Groneman Family

THE PROVERBS CHAPTER 28 25 He that is of a a proud heart stirreth up b strife : but he that putteth his c trust in the Lord shall be d made fat. So THAT's why I am overweight! I guess it's a good thing then, right? ;)

Yesterday I spent some time at the cemetary talking to my dad & mom & sister who are there with him. It was my dad's 90th birthday. The three of them were almost my entire life in my real early years and I spent a lot of fun times with them a little later on. I have a lot of really good memories.  It's sometimes hard not to have them around any more when I think about it.  I do miss them.  Time marches on and there is no pulling it back.  Happy birthday dad.

Happy Happy birthday children dear, Happy days will come to you all year. If I had one wish then it would be, To be out ATV riding but happy birthday to you from me.

Emmy has loved balls since she was old enough to form an opinion. She used to run around saying, "Ba! Ba!", or even "A Ba! A BA!" Now she knows about different types of balls, and she has a favorite. Basketball. Just in the past week or two, she has decided she loves basketball. It seems to me that it started right around the first round of March Madness. We watched a game during the opening round, and Emmy loved it. She kept saying, "Ba-Ball! Ba-Ball!" And we'd say, "Yeah, that's right! That's a basketball." It's become more obvious that she's a basketball fan. I was watching the news on Thursday or Friday last week. Emmy came to me and said, "Ba-Ball!", and looked at me intently. I changed the channel to a March Madness game that was on, and she was happy. That wasn't the first time, and she's done it a few times since then. Today she did the same thing, and I had to explain to her that we d...

In just a few more hours Steve will be home. We have missed him terribly around here. Both girls have woke up a few times crying for their daddy in the morning. Lydia keeps looking for him. the funny thing is that she goes to the bed to look for him : ) I guess that is were she normally finds him in the morning. This morning when I went to pick up Lydia from her bed she frantically said "fwaffles! Boon!" (translations: waffles! spoon!). Apparently she was VERY hungry. She is becoming quite the little talker. Kiera at 18 months could say about 5 words, Lydia I'm sure can say at least 200. Today on the way to church I said "Lydia are you excited to go to nursery?" I didn't expect any sort of response other than "yes" out of her, but she said "Ali!" "Snack" "sing!" "toys!" (she has a friend named Ali in nursery) I never expectd to have a conversation with her about it! Everyone at church comment...

I normally cut Kiera's hair and I feel like i've been doing a fairly good job. I think I was a littel over-confident because yesterday I decided to try something new. BAD idea. It got shorter and shorter before I decided I'd better stop and I went to get it fixed by someone who knew what they were doing (yes, I paid the $ to cut her hair when I don't even pay more my own!). As I feared, Kiera flipped out when we got there. Even though she was sitting on my lap she started screaming/kicking bloody murder every time the chic came near. This went on for 10 minutes straight despite all sorts of bribes and threats. I would have walked out way before that but her hair was TERRIBLE and we needed help. Finally, I got her to calm down and the chic cut her hair into a haircut I never would have chosen but it is alot better than the way I left her! (It reminds me of the 90's haircut that Buff had as a toddler). The trouble is, today I noticed a MAJOR error in her hai...

So this posting is about 2 days late, but I nevertheless thought it interesting so I thought I would post it. About 3 years ago I went to my first Republican Caucus Meeting. I was completely underwhelmed with the turn out. Our precint (roughly a little bigger than our ward I would say) had about 20 people in attendance. It would have been pretty darn easy to have been elected to a delegate position for either the county or state. For those of you who don't know, the caucus is really grass roots politics in action. The people present nominate and vote on delegates who in turn will go to the conventions and vote on whom they want to represent us on the ballots which we will all vote on again in Nov. So your delagates really need to be people you would like to represent you, and you have more power at a caucus meeting on the political process of selecting elected officials than at any other time. So anyway, back to my story. I was completely surprised this year at the overwhelming t...

Yesterday me n' the girls went to Steve's parents house for the afternoon. The have a trail behind there house that goes between the rows of houses the entire length of the street. all of the houses have gates in there back yard that open up to the trail. We frequently walk up it since it is beautiful this time of year (and there are free lemons and oranges to be had. So I yesterday I walked up it with my 2 girls. We turned aroud to go back to the house but there was a very large dog in the trail barking very agressively at us. It was running around in circles and barking/growling as if to say "come any closer and I'm going to get you". I would have been scared if it was just me, but I was even more scared with my 2 tiny girls. I had no idea what to do. I was going to see if I could get in one of the gates leading to someone elses' backyard, but they were all locked and the walls/fences were too tall to get my girls over. We were trapped. There was ...

So today the home tour for our home listing was finished, and the seller's agent sent it to us for fun. We thought you might like to see it. http://www.spotlighthometours.com/tours/tour.cfm?tourid=21478 Brigham spent the day sending them more and more paperwork that they requested, so we are still not officially under contract, but we still expect to be-- hopefully tomorrow if all goes well.

