Great News

Great News,

Chuck is now into the second phase in his schooling!

Even better news,

He got a 100% on his test

So his grade point average is 93%!!

YEA!!!!

To celebrate we decided to leave the apartment for the first time,

other than grocery shopping.

We went to the beach!!!!

It was absolutly FREEZING

but oh so fun!

It was so fun to see the snow,
then the sand, and then the water.
Can you imagine snow at the beach?

Touching East Coast sand!
The sea shells were HUGE over here!
The kids had so much fun hunting for shells!
Even found a blue and an orange crab claw,
Brayden is really excited about that!

We were struggling finding the street signs over here.
Finally we noticed they were these white poles
sticking out of the ground, lol.
Overall... we had a great weekend!!

quick update

This is going to be short and sweet for now.

I'll post pictures this weekend

the kids need to do school work

and we are short on time today.

Daddy only goes to school 1/2 day today!!!

Chuck will be passing his first phase today,

only 4 more to go until he is done!!

Taffy is feeling better!!

Yeah for her!

Ab's slept much better last night

but I didn't.

We have power and only a few inches of snow

but the wind reached over 60 miles an hour last night.

Man, it was loud!

We lost our grant money for his school

big bummer on that!

Unemployment status is still unknown.

Considering puting our house up for rent

instead of selling it,

since we haven't gotten any leads on it.

Well... our school day must begin.

It's snowing again

Well... we woke up this morning to the snow falling again.

Although I wasn't looking forward to this storm,

it sure is beautiful!

The flakes are large and starting to stick.

The trees look white from a distance and all the grass

that was poking through is now covered in white.

It is so peaceful.

Chuck went to school.

We are hoping they don't have a snow day today.

Today and tomorrow are the last days of the first phase.

Grades will be posted either Friday or Monday!!

Next week he gets a new teacher,

hopefully a few less students

and starts diving in the freezing cold lake.

He passed all the water tests this week!!

Yesterday he had to swim on the bottom of the pool

while the teacher swam around and pulled off their

masks, regulators, turned off their oxygen to see how they would react.

He also had to do a ditch and dive.

That is where you swim to the bottom of a 12 foot pool,

take off all of your gear, including your oxygen

and swim to the top, take a breath, dive back down and

put everything back on.

Out of the 19 students in his class

only 9 students passed.

Some gave up and some totally freaked out

and some tried really hard but just couldn't do it.

On a side note,

I think Taffy is a little sick.

She has only been outside once

other than quick potty trips.

So I'm not sure how she got sick.

Although the apartment is colder than the house in Fresno.

I'm making her rice and chicken for breakfast today.

Hopefully she starts feeling better

or I'll be making a trip to the vet.

Pig tails

This little girl FINALLY has enough hair

for little pig tails!!!

I'm so excited!

They are thin but she LOVES them!

She constantly pulls out the large rubberband,

looks at it, and then runs over to me to

put them back in her hair,

and then we start all over again. =)

Brayden thought she was so cute,

he wanted to take a picture with her.

Aren't these kiddo's cute?

Yes, Blake has a big blue line on his face.

This is an aftermath of his school work for the day.

He LOVES doing schoolwork everyday

and asks to do extra.

Both boys are learning so much!

After a snack of rice puffs,

which you can see on the floor,

she popped her uh-oh in her mouth and started helping in the kitchen.

She is such a big helper!!

Beaters

Ab's experienced her first taste of beaters last week.

She was so cute!!

I was making a fruit pizza

and thought I'd give the boys a treat and let them lick the beaters.

Blake quickly took me up on the offer and

Brayden said 'no thanks.'

So... I offered it to Abigayle.

She didn't really know what to do until she

saw Blakie licking and enjoying his.

She soon got the hang of it!

She soon got it all over her face and was enjoying every

single lick.
I turned around and caught her "sharing"
with Taffy.

I took the beater away and put it up on the counter.

She was not too happy and while I was finishing the fruit

pizza she snagged it back.

Look how happy she is now?

Taffy is still in the background licking her lips too!!

Mom's surgery was successful.

Hopefully she heals fast and is pain free now.

Chuckie had a fun day at school yesterday!

He had a 100 point day and got all 100 points!!

They had to swim across the olympic size pool 8 times,

tread water for 10 minutes,

swim across holding their breath,

hold their breath underwater for 30 seconds,

swim across with their weight belts on

and do a buddy/rescue swim.

He of course passed but was amazed

as to how many people couldn't do it.

