Dear Friends & Family,
Merry Christmas from our family to yours! We hope you had a wondrous year. Ours flew by trying to keep up with the 3 munchkins, Mike’s work schedule, and all of our church activities.
Many of our activities are the same as last year. Some of the new things for us are that we started our own garden using the square foot method which Mike built our beds/boxes, the boys tested and received their yellow belts in Judo/Mixed Martial Arts as did Mike, and we have a new puppy--Trixie. Well when we wrote last year’s letter we’d thought it would be a few years before adding another family member (puppy). However, we managed to last about a year.
Shae is taking a sabbatical from choir due to general over busyness and is no longer a table leader for MOPS. So you’d think she’d have so much more time. However, she stepped up to the leadership team of MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers-anyone under school age) as the Finance Coordinator for her group at our church. The Steering Team (leadership team official name) ladies sure work hard. Shae’s glad to have one of the easiest jobs and is thankful for those that don’t. We both still lead our small group which is still not small at all.
Mike still enjoys hunting turkey and deer and is still a Manager of Systems Administration (computers) at CSG. His team of employees doubled this year and he continued to travel to Denver. One of the trips was during Spring Break so the rest of the family went with for the week. In one day driving from Alamosa to Denver we got to see and drive through a sand storm, sunshine, and a blizzard. The big focus of this year’s trip was a day long train trip in Southern Colorado on the Rio Grande Railway from Alamosa to LaVeta. We’d been planning this outing for years to coordinate with the “best” age of our kids when Haven would be big enough to handle it and before the boys would outgrow the specialness of it. It was great fun. We splurged and had dome car seats with a huge banana shaped booth that seated all 6 of us. We also visited Estes Park/Rocky Mountain National Park for the day but found that there is a LOT of SNOW in April which made hiking pretty much out of the question. Shae’s niece, Kim, accompanied us again which was a great help. The week in Denver while Mike worked would have been much harder without her. We literally saw him for 5 minutes total 3 days in a row while he worked some issues for the company. There's a series of pictures of this trip way down the blog. If you go to the side menu, it's in the July section.
Haven is 3 and talks even more now than last year if that’s possible. She goes to preschool 2 days a week and just loves it. It makes her feel big since both of the boys go to school. Haven officially started dance class which wasn’t a huge stretch since she dances and floats around the house in a tutu all the time anyway. I’m sure she felt that it was about time we were seeing to her formal instruction. She also goes with Mommy to the gym and to MOPS. Shae always jokes that she’s officially a Stay at Home Mom, but is never really home running to everything between the church and school stuff. Haven still loves anything Disney princess, cooking in her kitchen, and playing dress-up. No news to report in ending the reign of the Queen of sass and bossiness yet either. We’ve won a few battles, but she’s definitely still winning that war.
Eric is 6, started Kindergarten this year, and is missing his two front teeth (which makes for a great lisp). Eric is just an all around easy going kid. We hear that he is happy with whatever they are doing at the moment at school. He gets great marks for being a good friend, being kind, and following directions. Can’t beat that. His giggle echoes through the house and makes everyone smile which is great since he giggles when he’s having fun, nervous, or even mildly getting hurt (like when the puppy is playing with her TEETH). He’s still our rough and tumble kid. Thankfully there haven’t been any new trips to the ER this year with him, although we’re pretty sure one of his “lost” teeth this year came out prematurely during some wrestling with his brother.
Ethan is 8, in the 2nd grade, and has expanded his football focus beyond just the NE Cornhuskers to pretty much anything football. His library books are even just about football. He’s a walking encyclopedia of football facts. He can tell you when the NFL was founded and which teams were already in existence. He is still one smart cookie and manages to amaze his teachers and parents alike. Lately he’s been thinking of being a Rocket Scientist and working for NASA when he grows up. No really, don’t laugh. He means it. Of course he would say Astrophysicist or is it Aerospace Engineer.
The boys (and Mike) continued with judo/mixed martial arts and all managed to test and earn their yellow belts. They have a lot of fun fishing together, backpacking together, and doing other manly things like wrestling and shoveling snow together. The boys played soccer again this year with Mike as Eric’s coach. They continued with swimming lessons and made their Mom hold her breath while they jumped off the high dive repeatedly including Eric at age 5.
We thought this was going to be a year without as many big trips but instead turned out to be the year of many weddings including big trips. A longtime family friend was married on Haven’s birthday in the Minneapolis area so we had a few days of fun up there with a trip to Valley Fair Amusement Park and of course Mall of America with the Lego store and Rainforest Café. We also went exploring to find the area’s waterfall. Who knew? Minneapolis has the beautiful Minnehaha Falls which we visited in the rain and enjoyed some great puddle stomping. Shae’s family was also in attendance for the wedding so lots of fun and 3 birthdays to celebrate.
Then Mike’s cousin was married in Fargo, ND on Ethan’s birthday so we had a great time hanging out with the Dalke clan for a couple of days and a whole bunch of Dalke grandkids' birthdays to celebrate.
The biggest wedding of the year for us was local even though Shae tried to talk them into a destination wedding. Hey! We haven’t seen Hawaii yet. Shae’s sister and only sibling was married mid July. The wedding party was made up of family which was fun. Shae was the Matron (sounds old) of Honor, Mike was a Bridesman (don’t laugh). The rest of the bridesmaids, groomsman, and groomswomen were Scott’s siblings or Shannon’s kiddos. Mike also assisted Dad in giving Shannon away since we’ve been heavily involved in their lives for the last few years. Scott didn’t know what he was getting into when he married into this family, but we’re so glad he did.
Well, this is the long promised Christmas letter. If I managed to get the blog updated a bit more often maybe this would have a little less info (and take less time to do). There are 7 total posts with lots of pictures which you can click on to see larger. You may need to click on “Older Posts” at the bottom of each page to see all the posts. Most of the other posts are pictures. The last official Christmas letter post is the one that's all Trixie our puppy. However, the posts about the train trip and Colorado are found in the July 2011 section of the blog so you may want to keep going after that. We hope you enjoy catching up on life with us!
Have a Blessed Christmas,
The Dalkes
