Groneman Family

Blogging from work again.  No pictures.  I actually haven't even seen the pictures of Halloween myself yet.  I was working.  I probably could have got it off had I wanted to, but I figured we needed the $ so very reluctantly I went to work.  Steve took the girls to the ward trunk or treat.  Kiera has been counting down for 2 weeks (literally counting).  Their ride to the party bailed on them a few hours before it started so Steve had to frantically call everyone trying to find a ride.  He finally found one 30 minutes before it started.  The girls didn't get to bed until 2 hours past bedtime because Steve couldn't find a ride home either.  But at least they had fun.  Steve said they were wearing their costumes (cinderella and sleeping beauty) for hours before the event but apparently right before they left to go they both decided they wanted to wear something else so they ended up wearing tu-tu's to trunk-or-treat in.  ...

You parental units out there are shirking your DUTY! Where are your kids Halloween pictures? We are waiting with baited breath! Also, Dastrups and Chad and Erica: see if you can get together to decide when you would both like to bring your kids here while you do your temple/date. I like them to come together for cousin bonding, and I am pretty flexable on when I can do it. Also, Thanksgiving is coming in a few weeks. Dastrups, I am not sure if you are coming or not, and if you can what time. Also I need to know what time Brett will be available. I am assuming that Chad will be available anytime that day? I just need to know the medical peoples schedules.

We just got back from the Care center. My mom was quite out of it today. She mostly slept through our conversations with dad. She was really struggling to try to get a drink out of the straw. It has a cap that you can cover the straw with and she kept trying to drink out of that, even though I kept putting the straw in her mouth and trying to get her to suck on that. I finally removed the cap and she did better. But she was on another planet today. For those of you who remember Wanda-the lady in the wheelchair that was always trying to find someone to take her home. Well, God finally did. She died yesterday from a viral infection. Rather sobering really. She seemed like she was doing great on Wednesday when I saw her. She still had her blue bear and was eating dinner. I thought she was the most likely one in there to outlive the rest. Dorothy , another resident who lived there, came in mom's room one day and laid down on the bed. When the CNA came to get her and take ...

<- - - -  The Dastrup blog is back!   Christa, did you know you can have one email address forward email to another with gmail?  You can use both email addresses but only actually use one.  I do that.  I have my gmail address forwarded to my novell.com address so anyone that sends me email to my gmail account will get to my novell account.

Christmas Gift Exchange UPDATE: See Brett's shared google document. I believe the previous spending limit was $20

Hurry!  Someone notify your aunt Nadine (or Jonell as she likes to be called)!  Maybe she'll be enticed to move to Bulgaria!  http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101023/blondes-march-bulgaria-101023/

For those of you who haven't lost your blog, I just would like to take a second to remind you of THIS .

We got walloped! I have been out with my broom shaking the branches of my trees that are loaded to the point of touching the ground, so that they don't break. There is at least 12" of snow out there! We were supposed to get 1/2 in but the biggest part of the storm came right over the top of us! It was shocking to wake up to, but it puts me in the mood for the holidays. If we can just get Halloween out of the way. It sure is beautiful though. For those of you counting your blessings that you don't have snow to contend with, it is supposed to be in the 60's this weekend. It won't last. We aren't even going to shovel.

who has who for christmas this year?  I can't remember for the life if me who I gave a gift to last year. 

Click here for mormon.org chat at it's finest:  HERE

Dunno how someone got Christa's/Buff's/Katie's accounts but here are some tips to keep you safe: 1 - NEVER NEVER NEVER enter any passwords, especially banking information if you are connected to an unsecure wireless.  If you are unsure if it's unsecure, don't do it. 2 - Don't ever use your spouse's name, your birthday, his/her birthday, your hometown, or anything else that is easy to find as your password.  There are machines out there that will compile that information (available online mostly) and automatically try combinations of it on your accounts to try to hack in. 3 - When you do have a good password, put some non-alpha characters in it somewhere.  For example if you like "forest", make your password "&forest1" or "for*est".  The longer your PW the better. Change it up once in a while.  Go from "for*est" to "fore$t" etc. etc. 4 - If your password is so complicated you have to write it down ...

