Groneman Family

I forgot to remember the ants!  This was a "Kim & Marilyn" holiday.  We got up this morning and went to Orem city cemetary to put flowers on my parent's graves.  Lots of people there!  We then went over to visit Grandma/Grandpa Haslem.  Grandma wanted to know when we were going to her house.  I told her we were there and she didn't believe me until I showed her her china closet.  We then went to the mountain for the first time this year.  Haleluja....no mice in our trailer over the winter.  Now we have to concentrate on sealing up Grandma's trailer because it has had lots of mice in it. Marilyn cleaned up the trailer while I turned on the water and generally un-winterized the place.  It's ready for partying now.  Last fall when Chad and I went up to winterize the place, a big pine tree had fallen over the deck but was proped up in the big pine tree in front of our trailer.  I thought it would come down with snow over the w...

This morning I explained Memorial day to Kiera and what the purpose of it. About 20 minutes later she said very seriously: "mommy- we better remember the ants". I guess she started to feel guilty about all of those ants she's been stomping on outside. Memorial day was spent at the park. And then we got ice cream cones and played hide and seek.

Someone must have declared this weekend Family Reunion weekend. Everyone is gone for Fam Reunions. So, the good news about that is that we can plan on doing a Kim Groneman Family reunion on the 4th. Christa already told me that she has been looking forward to being back in Utah for the 4th (where we really do it right-as far as community events go), so we will not be going to the Mtn. We will plan on going to the parade, and doing a BBQ and croquet championship of the world, and of course, we would need to have fireworks too. Well, maybe we wouldn't do fireworks if everyone goes home to put their kids to bed by 7 pm. We are open to suggestions on what you would like. We could also set up the slip-n-slide in the back yard for the kids. But everyone needs to plan on coming for dinner here on Sunday 2 weeks from today. Steak and Crab will be served! Cambrie's family will be here, and Christa has indicated that she will be coming to church with us until Brigham gets done wi...

Carson Smith Scholarship for K-12 special needs students. And here is some really good information about the scholarship. (Better info than the other official link) Christa, if you haven't applied for this already, you should!

So, I know that the Dastrups probably won't even check the blog for at least a week, so they won't be blogging any of their happenings. Yesterday, they needed to go to get Utah Drivers licenses so that they could get onto Bear River Insurance for their house and cars, which will save them a lot of money. And Christa went to Maceys and spent $200.00 on groceries and came home and put it away and it still looks like the fridge and cupboards are only half stocked. They spent quite a bit on stuff for the yard too, but the yard needs a LOT of help. The previous owners hadn't even turned on the sprinkling system...so Kim tried to do that yesterday. Got the front system operational, but the valve box in the back was full of catastrophe. Turns out that the drain and been put in on the high side of all the pipes, so it didn't drain at all and so it was full of broken lines. So Kim and Brigham made several trips for supplies, spent many hours working on it, thought that th...

FYI we got an email from Buff's mission saying that missionaries shouldn't post to public blogs so I made Buff's blog a private blog. Y'all should have received an invitation via email to get access to it. Lemme know if you didn't or have problems accessing her blog.  Oh...and speaking of blogs.  The Albuquerque weather gadget has officially been removed from this blog (wiping dust off of hands).  Take that NM!

Wow...what a crazy three days. Brett, Chad, Marilyn, and I squeezed into our Yaris and made the 10 hour trip down to Albuturkey. When we arrived we got right to work after a stand up meal (no table). Poor Benjamin wanted someone to play with but we just didn't have the time. We patched and painted and cleaned and scrubbed and packed boxes. I must say Brigham is the king of truck packing. I know that truck could have rolled over and not a thing in the back would have moved an inch. We had that truck packed to within a fraction of an inch of the back door, clear to the ceiling. Everyone worked from early morning until approximately 10pm on Wednesday. We all slept at a neighbor's house that Brigham rented for a month while they were out of town, then we got up the next morning and hit the road at 7 A.M. Brigham and Chad in the truck, Brett and I in the car. Christa, Marilyn, & kids stayed behind to do the walk through inspection and they followed. Here's a picture I snap...

