January – Terry Family Shenanigans

January 2024

If I looked back at my other posts from January I would bet that they say something to the effect that it is kind of a boring month but I love it because after the holidays I need a month of boring.

This year was not different. Relative to our usual schedule of kids activities and normal life events going on it was pretty slow. I loved it, and I needed it! There will still be some rearranging but I was able to go through each room and at least get the initial unpacking and organization done so everything is pretty functional. I did a little more decorating. Found some rugs, got a few things like and end table, bookcase and barstools. I hung up most of the pictures. I want to do another picture wall in the basement but I don’t have a solid plan in my head yet so I just keep thinking about it for now.

An usual change for me though was I got into plants. I like plants but as far as having live plants in my house I have never been interested because the few times I have been given a plant it doesn’t last to long. My sweet mom would give me starter plants after I got married and then they would die. She eventually gave up. I have just not had the desire or energy (I know it doesn’t take a ton but it requires some attention) to take care of them. Maybe now that my kids are older and a little more self sufficient I have enough band width to add some plants. So I did! I love them. They make me happy and don’t feel like a burden at all. The first one I got was a bit of an impulse buy from a store that doesn’t really have plants they just had a few randomly. I say that because so far it is the one that is struggling and I would normally think it was because I don’t really care to figure out why, but that is not the case. I think there was something in the soil or it wasn’t that healthy when I got it. I am still hopeful that it will turn around and make it but time will tell. After I got the first one I went and got a few more. Ryan took one to work and the rest I put around the house. I want to get more but I am making myself wait and not go crazy. The kids think I am a little silly but I like them. They don’t talk back or sass me either! Here are my plants I got. I repotted them and gave them all new soil and food and a nice sunny spot (or not sunny if they prefer) to grow. Three of the four are thriving and growing for sure. Crossing my fingers for the fourth but I am already way ahead of my past track record.

We had a few guests in January! Our first visitor was Sherrie. The girls stayed in Arkansas for a few days with her after New Years so she brought them back up and stayed the night with us.

A few weeks later Ryan’s best friend Mike Johnson came for a weekend. Those two are quite a pair. They love to get as much sports watching, eating, and talking in as they can whenever they get together.

It had been a bit to long since we had gotten out our Terry Family Growin’ Board and measured everyone. We got it out of storage when we moved so we measured the kids in January. Everyone had done some significant growing, Matthew hit a milestone he has been waiting on for a long time. He is the tallest in the family. He officially passed his dad in height. He is still growing so he is hoping to increase that lead by another inch or two.

Allison had two gymnastic meets in January. One at the beginning and one towards the end. The first one she had a few mess ups and wanted to just forget it. She still had some good moments but we can focus on the second one. Here are some pictures. I wish I had a parent photographer that takes amazing pictures for everyone on the team like I had for Matthew’s baseball but so far it is just my limited skills that are available. I tried to get some good action ones because we had pretty good seats at this meet.

Busy Weekends

January was a typical January. Kind of slow. Just the way I like it so we can recover and relax from the busy months before. By the end of January baseball, horse lessons, piano, gymnastics were all up and going. We had lots of things going on each weekend so Ryan and I would divide and concur the best that we could.

Like he does each year, Grandpa Terry started off one of the weekends in January celebrating his birthday. He turned 71. We told him we would make or get any food he wanted for his dinner and strongly hinted at BBQ. He said he wanted to go with easy to get, eat, and clean up so he picked pizza. After asking him 5 times to make sure he really didn’t want BBQ we picked up some pizza (we made sure one had every topping they offer on it just for Grandpa) and we celebrated with dinner followed by cake. His boys and his two oldest grandsons took him on an axe throwing adventure. They all felt very manly and proud of themselves when they got back. Ethan was concerned about not being able to throw the axe far enough and ended up being the best of them at it. Rhonda made a chocolate cake and a cherry cheesecake for him. In true pre-covid fashion we put candles on the cake and he blew them all out. I am all for blowing out candles but I think taking a piece for the birthday person and putting the candles on just their piece to spit on when they blow out is more my style. However, I am often overruled though and called a germ-a-phob or fun hater. All in all I think Grandpa had a fun birthday.