UPDATE:  Christa says she lost control of her email account and lost her blog, etc. so apparently this is more serious than I orginally thought.  Suggestion:  Change your password to your google mail accounts asap: "Hi" That's the subject of an email I have received from both Breanna's and Christa's gmail account.  Here is the text of the email without the KIM included: ----------------- Hi my dear Is everything ok?By the way,i found an excellent website in a few days, and the goods on there are cheap and economical, here is the address of that company You can log on their website http://www.famous-elec.kimcom/ well,nothing special,just send u my truely regards, hope u hv a nice day,and god bless u! Sincerely yours.♀ ---------------- It's coming from: " Received: from mail-iw0-f173.google.com not authenticated" which means that someone is spoofing the email addresses and routing them through google servers.  It's actually quite com...

By the way,  who has whom for Christmas this year? News with us...hmmm...   Lydia has been sleeping in a toddler bed this week.  She does fairly well but she is a little jack-in-the-box in the middle of the night.  It seems like every time she wakes up she has to wander in my room and start climbing on the bed.  Then I have to take her back.  Yesterday while I was at work Steve says she apparently fell out of bed.  Her ankle was swollen and she refused to stand on it for hours.  Today she is walking with a cute little limp.  Poor lady!!!   I put curlers in Kiera's hair to curl it for church today.  She was so excited and proud of her curlers. Funny girl.  I hated them at her age!  We have not had any time to try to figure out where we are going to be working 8 months from now.  We need to do some more research and phone calls.  but between my working full time on top of my already busy sche...

To anyone who thinks that they will be home buying soon. Everytime you live somewhere you expand your parameters of what you would like in a future home. After having been alive for 55 years, this is what I think I would like. I welcome anything else you people think is important too. -Location, location, location. The schools and church that your children will attend is very important. The church is the same everywhere you go, but the devotion of the people isn't. Schools are easier to detect as you can seek out where the best districts and schools scores are online. By location I do not mean fancy. Fancy matters not. But you need to find good neighbors in a clean and well cared for neighborhoods. Run down neighborhoods don't usuallly produce the best neighbors either. -A west facing house so that you have afternoon and evening shade in the backyard for BBQ's and the like. -A large kitchen with lots of cupboards. -If you are having a home built upgrade the heater, AC,...

You are all likely to think that I should have made this decision about 15 years ago, but I couldn't because I was raisin' kids. As Kim mentioned, yesterday I spent most of the day canning Spagetti Sauce and basil/garlic tomatoe juice. I had lots of time to think. I am always trying to figure out ways that I will have more time to do Family History and geneology, which is always calling me to come do it. It is why I have taken out 2 of my flowerbeds in my front yard, so that I will have more time for Family History. Well, yesterday, I decided that I can "Can" most of my canning! All except for the stuff that I can't buy something reasonably close at the store. That means that I won't have things all be exactly how I prefer them, but we will survive that, probably. I am glad I did it for all of those years you kids were home. It saved us a lot of money and helped teach my children to work, which is one of the most valuable things you can teach them, (righ...

There's this one place on our walk that always grows mushrooms.  It varies from a couple of them to a couple of pockets full.  A couple of days ago it had more mushrooms there than I had ever seen.  Must be about 10 pounds of mushrooms we picked, chopped up, and put in the freezer.  They are nummy in spagetti sauce (which your mom bottled yesterday...along with some spicy tomato juice.....she was tuckered out at the end of the day).

Most of you already know this, but for historical purposes we're putting this here: The winds of change are blowing around the C&E Gronemans. We've got some big changes coming up: I'll be changing my job, and we'll be moving. After trying to work things out with my current company (they are severely under-paying me -- I found out directly from HR that brand new people out of school are hired for more than what they were paying me), I've been looking around for a new employer. I've had several successful interviews. I got an offer from a company in downtown SLC. It wasn't quite as much as we were hoping for, and it would have been a bit of a drive, so we turned it down. Then they offered more $$$. The money was right, and everything with the company seemed right - but we didn't feel good about it, and felt that the Lord didn't want us to take it. Then, on Thursday, I got another interview with a different company, based in Ore...

