Groneman Family

Does this count as our little one's first costume?? :)

Scared ya, hu? No? Oh well... Happy Halloween.

Right now I have the following instant message systems running. Luckily, I can use a single IM client to service them all at once (I use Pidgin ) GroupWise Instant Messenger (work) AIM (work/family) Google Talk (family) MSN (Family) Yahoo IM (Family) IRC (work) Is anyone in the fam still using MSN or Yahoo? I don't think I've used those in the past year and would just as soon nuke them if nobody here uses them. ?????

In case you missed the 3 presidential debates and want an update on the topics and positions of each candidate in each debate, this is a good resource to use for a quick update .

THIS is something that just makes me shake my head and worry about the future.

The branch of the family that follows politics way too closely got out and voted yesterday. We voted at the county building. We stood in line for about 15 minutes before voting. Mostly it was old, retired people in line to vote. The poll workers were saying more people voted in one day of pre-election-day voting than voted in the primaries altogether. They're very concerned about what it's going to look like on Election Day. If you are registered and inclined to vote, I recommend getting it done sooner rather than later. Friday is the last day to vote early. Learn more about the Utah candidates and where to vote at leaveyourprint.com

I've heard many times that debit cards aren't as safe as credit cards. I was reading a Reader's Digest article the other day about debit cards and it had a lot of personal horror stories about using a debit card and some of them are pretty bad. The bottom line advice from the article: NEVER buy anything online using a debit card and NEVER let your debit card out of sight when paying for something (like at a restaurant). Debit cards have no protection like a credit card and even if your bank says they will guarantee your funds are safe using a debit card, more often than not when it comes down to it they don't back up their promises. Credit cards are relatively safe to use because you aren't liable for someone fraudulently using your credit card. On the other hand, debit cards take the money directly out of your account and banks/credit unions have no legal obligation to cover losses from fraudulent withdrawals there. There are also machines out there that can...

Lydia rolled over for the first time yesterday twice in a row from stomach to back. We have a gifted daughter : ) actually, it was more because she was holding her head up (which is probably heavy from all those cheeks) and her head got of balance and sortof fell over sideways and the momentum of it flipped the rest of her body too. But hey, it's a start. So I've heard before that babies are mailable so I decided to try to get Lyida to sleep in her baby carrier/carseat. Previously she would NOT sleep there. It took me about 5 days of trying and only letter her sleep there, but now life is SOOOO much easier! She can now sleep anywhere: church, car, grocery store, disneyland. I'm so glad that I did it! I'm going to do that with all of my babies from now on.

Moooo!

So I thought I'd share some of my bad attitudes with you. As of today, I am no longer a loyal Big-O customer. The premium brakes I bought a few years ago didn't last even 30,000 miles. "Sorry, nothing we can do about that. You can buy some new brakes if you want". I'll take that option, but at Les Schwab. We're no longer Qwest customers. "We reserve the right to increase your price at any time". They literally told me that. We didn't have a contract, but shortly after this experience, someone else was telling me about a similar experience they had (without knowing mine), where they did have a contract, and Qwest increased the price. He called up to cancel the contract, and was told to read the fine print of his contract. They can increase the price (even in a contract) at any time. I've attempted to contact all of my most local representatives in the state Government. I've done my homework on them, and most of them have not yet...

This isn't really a big deal, but I'm kind of excited about it, so I'm sharing with the fam. The professor I work with at school contacted me about a teaching job at a charter school in Provo. It's just from now until Dec. but it pays $25 an hour! Well... I'll only be teaching 2 hours a week - but... that's $50 we didn't have before, I'm getting school credit for it for one of my secondary ed teaching courses, and it will be great experience to give me a head start on student teaching next semester. Only a few people in the world might get excited to teach 13-year olds about genetics, and you're related to one of them (even if only by marriage). (And I just learned how to put a picture with a blog - I'm learning so much!)