The next day was another big day. Ryan’s biological mom Sherrie, her husband Dave, daughter Genevieve and her son Eric came up to finally meet Rhonda and Roger in person. It has been a highly anticipated meeting since we found Sherrie two years ago. Ryan was a nervous wreck all week. He was really worried Rhonda would change her mind or hurl back handed ‘compliments’ or barely veiled insults when she met Sherrie. The day before they came, Rhonda decided she wanted to call Sherrie and talk with her over the phone first. They said they ended up talking for three hours and it was a great conversation. That put Ryan at ease a little bit and when they arrived in person it went pretty well. We all sat around and talked for a bit then Rhonda and Sherrie kind of split off and talked and looked at photos. Gen and Dave talked with the rest of us and Eric jumped right in to play with Emilee and Jovee. Rhonda and Sherrie just kept talking. Everyone else went to Top Golf and played games. Rhonda told me afterwards that she was really glad she finally met her and she really liked Sherrie. She said she felt like she was talking with a long lost friend. Ryan and I were very happy that they got along and made a friend in each other.

Instead of going golfing with everyone, Allison and I headed to Salina Kansas for a gymnastic tournament. She did a pretty good job. She placed 9th overall, and had one of her best bar routines yet. She is still loving gymnastics. We are proud of her for how hard she works and how much effort she puts into it. Right when we arrived it started snowing so by the time we left a few hours later there was a pretty good snow storm. We had to go a little slower but we were still able to make it home.

Vermin

About a week into the New Year, it was a regular evening. The kids were all at youth night at the church. I sat down to work on a puzzle we had out from Christmas. Ryan said he was going down to the basement to work on the computer. We were set up for a nice relaxing evening after work and the events of the day. A few minutes later Ryan called me to come look at something. After a sigh, one more sip of my hot chocolate and begrudgingly unwrapping from my cocoon of my favorite blanket I went downstairs.

He had found little black things scattered around the top of the desk and couldn’t figure out what they were. We thought they were insects…dirt…crumbs…they weren’t much bigger than a flake of pepper. We weren’t sure, we wiped them up and decided to see if they came back. I went back upstairs, wrapped back up in my cocoon. A few seconds later I snapped a satisfying piece into my puzzle and the words ‘mouse poop’ popped in my head. I have never seen mouse poop so I wasn’t sure. I decided to google it- sure enough that’s what it was. Ryan had the same thought and we both hollered to each other that we thought is was mouse poop at the same time. We looked around and found a few more spots that had evidence of the disgusting rodents. Immediately everything in our clean cozy little house turned to contaminated, dirty, soiled nastiness in my mind. So instead of relaxing and enjoying our evening we cleaned up everything we found, bundled up and went out in the nasty cold weather to Menards to get some mouse traps. I was still hoping it wasn’t mice, Ryan was pretty certain. We decided to buy one of each kind of trap and see which ones worked and get more of those. We told the kids to pick up any messes and no food was allowed anywhere outside the kitchen and dishes had to be done ASAP after eating.

We crawled into bed. Wondering if there were just mice running around the house like they owned the place every night. Then I heard Allison crying in her room. I went to see what was wrong and she was distraught that we were going to torture the mice and kill them. I tried to explain we weren’t torturing them but we were going to kill them. We came to the agreement that we would use traps that killed them immediately or caught them alive and then dad would take them to the field by his work and release them AND provide video evidence of their release. Crisis averted we went to bed.

The next morning we had THREE dead mice!! THREE!! To make matters a little worse the only traps that worked were the sticky pads…not Allison approved. They completely avoided the rest of the traps. That day was spent cleaning, disinfecting, throwing things away, and putting anything the mice might take as food into a plastic storage bin with a lid. We bought a lot more sticky pads. I researched mice and learned way more then I ever wanted to know about them. Allison made it clear that her trust in us was gone and we were murderers. We had a lengthy conversation about why mice are gross and shouldn’t cohabitate with humans. I apologized that we were going to be using the sticky traps. I had not lied to her but now that I had more information then the night before I had to update our plans. She couldn’t get the image out of her head that they would bite there own legs off to get away from the sticky traps. I told her I thought the sticky traps had poison on them or something because the mice were all dead in the morning.

