Kyle's 2010 rodeo season is underway!

I do not even know where to start with our weekend, so I guess I will start with Friday (the logical place to start). Friday the temp got up to the mid 30's. It caused the ice on the trees and the power lines to fall off. Out were we live trees hang over the road. When I was driving home from work every time I went under a tree that was over the road it sounded like a hail storm. A ton of ice was falling and our power way blinking when we got home. Shortly after dark the power went off completely. Kyle was in Texas so he was not much help for us. The girls were scared and upset. Thankfully my wonderful in-laws let us come to there house until the power came back on. Chip hooked up the generator and Marilyn fixed us supper. It ended up being a fun time. We went home later that evening when the power came back on.

Saturday morning my sister, Lacey, called me to see if I wanted to ride along with her to Norfolk. At first I said no, but she talked me into it and it turned out to be a fun day. We met in O'Neill around noon and home about 9:30 that night. There was a woman's expo that we went too. It has a lot of fun booths. My Mom, sister, Danielle, and sister-in-law, Erin all came up to the expo as well. Later Lacey and I did some shopping. Shopping with a 5 (soon to be 6) year old, a 2 year old & baby made for a long day. Jenae and Riley actually did really good and were a lot of fun. Bree had some 2 year old moments :-)

Sunday the girls and I stayed home and mostly just hung out together. I did not do any house cleaning all day, I just enjoyed my girls. I have not decided if I am proud of myself or disappointed in myself for not doing any house work. I did have fun with the girls. We made some fun recipes out of Jenae's cookbook, we watched a movie and did other little things around the house.

Kyle left home on Tuesday of last week and was gone until last night. He was in Fort Worth and Denver. He was 5.0 on his first steer in Fort Worth. He has to run his 2nd one down there in a couple of weeks. Kyle did good in Denver. He made the short round and place in both the short round and the average! We were excited! The girls and I & had some adjusting to do with Kyle gone. The Jenae & Aubree actually did pretty good, but will be nice to have him back home for awhile before he goes back on the rodeo trail!

This weeks wrap up!

It was a fairly normal week for the Whitaker household. It has been extremely foggy and wet around here.

Kyle had Aubree one day this week and he had to go help his friend, Matt,with a quick project. He took Matt some of our eggs. Kyle had Aubree outside with him for awhile but it was pretty cold so he put her back in the pickup. She had gotten a hold of the eggs and cracked 3 of them open. When Kyle went to the pick up he found her with the eggs and she looked up at him and said "I am painting Daddy" She thought the egg yokes made a good finger paint!!!

Wednesday Aubree and I got to babysit Trey for the day. We had a lot of fun with him. He is growing and changing so much! He was a really good little boy for us. Aubree LOVED having him at our house. When Hope came to pick him up she tried to tell hope that he needed to stay at our house. Aubree told Trey "wave bye bye to your Mommy" implying that she thought he should stay with us. It was cute.

Jenae has been working on her reading and is doing really well. After having an extended Christmas break due to the weather I think she is happy to be back in school with her friends. She is a real social butterfly.

I think we have another quiet weekend in store for us, which I am thankful for. It think we are in for another snow storm so we will be staying close to home.

January 15th

It is crazy to me how fast the time goes. I can't believe that we are already 1/2 way through January. I try not to wish my life away, but January is usually one month I like to fly by! I do not like cold weather!!! We have been very lucky to have a break in the super cold temps. We have had highs in the mid 40's this week. It has been a very welcomed warm up and it is nice to see some of the snow melting.

I am looking forward to a nice quiet weekend. Maybe we can go sledding on what snow is left.

I posted a few more pictures from last weekend. Despite the fact we were all together for a funeral we still managed to have a good time hanging out together. It is too bad that it takes a funeral to bring everyone together.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

On a sad note....

