I can tell I haven’t checked our website in a while, when I look at page and find the last update was in May, and now it’s already New Year’s Eve.

Apparently we’ve been too busy with the day-to-day living of life to take the time to update this blog.  Or too busy with the changes to write about them, and then when things settle down it would slip our minds.  Who knows, all I know is that lots have changed in the last 7 months.

One of the first changes from the last blogs, was that Shane is not working for his former employer.  There was a parting of the ways due mainly to a misunderstanding.  Apparently the boss thought that as Shane’s employer he should be in control of when and IF Shane should have free time.  Our family plans didn’t apparently mean much to his idea of deadlines and launch dates, even when notified well in advance, or when it was the weekend.

With that change it became more difficult to complete the trailer in a timely fashion like we hoped.  One of the things that really needed completing before we could work on the interior was the roof.  Well, CraigsList helped us out there with finding the right sized trusses and a wonderful price  for them to redo the roof.  Unfortunately there was several rather heavy rain storms before we had a chance to start on the roof, and with other hold-ups as well we weren’t able to complete the roof soon enough.  What do I mean about not being able to complete it soon enough, well simply that things took too long and the interior became very heavily mold infested.  Too much so, for us to feel safe to complete the trailer or move in.  Therefore the project was abandoned.

In September we moved out of Karen’s.  Instead we moved in with Shane’s brother, Scott, and his wife, Charity.  So now we are living in Arcadia, WI.  We had thought/hoped that with Ashley Furniture and Golden Plump here in town, there might be job opportunities locally.  Unfortunately we are the wrong ages and have the wrong skill-sets for those employers apparently.

December 13, my cousin, Brandi Lynn Allen, was fatally injured in a car accident.  It’s hard to believe that such a bright young woman of only 19 is no longer with us.  She will be missed by many.

Allyssa made out well with Santa this year.  She received some Thomas the Tank things, TinkerBell items, a couple of dolls, and a few other things as well.  It took her about 30 minutes, I believe to open all her gifts and she enjoyed every minute of it, and then became busy playing with her new gifts.

Unfortunately the 26th we seemed to have a bit of a flu bug around the house.  Allyssa seemed to have it first, during the late night of the 23rd, but Shane and I seemed to have a bit of it on the 26th.

It has been ages since I last posted to this blog.  According to my looking through the past posts it appears like my past post was on May 24th.  If you have read anything of this blog since, you can see that much has happened since then.  I won’t bore anyone with the repeating of what you know has happened.  Instead I will attempt to do an update on some of the things that haven’t been posted. Please do not think this is a complete list of other things that have occurred but it is some of them.

Currently when we’re out and about, Allyssa has two favorite games.  They are both where you each take turns either counting or going through the alphabet.  She now get bored counting somewhere in the mid to late thirties, but typically we will only count up to twenty and then switch sides. We will also switch sides when doing the alphabet and she knows them both very well.  We are working with some flash cards,  the only word she always recognizes right now is “ice cream” but she will go though the letters and the pictures of all the other flash cards easily.

Allyssa has unfortunately started trying to be a picky eater.  Perhaps that’s the wrong way to put it, it would be more accurate to say that she often decides that she doesn’t want to eat when it’s meal time.  She’ll say she’s not hungry then, but just after we leave the table she’ll want some sort of treat be it M&Ms or cookies, or whatever.

Eating isn’t the only thing that Allyssa can be stubborn about.  She’s also that way about potty-training.  Yes, we are currently working on potty training, but progress seems to be very slow.  We have even purchased big girl panties for her but even that doesn’t seem to be incentive enough to try to remember to use the potty rather than go when- and wherever.  When we are home she is on the potty for 15-30 minutes every hour, but she still seems to be able to go when she’s not on the potty.  Sometimes I think she misses, because she is still sitting in the high chair because she hasn’t finished eating yet.  But as much as I want her potty trained, she has to eat more than 2 or 3 bites of food for a meal.  (Yes supper tonight was a bad night for her and eating.  The sad part of that is what we had for supper was tacos and refried beans which normally she really likes.  But not tonight apparently.)

Well those are my thoughts for the moment, I’ll try to post more again later.  Promise not to hold your breath though.

Those of you close to us already know about this, but next week I will be moving the family back to Holmen, Wisconsin where we can be with family and the activities we enjoy. It has been an interesting journey to Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City, but I guess the old saying is true, “Home is where the heart is”. It took a while for me to realize it, but I just need to get back to a place where I can do the things I enjoy doing and be with my family.

I’d like to say there won’t be a lot of posts for a couple of weeks with packing and moving and settling in, but a lack of posts seems to be the norm for this site. So get ready for this blog to be normal! Maybe once we are back and we have things to share we will post more. Then again, we will be sharing those things with the very same people who read this blog, so we may not feel a need to update. Geez, what is a person to do?

Currently I am not working, nor is Laura, except to build up our new business venture. Hey, we already have nearly a dozen clients so things are looking up. We will be focusing on the area around La Crosse, WI in the coming months, so if you know someone who wants a cheap web site, send them on over to $150 Sites, OK?

No, don’t get excited, yet. This post isn’t about moving back to the La Crosse area. It has only to do with moving our blog yet again. I grew ever tired of Blogger constantly being down, and after using WordPress on a few other projects, have decided to install the software, add the plugins and themes I want, and run the thing on my own servers once again. With this move we also have a new look, though that may not stay forever – you know how fickle I can be.

With moving to a system that won’t be down when I want to post, maybe, just maybe we will update you more often. Of course, having Blogger be down when I wanted to post isn’t the only reason I haven’t posted anything lately. Mostly it’s because I am lazy – come on, you knew that already. Also, since leaving my full time job back in August (you knew that too) I find myself not wanting to be around the computer much during the day, and spending too much time with Allyssa.

I know, you can never spend too much time with your children, but when you don’t get your work done, you don’t get paid. And when the first of the month rolls around and you don’t have the income to pay the bills, you will understand what I mean by “spending too much time with Allyssa”.

The sad thing is that I don’t really spend too much time with her. I am spending too much time moving web sites around, playing with new software and trying new ways to generate income that I just don’t seem to get the work done. That’s going to change, which likely means not very many posts from me – but what’s new?