We ended up catching multiple mice several days in a row, for a grand revolting total of seven. I kept thinking I couldn’t believe we had seven mice running around and no idea. More mice than people!!! I don’t think they were here very long though. The week of Christmas it got really cold. Several days of -5 or more. We think that is when they moved in under the sink for warmth. I deep cleaned the entire house before we moved in and never saw any evidence. I had cleaned several times since we moved in and not seen any either. Since we caught number seven we have seen no more evidence and the traps are checked and moved around regularly. Hopefully we are done with the gross disease carrying vermin.

That was the end of the mice drama until about a week after the last mouse was caught. Allison stepped on a sticky trap. She had a shoe on but was concerned she was going to spread poison all over the house.🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Allison’s Adventures

Allison is doing really well in school. Her goal it to work on her time management which makes me very happy. She is a person that evaluates herself and while she might not admit a mistake or shortfall, she makes a conscious effort to change or develop habits that she wants to work on.

In one of her classes they are making a large marble chute on a board. She asked me if I new which one was hers. All but one of them was contained to the board they were given to attach it to. One of them had extensions all over and was only on the board when she wanted to cross over to the other side. I guessed the least contained design and was right. Allison doesn’t like to be contained and that applies to all aspects of her life.

When I took some things into Emilee’s room the other day I found this note on the bathroom door that they share. It has been a while since I have found an Allison note. It made me chuckle. I especially love the ‘probably’ in parenthesis under “I WILL”. The two of them are working out some boundary/sharing issues with their shared bathroom.

Allison had another gymnastic meet this month. Her team took 1st place. She got her personal best in two events. She got a 9.3 on her floor and vault routine. She is progressing in all of her events and doing well. It is fun to watch her improve.

Boys vs Girls Communication

While I was at work the other day on a Thursday afternoon, I got a text from Lisa, she is Matthew’s friend Campbell’s mom. She asked me if I was ok with the schedule for Saturday for pictures and hanging out before and after the dance. Apparently that weekend-in two days, there was a high school dance that Matthew and Campbell were attending with a group of her friends. I told her I was glad she had reached out because I had no idea there was a dance coming up. After her text, I texted Matthew and asked him if he was going to a dance this weekend that he hadn’t mentioned to me yet. He said, “Yep.”

I am finding that Matthew will answer my questions if I ask him very specific questions multiple times. He isn’t much on details. Luckily Lisa and Campbell are, so they fill me in and tell me what is going on. He made it to all the places he needed to be to eat, take pictures, and dance. Campbell told me the dance was more fun this time because people actually danced.

Matthew also had parent teacher conferences. His communication continued to be brief for that as well. His entire presentation had fewer words than Emilee’s or Allison’s had on one page. Between his teacher and I we were able to drag enough information to know what we needed to know. I took a few snap shots of some of his artwork. I am not sure what the stick figure one is, when I asked he said, “An assignment.” 🙂

Emilee’s Events

Emilee had to find a new place to ride horses. The barn she was riding at had a few of their horses pass away and the owner wanted to take some time off from teaching. It took a bit of time to find a new place. Part of the issue was that she only wanted to ride with Reese so we had a find a place that had room for both of them. We finally found a place that wasn’t to much farther away. It seems a little more organized and stream lined than the last barn. Hopefully they will continue to progress in there riding.

While she waited for me to find a new barn for her, she filled her time with playing with her horses at home. She is pretty cute. This heard of horses, barbies and random other stuffed animals can be found around the house in various stages of their daily trek from the fireplace to the office and and back to the fireplace. They always travel together in a pack and they seem to have a fairly organized rotation for taking turns riding on all the different horses. If you are lucky you will catch a little bit of conversation between all of the animals but if they know you are around they move pretty quietly. I love her imagination.

She has also become one of her primary teachers helpers with her baby on Sundays. She loves holding her. The babies name is Maddie and as you can see she is fond of Emilee too.

February is usually parent teacher conferences. For the winter conference they have the students come with their parents and talk with them about what they are doing and learning. Along with her grades (that were very good!) I was sent home with a few of Emilee’s self portraits. One of them was her before she got glasses and the other was after she got them. She has done much better in school and seems to feel more confident going now that she can see. Imagine that. She reads a lot without being asked too. I asked her how she read the board to know what to do. She said, “I just guessed.” I’m glad we figured it out so she can work and learn at her full capacity. Poor girl! She looks pretty cute with her glasses I think!

