And off he goes!

Kyle has officially begun the winter rodeos. It is an adjustment as always to have him gone. The mornings are by far the biggest challenge that I have. This is my typical work day when he is gone. (I am sharing this mostly so I can look back at my blog when I am old and gray remember these days :-)

Alarm goes off at 5:45. Get up and get myself ready and let Buster outside before the girls get up. Pack Jenae's lunch and make sure her back pack is ready for the day.
6:30 sharp I wake the girls up if they are not already up.
6:45 Go get the car out and pull it in front of the house so it can warm up a bit.
7:00 on the dot we need to be driving out of my driveway and off to drop Jenae off at Grandpa & Grammy's house. (Marilyn takes her to school when Kyle is gone)
7:10 Drop Aubree off at Lindsay's house for the day.
7:20 pick up my car pooler, Lisa and head to O'Neill.
7:55 At work ready for the day!

I run a pretty tight ship in the evenings too.

It is usually 6:00 in the evenings by the time I get home, get the girls picked up and settled in the house.

From 6-7 We eat a quick supper, get baths taken and work on spelling words and math facts with Jenae. I do sometimes let the girls eat supper in the living room and watch the Duke's of Hazard. We all like that show :-)

At 7:00 we shut off the TV and I turn my phone on do not disturb so the girls and I can have quality quiet time. We do a lot of reading from 7-8 and at 8 I put them to bed so we can do it all over again the next day. (This is assuming that Aubree does not nap during the day. If she naps she is so wound up at night and I am lucky if I can get her to fall asleep before 11:00...and this mama is not a night person!)

Aubree probably has the hardest time adjusting to Kyle being gone. It is a real struggle to get her woke up and dressed so early. She loves get to lay around in her pj's until she is ready to get dressed for the day. Getting her dressed at 6:30 in the morning can be a challenging task.

It is hard right now, but I know soon we will adjust and it will get easier. I am so thankful that we did not get the additional 4-8 inches of snow they were predicting. That would have added a little more stress to having Kyle gone.
At least he is only gone a couple days then home for a bit before he takes off again.

Thankfully I have an awesome support system with Chip & Marilyn just down the road. They help me out in so many ways from taking care of the horses & chickens in the winter months to getting Jenae to and from school. Kyle would not be able to do what he does with out all of their help.

Yesterday Aubree and I were kind of lost having Kyle gone and Jenae at school. We did manage to have a fun day at home. We played "house" and I was the mom and she was the kid again! Sometimes she would be afraid I was not "playing house" and she would remind me at say "Mom, we are playing house remember you are the mom and I am the kid" It is hard to pretend to be the mom when I actually am the mom :-) We had fun. It was snowing pretty hard last night and they called off Awana. I was thankful I did not have to bundle up the girls and take Jenae into town for that.

I am hoping the weather cooperate so we take take a little road trip this weekend. I saw in the forecast that they are calling for snow on Saturday night into Sunday morning now. I guess time will tell.

Back to Blogging

We have been keeping busy mostly in the house the past couple of weeks. Since I have not posted in awhile I really have to think back over the past week or 2 and try to remember what we all did. I am really mad at myself that I have taken a short break from blogging. It makes it so much harder to get back into.

A week ago Saturday our friends Zane & Sara had their annual New Years Eve Party. Yes I know it was not New Years, but they had to have the week following due to some scheduling conflicts. It was a lot of fun. Zane goes to a lot of work planning games for everyone to participate in. We did all sorts of things from tying a bucket on our head and trying to catch ping pong ball to trying see who could stack 7 oreos on their head the fastest. The girls spent the night at Chip & Marilyn's house.

Sunday we got up and got ready for church. The girls were having too much fun with Grandma & Grandpa so they skipped out on church. It felt strange to go to church without them. It really started snowing on Sunday afternoon and the snow just kept on a coming.

School was called off Monday & Tuesday due to the extreme cold and the snow. I am so thank for my job and my boss to give us snow days. They are basically free days and treasure the extra days I get to be home with my family. We kept really busy making crafts and playing play dough. Aubree and I played "house" She wanted me to be the mom and she was the kid. I still really do not know how that was "playing" since I am her mom and she is my kid. We had fun anyway. I did make it into work on Tuesday for part of the day. I am not sure driving on my country roads to O'Neill in my car was the greatest idea, but I made it.

Buster has been getting to spend a lot of time in our mud room since it is so cold outside. Jenae loves to read to him and she is convinced he loves to hear her read. One morning she took her book into the mud room and Buster was jumping up and down so excited to see Jenae. She said "Wow, I didn't know Buster like reading this much"

Wednesday I had to go to Grand Island for a State Farm meeting. It was so cold that day. We started off the day at 8 below 0 and I think it got to a high of 9 degrees above zero.