Warning: The following photos may not be suitable for the weak of stomach or for impressionable children. Viewer discretion is advised. I guess that it's true what they say about great minds thinking alike because the night that Kiera made her debut in a toddler bed, Jacob was doing the same. We bought the bed off of Craigslist that morning, but it's use was expedited when Jacob took off his messy diaper during quiet time and fingerpainted his broken crib. And all the toys and books in his crib... and himself. To truly catch a glimpse of the majesty of his artwork, one must click on the picture and view it full screen. So the crib went into the trash, and Jacob had his first night in a toddler bed! I was biting my nails all afternoon anticipating the event, but like Kiera's transition, it actually went shockingly well! We put him in bed, sang him his song, walked out, and waited for him to follow, but he didn't! I did have to pick him up off the floor when I ch...

A man came home from work late, tired and irritated, to find his 5-year old son waiting for him at the door. SON: 'Daddy, may I ask you a question?' DAD: 'Yeah sure, what it is?' replied the man. SON: 'Daddy, how much do you make an hour?' DAD: 'That's none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?' the man said angrily. SON: 'I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?' DAD: 'If you must know, I make $50 an hour.' SON: 'Oh,' the little boy replied, with his head down. SON: 'Daddy, may I please borrow $25?' The father was furious, 'If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I don't work hard everyday for such childish frivolities.' The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door. The man sat down and sta...

Chad and I went to our first (of 4) pre-natal class last night. I learned a lot, and I'm glad we're enrolled. But let's just say we both didn't sleep well last night because we were thinking about it. Next week I'm going to unwind a bit and get my mind on something else before I go to bed. We're excited, though!! :)

About Grandma: I was in the hospital with her and dad yesterday for about 5 1/2 hours. She was a royal pain to try to keep there, but the good news is that their tests revealed nothing wrong with her heart, so she was released. Evidently heartburn issues all over again. she has been to the ER with that numerous times in the past...and is on meds for that...but evidently they are not doing the job. Boy, she was more loopey than ever though. She kept insisting that it was Sunday and that they had been in church that morning. She thought Keith was one of her brothers, she took off all of her clothes in the night time and was walking down the hospital corridors during the night before she was caught and taken back to her room...She had no idea where a bathroom was (in her room) and I had to keep pointing it out and she was pleased and surprized every time. She kept wanting to take the hospital person that they had put in her room 24/7 after the streaking incident into the kitchen so sh...

Listen to this MP3 clip . I guarantee it will shock you and make you shake your head at the stupidity of some folks concerning the upcoming election.

Latter-day Night Live!

My new shirts HERE and HERE

Follow the instructions on this link. The important thing is to concentrate on the people in the white shirts and count how many times they pass the basketball . The difference between the genders in what they see is amazing! See how many passes you count. That page will provide you a link to the video. When you are done, go back to the original page and compare your answer to what reality is (answer at the bottom of the page). Good luck

I just thought that I should let all of you know that my mom is in the hospital right now. She was having some chest pain so she wanted dad to take her to the ER. Her blood pressure is really high, and they said if they don't get it fixed that she will likely have a stroke or heart attack in the next 4 days. And heart attacks and strokes don't always kill, often they just leave you maimed, which would put her into a care center at $ 4,000.00 per month. Thus the dilemma: To fix or not to fix, that is the question. Mom's request was to go to the hospital, but then when they wanted to admit her, then she was refusing to stay...she wanted to go home, so she was on her way out of the hospital, even while still hooked up to medical devices. If she goes home, 99% chance is that dad won't be able to get her to come back for any procedures. Right now, they are planning on doing a angiogram, but earlier they said that she would need to go into the cath lab so that they could g...

The worst best man award goes to ...... And the best football catch ever award goes to ...... And the underdog of the year award goes to .........

I found this on a comment to a post back in August: Nelsons buy for C&E C&E buy for dastups Dastrups buy for Buff Buff buys for B&K B&K buy for Nelsons So that's the official word then?