All three of my kids needed glasses when we went in for this years annual eye check up. Apparently we didn’t eat enough carrots last year. Matthew and Allison only need their glasses in certain situations, Emilee needs hers all the time.

January 2022

This January was a typical January. Not a lot going on. A good month to rest after all the holidays and re-group and plan for the upcoming year. It is a long slow month. I don’t mind though.

Ryan’s work did there usual January Christmas party for the company and their spouses. This year was a little different though because it was also the 10 year anniversary of the company starting. Ryan has been with them since they started so he made a little party planning committee and they put together a fun night for everyone. It was at a hotel in Lawrence Kansas. They had meetings Thursday and Friday and then Friday evening all the spouses came and joined for the party. They had a dinner followed by a casino night. They gave you fake money to play with and you won tickets with your money that you could bid on a bunch of prizes at the end. They did a good job. It was a fun night. Everyone stayed the night in the hotel and went home the next morning. I am glad he works at a company he enjoys and works with good people.

That is about the only event worth reporting in January. February came with a couple good snow storms this year. Ryan’s parents went to Idaho for a while to see Becky and her new baby boy Kaden. We took care of their house for them while they were gone. Ryan told the kids to go over and shovel his driveway. I am a sucker and they talked me into driving them over. Then they found his snow blower and asked if they could use that. I pulled it out and it was easy enough to use so I started using it and told them to shovel. At some point the new phone in my pocket that was less than two weeks old wiggled its way out of my pocket and fell on the ground. The snow hid it and the next time I came around I snow blowed it right up. I thought I had hit a heavy part of snow for a second and then didn’t think much about it. Matthew was standing at the top of the drive way in front of me and noticed a black object flying through the air land at his feet. He looked to see what it was and picked up my phone. It was no longer straight but had a nice arch to it. The phone did not survive its run through the snow blower. The case however came out with barely a scratch on it. I was pretty annoyed. I got to spend three hours of my day to go buy a second new phone. I got the special one for the price of two deal this time.

Fire Alarms and Cocoa

All the Christmas stuff is put away. We have had a few snow flurries, the new year is underway and the long month of January is about half over.

Last week after the kids had started back at school about the time that both Ryan and I were headed home from work last week the girls called him. He answered the phone and Allison said, “Dad, the fire alarms are going off in our house. There is a weird smell. I took Peanut and Emilee and we are walking to Grandma’s house. I made Matthew come with us but he is a jerk and wouldn’t bring the crabs.”

Ryan asked if he could talk to Matthew. He didn’t see or smell any smoke so he didn’t think there was a fire but he was going with the girls to grandma’s because the alarms were going off and obviously really loud. He also confirmed that the crabs were on their own if the house was on fire.

Ryan decided to not have them call 911 because he was only a few minutes away from the house and hoped/assumed at 15 years old Matthew was somewhat capable of knowing if there was a fire in the house. He told them to go to Grandpa’s house until I came and got them just in case it was a carbon monoxide leak or a fire.

Roger and Ryan went over to check the house. The alarms would go off for a minute or two and then stop for a bit then start again. As far as they could figure there had been a short or something that set the furnace room alarm off. No smoke, no gas, and the battery was still good. Weird. I will take weird over a fire any day. As far as the weird smell Allison smelled, we think it was the smell of something that burned in the dishwasher on the heat cycle. It washed them while we were all at work and school and when Emilee opened it after school to empty it, the kitchen had a little bit of that weird burning smell.

Ryan called me and told me what happened so I went to get the kids. I was glad to see all three fire trucks at the station by our house when I drove by and no pillar of smoke coming from the direction of my house. When I got to Grandma’s house Matthew was playing a game, she had already gotten a snack and a craft out for the girls to work on, and Peanut was in his temporary home (a box from Grandma’s garage) with several towels to snuggle in. Allison was still annoyed at Matthew for abandoning the crabs and not feeling bad about it at all. When dad and Grandpa gave us the all clear we went back home and had some hot cocoa.

The take aways from our exciting evening were:

We are really glad we have Grandma and Grandpa close by. When in doubt, go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.
In an emergency Allison will take charge and make sure everyone is safe including the pets.
Matthew will assist Allison in saving human beings but is out when it comes to pets-especially crabs (unless we get a dog). Matthew is also happy to let Allison run the show.

