Shane – Laura – Allyssa

Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category

Remember that post back on the 6th of December titled Moving Again that made you think we were moving? That one was just about our blog moving off of Blogger and onto our own WordPress installation – like that really mattered to you, right?

This time, the title “Moving Again” means we are physically moving, south, past our hold home in Trempealeau, past La Crosse, heck, even past the state line. Though we don’t know exactly where we will be living as we are in the process of finding a place now, I will start working for Verizon Wireless in Schaumburg, IL on January 12th, and we will be moving during the first week and a half of January.

There is a fun story in this for all of you to enjoy. Originally, the in-person interview for this position was set for the morning of December 29th. Then it appeared the person who was supposed to interview me was going to be traveling that week, so they asked if I could come down on December 22nd. We made arrangements to stay with Laura’s cousin Jean Ann in Lake Villa and ventured south on December 21st – with terrible road conditions the trip would take us over 8 hours. It was hoped that the trip would be worth it.

Monday morning we set off for Schaumburg, IL for the interview, and after getting caught in traffic we were unable to make the interview, which was rescheduled for Tuesday morning. We had already planned to meet my Aunt Joanne and Uncle Bob for lunch so we kept those plans, then went shopping afterward. Joanne was having so much fun with Allyssa we offered to make room in the car so she could spend more time when the rest of her party headed back home. It was nice to see Allyssa take to Joanne so well that Laura and I could go and do some last minute shopping.

Tuesday morning we left an hour earlier and arrived almost an hour early, having no problems with weather or traffic. All was looking well until I received a phone call that the person interviewing me could not get out of his subdivision and could not make it. Needless to say, I was very frustrated and decided to head back home to spend the holiday with family. We again met with Joanne and Bob for breakfast at Walker Brothers, the world’s finest pancake house. During breakfast, I received a phone call wanting me to agree to meet for an interview on Christmas Eve, which I was just not going to do. I had family stuff planned – so I declined and we headed to Holmen, WI.

On the drive home I again received a call asking if I could come back down on the 29th for the interview – the day it was originally scheduled for. I agreed and we made plans to stay in Lake Villa Sunday night and drive in to Schaumburg on Monday morning. This time, everything worked out well and the interview started on time, but went long. I left the Verizon office around 11:30 thinking the interview had gone well . Laura and I spent some time around Carpentersville, IL where I grew up, and even stopped for lunch at the Village Pizza Pub, home of my favorite pizza as a child – and it was just as I remembered it.

After leaving and getting on the highway to head home, I received a phone call shortly after 2:00 informing me that I was being offered the position, and that they wanted me to start on January 5th, but also gave me the option of January 12th. I chose the later date to give me time to finish up work I had back home and give us plenty of time to pack and move.

So that’s where I am at today – finishing up the work I started before this 1600+ mile trip during the holidays and planning how we will make the big move – yet another one in the winter. You probably won’t hear much from me until we get settled in the new place in Schaumburg, so I am wishing you all a Happy New Year – I know mine should be a little better with a full time job and steady income for a while.

It’s been way too long since we were able to drive our car rather then the van, but as of today, we can! Those of you who know about this will want to hear about the hassle with the DMV I have dealt with this past few months. It seems our tax dollars, which are used to pay those idiots at the DMV, are being wasted. I will elaborate:

We bought the car on August 4th, 2008, but due to an accident I had back in 2004 when I did not have insurance, I was unable to register the car until I paid the damage judgment against me. This started a search for the person I owed the money to. Ironically, the DMV nor the court systems could help me find him, and any old contact information I had was long outdated.

After nearly 3 months of trying to find him, I suddenly remembered where he had worked, and thought to call there to see if they had current contact information. Fortunately, he still worked there and he eventually contacted me back. Problem was, he wanted all the money up front before he would release the judgement. I worked it out through family and friends to be able to pay him the full amount, but informed him if he wanted his money he needed to meet me at the court house in La Crosse and sign the satisfaction of judgement. He was more than willing to do that. This is where the fun began!

I received the satisfaction of judgment on November 13th and called the DMV the following Monday. The yahoo that answered the phone told me that he sees the judgment is satisfied and that I now need to file SR-22 insurance and pay a $110 reinstatement fee. This really frustrated me because when I called the DMV back in October to find out what I needed to do, that person said nothing about insurance or a fee, nor did the notice the DMV sent me when I tried to register the vehicle. If I had known about the SR-22 requirement back in October, I would have done it. Turns out it only added about $25 to our policy – not bad.