Just something to get you excited about the upcoming Thanksgiving day holiday at the Groneman House.......... Oh...and I just have to say I beat Brett and Katie in 18 holes of golf yesterday. I was only a whole bunch over par. Brett was even more than that and Katie.....what can I say......she was a ridiculous amount over par. :)

Yesterday we decided to set up the second crib in Kiera's room in preparation for when Lydia will be joining her (probably in a month or so). While setting it up we got the idea of making the new crib in to the "toddler bed". I've heard that many toddlers have a terrible time with it and end up not going to bed for hours since they now have freedom to roam, but we thought that Kiera wouldn't be so bad so we decided to try it. I decided to hide in her room while Steve was getting her ready for bed-- was was very curious to know what she would do. Steve came in and laid her down. She commented "new bed" and Steve left and shut the door. I sat there in my hiding spot and waited. So what did she do? She stuck her feet in the air and said "wow" (while admiring her red toenails) and rolled over and went to sleep. I snuck out of my spot about 7 minutes later disappointed that there was nothing exciting to report. Secondly, yesterday was too...

Our trip to Moab was more fun than I guessed it would be! Kim kinda gave you a rundown without any emotion attached...but even HE loved it (he usually doesn't enjoy "having to do" the sysop trip in the fall)...but there was some really fun stuff that he enjoyed too, and we would like to take all our kids/spouses on a 1 day Westwater Canyon whitewater rafting trip. We would like to do that next summer, but with 3 girls nursing babies and BJ in school, I think it will have to wait until 2010. By then, Brigham will be done, Steve????, and hopefully it will work. Anyway, if we can pull that off, there are some other cool places to check out also. So...we will tentatively plan on it. Hope you all will too! This is not the raft trip that we just did, it is another one that we heard was a lot of fun to do while we were there, in case you wondered.

Click HERE to see the album The trip started out in Park City at Stein Erickson lodge which was fun and in the snow. We then moved on to Moab where we had a blast. The pictures in this album have captions that explain most of it but here's a short rundown. We started out on a full day river run down the Colorado. It was fairly mild but wild enough we all got very wet. There is another section we want to run with the family someday that is quite a bit more wild. We ate that night at the Red Cliffs Ranch (Formerly White's Ranch) where John Wayne made a lot of his movies. Here are some movies, old and new , that were shot in this area. However in the John Wayne movies, it wasn't the Colorado River in Utah, it was always the Rio Grande. Sometimes one side was Texas and the other Mexico...sometimes the other way around. The second day we did Elephant Hill , eating lunch at Devil's Kitchen then on to the Joint Trail to Chessler Park. Over the Silver Stairs & ba...

So here I sit like a frog on a lily pad.... Well not really. I'm over at the nelson's house babysitting little kiera and lydia so they can go on a date. Little kiera just went to bed about 15 min ago and after the nelsons left I literally walked around in circles to get little lydia to sleep. Now here I sit, while she is asleep on my chest in her little carrier thing. She's so cute and peaceful when she's asleep....be jealous... be very jealous :-) So I thought I would let you all know, one of those fires that was down here in southern cali (yes I know....again) well this time, one of them was literally less than a mile from where I go to school. It was pretty weird to be driving on the freeway and see all the burnt trees and such from where the fire was. It wasn't actually burning when I went to school this week, they had finally put it out the night before I went back to school. The exit to get off to go to my school was still closed and I had to take a ...

Here is an email that was sent to the full-time employees in the Division of Continuing Education: With Deans' Office approval we announce a job posting for a Program Administrator (Assistant Program Administrator II) within the CES Youth Programs department. Job posting #080555, has been posted and will close at 12:00 midnight on 10-30-08. gt That job posting is mine. It means our little girl is getting close to being here! I'm so excited for the new change and challenge of Motherhood. What a blessing to get to do this full-time! (I know I will have days that I'll miss it here as well, at least many parts--not all--of my job.) One of my co-workers says that not one minute of her time at work has even compared to her time being with her little ones at home. I believe her, and I'm excited to experience that. By the way, my last official day in the office is November 21st. (Although I'll get a pay check until the end of January because of sick/vacation time.)