After almost nine years of marriage, Brigham and I are finally about to join the home-owners club! We spent the last week in Utah and looked at EVERY house on the market that fit our criteria. I'm sure that we saw more than 50 homes. At the end of 3 days, we had 4 that met most of our criteria (though not all), and we knew that it was time to make an offer. I was disappointed that there hadn't been a single home that had made my heart sing, but time was running out. The home we liked the best was overpriced (as determined by comparables sold in the neighborhood) by about $100,000, but we decided to make an offer to see if the owners would see the light. They didn't. I really struggled with the idea of making an offer on our 2nd choice for some reason, so I asked to see it one more time. When our realtor (Brigham's dad-- he was extremely patient with us-- thanks, Dad!) tried to make an appointment, he was told that there were already 3 offers on the house and tha...

Sorry-- no pictures-- Steve stole the camera to take it to Honduras (he left last night). Steve will be in honduras for a week. Here are a few tid-bits of what is happening in our lives. Lydia is recently obsessed wtih shoes and tries everyone's shoes on all day long (besides her own). She throws a tantrum if I ever try to put her own shoes on. She wants to wear only Kiera's shoes. It got bad enough that today I just pulled out the lot of shoes a size up from her so she could wear something that was only 1 size too big instead of Kiera's shoes which are 4 sizes too big. Today when I asked Kiera what she learned about in primary she said: "teeth". That is what she always says and I can never get her to vary from that answer. Why? Because whenever her daddy comes home from school and she asks him what he learned about..... My surrogate (a chic in CK's ward) found someone else to be a surrogate for who will be ready sooner than us. So, now I'm on the ...

Last year Katie and I had hoped to go to Havasupai in AZ.  Some of you may remember the blog posting of the idea . That didn't happen... sadly. We're hoping to make it work this year.  Again, it would be awesome for some fam to come with us, but I realize that may be impossible with kiddos n' such.  We're looking at trying to fit it in at the end of June, but I'm hoping to gather opinions about (1) if you're interested in coming, and if so, (2) would the end of June work or some other time?  To do it, you have to get reservations pretty far in advance, so that's why we're looking at it now (hoping that we haven't waited too long...)

The Dastrups are anxiously awaiting news....but you will have to get the story from them! :)

Thank you to Christa for introducing the idea of supplemental health insurance to us. We received $8625 in the mail today. Expecting that # to almost triple. It feels like Christmas to go check the mail! I'm going to have to battle for some of it (I've already started) but that is ok. As soon as we get it we can start the process of surrogacy. I've got my clinic, attorney, surrogate, psychologist, etc. all lined up and ready to go as soon as my bank account says that we are ready. Hurry up $! PS-- update on my job. I was offerend a supervisory position yesterday. I would go out to supervise the nurses who care for TPN patients. I'd make sure they were doing everything correctly. The great thing is that I would only have to see each patient once a month and i can schedule it for any day and time that I want so it is 100% flexible. I would also continue seeing a little baby I've been working with, but only a few hours per week while Steve is home. So, I won'...

Brigham, you can probably relate to THIS   I thought it was funny.

Everyone knows it, but since this is more or less our family journal (I save and print these pages)  it needs to be documented.  Dastrups are in town looking for houses in the Sandy/Draper/South Jordan area.  They've found some of interest, but nothing "perfect" yet.  They made a low offer on a house but I kinda think it won't be accepted.  We'll see. Marilyn is keeping the boys entertained during the day.  Benjamin spends his time shooting baskets..into a real basket.  Jacob spends his time trying to figure out how to get into the electronics in the cabinet....and Marilyn is spending a lot of her cycles thinking of ways to keep him out!  Ty is just tootling around being cute. He's so little!  Emmy came over yesterday to play with the cousins but for the most part Ty and Emmy just ignored each other.  It was fun to see them together though.  It was Benjamin's birthday yesterday (long story) and we sloberated with a dinner.  Bre...

Dear Buff.  I'm writing this letter slow because I know you can't read fast early in the morning.  I thought I should let you know we don't live where we did when you left home. Your mom read in the newspaper that most accidents happen within 20 miles from your home, so we moved. I won't be able to send you the address because the last family that lived here took the house numbers when they moved so that they wouldn't have to change their address. This place is really nice though. It even has a built in washing machine.  I'm not sure it works so well though: last week yer mother put a load in and pulled the chain and haven't seen them since. The weather isn't bad here. It only rained twice last week; the first time for three days and the second time for four days. About that coat you wanted me to send you, your mom said it would be too heavy to send in the mail with the buttons on, so we cut them off and put them in the pockets. Marilyn locked her keys ...

I dub you sir super-annuated. Happy Birthday, Dad!