I'm baffled.  In our playroom in the basement yer mother found a sack containing a small child's bunny costume, a little girl's outfit, and little girl's shoes.  I called Chad and he said it's not Emmy's.   ?????  Anyone have a clue?

I was looking at the gift wish list (hint, hint) and realized that I'm not the only Groneman in town with the initials KG anymore.  Katie, don't tell me your middle name is Louise or something like that.....

Well, our baby is looking really good - according to the Dr. who was in the room for about 3 min. to do a 1 min. ultrasound today. He got a page from labor and delivery right when he squirted that cold gel on my belly and had to go to the hospital right away. But he did a quick check and the baby is at 7.5cm with a heart beat in the upper 150's. He said it was "big" and I blame Brett. He said that a good ultrasound like this one at 13 and a half weeks is usually a good sign for less probability for miscarriage. So we're pretty happy! And we're crossing our fingers (and you know... praying), for all the other baby hopefuls in the fam. Love ya'all!

Steve is in THIS VIDEO .  I'm sure you'll recognize him.  This is pretty funny.  So is this .  But I thought this was the best one.

Emmy drew this picture especially for me for Halloween!  I'm scared...how about YOU?!?

I just haft ta say that I love my life! How I enjoyed having most of my favorite people here this week! We missed Brett and Breanna ...hopefully we can pull off the party with both of them next year. It was so fun to have our little Nelson ladies to entertain us this week. Grandkids are the best! We tended for the Dastrups yesterday while Christa was gone. That Ty! The kid never stops! and everywhere he goes, he's gotta be on the run! So cute. And Benjamin was clueing Uncle Stevo in on more about BYU foot ball than even Steve knew (we saw a BYU flag on someones flagpole today at half-mast: Sorry about your loss!) Kim was busy loving on Jacob and trying once again to out smart that boy to keep his pants on. This time he put the suspender pants on UNDER the t-shirt so he couldn't slide the straps off his shoulders...and it worked for the few hours longer that we were there. And we always enjoy Emmy's loves. She loves to cuddle, and we love it too! How blessed I am...

Wow....what a party! Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fNVVBBZPv0 We missed Brett and Buff. :-( Katie brought Carmel Apples (mmm!) Erica brought a pot of worms (mmm!) Christa brought monster apple bites and spider web dip (mmmm!) Cambrie made a monster hand dip, Steve carved the watermellon brain, grandma made the graveyard cake, the punch bowl hand, and I made the vegetable man tray, the spider candy tray, the witch fingers (actually, there was a coven in our back yard and I just killed and burned them all but I saved their fingers so it wasn't hard) and yer ma and I made the mummy pizzas. Here are ALL THE PICTURES: http://picasaweb.google.com/kgroneman/201010Halloween   We played some games...not all went well.  Pin the nose on the pumpkin didn't make it.  Musical electric chairs was a hit.  Ping pong ball hockey was fun for all.  A balloon stomp which everyone enjoyed (because there was money in some of the balloons).  Outdoor races w...

Here is more food from the halloween party. All the adults had fun making it and all the kids had fun eating it. Everyone thought the witch fingers were a little too realistic to really enjoy, but I thought they were great (I made them!). The frozen hand in the punch bowl didn't turn out exactly like we had planned. Just the wrong fingers broke off. Brigham was offended so he had to break the last one off. I liked the bowl of worms and the mummy pizzas. Wish you were here Buff! Next year.

We've started preparing for tonight's Halloween party.  For Buff's benefit (and my blog archive), here is some of the food that we have fixed before hand.  There will be more:

Good morning:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QYj4MQ-ZeI    See?  I'm not so bad.

Here are another couple of name possibilities for Katie's baby: http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x1685474631/Pedestrian-hit-by-car  (Pussycat Doppelganger-Weedman and P. Poole)

Anyone interested?  http://www.clasropes.com/canoe.html Halloween Cruise - October 1-30, 2010 Come enjoy an adventure riverboat ride on the lower Provo River! You'll see over 100 hand carved jack-o-lanterns reflecting off the water, hear the boat captain tell a scary story, and enjoy some scary songs. A pirate even attacks the boat! We have two professional excursion boats that can accommodate 40 people each. The ride is a round-trip experience that takes approximately 25 minutes, with departures every 15-30 minutes. No need to make a reservation unless you have a group of 20 or more! Boarding Location: CLAS Ropes Course 3606 W. Center, Provo Price: $28 per family* or $7 per person Reserve the whole boat: Mon, Fri & Sat - $185 Tue, Wed & Thru - $165 Hours: Mon. - Thurs..... 6:30-9:00pm Fri. and Sat........ 6:30-10:00pm Closed Sundays Information: (801) 373-1897

