Rainbow and Sherman=BFF

Our lovely cat Rainbow and our new hamster Sherman have fast become BFFs. Last night we noticed the cat was sitting by Shermans cage and Sherman was licking her fur, I am not kidding! It was cute, but also kind of strange Rainbow was letting Sherman do this. Not long after my oldest took Sherman out to hold him, after he was done he made sure he shut the cage. Then a little while longer we all went to bed.

This morning I started making breakfast and went over by Shermans cage quick and noticed his door was wide open, O My! Where is the hamster, we frantically looked and looked again in the cage, he was not there. So then we started looking everywhere, under furniture, behind bookshelves, everywhere. There was no sign of him, we thought for a minute, maybe the cat did something to him? After about an hour of searching, it came to me, the cat was playing in our room just after we went to bed and running around and sniffing in our closet, hmm. So I told the boys, go check in my closet. My youngest started looking and wouldn't ya know he yelled, I saw Sherman, I saw him. I thought, no way. Here he was sleeping in the corner of our closet.

So what I think happened, was the cat decided Sherman was being so nice, he let Sherman out to play. Sherman probably followed Rainbow everywhere and ended up in the closet. I think they had a good time playing all night. Now they are both fast asleep.

Ancestry

I have been researching my ancestry on Ancestry.com, it is so interesting when I find clues to my ancestors. So far I found that my great-great grandma and grandpa on my dads side were from Palmero, Sicily, which is so cool. And that most of my other ancestors were from Germany, Russia, Italy and even France. Wow! I believe my great-great grandfather was born in France, I even found a vineyard in France with a last name very similar to my maiden name. Also, my 2nd cousin from my grandma on my moms side emailed me this: James
Alexander Dunn Married Jane de La Cossitt. If you follow her line, which is in my tree, the Cossits came from France and were nobility and lived in a castle.
You can look up the Castle -- Chateau de Brisse. They were Counts, but
I did not find any Kings. 

You are descended from William Bradford, Governor, of Plymouth Colony.
He came over on the Mayflower in 1620. 

Isn't that just neat, she has given me alot of information and I am so thankful she is sharing this with me. 

It has been so fun finding out all this history and even connecting with relatives I didn't know even existed.

There still are some pieces of the puzzle missing on my great grandpas side of the family, like what their names were. I just contacted a relative who may know more about them, so I am hoping to hear back from them.
Now I need to find pictures of these people and some more history about them and that would be great and I feel my research would be complete. My goal is to put all of this together then I can share this with my boys.

Here is a picture of the Chateau de Brissac, my great grandfather X3 wifes great grandfather X5?  lived here. So cool!!!!!!! He was a count during  the reign of King Francis I.

I am still researching so if I find more to share I will!!

Doggie friends

 We all had a stomach bug the week prior to Christmas so it really did not feel like Christmas around here this year. That whole stomach bug threw us off.
The week after Christmas was lots of fun getting together with friends and family.

So let me explain the dog pictures, everywhere I have been going lately there is a dog and I become friends with them. I love meeting new animal friends and I definitely have done plenty of that lately.

 Here is my friends dog, she was a lovely dog and she quickly became my buddy. :)

This dog came out quickly to us while we were ice fishing from one of the houses on land. He knew commands and stayed with us almost the whole time. I pet him a bit and talked to him, not to long and he was following me everywhere. At one point he even laid by my feet while I was fishing. Such a sweetheart.

Family time! 

All the cousins, except two that were napping. We had a great time seeing everyone this year!

My moms birthday was a smaller group this year, but we all enjoyed spending time together. After time at her house, everyone went to Christmas Eve service. It was nice to have family join us. 

This was my dads birthday celebration. It was a wonderful evening and we had breakfast for supper. Josh and I have never made a meal for that many people (17), so it was a good experience. 

Just some Christmas activities at home. Like making sugar cookies and playing the old school Battleship that Aunt T. gave us. We love that game and really did play at least 15 times on Christmas day!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a wonderful New Year!!

A day of embroidering

My grandma Severson would be proud, I kept saying to myself this past weekend as the boys and I found ourselves inside most of the weekend because of the weather. So I got my grandmas old tin of embroidery thread out (she had hundreds of colors in this tin), and I was so excited when my oldest was actually enjoying this craft. We made 4 embroidery patterns that day, my oldest did two and I did two. It was so fun to see how well he had done. My youngest helped too, but he was not enjoying it as much as my oldest.

As you can see we were busy embroidering that day.

