Matilda

This is her photo from the humane society's website. Matilda is now at our home and she's super quiet and sweet. She's a lab mix but pretty small. Her photo doesn't do her face justice. Her eyes are cute and she makes me sort of laugh when I look at her. We'll get more pics up later. We like her.

Family Addition

I think we may be adding to our family. If all goes well we'll be going to the Animal Shelter in Amery tomorrow to get a doggy named Matilda. I'm pretty excited. I've never really had a dog before. When Matthew and I were first married we had a puppy named Jacob but he was Matthew's dog for hunting and wasn't really a family dog. Jacob had to live at Matthew's parent's farm when we moved to an apartment and had to stay at the farm when we moved to the Hwy.12 house as he'd have surely gotten squished on the busy highway. We plan on bringing Jacob back up to our new house soon but he'll probably stay an outdoor dog. Anyhow....I'm excited to finally get a family dog.

Matilda is 6yrs.old although she was a stray so, unless she talks, I'm not sure how they know her age. Another bonus is they haven't heard her bark and she's housebroken. I don't think I'd have the patience or time for puppyhood. I picked her out from the shelter's website and we haven't met her yet but I'm hoping we all click tomorrow. Matthew called the shelter today and asked a bunch of questions and liked the answers he received. He liked the answers so much he's agreeing to a house dog. Yes!!

I'm sure my mom and sister would prefer the family addition to be another human, however, Matilda is as good as it's gonna get. I think I'm going to order those return address labels with the cartoon family members. Have you seen them? I'll get a bald papa, a mama, a boy, a girl and a Matilda. No room for any more small people. I may have to buy really large envelopes because the barn cats, Jacob the dog, the sheep, the ponies and the pigs might get jealous if they aren't represented on the address labels. Hmmmm? On second thought I'll save the hassle and just keep writing out our address.

If I ever find our camera recharger thing I'll post some pictures. Oooooooh IhopewegetMatilda. IhopewegetMatilda.

Christmas with Jesus

We received a call this morning from Matthew's folks. Matthew's Granny had hip surgery last week and was thought to be recovering fine. We learned this morning that Granny passed away last night.

This will be so very hard for Matthew's mom and her three sisters. They were very close to their mom and Granny will be missed. Matthew too is having a hard time as we lived far away from Granny and weren't able to visit as often as we wanted. I never knew Matthew's Grandpa but I do know Granny was deeply saddened to loose him and never really got over that loss. I will try to imagine the Christmas celebration Granny will be having this year as she may be reuniting with her dear husband and will see our Savior face to face. She otherwise would have been in a brand new nursing home working on physical therapy for her hip. I know too Granny didn't want to have the surgery but due to the immense pain she was in agreed rather reluctantly and this too will weigh heavy on Matthew's family.

Thank you blog friends for reading through a rather sad post during what is supposed to be such a happy birthday celebration.

I am thankful Jesus was sent as we now have hope far as the curse is found. Merry Christmas!

Where Am I Going?

In my last post I wondered where I was during Anna's and Elmo's cookie bake-off. Today I am wondering where I'm going.

You see while making supper for my dear little family I received a call. The call came from a company that is hired by our bank to watch out for unusual transactions on our check card. The check card is still in my possession so I have not lost the card. Apparently, however, a dear hacker is purchasing music from itunes for their trip on AirFrance. How do I know? The hired company asked if I'd recently attempted to purchase airline tickets. Nope. Also, have I been downloading music from itunes? Nope.

After speaking to many representatives at our bank and the watchdog company our check card is now cancelled to avoid anymore fraudulent charges. I live a very busy life and I don't even know about all the activities I'm involved in.

I have close and personal friends from the Children's Television Workshop and I travel AirFrance to India listening to itunes on my ipod. This explains, I think, why I'm so tired by 7:30pm every evening and can't even stay up for The Office.

Where Was I?

Yesterday Isaiah had his Christmas musical at school. He did a great job. I was impressed with the song choices too. During at least three songs the birth of Jesus was actually acknowledged. Nobody sang about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or Ramadan for that matter. The Christmas concert actually mentioned our Christ! Very cool. I was impressed.

After the afternoon concert that was attended by Gramps, Grammy and Auntie Sally the whole crew came over to spend the afternoon and eat tacos for supper. The tacos were Isaiah's idea. I was planning on something a bit fancier but whatever.

Mom and Sally were eating some Christmas cookies that I made earlier this week and mom said she liked them. Anna piped in and said, "Sank you, I make dem my felf." As I stood there with my mouth hanging open in disbelief Grammy continued the conversation and said again that they were tasty cookies. Anna again had a little comment and said, "Elmo helped but he just ate da dough." Elmo, as in Sesame Street, apparently was over this week and made cookies with Anna. Again I ask, where was I?