A friend sent this to me. I think it is a great easy way to find out how the candidates line up on the different issues. I suggest you give it a try! http://voteeasy.org

Yesterday Brett/Katie showed up for some free food and we enjoyed their company for a while.  They drove us down to see Grandma (I never get to sit in the back seat of a car and just look around while driving the freeway!).  Grandma was a little quieter/slower/etc. than she had been the day before but still was able to make everyone laugh a couple of times.  She sure loves her babies.  Everyone got a good chuckle when she was cooing over one of the "babies" and said "Isn't she just a doll!?!"  Nelson ladies finally arrived at our place about 6:30 and it was wonderful to get those little lady hugs.   They immediately headed for the basement where Grandma pulled out the princess stuff for them and they were just content. I sure hope things go well for Punkin' while she's here this time.  Stevo arrives on Tuesday (I think that's what Cambrie said) and we get to party for a few days.  Speakin' of party.....this Friday's bash looks to be a good...

We are very excited for the Halloween party on Friday! I will be bringing spider web dip, monster jaws, some Halloween tunes for a game of musical electric chairs, and three little monsters. Let's party!

It was actually a really, really, really good trip.   I took the NKPs (formerly SysOps) to Marysvale where we stayed in the oldest hotel in Utah....and it's been continually used as a hotel.   It's the one I suggested a few years ago we do a family reunion in, but Marilyn wasn't too keen on the idea.  Now that she's stayed there, she is VERY keen on the idea.  I have never stayed anywhere that had anywhere near as much character as this place has.  It's furnished and decorated with the antiques that have always been there.   The beds, the claw foot bathtubs, the old pictures, etc.  The place just radiates old fashioned charm.   Above the door there is a sign that says "Arrive strangers, leave friends" and it has never been so true.  Randy/Katie (owners) just make you feel like family.  They're also great cooks. (There's a sign in the kitchen that says "Dinner Choices:  Take it/Leave it")  It has a little old...

I have access to lots and lots of pomegranates off of my friends tree up the street.  Anyone want some?  So I'll be leaving sunday AM to drive up there with my 2 kiddos.  I'm not so excited about driving by my lonesome with kids, but I'm fairly sure we will arrive alive.  So you can plan on us sunday evening.  I know 2 tiny ladies who are SOOOOO excited to see everyone.  Lydia has been pointing out Emmy excitedly in pictures.  Kiera likes to tell everyone about how Brett doesn't like butter on his broccli. 

http://picasaweb.google.com/kgroneman/MVBryce

Alright, siblings. This post is for you. As we all know, Thanksgiving is at Mom and Dad's this year. Our problem is that Dastrups are also having Thanksgiving at their side this year, and all of Brigham's Utah siblings are there this year and then rotating to their other sides next year. Obviously that isn't good news for us. As it is now, no matter what we make one side of the family unhappy. Brigham's brother's family is pretty much locked into their rotation because his wife's parents go to Vegas every other year when it is not their turn (i.e. this year). So my question to you, my dear siblings, is this: are you guys already set in a rotation with your other side of the family? If you are set, I guess that maybe we'll have to do 2 years in a row with one family and then 2 years with the next so that one family isn't always getting shafted. But that's not ideal because that means we'd only have Thanksgiving with you all once every 4 y...

Just hangin' on the stalks ready to fall on the ground...and they will before next weekend. Come and get 'em.   Probably about a quart would be my guess.

260  Kim Groneman                       1   2   3   1   3   1   1   1   1   2   6.02% 322  Erica Groneman                     1   2   5   1   2   1   3   1   2   1   4.17% 967  Katie Groneman                     1   1   3   1   5   1   2   1   UR  1   0.04% Ok Erica/Katie.  I guess it's time to quit this fun stuff...nobody else will play along.  Thanks for all the ...