Today he is back at the school but tomorrow

they get back in the pool!!

Diver

We have a diver (or two) on our hands!!!

Chuck only got his booties, flippers, snorker (like Brayden says)

mask and weight belt but we had fun trying them on.

Chuck will actually get his feet wet today!

He starts scuba training this morning,

I'm so excited and can't wait to hear how he liked it.

He has to be able to swim across the pool with his weight belt on and no flotation

I just hope he doesn't freeze!!!Blake has decided that he wants to be a diver

"just like my daddy"

He practices holding his breath and diving

in the bath tub, lol.

Favorite time of the day for these kiddos!
Although all of them look a little irritated that I'm taking a picture, lol.

Taffy LOVES to take a bath and begs to get in
every evening.
She got so desperate that she jumped
up on the side and jumped in.

She had a ball!!
And Ab's thought it was super funny!

This picture doesn't do these icecycles justice.
They were so beautiful.

We finally lost our big huge icecycle.

It formed from the roof and grew to about

a foot below our window seal.

It was so thick and beautiful.

But as you can see, the snow is finally melting!!

We can see grass poking through under some of the trees

There might be hope!!

All and all we had a really nice relaxing weekend over here.

Mom did great during her first surgery yesterday,

now to get through the gallbladder removal today

she will finally be feeling better.

Surgery

My mom has been having gallbladder problems for a few months now.

Things have gotten worse and she was

taken to the ER last night with massive amounts of pain.

They found she now has a blockage and admitted her.

She is on morphine for the pain and an IV since she can no longer eat.

They are going to go in and unblock the stone today

and they scheduled surgery on Monday for removal.

Please keep her in your prayers.

School

I cannot believe that it has already been 3 weeks

since Chuckie started school.

He was so nervous the first day of class.

His class started with 23 students

but three didn't show up.

One person has dropped out so their class size

is now down to 19.

There are some flakes in his class and some

really smart men too.

The first week of school they learned about

you know... I totally cannot remember

BUT he did get an 'A' on his test!!!!

The second week of school they learned about

decompression and dive charts.

He did really well on his test but because he

wrote out his math in the wrong spot, got the answer right

but the teacher didn't care,

he ended up getting a 'B' on his test.

Then week three is considered the hardest week during the whole school.

They learned about anatomy and dive medicine.

Oh boy, he has been studing like crazy!!!

100 pages to study and gobs and gobs of questions/homework

all with 3 1/2 days!

Just found out that he got an 87% on his test!!!

This test is so hard that often people fail and he passed with flying colors!!

I'm so incredibly proud of him!!!

Today, he will stay after class and get fitted for some of his dive gear!

They start learning about scuba, as it pertains to commercial diving next week.

They actually get to get out of the classroom and into the water!!

Thankfully, they will be in a heated, indoor pool

cause there is still ice on the lake and snow on the ground.

Don't worry everyone, I'll be taking plenty of pictures

and will post as soon as he isn't looking, lol.

And More Snow

We had so much fun making our giant snowman!!

Of course his name was Frosty too.

The snow finally froze enough to be able to walk on top of it

instead of sinking down inside it.

Frosty is still outside smiling at everyone as they enter their homes. Ab's has now decided that she likes the snow!

She figured out how to pick up her own snow balls,

throw them, if you help her walk,

and her favorite part, eat it!!

Her little cheeks get bright red from the cold!

She was so proud of this huge snow ball!
She carried it for at least 5 minutes until she finally let it go.

Brayden throwing snow balls.

I launched a snowball toward Blake,

he moved to get out of the way and ran right into it!!

Notice Ab's in the back ground still holding her big snowball.

This is our Super Walmart.

I only add this picture so you can see the massive amounts of snow

we are experiencing.

Notice the size of these piles compared to the cars parked.

This Walmart is so huge I couldn't even get the whole thing in a picture.

There is still another door!

Ab's sleeping while we are shopping.

The snow is piled up so much that we cannot even park straight in one spot.

When I took this picture we had to park diagonal.

Since this picture was taken we've had one more storm

now we have to park completly sideways.

There is just not any more room for the snow.

So a far, we've enjoyed living in the snow

except for the parking hassels.

Chuckie is doing great in school

I'll post more about him and his school tomorrow.

More Snow

Well... during the next snow storm, we got TONS of snow!!

So much in fact that they shut down some of the little towns.

Some counties even declared it a Snow-Emergency

Which means, you are not allowed to drive unless there is an emergency.