Ummm....Thanks!

Earlier this month I made cut-out cookies for the Rolli Family Christmas. Yesterday I started to make other Christmas type cookies and candy and wanted to make some new recipes as my mom makes all my favorites. Matthew's favorite are the Norwegian cookies his mom makes but he only likes them warm. I do not have a griddle in which to make that type of cookie. The kids pretty much like any cookie with sugar so I just picked out some recipes that looked fun.

I made some candy yesterday with nuts and also cookies called walnut-butterhorns. I thought they tasted pretty good, not my favorite probably but good. Isaiah had one after supper and raved about them. His facial expressions were proving the fact that these cookies were a hit with Isaiah. I asked if he liked the walnuts and he said that he did.

Then he paid me the ultimate compliment, "Mama, these taste just like mac-n-cheese 'cept with sugar on them." What? Seriously?

I tasted another cookie and laughed. The dough part of the cookie does in fact remind one of the way the pasta tastes in the blue Kraft box. I decided I didn't care and that they can still be good cookies.

I planned on filling a little tin with candy, biscotti and cookies for Isaiah's teacher. I can picture it now, "Hey Mrs. Jensen..... those ones with the walnuts are really good. They taste like mac-n-cheese." sigh........Great!

Date Night

Today I have a "date night" with my Isaiah. I'm so excited. I miss my little buddy. Once school started and we added our super special little Anna to the family Isaiah and I didn't have the constant one-on-one time anymore. I miss that. I could go on and on about all the adventures we had when Isaiah was a baby, just him and I, as Matthew was starting a sign business and at one time was working 4jobs at once. I won't. But we did spend every waking and sometimes sleeping (he'd crawl into bed with Matthew and I) moment together for his first 4years of his life. I miss that sometimes.

Anyhow today's the day for our date night. Yes. First off we'll be going to Hudson to drop Anna off at Gramps and Mimi's house. Isaiah and I will be doing some Christmas shopping together and he'll need to pick out some stocking stuffers for Matthew's stocking. (there's no Santa appearance at our house because Isaiah was scared to death of the big red guy when he was little and we saw no need to freak him out with a nightly raid in his own home by the jolly elf) We then will double date for lunch at McDonald's with a friend of mine from high school and her daughter who is the same age as Isaiah. After the fine dining, Isaiah will then escort myself and our friends to the Phipps for an afternoon performance of the Little House Christmas production. I can't wait.

This all sounds fun and I know we will enjoy ourselves but you know what will probably be the best part for me? The quiet car rides (Anna will be at Mimi's) to and from our destinations. I bet we'll have some neat conversations about "stuff". Isaiah's really fun to talk with and when we have uninterrupted little discussions about life it's pretty neat to find out how he thinks about things.

Thank you God for allowing Isaiah and I to take the time to be together today.

...Before the Fall.

Anna and I were playing with her babies. Rocking, feeding, kissing, hugging, singing, napping, burping, strollering, etc. I watched her interact with her little dollies and thought to myself she'll probably be a kind, empathetic, understanding mama someday. aaahh...... sigh....... smile...

You know what she did then?! She jumped up and down with her stuffed baby bunny, rather aggressively, grabbed the fluffy bunny ears and flung that critter across the dining room floor. sheesh... I guess we need to have the please-don't-hurl-your-babies-by-their-ears talk.

Fractions

Anna likes to practice counting. She looks at her little baby fingers and knows they represent something. She likes to count. One...two...fee...eight....nine....yeven... on and on we go and she still hasn't left the first hand. One night as we lay in bed snuggling before bed she was practicing her counting and asked, "Mama wat dat one?". I couldn't tell which finger she was pointing to and asked her which finger? She said she wasn't pointing to her "fingo" she was pointing "dare". Anna was asking what number was between her two fingers. I told her that it wasn't a number it was just a space. That answer was not good enough for my Anna so she asked again. I could see where this was going so I came up with an answer. I told Anna that the space was 1.5. How many two year olds do you know that know fractions?

I Elfed My Family.....gasp!

Silly? Yes. Did the family enjoy thems"elf"s? Why, yes they did.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1264111186

Northwoods Living

During the recent snow accumulations we at the Rolli household have learned a few things about rural, northwoods living.

First off let me say our home is miles from anywhere. Miles. It takes us a good 15minutes, at least, to get to any town. New Richmond. Osceola. Amery. No more three-minute-hop-in-the-car-drive-to-Target-trips for this mama. We now have major put-on-your-Sunday-best-hitch-up-the-wagon day trips to town. Big difference.

