
4/21 - our good friend Brian Cleary happened to be in Springfield, so we were able to go out to dinner with him! It was really great to catch up, but I guess the steakhouse where we ate served me something my body didn't like. No one else got sick, but I was puking my guts out 2 hours later! The next morning (today) I felt perfectly fine! However, because of my violent puking, I have broken blood vessels under my eyes. If you see me in the next couple of days, I may make up a story about being in a fight, because it is definitely believable at this point!
Here's to less throwing up and more blogging in the coming months!