You will actually be sited and fined.

We thought it was kinda funny how everyone freaks out over snow

here in New Jersey.

We went to Super Walmart and it was seriously as busy as Black Friday!!

They were running out of all kinds of food,

even managers were STOCKING SHELVES!!!

We asked why it was so busy

and we were told that people stock up thinking they will be trapped for weeks, lol.

We, enjoyed the snow!!!

Here are a few pictures of us playing in the snow.

Blake throwing a snow ball. The snow was just a dry powder

that you couldn't even make a snowball with.

Taffy was NOT a big fan of the snow!! lol.

The snow was so dry, it would stick to her fur and freeze.

I had to take her back in the house so she wouldn't be miserable.

This was the view of our truck in the morning.

Icecicles began to form and they eventually got so big that they
are now down to the window seal.

Abigayle is beginning to understand that snow is kinda fun.

She won't walk in it yet, but at least she isn't crying!!

Blake, catching snowflakes on his tounge.

The people that knew were are from Cali keep asking us how we like the snow.

And if the kids had fun playing in it for the first time.

They seriously thought we'd never seen it before!!!

Come on!! We don't all ride a surf board to school every day

and hang out with movie stars.

SNOW

We were so excited when we heard that the snow was coming!!!

The kids could hardly contain themselves

and I must admit, we were pretty excited too!!

Below is the view out of our bedroom windows. This storm only produced a light dusting of snow.

Little did we know we were about to experience more snow

than New Jersey has EVERY experienced before.

This is the view out of our living room windows.

The bright white patch is a huge swimming pool.

The boys ask everyday if they can go swimming, yep even in this freezing cold weather.

The boys were so excited to finally get outside
and start playing. The snow was really dry and not good snowball material.

But as you can see from theses smiling faces

they had fun anyways.

They begged and begged to make a snowman but there was just not enough snow.

So... this little snowman in the parking lot was as good as we could get.

They boys were thrilled!! They looked out every morning

to make sure Frosty was still there.

He actually lasted until the next snow storm and everything around him was melted.

Abigayle was NOT a fan of the snow, although

she is one of the cutest little bundles out here.

Her pink fur coat is her favorite and her hat is unique to the area.

Everyone stops and comments on her.

She doesn't like to be cold

and doesn't enjoy the cold wind blowing on her face.

This was the only picture she is not crying in, lol.

Since we were very limited on what we could bring

we didn't bring too many snow 'items'

Chuckie had to brush off the snow with his gloves, lol.

Moving In

I have proof!!!

Even though these two pick on each other and are quite jealous of each other

Deep down, they do love each other!!!

Our stuff FINALLY arrived!!! Plus nothing fell out!!

During our travels we drove through some serious snow and rain

storms so a lot of our stuff got wet but... we are thankful for

everything that arrived and in one piece.

Our apartment was a little different than we had expected.

These hallway/stairs, which are very steep, are only accessible to our neighbor below us and us.

It is called a "common area." Anyways... due to our location and the rainy weather

we had to park our ReloCube all the way around the building so

unloading was not as easy as we had hoped. Chuckie had to bring most everything to these

stairs and I would lug them up the stairs and into the apartment.

It was a challenge but we got it and were sooo thankful for our comfy bed to sleep in that night!!!

With the arrival of our stuff we were finally able to put away our
microwave box/entertainment center. Well... it is now being used as a night stand cause our
night stands are being used as our entertainment center, lol.



Our blow up mattresses were used as a bed/table/couch and the kids thought they were
AWESOME!!!




They were suprisingly comfortable!! Plus they were on clearance at Target for only $4.98!!!


Abigayle slept so well that first night with our mattress. But I think her favorite item we unpacked was the rocking chair. It took her all of a few seconds to fall deep asleep when I was finally able to rock her!!


Blake was a little confused when he woke up in the morning.
He knew he fell asleep on the top bunk of their bunkbeds but somehow ended up on the bottom in the morning.
It was quite funny listening to his story over and over and over again on how this actually happened.


Brayden actually got to sleep all night on the top bunk and still begs to sleep up there every night.
This wouldn't be a problem except when the boys are seperated they both always end up in our bed in the middle of the night cause they "miss each other".
So... they now share the bottom bunk and mommy and daddy only have to share 1/2 the night with Ab's.



The next day, the kids had a blast!!
They found all their toys and all the new Christmas toys
I had hidden.

They had soo much fun "reading directions" and putting together all their new toys!!