Then today I called the DMV to make sure the SR-22 filing was on record, and was told it was, BUT, the satisfaction of judgement was not. I flew off the handle – yelling at this poor woman, Mary, who quickly calmed me down and told me what I needed to do. I scanned and emailed the satisfaction to her, and she immediately called me back to get the payment of only a $50 fee. The $110 the other yahoo mentioned included the $60 to reinstate my license, which I didn’t need to do today. She then transferred me to someone in the registration department who expedited the filing of the satisfaction, and told me we could get temporary plates so we could use the vehicle. FINALLY, someone at the DMV who knows what they are doing.

To make this long story short, now that you’ve waded through the whole thing, Laura made a trip with the van to River Falls to get our temporary plates and we can now drive our more fuel efficient vehicle again. So, for those wondering, we will be back home for Christmas, though we will once again spend Christmas Day here at home as a family.

Here we are, Mother’s Day, 2008 and Laura’s second as a mommy. So far it looks like Allyssa is enjoying it, with a big grin – must be a good dream – or maybe she knows that daddy is taking her picture. She is such a ham.

Anyway, on to the real reason for this post. As you probably know if you’ve been checking we haven’t posted much since Allyssa turned nine months old. That’s just stupid, because we have pictures and we want to share them, but time slips by and they don’t get posted. Until I realized that WordPress allows me to back date posts! A blog like this is not only a great way to keep family and friends up to date on the family, but also to keep a historical record of our lives as a family.

So today and throughout the next month I will be adding posts and back dating them to when they actually were taken. This will allow me to get my memories down somewhere while they are still somewhat fresh in my mind, and let you get up to date on our life so far in 2008. So if you see me I don’t want to hear, “Geez, I must not have visited your site in a while, I never saw all those posts!” because you know now that it was my fault and not yours. So enjoy them as I get them up and share your thoughts if you care to. For now, Happy Mothers Day!

A world of firsts lies ahead of Allyssa and our family as she approaches her first birthday next month. We’ve already had so many, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, her first booster shots. Here we have another first, her first Easter – and there she is on the easter egg hunt with dad with her first easter egg – imagine that, it’s purple! We are at Grandma’s today with the rest of the family for easter, even if it is only Saturday. We’ll spend tomorrow with Laura’s family.

And Allyssa is really getting into it, reaching out for eggs that she finds. Ok, daddy found it and pointed it out to her, but she was having a ball trying to get it. It was also fun to see Allyssa find all of her eggs first (with daddy’s help). At mom’s, she has these plastic eggs filled with money and candy, and each grandchild gets the same number of eggs, each with their own color. It’s not really a contest to see who finds them all first, but NYAH, Allyssa won!

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games, she also took some time to hang with her cousin Heather. Look at her expression – “we come all this way only to have you ignore me and talk on the darn phone?” Come on Heather, hang up the phone and have fun with the family. Your friends will see you on Monday!

Yes, it’s Christmas. As Shane has said we have had a lovely quiet family Christmas, just the three of us. The 2 1/2 hours of travel it would have taken to be with family on Christmas Eve would have just been to hard with Shane having to work yesterday as well. While we both missed seeing family, having this morning with Allyssa in our home to open her presents made it extremely special to us.

Of course this day has taken it’s toll on Allyssa. Playing with her new presents has tired her out as you can see here. But look how angelic she looks while she sleeps. (Okay, all children look like little angels while they sleep, but to me she is the most precious little angel.)

I have to agree with Shane in that this is the best Christmas, I’ve ever had. While it may have been lean in material things it had the things that matter most, loved ones and joy. Thank you Shane for the wonderful words, and thank you for being you. It may have taken us a while to find each other, but I’ve never doubted that your my Mr. Right.

Allyssa is crawling. She’s been doing it since early December. And strangely enough, I don’t recall seeing her crawl backwards first. Of course that could be to the month we spend in the hotel, were we didn’t let her down on their floor. We kept her up on the king sized bed or in her walker, or in her pack ‘n play. I just had no way of knowing what kind of chemicals they may have used on their floors or how clean they actually were.

She is growing so much even if she’s remaining on the petite side of things. On the 19th when she had her second flu shot, she was 16 lb 3-4 oz and 26 3/4 in. She enjoys drinking from a glass, but still has problems figuring out a sippy cup. She also has liked everything she’s been given to eat, from beans to spaghetti (yes we pureed it for her). She loves ice cream and Red Vines licorice. She is also a big fan of potatoes, any way she can get them.

A few days ago, we felt the rough edges of her first tooth cutting thru. For the most part it hasn’t bothered her too much, or at least not yet.

We look forward to seeing family for a late Christmas when we are next in the Holmen area. It looks like it’s going to be the first weekend in January, but while we couldn’t be with them in person, they were in our thoughts on this beautiful first Christmas with our daughter.