My Healthy Birthday

It is hard to lose weight and celebrate your birthday at the same time. But this year I did a great job. Today I went to the gym for 1 1/2 hours and for dinner Brenda made me a wonderful (and healthy) fish dinner. I had shrimp, salmon and scallops with mango, lime salsa. To top it off, I had a birthday orange instead of a birthday cake. It was a great day.

Our Final Portage Northern Conferences

Tonight was our last PNHS teacher conferences. Since Bryan was in kindergarten, we have attended 398 teacher conferences. Tonight we got to see Nancy Nott. Nancy has always been one of our favorite teachers and really emphasizes writing skills. She has taught for 30 years are we are the first family to have four kids take her senior honors english class. Thanks Nancy for setting high standards for our kids and for your dedication to teaching!


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A Different Mulder Winter Weekend - 2011

For a moment, we thought that Ken had shown up for Mulder weekend? Nope, just a guy named Ryan hanging out at Bells with us.

A toast to Mulder Winter Weekend - 2011

Where did all the snow go? We had 14 inches just a week ago.

Mulder Winter Weekend 2011 will be long remembered for what did not occur:

- We did not ski or snow shoe (50 degree days the week before put a quick end to the snow)

- It was only 24 hours (snow and ice coming in on Sunday sent everyone home on Saturday)

- Craig was the only TC Mulder (although he did look very relaxed and well rested)

- Grandma and Grandpa were missing (blame it again on the Sunday storm)

So instead of our Traverse City event, we did a short gathering in Portage. Short, but fun.

We went hiking, played RA, had a great chance to talk, Phil, Gabi and Liza went to see the play Hairspray, and we stopped at Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo.

We sure missed everyone and also the chance to ski, but there is always next year!

This is harder than I thought

It has now been three weeks since the Mulder Moose decided to give up his life as a lumber jack and seek a new career (see blog posting of January 27th). Well as many Americans know, making a career change is difficult in this era of high unemployment. He has put in many applications, but has had only two interviews.

The first interview was at a hardware store. The interview was going well until they asked him to use the cash register. Guess what? Moose has no fingers and was unable to use the keyboard of the cash register. The next interview required a test measuring critical thinking. Well with stuffing instead of a brain, he quickly failed this test too.

I realized that I was asking Mulder Moose to get a job and he had absolutely no skills. So this week, we started some career skills training for Moose. On Monday, Phil made a Valentine's Day dinner for Hannah. So to help with the dinner, we had Moose serve as the waiter. He looked great, but will need some additional training. Phil thought he was a little stiff and Hannah was annoyed at the way Moose stared at her during the entire meal.

This job thing is going to be harder than I thought...

What to do when you get bored during a Michigan winter

Tom and Laurel came to visit this week and we had a beautiful sunny and warm weekend. It even reached 40 degrees today (heatwave). We wanted to go outside and have fun but after snow shoeing yesterday, we wanted to stay close to home. How about building a snowman and running a silly obstacle race? We had a great time - here are the photos (and movies).