Thank you to the Bartles!!

Here are the Koehler Kids enjoying their Christams gifts. Autumn wants to wear her hair stick everyday!! You should recognize the boys' pose... just think of the biggest 80's movie!! he he!

Here's Bailey

Winter Holiday

I wanted to take a few moments to thank everyone for their cards and gifts for Christmas. It was our first away from family and friends. We did the web cam thing with my family again on Christmas Eve and got to watch the girls open their gifts. It made things a lot easier!! All in all we had a really good Christmas. The kids got one of their gifts a few days early...it would of been pretty hard to hide him. We adopted a new family member of the four legged kind. He is a lab/hound mix and has the markings of a cow..not kidding!(Hey BB and Mrs. Lehane... maybe he is my good luck for the year of the cow!! HE HE!) He is black and white, and the biggest sweety! His name was "Jelly"...we just couldn't keep that and it took a few days but have came up with "Bailey". He responds very well to it and is already very spoiled! I will try to post a few pic later!!
It snowed all day Christmas day and finally stopped the next evening. It has cleared up and we now have sunny skies, but that brings on the colder temps. We are right now at -13 and have a high of -3 for today!!How do you say "BBBRRRRR!!"?

Well it's Official

Well it is official, I am now a full time college student. I am enrolled at Wayland Baptist University and will start classes in February. It is so scary!!! I am hoping to CLEP some of my required classes before then and they will allow me to use my last four years of employment towards my credits....12 to be exact. NICE! Another nice perk to living here is that the spouses club gives out scholarships that I can get for each term. They will give out $375 per term. That will help a lot. I think I will just stick to two classes each term until Adam gets to pass his GI bill to me next August.
WISH ME LUCK!!

Tonight was Aydens play at school. It was so cute, they did a fabulous job! The whole play was put together, choreographed and everything by the students!! Of course Ayden was the only tin soldier that had issues with his helmet... he was so great though. He had a nervous stomach this morning...I just had to giggle a little to myself. I so remember days like that from when I was young. All of this has brought back memories from when I was in a winter play, I think it was third or fourth grade. I was an elf, and only had one line..but I was so nervous! And I was so excited because my mom was going to be able to come see it.
Ayden came home today with lipstick on his cheeks, he didn't know he was performing for the school today during school. He was saying he was being called "rosy cheeks" on the way home. I touched them up before we had to go back tonight...I only have long lasting colorstay, and he had the roughest time trying to get it off. It was too funny!!

Quite a busy time..

Tis the season to be busy!! We started off the weekend with Austin going to a semi-formal dance with some of his girl friends. I guess Hali was his "date", but he likes Danielle more. And they all went as a group, that way there is no pressure... and I like that a lot more! I feel so old to have a child old enough to be going to these kinds of dances ;O( !!! Saturday was a day where I stayed at home and helped Ayden get caught up on homework and such and Adam went out to finish up Christmas shopping, and I also got all the housework done. Sunday, Austin and I went the church I had found and wanted to try. We really liked it, so I think we found our church home while we are here. We also got in a hockey game on Sunday. Our Aces were playing the Idaho Steelheads...oh who do we root for?!! Happy to say that the Steelheads won 1-0!! I know I will have to root for the home team at sometime..but the Steelheads have been our team for too many years to break it right now!

Ayden has one last play rehearsal tonight and then the play tomorrow. I will blog on it in a few days. I am so excited!! The kids only go to school until Thursday, then we start our holiday break. Two weeks of being trapped in the house with three kids.... AAHHH!! I'm sure we will go to the Arctic Oasis, go bowling, and visit with our friends the Cassidy's. Trying to find inexpensive things to do, and keep them off the video games all day!! ;O)

We ordered chinese food for dinner, and we got Adam the Generals Chicken as always. Austin is always willing to eat weird things for money...and this time he was willing to eat all the hot peppers from the generals chicken for an unknown amount of money...Adam had told him that he would give him all the one dollar bills in his wallet. Austin had asked for $10, Adam honestly didn't know how many he had..he knew it was more than one or two. Austin ended up making out with $6!! I'm not sure it was worth it....The deal was that he had to eat them all at one time...all ten of them!

Autumn Singing

This video was taken before we moved, but I just love it!! This is music from "Camprock" , which she knows every word to every song! I really wish she would get passed her shyness issues... I may be biased, but I think she really has potential!

OH Austin!!!