I haven't posted for a while. I know y'all are dying to know what's going on with me, so I thought I'd relieve your curiosity. First of all, I'm married, expecting a little girl. We're not telling people the list of names we've come up with for her, although Brunhilda seems to have already leaked somehow. She's an active little one -- she likes to play hide and seek with us from within the womb. She comes to the surface and lets mommy find her, waits for mommy to call daddy over, and then when mommy moves her hand out of the way so daddy can feel, she moves. She greatly enjoys that game - she has us play it all the time! The product I work on is now in beta testing, and has been for a little while. It still has some time to go, but so far not a single bug has been found by the beta testers. I credit our software test engineer for being so meticulous in his testing. There are still some bugs we've found since then, but I have time to start wor...

Yesterday I was reading with Benjamin from Alma chapter 44 about Moroni's army surrounding Zarahemna and the Lamanites. After several days of getting through Alma's counsel to his sons and sermons on the ressurrection, justice, and mercy, I could tell that Benjamin's attention was a lot more focused. My suspicions were confirmed when he said under his breath, "Now THIS is interesting!"

17 degrees and about 5 inches of snow here in Park City this morning. However, the Filet Mignon was great and the jetted hot tub warmed me up.

Christa is endlessly chiding me for lack of contribution to the family blog. I could make the very valid excuse that my work hours are ridiculous; however, I will take the high road and succumb to her pestering. My job allows me a very negative perspective on humanity. Put simply--I see and take care of a lot of idiots. Drunk drivers, helmetless motorcyclers, people that blow up their own methamphetamine labs, etc. frequent my workplace every day. I usually learn little about the story behind the carnage, but earlier this week I got a few more details about one particularly intelligent patient. While having a fight with a woman he could not consistently call his wife or his girlfriend (turned out he had both and was just getting confused which was which), this young gentleman chose to express his displeasure by throwing her cell phone from the 5th story balcony where she lived. She immediately insisted that he had better retrieve the phone right away. Perhaps he wanted to show her ...

So an interesting thing happened today at Lydia's baby blessing. There was a confirmation and 4 baby blessings but that's not the most interesting part. Directly after that, in the middle of sacrament, all the lights went out. They flickered back on and off a few times and then stayed off. So we finished off the the rest of sacrament meeting in the dark and with people having to talk very loudly to bear their testimonies. It was also very cute because while we were singing the hymns, Kiera was doing her version of singing too....Just "Mleh blah, beh bleh" away very loudly all through the hymns. It was very cute. I wish i could have taken a video of it. Anyways, you all missed out.

we went to an outdoor party this evening. It was SOOOO cold. Everyone had winter coats and hats on and some even had mittens on. After we got home I checked the temperature: 59 degrees.....brrrrrrr!!!

It's not everyday that we find an activity that is equally fun and exciting for all members of our family, from Brigham on down to Jacob-- but today we found one of those things. This morning we yanked our kids out of bed early (also a rare happening) and headed down to the famous International Balloon Fiesta. It was AWESOME! Because of traffic we got there later than we wanted to, and we arrived just as the shaped balloons were starting to launch. There were so many fun and crazy balloons-- from Darth Vader to a cathedral! And they were HUGE. The pictures really don't do this event justice at all. After the shaped balloons all launched, there was a hot-air balloon competition. They set up three big poles and tied keys to each of them. Balloonists swooped down and tried to get a key off of a pole. One of the keys was to a new car, so hundreds of balloons came down really close to the ground (we saw three actually crash INTO the ground) right in front of us. It was be...

Benjamin is officially Kiera's new favorite person. She talks about him all of the time and asks to play with him. Try explaining to a a 1-year old that someone lives very far away or that we'll see him at Christmas..... no comprehension. She sure talks about him a lot though, he is definately the favorite cousin (despite the fact that her twin cousins who are also 4 came to visit just last week).