Ok, I'm officially getting fed-up with the trying to find a surrogate situation. It is a huge emotional roller-coaster and TONS of work to find someone who matches up personality-wise, financially, spiritually, geographically, has the correct health insurance, etc.. Below is a very shortened condensed version of my surrogates who I've arranged so far. 1. From NM. Dumped me because someone else was ready financilly sooner than us. 2. From CA. Dumped me because she got back together with an former fiance. 3. (#1 again). Increased her princes by a few thousand dollars after I had already spent $760 on her non-refundable plane tickets. Told me the price increases were NOT negotiable so I dumped her (and lost my $760-- she gets 4 plane tickets). 4. From ID. My current surrogate but I'm learning not to say that anything is for sure. She just gave birth to surrogate twins 5 months ago. She went inactive from the church during her last surrogacy because of some very-s...

It's snowing today (yeah, not just raining--snowing), so we needed to get out of the house to do something fun. I called Emmy's friend Seth and my friend Ashley and we went to the Bean Life Science Museum at BYU. Little did I know our kiddos would be AMAZED at the animals. Instantly upon entering the building and seeing the animals, they said, "Whoa!" and "Duck!" and "Grr!" and "Lion!" and all sorts of animal sounds and names. Absolutely adorable! I took a bunch of video of both of them while we were there, but I'm too tired to upload it. Perhaps another day. These few picture will have to do. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of Seth. He was being so adorable too! Both of them were so excited! They ran around for a whole hour, completely loving every minute. We will definitely be doing this again. As proof that Emmy had an awesome time, after we got home, she fell asleep in her high chair after eating half her lunch (I was ge...

OK, I just spent a pretty nasty morning outside in the snow, saving my flowers, trees, shed, house and gazebo. Yes, you read it right: SNOW on May 24 :( Over $100.00 of annuals needed to be covered. The limb on Simon's tree that we have been concerned about for years was bowed down with weight, clear down to our shed, so I went out with my winter coat and gloves, ladder and pruners and got up on top of the ladder and stretched and cut off all that I could, till I was sure that it wouldn't break cause I had cut off so much of the weight. It was nasty cause I had to look up into the tree to prune it and so when it cut a lot of snow ended up falling in my face, again and again. And it was mostly slush, so when it went down my shirt and melted down to my belly button, that was rather an unsavory experience! I went through 3 changes of clothes, cause every time I came in, I came in soaked! I put pots, covers of various kinds on my flowers and tomatoes to protect them, and I took t...

Last week, Chad, Emmy and I went miniature golfing. Emmy loved it. She loved chasing the balls around, so we had a live, interactive obstacle course. She also loved picking up the balls from the holes for us. We went at 3:30 pm on a school day so we had the whole park to ourselves. A ball-lover's paradise!

I just had to copy this picture onto our blog so it will be in our family blog book.  Either Cambrie is a great child photographer or she has exceptional subjects or both.  This one is now on our fridge along with the picture of these two kissing and sitting on the porch eating popcicles.  These pictures are just priceless.

The product I've been working on for the past year went to beta early this week, and while it's in Beta, I've been put on a small team to develop something for a conference that is coming up towards the end of June. Yup, as in, one month from now. The project for a Microsoft Surface . I can't go into details here, because this blog is public, and the details about this project are not public yet (they want to surprise people at the conference). There is a customer that wants us to do it, and we're working with them to get it done the way they want. The project officially got underway on Wednesday, but I had started tinkering with it on Monday. On Wednesday around lunchtime, I was surprised to learn that someone had scheduled us to do a demo for the customer on Friday afternoon (today). Apparently we'd promised the customer that by Friday we'd be able to demo a certain set of features... I have my theories as to why I wasn't told about that, or why t...

Hey...Father's day is coming up:  HINT HINT .  I could really use one of these.  Back in the early 70's there was a song titled "In the year 2525" and here's a snip of the lyrics:      your arms are hanging limp at your sides      your legs got nothing to do      some machines doing that for you I guess we just got there a little earlier than the song predicted.