Sorry for the time since my last post. Wednesday Kyle's Grandpa Phifer passed away. Bernard was 91 years old. He will be dearly missed by all that knew and loved him. Bernard lived life to the fullest clear up to the end. He was still living at home and lived a very active lifestyle. He went into the hospital in Callaway on December 30th then was transferred to Kearney on January 1st. Kyle, Marilyn and I went down to see him Tuesday night. . Chip kept the girls at home that night since Jenae was supposed to go back to school on Wednesday. Due to are lovely Nebraska winter they called school off Wednesday. They ended up canceling school Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. We had a couple of more inches of snow and the wind whipped up and drifted the roads closed. Thursday we loaded up in the pickup and head out to Callaway. The snow plow had not yet went and the wind was still blowing like crazy which made roads really bad. Chip went in front of us in the tractor and blade to push through the drifts. There was a drift that was too big for him to get through. To make a long story shorter we ended up having to cut through a pasture to go around a drift then we were able to get to the highway. Luckily we followed the snowplow for the first 10 miles once we got to the highway. Once we go closer to Burwell the roads got better.

We spent much of the time sorting through things in house. Jenae and Aubree had a great time finding all sorts of "treasures" that they got to take home to furnish their playhouse. I really enjoyed spending time with Kyle's Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins. They are a neat family. Jenae and Aubree were we really happy on Friday night when Kassie and Karson arrived. Kassie and Karson are Kyle cousin's girls and have to be the 2 best babysitters ever. My girls think the world of them!

The funeral was on Saturday and was a very nice service. It was a very personal funeral with a lot of stories shared about Bernard.

Saturday night we stayed up past 1:00 in the morning sorting though things. I woke up in the middle of the night to a beeping sound. It was a slow beep that gradually became a faster louder beep. I was a little mad that someone had set an alarm to get up and start working so early. When no one got up I figured it must not be an alarm. I followed the beeping noise to the office when I got there I saw it was a typewriter that had went bonkers. I shut the power off of the typewriter and went back to bed. I no more than fall asleep when I wake up to another beeping sound that soon turns into an alarm sound. It sounded like a smoke alarm but I could not see/smell smoke and I could not find any smoke alarms on the ceiling going off. Ben and Hope woke up and they figured it was a carbon monoxide detector. We were trying to decide what to do. It seemed like we should leave the house, but at 5:30 in the morning in Callaway where do you go??? We then notice the lights in the house were really dim and that there was a brown out. We though that the brown out may be what was causing the detector to go off. A few minutes later we lost all power in the house. We looked outside and realize the whole street was dark so it was a city problem not a house problem. The power came on about 30 minutes later. We plugged in the carbon monoxide detector and it was fine. It must have been the brown out that caused the sensor in the detector to go off. We all went back to bed to get a couple more hours of sleep.
Sunday we got up and finished what we were working on the house. We then packed up and headed home.
I will try to post new pictures in the next couple of days

More Christmas and New Years

I will try to sum up the craziness of the past couple of days. Thursday night we went to our friends Zane & Sara's house for NYE. It was a lot of fun.

Saturday we got up to go to my Grandma's house. Kyle's Grandpa Phifer had been in the hospital in Callaway for the past few days with pneumonia and was transferred to Kearney due to congestive heart failure. Kyle went to Kearney with his Mom to be with his Grandpa and the girls and I went to my Grandma's house for the Forre Christmas. The girls and I spent the night at my Parents that night. We had a lot of fun. Jacque, Lacey, Riley,Danielle & the boys spent the night at Mom & Dad's too. We played games and just hung out.

The next morning I met up with Kyle and went back to my parents house to have Christmas with them. It snowed right along most of the day and we had to leave the party a little earlier than I wanted to so we could get on the road when it was still light out.

Sunday we had our final Christmas celebration of the season over at Hope's house for the Whitaker Christmas. Kyle's Uncle Robert, Uncle Zac, Aunt Amy, & Cousin Adam were all that were able to make it. It was a lot smaller than normal but still fun. My girls really took a liking to Adam. We always do a white elephant gift exchange. It is always a good time.
Our life should get back to some sort of normal now that the holiday season is over for another year. I always get a little bummed when the holidays are over because it means Kyle will soon be going back on the rodeo trail with the winter rodeos. As of today Kyle's Grandpa is not doing very good. Please keep Kyle, Marilyn and her Dad in your prayers.