Unfortunately the nearest Waldorf schools where in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and other cities across the river from Hudson.  Then I looked at the Montessori schools, there is one in River Falls, but it’s a private school (as are the ones in Minnesota) rather than charter schools.  What’s the difference?  Well the private schools are quite expensive and charter schools are actually public schools and paid for by taxes which mean they don’t require extra tuition costs.

Shane and I talked about the tuition costs for the Montessori school in River Falls, and while it probably isn’t out of line, it is more than we felt we could afford.  It also meant that we’d have to drive her to her school every day, a bit more than we wanted to take on.  Instead we decided that for this year, we are going to find activities for Allyssa and I’ll work on teaching or homeschooling her this year.  We’re also looking to homeschooling groups and such in the area as addition places Allyssa can make friends.

So last night we were looking over the Woodbury Parks and Rec booklet, and decided to sign Allyssa up for their Wish Upon a Ballet and Fascinating Fitness programs.  ”Wish Upon a Ballet is a dance program for children that incorporates popular children’s stores as well as ballet stores to create a dance class that is more than ballet steps.  Using musical instruments, parachutes and scarves we will create a complete fairy tale experience while we skip, leap, jump and spin.  Children will learn an appreciation of dance and music while developing strength and flexibility.”  The class is 45 minutes in length.

The booklet also talks about Fascinating Fitness and says, “This class will be packed with high energy warm ups, games and fitness routines.  We will not only get our bodies moving but learn about healthy eating and exercise.  there is no doubt that being healthy starts when you are young.  Help your children be fascinated about fitness today so that they can be fascinated about fitness for life!”  This class is 30 minutes in length.

Part of the reason we decided to go with both of these is that they are one after the other in the same location which is only a couple of miles from home.  There is a 15 minute break between the two so plenty of time for Allyssa to have some water and a quick healthy snack if she wishes.  But not so long as need us to find other things to do between them.

Another part of our activities has been going to Storytime at Hudson Library every Thursday.  This has worked fairly well.  We drive in with Shane in the morning, spend time at the library as well as other places in Hudson, and then do our grocery shopping before coming home.

Allyssa is getting bigger and is really smart too! She knows the entire alphabet and can count to ten, though some days she needs a little coaxing to get through them all. She is also at that stage where she wants to be “naked”, well, except for a diaper, and refuses to wear clothes. She also refuses to sit on the potty so potty training is progressing very slowly, or not at all right now.

Her favorite movie right now is Cars. Well actually, it is Mater and the Ghostlight which is a bonus on the Cars DVD. I think I have seen that over 100 times already. It is kind of annoying too, because every time Mater breaks his headlight she has to scream out “he broke his light!” Oh well, she’s still the most wonderful part of my life right now.

The job market in the area is crap, and although there have been a couple of options, none of them have panned out. So, Laura and I have decided to use my knowledge to build a business. We are working now on a Business Plan and actually have about a half dozen customers already, so it just might work out. The trick will be to actually keep working towards that, and not playing games on Facebook (hint hint Laura).

Shoot, gotta get back to work now. In case you don’t hear from us in the next couple of months, just remember that it is NORMAL to for us to not update the blog, so things must be normal.

Allyssa feel asleep waiting for daddy to do something that could have waited until tomorrow.

I guess I need to really pay attention to what I do with my time. I start school on Monday so time will become even more precious than it used to be. I have a schedule planned for Monday through Friday:

• 7:00am – Wake Up
• 8:00am – 1:00pm – Work
• 1:00pm – 2:00pm – Lunch and exercise
• 2:00pm – 4:00pm – School Work
• 4:00pm – 5:30pm – Work
• 5:30pm – Make dinner and spend time with the family before I go to bed.

No planning work or school on Weekends – those days are for family time. This looks like it should be good right? Hopefully I can stick to it, but I will need Laura’s and Allyssa’s help in several ways:

1. While I am at work, they need to avoid distracting me.
2. Have lunch ready around 1:00 so I can eat and exercise before school work.
3. While I am at school, they need to avoid distracting me.
4. At 5:30, they have to tell me to stop and be with the family.

I am sure if we both work at it, I will get on the schedule and be able to stick to it. It’s gonna be a long, hard 2 years with work and school, but I know it will be worth it. After this, we shall see if I continue for my Bachelor’s degree. You ready for this, Laura?

P.S. I should add that I did spend a few hours with her playing with a ball, potatoe heads, blocks and things before we started watching the movie. But it probably wasn’t enough.

He talks about doing dinner, but he enjoys that (usually) and find it relaxing.  But don’t worry he doesn’t do all the cooking.  I make the lunches for the 3 of us since he works and will be going to school from home.  While some might thing that lunch is a lighter meal, it’s still important to keep it balanced.  My theory is that we’d be better off if lunch is a bit heartier and dinner a bit lighter since most don’t have a lot of physical activity in the evening.

Shane has also started doing weekly fighter practice for SCA.  This is once a week on Wednesday.  Allyssa and I go as well, we talk to others and watch him get hit with sticks.  It’s good to get to know the other SCA folks in the area.  And we have several events we are talking about going to in the near future.