As I am typing the last few sentences, it reminds me of the time the kids came home from school and there was some ‘strange men people’ according to Allison that were climbing around on our roof. I have probably blogged this story before but I will review it again.

At this point in time Grandma and Grandpa didn’t live in Kansas yet. When Allison got off the bus and saw the unexpected people on our roof she later told us she couldn’t recall any conversations about people coming over to fix something and was unaware of any roof issues that our house had so she was immediately suspicious and told Matthew they should all stand by the mail box until dad or I got home. Matthew looked around for a second then said, “No thanks, it is cold.” He then crossed the road and entered the house through the garage like any other day. 🤦‍♀️Emilee followed him because, “It was cold.” 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ They left Allison at the mailbox. As they were closing the garage Allison ran across the street and ran into the garage. Matthew and Emilee went inside dropped their stuff all over the floor and got a snack and went on with their usual after school routine. Allison grabbed the phone and a BAT from the garage and walked out the front door and stood in the middle of the front yard to stare down the strange men while she called Ryan to tell him what the situation was.

Ryan was actually surprised and didn’t know why people would be on our roof either he told Allison to get herself back in the house and lock the door and he talked with her while he came home immediately. A few minutes later she said they were putting their ladders away and leaving. She sat by the front door looking out the window with her bat in case they decided to come back until Ryan got home.

Turns out, it was a Christmas light company that puts lights on your house for you. They had gotten the wrong address and put lights on our house by mistake. They figured it out eventually when whoever’s house they were supposed to put the lights on never got them. A few days later when we got home they were gone.

I think Allison was 8 or 9 when this happened. We recommended that in the future instead of going home they go to a neighbors house if someone is at our house unexpectedly. We know that Allison will take charge and let us know if something isn’t right.

Grandpa Terry’s 69th Birthday

Grandpa Terry has his birthday in January. It is his last year of his 60’s. Usually for your birthday you have someone else make your meal, at least I do, but for his birthday he invited us and Ross’ family all to dinner at his house and made us a ‘farm meal’ which was mashed potatoes, gravy, roast and green beans. Then for dessert we had a raspberry cheese cake. It was nice to get to see him on his birthday. This might be the first time we have spent it with him because it is in January and we don’t usually travel a lot in January.

For his gift we got him some Chief socks and a sweatshirt so he has some gear to wear for games.

I think this is as good as place as any to add a funny grandpa story. Now that we live by Grandpa we have learned that he has a particular way he does things. Everybody does of course, sometimes those things are more…neurotic then others.

Grandpa likes his house to be in perfect working order like it is brand new. He works very hard at keeping things cleaned and well taken care of. When he moved into the new house he went around and made sure EVERY single nail hole was filled in and sanded and repainted so there weren’t any unused nail holes on the walls. He also likes to use or reuse things until they can’t be used anymore. No matter how long it takes to clean or maintain or craft something to fix it, if it can be fixed he will fix it. He likes to save money and he does not like to throw perfectly good items away. This means he washes plastic silverware or cups in the dishwasher. He also uses plastic sacks from the grocery store (about two gallon size sacks) in his 13 gallon garbage can so he doesn’t waste the sacks. When there are 12 people over for dinner you can imagine how quickly those fill up. But we all have little things that have the potential to drive other people a little crazy, and we love Grandpa so we just smile, sometimes roll our eyes and empty the trash 12 times when we go over and wash the disposable silverware.

One of the times we were over we noticed a new frugal fix that he had come up with and it made me giggle. Exhibit A

What is this you might be wondering. It looks like a measuring cup from the top of a bottle of medicine screwed to the wall. You would be correct. It is a piece of trash screwed to the wall. What possible reason is there for this? When you see what it is for you might think it is actually pretty resourceful, and is it, but since he is not a 19 year old boy living in a college dorm room it is a little silly. Exhibit B.

We love Grandpa Terry and his fix it skills. 😁🤣😘

Allison’s Gymnastic Pictures

We got back Allison’s team gymnastic pictures. She has the prints hanging up in her room, but I took a picture of the pictures to have in the family blog.

She set a goal to work on her back flip, tuck, and handspring this year. Last week on the trampoline she got it down. She has had the skills for a while, she has been working on the nerves to trust herself and do it. She has a couple nasty trampoline burns on her face but she is confident enough to do them well on the trampoline now. Next step is applying it to land.