A whole lot of pictures are now available here FamilyPicturesFeb10

Steve starts finals this next week. Normally, I'm glad when he has finals because that usually means he has a week break to spend with us. However, this time he'll be going to Honduras with the dental school and he'll get back late sunday night before school starts monday morning. That's life. We only have a little more than a year and we'll be done. Oh, and I know that next to what CK has endured I have no room to complain. Random tidbits of the week: Kiera calles Seasame Street "Snuffy street". Lydia is now completely without a paci and doing fine. I now rock her and sing to her before puttign her down and she recently started singing along which is cute. Kiera will now willingly drink water which has been a HUGE battle all of her life. I've literally strapped her in her highchair and made her stay there for an hour + in the past to get her to drink even an oz. Now she will drink it as long as she is rewarded by juice when she is done. Work...

Remember Mothers Day is coming:  CLICK HERE .

Yesterday we had a video chat with Emmy & her parents using Google talk.  Emmy was like a deer in the headlights for about 10 minutes...I don't think she understood why Grandma and Gramps were on that little screen.  After a while she warmed up and smiled and talked to us.  Today we had a video chat with Kiera and Lydia and their parents.  Kiera was all over it....she was telling us about all kinds of things.  Kiera and I rubbed noses over the computer.  Lydia was just "ok...so?  what's so special about this?"  She was cute though.  It was fun.  Today we're getting ready for a Dastrup visit.  Cleaning, moving things, Jacob-proofing, etc. etc.

The book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" has been sitting on our bookshelf for our 7 years of marriage. I never thought to read it since I thought to myself "I know how to make friends already and I feel like I influence people well enough". Recently, however, my sister-in-law highly recommended that I read it. She told me she reads it almost every year. So I picked it up. I'm almost done with it and I have to say that it is much better than I expected. I just keep thinking over and over to myself "why didn't someone tell me to read this before!?" So, I'm doing you the favor and telling you to read it (Even you Buff-- it has very useful information that could help while being a missionary). Now if you ever read it 20 years from now you can't say "why didn't someone tell me to read this?!" because I did.

So the Dastrups have/had plans of leave Albuquerque as soon as Brigham got off work today (I think she said 4 pm) and were going to drive into the wee hours of the morning to get here. Problem is is that there is a BAD storm that is supposed to hit along the whole corridor of their drive. They are saying 20 inches of snow in the Mtns they have to come over in the 4 corners region, and the weather man said you should avoid driving down there. And, as luck would have it, it is supposed to still be going on Sunday morning too. Kim and I have driven to the Q in bad weather, and it scares both of us that they are going to have to deal with the storm at all, but I REALLY don't want them to drive in it tonight in the wee hours of the morning when there won't be anyone to help them if they go off the road and get stuck and visability will be awful! But Brigham has had to go through all kinds of contortions to get this time off so they can find a house to buy....they NEED time to look.....

When I got my job I signed a paper saying that I understood that if I ever transported my patient or his family (on or off the clock) that I would be fired. It seems simple enough, but last night I was very tempted to do it anyway. So my little 9 year old guy was discharged from the hospital at 8:30pm (keeping in mind that he and his twin sister go to bed at 8pm). They have no car and therefore his mom asked me to transport their truckload of boxes of medical supplies since there was no possible way of taking it all on the bus with them. So I took the supplies and went and waited for them in the parking lot of their appartment complex. They arrived at their home 90 minutes after I arrived which I was feeling bad enough about. But to make matters worse, when they arrived home the mom discoverd she was locked out. I waited with them in the cold (high 30's) with no coat for an hour and a half while we tried various ways of getting in. The kids were extremely tired, cold, and t...

The question mark is there, because it's only going down hill from here! BUT...drum rolling in the background....next Wed. Kim officially becomes a SR CITIZEN! Yes, girls, you know what that means!!! It means that if you can pry Kim away from his computer when you come, and he will go with you...that YOU CAN SCORE BIG AT DI WITH HIS SR. CITIZEN DISCOUNT!! I KNOW you are SO thrilled at this moment, you can hardly contain yourselves! Wow! Course you can't get the discount from me, as I am too young :) So to celebrate this GLORIOUS event we will be having a Birthday party next Wednesday the 17th, with dinner of course! Would it work to do it at 5? 5:30? Brett, do you even have it off? Need some feedback folks. Also, and this IS an important event, Breanna will be recieving her endowment on Sat Mar 20. BJ and I will be in the temple at 1:30 and the rest of you people she loves can join us at 2:30. AND, of course we will have to celebrate that too with a Steak and C...

I've been listening to Lydia cry for the past hour in her bed. She misses her beloved paci. But for the past 5 minutes she's stopped crying and been yelling "Mama!" every 2 seconds over and over and over which is heart-breaking. I'm glad we had the paci, but it sure is hard to get rid of it!