I took Thursday off since I had the meeting on Wednesday. It turned into a nice day. Kyle went to Wakefileds to practice most of the afternoon and Aubree and I plugged away at house work. When Jenae got home from school we went out and did some sledding. It was a lot of fun. Aubree played "house" out side and the barn was her house. She wanted Jenae & I to come visit her. I just love her little imagination!!

Saturday Ben, Hope & Trey came over for a visit. It was nice to have them over. They stayed for dinner and Chip came over as well. (Marilyn was working with FCCLA kids, getting them ready for districts) Jenae & Aubree invited themselves to go home with Hope. Hope so kindly agreed to take the little monkeys and they had a blast.

Sunday morning I got up early to pick the girls up from Hope's house. Then went to church. After church we were invited to Foster & Sue's house for breakfast. Kyle went coyote hunting and the girls and I had nice relaxing day. I even took a short nap!! :-) I wanted to bake some chocolate chip cookies but Jenae had another idea. She got out the Chamber's Fireman Cookbook and looked through it until she found a recipe to make. She ended up picking out sinckerdooles. It is crazy to me that she is old enough to pick out a recipes out of a recipe book with out pictures and be such a good helper!

Kyle is getting geared up to start with the winter rodeos. Nick arrived at our house last night. Jenae and Aubree were so excited to see him. I was working with Jenae on her math flash cards and Nick picked up a pile of flash cards and started working with her too. It was nice of him, I am sure she enjoyed having someone different to work with instead of boring ol' mom!

It is snowing again!!! We are supposed to get another 4-8 inches between today & tomorrow. I am so tired of the snow!! Sunshine please come back.

Pictures form Zane & Sara's party






Pictures of the girls keeping busy!

I know it has been awhile...

I have been getting comments from some of my regular blog readers that I have not updated my blog lately. It seem that the time is getting away from me. My goal is to get it updated by tomorrow with pictures and what has been going on for the past couple of weeks at the Whitaker household.

Today it is so nice out. It is 38 degrees but we better not get to used to heat wave because it is only supposed to get up to 13 tomorrow and 12 on Wednesday. Burr!!!!

Whitaker Christmas

With all of this crazy weather yesterday did end up being a nice day to have the postponed Whitaker Christmas. We had it at my house as it was easier for Chip to clean out my driveway/yard then for Hope to her yard cleared from the 6-8 inches of snow.

This was my first time in hosting an extended family gathering. One of the things I learned is that I need to turn down my thermostat before everyone arrives. The house warms up really fast when you get a bunch of people there.

It was a smaller group than sometimes, but we still had fun. Thank you to all of you who made the effort to come. I know traveling with young kids is a challenge at times, but I thing the memories that are made we all have a chance to be together are worth it. I am learning that as time goes on it is going to be harder and harder to get together so I am thankful the weather held out and we were able to have our Christmas celebration.

It was an eventful day with Uncle Robert ending up in the hospital. Thankfully he is feeling a little better today.

Lana & Paul came and it was nice to see them as well.

This year Hope had the idea of simplifying the menu and going with different kinds of soups and salads. Chip & Kyle were not excited about the change from a 4 course turkey and dressing meal, but it really made the day much easier to prepare for and I do not think anyone went away hungry!


Jenae having people draw their number for the Whitaker Christmas gift exchange.



Mat getting help from Bryan & Caden as to what gift to pick.



Amy opening the last gift of the day. It ended the white elephant gift exchange for another year.


Reece hitting pinata that Mat & Elaine brought. The kids had a great time with it!


The kids heading off for some sledding at the creek.


Having fun playing Apples to Apples

Holiday Bowl/New Years Eve

Our New Years snow storm has not stopped us from having a good couple of days! Thursday night our friends Matt & Heidi came over for supper and to watch the football game. I will spare the details of the not so good game, but it was a disappointment that the Huskers could not get things together. It was nice to spend some time with the Matt & Heidi and the kids had a lot of fun.

Our New Years Eve celebration ended up with a change of plans. The Zutavern crew could not make it up and it was looking like we were just going to be hanging at home by ourselves. Well Matt & Heidi could not make it to her parents house like they were planning so we ended up over at there house for the evening.

It is looking like the Whitaker Christmas that was supposed to be today is going to be tomorrow at my house so I best stop blogging and get to getting my house in shape :-)


Wyatt giving Aubree a ride.


Matt & Heidi's youngest little girl Abby.


Aubree, Jenae & Brooke playing dress up.