Our first realization with rural living is that mailboxes are NOT at the end of your driveway, much less attached to one's own home. I couldn't even find the mailbox for the first few days we lived here. Never thought to ask. Never in my wildest dreams did I think we needed a map to find the mailbox. We do. I did eventually find it. Now, how do I get the mail in the winter without warming up the car for 10minutes to make the drive down and back from the mailbox? Well, Anna and I bundle up real well and she sits in the sled while I pull her to our destination. I also put Anna's backpack on Anna and she carries the mail for me. I figure that's the least she can do as I haul her up and down our un-plowed road. Which leads me to the next tidbit of information we've learned. The road.

We live on a very rural dead-end road. It's so rural it has two dead-ends. When you turn onto our road you drive about half a city block and come to a "T" in the road. You may turn left or right. (both directions leave you still on the same road by the way) Both the right and left turn will take you to a dead-end. When turning left at said "T" you will eventually get to our home after passing a couple year-round homes and a bunch of summer cabins. The county plows our road up to a certain point at which point the paved road turns to gravel and then it's private and I think we jointly own the dirt road along with three other neighbors, don't know for sure and don't care. We personally have a turn-around in the dirt road at the beginning of our driveway that the school bus turns around in. Being that it's a dead end the bus would have no other option to turn around without that turn-around. We did not realize when purchasing the home that the county (when they do plow our road which is apparently two business days after a major snowstorm) only plows up to the end of the paved road. They DO NOT plow the dirt road or the turn-around. OOPS! That means if we want Isaiah to get picked up by the bus at the end of our driveway a major amount of snow needs to get plowed. Have I mentioned the word, OOPS?!? If the paved road and turn-around do not get plowed Isaiah and the two neighbor boys will get picked up and dropped off at the beginning of the road..... TWO MILES away!!!

Thankfully, the neighbor with the other two school-aged boys has a four-wheeler with a plow attachment and has plowed our turn-around for the bus. Because we were unaware of our important duty the bus company called the neighbors complaining about the lack of snow removal. Apparently the bus company did not have our number yet. Hi, we're the Rollis, you know the new neighbors the bus company called your house complaining about? Nice to meet you. Sheesh!

Matthew is at this very moment researching a major snow pushing, blowing, removing type of machine to purchase that will plow out our half of Polk County. The Polk County plow drivers are probably busy plowing the other half of the county that we are NOT responsible for.

Thinking Ahead

Isaiah was granted a cookie after school. I said he could have a second cookie if he wanted but he opted for some cheez-its instead. He had good reason, he felt his 2nd cookie of the day would safely be achieved after supper.

After I asked if he would like a 2nd cookie he asked what we were having for supper. You see, if he felt secure with the fact that supper would meet his boy standards he knew he'd be allowed dessert. If, on the other hand, supper would be sub-standard fare dessert would be unlikely. Unlikely because he would throw a supper-time fit. With the assurance of a high quality Chef Boyardee Pizza kit he knew the 2nd cookie would be granted at dessert time, thus his second choice for snack, the cheez-its.

I was quite impressed with his ability to think a situation through fully before making a decision. Because of Isaiah's forethought he was able to enjoy not only cheez-its but, two cookies as well. Brilliant.

Miss Independant

Three months ago I thought I'd introduce the idea of potty-training to Anna. We purchased the pink pull-ups and bought a 2nd potty chair for the second bathroom. She went in the potty chair once and could not have been any less interested then she was at that time. When Isaiah taught me how to potty-train a child five years ago he thoroughly showed me how sticker charts, treat bribes and new big boy underpants DO NOT mean a hill o' beans. I learned my lesson and decided to just wait for Anna to be interested.

I waited. Waited some more. Waited again. Last week Anna saw the package of pull-ups that made the move to Osceola with us and thought they looked neat. Well she told me she wanted to wear her pull-ups last Wednesday and has been nearly spot on for almost a whole week. I'm impressed. Relieved. Seeing the light at the end of the babyhood tunnel. Sigh... we've almost made it. The money wasted on an occasional wet pull-up will be evened out by the savings on stickers, paper and ink. It's allllll good.

Inevitable

Because of the "snow storm" Matthew wanted me to have LOTS of food in the house, just in case. I obliged and picked Isaiah up from school as we had to run up to St. Croix Falls to pick up their Christmas card pictures. The pictures were at the Wal-Mart Supercenter so one-stop-shopping it is! Yes!

We have sled casualties at our home. We use 'em and loose 'em? No idea where these things go. Now that I think about it the casualties may have happened because of our lack of a garage. Not a problem anymore hopefully the problem will be no more. We shall see. As a result of our sled shortage I splurged and bought two different sleds of two different styles. I thought it might be neat to try out some of our hills in the yard and see if they are sled-able. I also bought enough food for a week, even though I don't usually go shopping until Mondays or Tuesdays. All the preparations are ready and set for at lest a foot of snow.

Know what? Because of all planning we did I bet we'll receive a whoppin' 2 inches of powdery fluff. Ya think?