Last Saturday we had the couples dinner over at my mom and dads. David came straight from a Stake meeting where he had heard a member of his Stake Pres talk about his son being down in Chile where the 8.8 earthquake hit last week..he told about how all of the missionary's in that mission were safe and accounted for because of what happened to the Mission Presidents wife as she slept. Then one of our ward members sent this that she had found in "Meridian Magazine". I felt there are some valuable things about this to ponder, thus I add it to our blog: During the past few days, we have witnessed many events which serve to remind us that the Lord is in charge and that as missionaries and members of His church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are performing His work, and as President Monson teaches, "When we are on the Lord's errand, we are entitled to His help." I want to share with you a few miracles that will help you to understand our pr...

So Buffalo and the mother ship are coming to California in april (13th?)to visit us Nelsons. We plan on eating tastey food, playing games (we've got crochet and a back-yard) maybe we could visit the beach and check out some tide-pools. I just want to invite anybody else who wants to come to join us. Speaking of which, just so that everyone knows, there is a standing invitation to come to our house. If you ever get the urge to go on a trip, to go to disneyland or the beach, our house is always open and you are all welcome. We love visitors.

So, Kim had to take the plow blade off the ATV so that we could go ATV riding 3 weeks ago. He probably hasn't used it to push over 10 inches of snow combined for the whole season previous to the removal. Well, this morning we have 10 inches of new snow. Very heavy. And no plow available! It shouldn't stick around long though, so he isn't gonna bother. It was crazy! Yesterday at noon it was 62 degrees in my yard, and 3 hours later it was snowing hard! And it is still snowing! Our walk this morning was GORGEOUS!! Because it rained first, then turned to snow it is sticking. It was weird to see stop signs with 8" of snow on top! We need the snow though. We only have 60% of normal snow-pack in the mtns here, while So Utah is bracing for flooding when the 280% of normal precipitation down there melts! At RS last night they had Anita Stansfield speak. For those of you who don't know, she has authored 47 (mostly romantic) LDS Romantic Fiction books. I didn't ...

Yesterday evening I went over to Emmy's house to play.  We played and played.  The first thing we did was load a basket full of plastic food and then Emmy dumped it over her head while laughing.  Repeated that about 30 times.  We read some books, even some about Santa.  She then was intrigued by a weely advertising catalog that came in the mail and we looked through that for a long time....back and forth.  I think it was because it was something new and different from her existing books.  In the end she decided to rip it to pieces which was fun.  We played ball and shape sorter then read some more books then she got tired so we jamified her.  We started reading more books when her parents came home and ruined all our fun.

Due to a labor shortage, three cannibals were hired as orderlies in a busy hospital. During their orientation the director of human resources said, "you're all part of our team now. You can earn good money here, and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat. So please don't trouble any of the other employees." The cannibals promised. Four weeks later the boss returned and said, "you're all working very hard, and I'm very satisfied with all of you. However, one of our nurses has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to her?" The cannibals all shook their heads no. After the director left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others, "Which of you idiots ate the nurse?" A hand raised hesitantly, to which the leader of the cannibals replied, "You fool! For Four weeks we've been eating hospital administrators and no one noticed a thing, then you had to go and eat a nurse!"

We went to disneyland last night as a family and met up with Saundra, randy, and Jolynn. It was fun to see them. They hung out with us and did kiddie rides (good sports!) Kiera called Saundra "Lasagna" which I got a kick out of. My disneyland pass expires next Wednesday and I'm doubting that I'll go before then so I think I'm done for a while, which to be honest-- I'm glad. Too much disneyland . This morning I went to change lyida's wet diaper and she threw a fit because she wanted to do it herself. It was hilarious watching her try to figure out how to do it. She'd set up the wipes and diaper on the ground and then lay down next them them and try to wipe her own (diapered) bottom and then put the clean diaper on top and try to get it to stick on. I actually got a video but I'm too lazy to post it. Later on in the day I got her to go " stinkies " in the potty. No, I don't plan on attempting potty training at this age b...

23 Brett Groneman 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 37.92% 138 Katie Groneman 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 12.60% 236 Brigham Dastrup 1 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 6.32% 356 Breanna Groneman 1 1 1 3 1 2 2 1 3 1 3.32% 501 Christa Dastrup 1 1 7 1 1 2 2 1 1 3 1.59% 630 Erica Groneman 1 2 2 2 1 2 1 4 3 1 0.89% 661 Chad Groneman 1 2 1 4 1 2 1 9 1 1 0.81% 856 Kim Groneman 2 2 2 3 1 4 2 1 1 1 0.38% ??? Marilyn Groneman Party Pooper ??? Cambrie Nelson Party Pooper ??? Steve Nelson Party Pooper Enter the March contest here: http://www.brainbashers.com/common.asp