An update on the whole, Stolen Garmin thing... I did find my Garmin box and serial number in the trunk of my car so we gave it to the police and they said that as long as they have the serial number, as soon as the guy turns it on, they can track him with it. So we're hoping that between that and the cops retrieving the video tapes from the gas station the guy stopped at and used mallori's card to buy gas that they can catch the guy and make him give everything back or at least pay for the things he stole. Keep your fingers crossed! Also, just for your FYI, I was voted the Treasurer of my LVN class....which is pretty cool. I didn't really volunteer, I was nominated by a whole bunch of people in my class...so I guess that means i'm a popular person :-) Today, in class, we started practicing how to give injections. We were practicing on pillows... I feel bad for those poor pillows... They got a lot of holes poked in them today. So anyways, another day in the life o...

October. The most wonderful month of the entire year! Cool temps. Usually rain. Lawns are green and flowers are blooming. Halloween! The falling leaves smell SO GOOD. It's supposed to snow in the valley (but not stick) this weekend then warm back up next week. Yer mom & I will be in Moab with SysOps all next week doing Elephant Hill, Colorado River Run, etc. It's a tough job but someone has to do it. Weather is supposed to be in the 70's and sunny....great! Ya know what's after October? THANKGIVING! Then Santa comes. Somewhere in there I get 2 new grandkids. What a great time of year. The best. I finished winterizing the mountain yesterday & yer mom scattered grass seed on our new cabin pad on our property. An elk bugled up the hill from us a little way.

Hello family, it's been a while. Well, my trip to Utah was wonderful! I had a ton of fun hangin out with mom and dad, chad and erica, and even brett and katie while I was there. So for the trip up, I let my roommate and the other girls that were with her borrow my Garmin and they used it to get home. Well, they got home late and my roommate decided to leave it in the van and just to take it out of the window. She left that, her backpack with her books and wallet in it, her digital camera, her IPod, her's and her mom's ITrip, and her Car charger for her cell phone in her van. It's her moms van and she didn't know that when you lock the van with the little remote thing, that it doesn't lock the drivers door....well... Yeah, everything got stolen. Lucky me. Lucky her. Anyways, she feels really bad about it and she's going to buy me another one that's used but it's still frustrating cause it was in our apt complex parking area which is gated. An...

Wow! Did President Hinckley ever warn the economic disaster we are currently in. Who could have guessed that it would get so UGLY so fast? You kids didn't grow up hearing your parents talk of their memories of the Great Depression, but I did. There was great hardship all across America. For a time some of my mom's family had to live in a chicken coop as they had lost their home.... Here is some of what Pres Hinckley said " "Now, brethren, I want to make it very clear that I am not prophesying, that I am not predicting years of famine in the future. But I am suggesting that the time has come to get our houses in order. So many of our people are living on the very edge of their incomes. In fact, some are living on borrowings. We have witnessed in recent weeks wide and fearsome swings in the markets of the world. The economy is a fragile thing. A stumble in the economy in Jakarta or Moscow can immediately affect the entire world. It can eventually reach down to e...

Time isn't kind. My favorite singing group when I was young (and still is) was Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. They were part of the young generation that played at Woodstock and always represented youth. I was pointed to this 2006 video of them . Goodness the years haven't been kind. So much for my memories of them. Here's how I remember them .

Here is proof that our little girl is getting bigger. :)

This evening while Steve was home and Lydia was sleeping I took Kiera to the Library. Kiera normally loves climing up and down the stairs a thousand times, but today I introduced her to all the stuffed animals lining the tops of the shelves in the children's section. She immediatly grew very attached to a shark that had a mouth that I could move (puppet style). There is a shark on Finding Nemo so I guess she loved it. She hauled it around the library for 20 minutes very much in love with it until we got the phone call from daddy saying that Lydia was awake and to come home. So we took the shark back to it's home shelf. I had to rip it from her fingers as she said "no! shark [longingly] shark! no!" I picked her up and started carrying her away quickly (since she is yelling in the library) and in the saddest little broken-hearted voice she yelled "bu-bye shark!" It was the cutest/saddest thing ever and it got a few chuckles from quietly reading libr...