We have found two parks in the area which Allyssa enjoys.  Of course we’ve also found out that as long as the park has slides it will be one that she enjoys.  She is a huge fan of riding the slides.

I have found a cross stitching shop in the area.  It wasn’t easy but I have finally figured out how to find shops when you new to the area and have no idea of what they are called.  It’s hard to do an internet search for them without a name, and harder still to do a yellow pages search because often the shops are so poorly categorized on the online yellow pages.  I was on a website of a company that dye their own fabric colors for cross stitch.  They are a wholesale company so when I asked them about shops in my area they were able to give me the name of two within 21 miles of me.  So now I know how to look for shops in the future.  Go to the wholesale suppliers and ask them who is in my area.

Why worry about giving a local shop?  Well I try to support the local shops whenever possible.  I have a simple view of things.  If I don’t do my part to support my local shop, when I need to pick something up quick they won’t be there.  The day after I received the information about local shops, I went to the closest one and checked them out.  It was good to be in a shop dedicated to needlework.  Not one where it’s just shoved off into a small corner of the craft store, which keeps getting smaller.

I finished the birth announcement I was working on for Allyssa.  Please click on the image to see the entire piece.  Now I’ll have to clean and mount it.  Of course, since that one is done, I had to start another project.  This new project is one of Santa looking at signs to check his directions.  It’s on a black background and is originally from an old postcard.  I have an entire book of Santa’s from old artwork it’s called Santa Remembered from Leisure Arts.

Allyssa is growing in leaps and bounds, but lately it’s been hard to get her to sleep on her own.  She wants to be attached to momma when she sleeps.  She just doesn’t want to let go.  Lately it’s been if she won’t let go at nap time, we get up.  It makes her more tired in the evening, but she has to learn that she can’t stay attached to momma.

When she falls asleep at night, she also wants to stay attached also.  This makes things hard for momma.  While I don’t mind taking an afternoon nap with her (actually I usually enjoy a good afternoon nap), I like to get up for a bit after Shane and Allyssa are in bed.  It’s a good time for me to have some private quiet time.  It’s my ME time, and I have learned that I need it.  If I can’t have my me time for I get more irritable and much easier to annoy.  I have also found that if the housework isn’t done before they go to bed it’s not going to get done that night.  My time is for me, not for housework.  (Doing housework during that time is a sure fire way for me to get extremely annoyed.)

Well that’s all my thoughts for now.  I’ll try catching people up again soon.

Thursday night comes around, and we are all ready to go grocery shopping. Just before we leave, Shane checks his account. The funds were NOT available. Talk about being rather frustrating! Perhaps it is a good thing that there isn’t a local branch of the bank we are having the problems with. This way it makes even more sense to change to a local bank. Now we just have to take the time to do so, with both our personal and business accounts.

First thing Friday morning though, we found the funds were available so we decided to go Friday night. We ended up with a late start getting out of the house. Since there is a Cinzzetti’s near the Whole Foods Market we were planning on shopping at, we decided to eat there then shop.  It’s never a good idea to grocery shop on an empty stomach.

Cinzzetti’s is a bit different that many Italian restaurants, it’s basically an Italian buffet, and it’s wonderful.  I highly recommend it to everyone.  When we finished eating, it was 8:50.  Our problem was that the grocery store closed at 9.  Nothing like everything conspiring against us, huh? Well luckily enough for us 3rd time was the charm.  We were able to actually get our groceries this afternoon.

Of course that isn’t the only thing we did this afternoon.  Much to Allyssa’s enjoyment we also squeezed in some time at Loose Park.  It’s one of her favorite places, since it has slides.  Of course, chasing Allyssa around the park makes enough exercise for mom and/or dad.  This picture was actually taken on Wednesday, the 1st.  But it still shows how much she enjoys the slides.

I guess it could be worse, I mean, she is always putting rocks and leaves in her mouth. If she wants to eat green pepper then I will let her. Besides, it’s healthier than a cracker, isn’t it?

I’ll keep you update to date here, but will share most of my progress and research on my new blog, Down to 200. I am sure that I will start to lose some of the excess baggage, but more importantly I am going to learn how to eat better and maintain that weight. This will be some time in the works of course, but if it works for me, I’ll put you all in touch with the wonderful Dr. Heidi who can help you as well! I’ll start this off with my before picture – and no, I am not showing my hideous overgrown belly. Enjoy.

The picture above doesn’t really look great, because the lighting in the pool area of the hotel was not very bright, so getting a good picture was hard, and even though I pointed her out, Allyssa just wouldn’t look at mom or the camera. This picture was taken just minutes after we got in the water, and though it took her a little while to adjust to the water, she really enjoyed swimming. We did learn that that modesty at her age isn’t as important as comfort. In the photo she is wearing a shirt which we quickly found made her feel cold when the cold shirt was out of the water. The next time we took her she did not wear a shirt.

This won’t be the last time we take her swimming, but unfortunately we haven’t found a public pool in the area so we will just have to go swimming in the St. Croix River. It’s so clear and inviting we can’t wait for the weather to warm up some so we can enjoy the river. I don’t think we will be purchasing a boat any time soon though – gotta get a better car first. Driving this full size van we have is just too much on gas. Until then we can enjoy the river from one of the two beaches in town.