Yesterday morning, I could of sworn that it was a Monday. I was sitting on the couch, I hadn't showered or anything, when there was a knock at our door. It was Austins little girlfriend, who came over to walk to the bus with him. Nice, nothing like being seen when you just roll out of bed. But that wasn't the bad part. They rushed out the door, running late because Austin was too busy getting a cup of coffee. I then get a frantic call from him on Katy's cell... he dropped his cell phone while running to the bus. He felt himself kick something, but thought it was just an ice chunk. He needed me to go out in the dark and snow to find it.... it doesn't get light until about 10 am. So I put on some sweats a beanie and grab Adams spotlight and head out into the cold. I must of been a sight... even the neighbors noticed I was out there and asked what I was up to. ARGH! I did find it.. in the middle of tire tracks! It had already been ran over and is now broken! Now of course we don't have the insurance on it, it was a cheap and very basic phone. I proceeded to sit on the phone with Verizon for the morning trying to figure out a plan. We could suspend the service on the phone, but we would still be paying for. It's not like we don't have enough phones, he could use the one that we use for the house phone.. or at least did, it now just kind of sits here. But I don't want to pay for Austins phone line and it not being used. The house one gets used when Ayden goes out with his friends and such, and my mom calls it all the time. So to make a long story short.. I remembered that I still have my old phone lying here because I just updated my phone a little over a month ago. It has it's own issues with a certain button not working but it's better than no phone..right. So we did some reprogramming and got Austins number transferred to it. PHEW! So far .. so good. It doesn't seem to want to send pic/video messages like it should, but who cares. As he says, ..."as long as I can text and talk!!"
Who says I shouldn't get mom of the year..... Austin!!

Austin may be 15 going on 16, but he just still loves his Elmo!! JK! He was showing me something on youtube and I looked up Elmo. Austin and Sierra used to listen to this song over and over again.... probably why we tease him so much now! ;O) I swear when you listen to it, it sounds like he says a bad word.... HE DOESN'T. He is saying "what..no", but it sounds bad.
Here are also some pictures of Autumn wearing her wig from Halloween. She is such a goof!!She must get it from her father!!!

The Tree is up, the Snow is on the Ground...It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We had gone out to dinner Friday night and then headed to Home Depot and picked out a Christmas tree. I was so excited and love the smell of a fresh cut tree. We have had a fake one for the last few years, but decided that we didn't want to move it up here. So Adam got up early yesterday morning and headed down our snowy step to get boxes of Christmas decor out of our shed. What a good guy! I still am not felling too great so I just stuck to the basics for the tree. I usually have to decorate the whole house and then some, but knew that I would have the energy for that this year. I absolutely love the tree we got, it is a seven foot Douglas fir... which is my favorite type of Christmas tree. The needles are so soft and the tree is so full.
The boys had a day of snowboarding planned, so Autumn and I were going to do the tree. We usually do this as a family.. but Autumn and I needed something special to do and the boys didn't really care. This was the boys first day of trying to snowboard... trying being the key word there. Adam hasn't really ever snowboarded before either, he is a great skier.. but there is definitely a difference. Austin was the first to be done.. he fell and hurt his wrist, it is still a little weak. Adam was pleasantly surprised at how well both of boys did. I'm sure there will be many weekends ahead where Autumn and I will have to find stuff to do...oh darn. I know that our friends the Cassidy's will be glad to see us.
I kept the tree very basic this year. I stuck to the blue balls, icicle garland and topper, and snowflake decorations. Yes, the tree has to match my giftwrap! ;O) Autumn made me want to sit down and cry for a moment. She was asking where we were going to go... It took me a few minutes to figure out what she was asking, but we always go to Auntie Candi's for Christmas. I felt so alone and isolated, but then I tried to remind myself what the season is about. We will probably do the webcam with the family again like we did on Thanksgiving and that helps. We will have to get Adams parents on there this time too. Then Adams dad will be here in about a month again. The kids are looking forward to that. :O)

Let it snow..??

We were sitting at the table this morning, eating our cinnamon rolls and watching the morning news for the weather. It had reached the high yesterday by 11 am and then cooled off again....the high was 12! So this morning as Austin is heading to the bus stop, it is a balmy -3....and he left his coat in in locker yesterday :O(. ARGH! We have also had some snow lately, in fact it snowed three days straight. I sat in my living room watching it, it is very peaceful...but I am beginning to wonder if it ever stops. We are sitting, according to the news this morning, at 21.8 inches of snow!!! yeah... you read that right! They are talking about how this is going to be a very snowy winter...so now I am trying to look on the bright side. At least we should get the worst our first year here.. that way we can decide if we really like it here...right?!? If we can handle a bad winter than a normal one later will be cake..
The kids are loving it though. Sledding is big here..even just in the neighborhood. Adam had them out for three and a half hours the other day. They are a little sore but that is just because they have too much of Adam in them and were trying to do all these tricks...silly kids.
We made it through the holiday.. a bit of a rough one. I have been having some health issues, but making slow progress and recovery. Adam has been wonderful with all his help. I will post more later when I get test results and such.