We went to the BLUE LEMON restaurant tonight for dinner. It was pretty good.  It's in Highland, across the street North from Kohlers. I had: Grilled Balsamic Chicken Panini $8.5 Balsamic glazed chicken with sliced tomatoes, grilled onions, garlic, peppers and herbs, smoked mozzarella cheese and lemon pesto aioli on artisan bread pressed on the grill And Marilyn had: Chipotle Pineapple BBQ Brisket $9 Perfect pulled beef brisket, provolone cheese,lettuce, tomato and onion on white or wheat ciabatta bread (We had a 2 for 1 coupon so the price was pretty reasonable....11.50 for the both of us).  It was really good.  There are other things on the menu I want to eventually try.  I didn't care much for their decorating...it was VERY 60's, which I guess is the new style in the 2010's.  The food made up for it.  Probably some of the best sandwiches I've had.  They also have entres and salads.  We split a chocolate desert which was REALLY rich and nu...

FYI for the moving crew, the Dastrups have moved up their moving process by a day to accomodate a Dastrup family reunion.  What that means for the packing/moving/tending crew is that we won't be there to help box up.  We'll still drive down on Tuesday but instead of boxing on Wednesday, we'll load the truck so we can then carivan it back to Utah on Thursday.   FYI the old folks will sleep on Christa's air mattress and we'll take individual air mattresses for Chad/Brett.  Room in the itty, bitty car carrying 4 big galutes to and fro will be at a premium so only pack what you need...and we do need some bedding as Christa is using her bedding as packing material.

My Grandpa Alton (not really my grandpa, but my great uncle, but he WAS my grandpa...long story) was on the Utah Vally target shooting team and competed nationally.   He was good.  He had a special Winchester model 52 target shooting rifle which, when he died, went to my dad.  I got it when my dad died.  I have a good friend that's a gun collector who looked it up for me.  Right now it's worth about $1000 which I had no clue.  I was thinking maybe 200-300 at the most.

Hey, Just so you can know if you can't get ahold of me, her address there is: Sister Breanna Groneman 5620 Surrey Ct. Alpharetta, Georgia 30004

Katie, Marilyn, and I were sitting in our backyard today and Katie saw this first ....we had to get out from under our gazebo and take a look.  A single long wispy cloud had turned into rainbow colors in the sun.  I've never seen anything like it.  It's a sign.  I *AM* supposed to go ATV riding.

Today at church was ward conference. It was excellent! Pres Richard Robbins spoke in RS. He had so many great analogies! So I thought I would pass some of it on to you. Or maybe I will just put it on the blog. Or both! We have all heard about likening the scriptures unto ourselves. Only he took it a step farther. He gave us each a bookmark that had pictures of 4 prophets on it. He asked us who they were. We identified them as Nephi , Abinadi , Helaman , and Mormon. He went on to say, that the Book of Mormon was never read by the people in the days in which it was written. It was written for us, specifically. Many prophet writers of the B of M said that they saw our day: some of them said that they had seen us. Mormon said that he could only put 1% of what records he had access to into the B of M, and so he had to choose very carefully that which he would write. He saw us, he saw our circumstances, he analyzed specifically what we needed to hear for our situati...

Let's see...and update. Hmmmm....well we painted and siliconed the rubber on the balcony and attached the slide so it's ready to rock and roll. (150 lb weight limit....that leaves me out...but I can stand on the balcony!)  The door from the fort to the balcony needs to be hung on hinges but I just may need Benjamin's help to do that.  Oh..for Christa:  East side of your house to the fence: 106", West side 138".  It's so great to have Katie and Brett living so close.  Last week they mowed both lawns and this week Katie mowed the back lawn (while Brett did the weed eater edging thing).  It's been fun to watch Katie's school related projects.  Yesterday she built a solar oven out of a Wii fit box . Put it in the sun and it got to something like 120 degrees.....then she built a reflector box around it and it got to something like 240 degrees.   She got graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate chips and put them in the oven.....and the chocola...

What a process! And we didn't even move that far! Good luck dastrups! We were worried about the trains that run right by our new house (with no wall or buildings between us and the tracks) but the train was fine. It was the FROGS that were loud. There are very large fields right in front of our house and apparently they live there. After our fridge was moved to our new place and put in position I started looking around the piles of stuff for the food to put back in it. I looked everywhere but couldn't find it (that happens when lots of people help you move). Finally, I got the idea of looking in the fridge. yep, it was there in bags. I had put it in bags so that it could easily be removed to move it. I feel bad for the guys who carried it. It was probably an extra 140 lbs of weight with the food in there! oops! This morning Lydia woke up hungry and said "eat!" but then she got a very concerned look on her face and said "chair?! Chair?!" She was V...

