You're starting a WHAT?!?!

**Mind you, I already typed this entire post, and then it magically disappeared.  So, here's my second rundown.... hopefully I won't lose this one too, or it may be a sign from God that blogging isn't for me :) **

Here I am at a new phase of my life.  My son just turned one, and my daughter will soon be five.  I absolutely can not believe how fast time has gone!  I've had a hard time keeping track of their milestones and events going on in day-to-day life.  Emma often has many insightful things to say, and people always tell me, "You have to write that down!"  Kaiser is doing new things each day as well, and I need a place to keep track of it all, amongst all of the other chaos in our lives. 

I have pondered over this blog thing for quite some time.  "Why would anyone want to read it?  What will people think of it - I don't really have a sense of humor?  How would I ever keep readers interested?"  Well, I've come to the realization that I'm not writing this blog for you, but for myself.  If you want to read a goofy tidbit about how my son has a fixation with a Tinkerbelle phone at daycare and how Emma amazes me with her grasp of reality, then this may be the blog for you.  If you will get nauseous when reading about my kids and their accomplishments, then this may not be the blog for you to read.  This is going to be a place I record happenings in my family's life.  It's a place I can come back to whenever I wish and reminisce about when my babies were young!  

Here's an update of my family so far:

Kaiser just turned one YESTERDAY. Our little "Orange Bowl Baby" surprised us when he finally crawled everywhere at 7 months after being up on all-fours rocking back and fourth since five months.  He hasn't stopped moving since he started walking at 11 months.  He doesn't much like to sleep, but sometimes we get lucky once in a blue moon with a full night's rest.  Kaiser eats people food, and LOVES to eat.  He loves to torment Big Sister by stealing her toys and getting into all her 'stuff'.  I have honestly never seen a kid smile more than this guy.  I know I'm not just biased, because I hear it all the time.  It's taken him a year to master the act of throwing a fit.  This is a new 'thing' he's doing now.  He's found his voice, and by gosh, he knows how to use it.  I wonder who he's taking after!?!

Emma will soon turn five.  Wow, talk about how time flies.  She's in preschool and loves every minute of it.  She comes home with stories and stories about how her day went.  It's unreal to me that she'd rather spend an hour writing, drawing, or coloring than playing with her Leapster or her Tag Reading System.  For Christmas this year, she wanted, "Two American Girl twins and a book."  She'd been saying that since September.  Her American Girl dolls are one thing she will play with for hours.  She takes really good care of them (thank goodness!) and has names for them all:  Lila, Molly (mine from many years ago), Jack, and Cora.  Emma is in her second year of dance, and boy, talk about improvement!  I was really worried the few first practices when all she did was sit and stare at the instructor!  She is also extremely tolerant of her little brother, especially since he loves to pull and pull and pull her long hair.  She's also a master in the fit department and has been since a very young age.  I wonder where she gets her stubbornness??

Eric started a new job this summer as Middle School Principal with South Tama County Schools.  He'd previously spent nine years teaching high school math at Benton Community.   It's been a challenge for him, but in a good way.  He's learning so much and expanding his network of contacts by leaps and bounds.  He's quite the blogger about his educational views, and has many contacts through Twitter. 

I, on the other hand, am still "Twitter dumb" and have no idea what goes on in the world of Twitter, nor do I want to take on that challenge at this point.  We'll take it one step at a time!  I'm still teaching 4th grade and am diving into more technology use in my classroom each day.  This is one of my goals, and then I'll see if I could handle taking care of a classroom blog page.   One of my highlights from this past year is going to the Carrie Underwood concert with my two sisters and my mom.  It'll be a time to remember and hopefully we'll get to do it again sometime soon!

As for the family front, we are fortunate enough that we took a week's vacation to Washington DC with the Townsleys, and we went up to Minnesota with the Kaisers clan again.  At the end of December we FINALLY sold our "summer home" in Van Horne, as we frequently called it.  We bought a house in Keystone in October which is just a few blocks from my school and the park, and it's also closer for Eric's commute to Toledo.  The kids adjusted wonderfully to a new babysitter, and there haven't been tears at drop-off since day one!

For now, that's all I've got.  We'll see if I can come up with anything more to write after this post.  We'll see....we'll see!  

The girls at Carrie Underwood!

Kaiser at the Townsley Christmas

Emma at her Christmas dance at the Nursing home

Our family, Christmas Eve

My goofers, Christmas Eve