My house has projects of two quilts and embroidering projects all over, it is a busy Christmas sewing/embroidery season. 

My oldest first embroidery pattern, a fish!

My first embroidery pattern!

Working on a gift during school reading time. 

My youngest helped with these tree ornaments.

I have really enjoyed doing embroidery so far and I am so happy my boys have too, It makes me glad to know when they get older they will know how to sew up a hole in their sock. :)

We are working on more patterns, I will show them when we are finished.


The boys and I are especially thankful for daddy's one year of being sober, we celebrated by going out to eat with the people that helped us out through that time. It has been touching to see what God can do. 

We are wishing you a Merry Christmas!!

Hands on activities

 We have been busy doing hands on activities around here, which the boys love. Around Halloween we made homeade root beer with dry ice and the process was pretty neat. The root beer tasted great, but I got the clear root beer extract, oops.... It was still really good.

We also made homemade snowflakes to put on the windows and some of them my oldest cut out without a pattern, pretty creative,

 For math one day I got out the mini marshmallows and toothpicks to create geometrical shapes.

This was fun for the boys, I put whip cream on a baking sheet and had them write sight words that I would say. So they enjoyed eating the whip cream afterwards.

Matching sight words with string. Messy, but fun for awhile. 

I am always looking for hands on activities, because my boys learn more with them most of the time. I got some of these ideas from a you tube channel I watch and the lady also homeschools. I also get alot of my ideas on Pinterest. 

Meet my friend Elliot

Here is my friend Elliot the mouse. This is his home, a 1800s water pump, what a great home. He is very friendly. The first thing I did when we got there was knock on the water pump and a couple seconds later he popped his head out to say, Hello. I am sure there have been generations of mice that have lived here.

When we go on this particular walk he is my favorite part, the boys and I get so excited as we walk the mile to see him. We spent about a half hour with him this last time, it is so fun to see him poke his head out, we also gave him some snacks this time so now I'm sure he considers us good buddies.  

Anniversary

Us then, 2008.

Us now, 2016.

Our family, 2015.

Yesterday was our 8th Wedding Anniversary. It was only Tuesday and we didn't get to go out to eat or anything, we had to take our kids to skate city for their cub scout Halloween party, and as I am the popcorn kernel helper I had to help with popcorn duties. 

When we got home, we sat and talked after the boys went to bed about how things have changed for the good and where we are at compared to where we were. The hard times I went through with him putting his drinking before his family and now that has completely changed, thank God. I told him how I can say I really love him and the person he is now, a couple years ago I couldn't say I loved the person he was. Nothing is still perfect, but it so nice to be more on the same page with things. I am sure his love for me has grown too, with my love for animals, shopping and all. :) 

Love you, Joshua!! <3

If I know what love is, it is because of you.  -Herman Hesse

We started school

I got creative for the first days chalk board. So every picture they had to guess the meaning. So book meant reading, the hand washing, health and so on. Neat idea, hey!

Carter is  a tricky one to get motivated for school, it can take him awhile..... ugh!

But then when they get motivated they do great things!

Conner doing his math on the computer. 

1st day school pics. I will get better ones eventually.

Carter wanted a pic with the cat in the tree, haha.

This year was so much easier to Homeschool, because I made the choice this past summer, not two weeks before school. It is so much better when you know what you want so you can organize. We are using Sonlight and so far we enjoy it. Anyways, happy schooling!

Volunteering at Natures Edge.

We love NE and so we wanted to continue going there by volunteering. We love all the animals and know most of their names. The boys and I are having lots of fun helping there. Our chores include, walking the animals, picking up poop and just loving them. 

Fun in the city!

We had a great time a couple of weeks ago in St. Paul. Aunt T. had told us about a church that my great grandpa helped build. So anyway I think she meant, The Cathedral pictured here. Absolutely beautiful inside and out. 

                                   The boys in front of The Cathedral.

We finally made it to the science museum in St. Paul. There was so much to see, I felt overwhelmed with all there was to see and learn, but the boys seemed to love it.

           My favorite part, the Mummies, so cool. I could stare at them all day. It was amazing to me that I was looking at something so old and to see the cloth and other things they used back then amazed me.

Our favorite part of the whole day.....COMO ZOO, geez and that was free. Anyways, it was so fun to see all the animals again (actually first time for Conner, he doesn't remember last time, he was too little).

I LOVE the gorillas, they are so neat to watch.

We watched one of Sadies puppies the other day. Can you say TWINS!!

We just started school today,  I will update about that soon. :)