I had better do something to help relieve this posting famine. This poor blog hasn't had a new post since yesterday! As many of you know, we just returned home yesterday from watching our good friend run the St. George Marathon. She ran Baltimore with us, and Brigham has been training her to qualify for the Boston Marathon. She paid for us to come up, and things worked out with Brigham's schedule to allow a very quick trip. Despite the constant rain and cold (which none of us were really prepared for-- this is St. George, after all), she shattered her goal by running it in 2:31! It was a lot of fun to share in her exciting moment. From St. George Marathon 10-08 The big news on the homefront is that Benjamin started as a peer model in Jacob's class today! He was very excited about it-- both before and after preschool. In fact, when I told Benjamin that this Friday there was no school because it was a day off, he said, "Oh, man! I hate days off! I LOVE going to...

OK, folks! This blog is becoming boring! Where are some of you? We are going to need to give this a burial if people don't put anything on here. Kim got discouraged about his putting fun stuff on here cause no one ever comments... We know that you have busy lives...and we don't want to torture you to do this...but it would be great to hear from everyone, briefly every week an a half or so!! I AM excited to report that Christa is going to gain a lot more freedom starting tomorrow...so I will let her explain why...but she should have much more time to put stuff on the blog! And I KNOW they have fun stuff to report on! :) :) Today was GREAT! It felt like Christmas! Chad and Erica came over to play with us all day between Conf sessions, and of course BJ is here, and flying home tomorrow evening, and then Brett and Katie showed up and had lunch with us and played some WII with us. And we played (in addition to alot of WII games), one game of Settlers of Catan....SO HECK! I...

Enter October's here Look at Teeta! 86 Christa Dastrup 1 1 3 1 2 4 1 1 2 1 9.5017% 287 Chad Groneman 1 2 1 1 3 4 2 1 2 5 1.4113% 918 Cambrie Nelson 11 3 11 1 3 1 1 1 1 2 1002 Brett Groneman 8 3 1 1 UR 2 1 1 1 2 1202 Kim Groneman 10 6 2 1 2 1 2 1 3 7 1296 Erica Groneman 10 2 1 1 2 8 2 UR 2 2 1802 Steven Nelson 4 2 3 6 2 2 1 20 2 7 That's all I could find of our family.

Tradition on the Nelson household. When daddy has to go to school in the morning Kiera and I watch out the window as he puts on his bike helmet and backpack and then wave bye. Then when school is done steve calls me and lets me know he is coming home and all us Nelson females go sit on the edge of the sidewalk and wait for him to turn the corner onto our street at which point Kiera goes running down the street (unless I stop her due to a car) as fast as her toddler legs can carry her towards daddy and then daddy takes her for a ride on his bike while I go do the finishing touches to dinner and we eat. kiera and i have been playing out yhis entire scenario over and over with play dough characters. Kiera asks me about 5 times daily for "shoes......wait" (she wants to go outside and wait for daddy). Lydia smiles now. she smiled 3 times at daady before mommy. my girls love daddy and i can't blame them.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/01/beck.future/index.html

So Erica and I have been cleaning out our spare room, turning it into the baby's room. We've done a pretty good job. There are still filing cabinets and a few other things, and a bookshelf full of books that need to be gotten rid of. These are the expensive books that we didn't resell to the bookstore - the ones we felt would be worthwhile to keep. Well, it turns out that after sorting through my books, I only really want to keep half of them, or less. We would like to not simply put them in the dumpster. They're likely to be a few revisions behind the current. You know how that is - publishers change a word and come out with a new version every other semester, to keep students buying brand-new books. We're wondering if the book-buy-back places will buy them. We could put them up on half.com, but that's almost more trouble than it's worth, between running to the post office and dealing with people who for whatever reason are unhappy and want to give y...