I *assume* that the Dastrups closed on their house.  Here are SOME PICTURES from our visit to their new house a couple of days ago.  (Marilyn took them...they don't show off the house very good but they do show some of the decorations the current resident has)

I'm getting so excited to remove the Albuquerque weather widget from this blog.  One really good thing that came out of the Dastrups living in New Mexico:  I finally can spell Albuquerque without looking it up.

Tonight we went with Max and did a "walk through" the Dastrup's new house.  All I can say is wow......I never even dreamed of living in a house like that.  I've never even KNOWN anyone that's had a house that fancy.  Nice!  I hope they don't mind coming to visit their poor relatives from time to time.....

I just wanted to wish a very happy Mother's Day to our great mother and to all the wonderful mothers and mothers-to-be in our family. I hope your day is full of good food and serious pampering! “Do the best you can through these years [motherhood], but whatever else you do, cherish that role that is so uniquely yours and for which heaven itself sends angels to watch over you and your little ones… Rely on Him. Rely on Him heavily. Rely on Him forever. And ‘press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope.’ You are doing God’s work. You are doing it wonderfully well. He is blessing you and He will bless you, even—no, especially—when your days and your nights may be the most challenging. Like the woman who anonymously, meekly, perhaps even with hesitation and some embarrassment, fought her way through the crowd just to touch the hem of the Master’s garment, so Christ will say to the women who worry and wonder and sometimes weep over their responsib...

Added a balcony and a slide to the playhouse:  http://picasaweb.google.com/kgroneman/PlayhouseUpdate   It still needs a little work, to be caulked and painted and some dirt moved around the bottom, but it's usable.

This is a random time to blog, but I'm exhausted and taking a break. We just got the key to our new place and we'll be taking a load of stuff over as soon as my girls wake up. We'll be getting our truck next friday though. They decided to drop our rent $25 last minute. Nice. I just loaded our car with the necessities of stuff to take over for our first load: hand soap, tp, snacks, diapers, cleaning supplies, a few toys. As I finished filling the car I thought back to the days where I could put ALL of my posessions in my little red car. Yep, those days are gone! Here goes nothing. Call us crazy, but we are going to be camping in our backyard tonight just for fun. We wanted to make a yearly tradition of it, but our new place doesn't really have a backyard and it is really noisy since it next to the tracks so we'll be going tonight. So, we'll pause our moving process to have a little fun with our little ladies. funny story: today I was babysitting a 4...

Grandma and I ate dinner at Chad & Erica's house last night. (Good fajitas!) then we spent the evening with Emmy while mom & dad went to the temple.  Just like the last time I went over there, Emmy spent the evening laughing and trying to keep Gramps from filling up the basket with plastic food.  She got a thrill and just cackled with glee every time she dumped it...of course then she had to wear the basket over her head as a hat.  We did spend some time playing a little ball and putting blocks into a giraffe stacker then letting them out the bottom.  The only thing that seemed to distract her from her dumping plastic food was when grandma decided to read her stories....she really likes that.   We put her to bed when mom & dad said to and she spent almost an hour up in her room just talking to herself.   What  a cute little gidget.   After she went to bed we watched Survivor (best season yet) but I'm not saying what happ...

1 more week until we get our key to our new place. We are buried in boxen right now. We sold our piano a few days ago and some piano movers came to pick up our piano. The time from when they knocked on the front door to the piano being in their truck was about 40 seconds flat. I think it shocked Kiera a bit: 2 big guys coming quite abruptly into our house and taking our piano. She watched out the window as the truck drove away and was a bit upset about it and even today she asked me "can I have my piano back?". Because of these emotions I've seen coming up in her I've been trying to warn her about the upcoming move telling her about what is going to happen. I hope she will be ok with it. My n' the ladies ran through the sprinklers in the front yard today and ate popcicles. I think the neighbors probably thought I was crazy, but we have fun. My little girls are so funny. I go into their room every night to check on them and both of them are either wearing the plast...

April common answers results: 99 Chad Groneman 115 Katie Groneman 511 Kim Groneman 619 Christa Dastrup 1075 Breanna Groneman 1502 Erica Groneman Here's the May challenge: http://www.brainbashers.com/common