Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Way Overdue…

Monday, November 29th, 2004

Well, it’s been way too long since I entered anything in the Blog, so here goes and update:

Ed’s currently away in VA on business, so I’m a single mom for the next few days. Charlie’s doing increadibly well both at pre-school and with her riding lessons. And Suzie’s vocabulary is just taking off like rocket! She’s obsessed with doing what everyone around her is doing — “big kids” and all. She just won’t be left behind. Both of the girls are keeping Ed and I on our toes. It’s really tough to keep up with the two of them sometimes. But it’s well worth all the hectic times, lemme tell you! They are both very caring and considerate young girls (when they want to be ;-)

We just had a very quiet TurkeyDay — and we saved the turkeys by going out to a Chinese Buffet for lunch. It was just the four of us, so we didn’t see any point in cooking a big meal at home. But we did get a boat-load of stuff accomplished around the house. We managed to start pulling out the Christmas stuff and putting up some of the decorations. We got a bunch of yard work done — clearing up the leaves and mulching them. Moving the woodpiles that have been plaguing our yard since we had that huge tree cut down. And Ed even started to split some of the wood! I cleared out the crawl-space under our kitchen stairs and we’ve decided to make that the ‘wood cellar’. It’s the perfect place to store the chopped wood and have it accessible to take inside for our wood-burning stove.

So, I hope that’ll do all of you for an update. I’ll try to post more after the December/January holidays. And Happy Holidays to all of you!!! And a very Happy New Year for 2005 if I don’t write before then!!!

Please excuse a motherly gloat…

Thursday, April 8th, 2004

Ok, so yesterday I was playing with Charlie at the fridge with the magnetic letters and we were making short (3-letter) words; she and I were sounding them out and she was ‘reading’. Well, last night, when I was putting her to bed I pulled out some really beginner-type books and she read me one!!! Can we say “HOLY S-H-1-T!!!”, talk about a new type of ‘high’. I’m abslolutely over the moon about this!!! (In case you can’t tell). The book was nice and short and consisted of things like, “Mat/Mat sat/Sam/Sam sat/Mat sat. Sam sat/Mat sat on Sam” that type of thing. But she was really reading!!! I’m just so chuffed about this, I wanted to share it with all of you. A date to mark in the baby-book — April 7th, 2004 — the day Charlene Shiobara read her first book, at the ripe old age of 4 years, 1 month, 1 week and 3 days old!!!

We’re back up to date!!!

Tuesday, February 17th, 2004

Well, after not being able to update the website for two months, I’m happy to say that it’s now updated. We were out of disk space so I was unable to put anymore pictures up, but now that our new 80 gig drive has been installed (thanks Ed for putting it in), we have plenty of disk space which should last us a while.

Suzie’s first birthday was a big success, and her party went very well — we even practiced blowing out the candle! Charlie’s gearing up for her fourth birthday, and Mom’s gearing up for the party (I’ve got over 20 kids coming so far!!!). Well, it’s sure to be an interesting day ;-)
We’re all doing well and plodding along in our lives. Trying to keep busy (as the pictures and movies will show).

Please enjoy looking at them — Ed and I put a lot of time into this website for our friends and family to utelize. We hope you like it!

The Start of 2004

Tuesday, January 13th, 2004

Well, it’s January 2004! Another year is upon us. Ed’s been working feverishly and helping out at home in his ‘spare time’. Charlie’s started pre-school — many of you know that it was something Ed and I had been milling over for some time. She’s adjusting quite well, and after one week of class, seems to have made a new friend (actually, after the first day of school they wanted to have a ‘sleepover’). Charlene is growing nicely, with one or two minor hiccoughs from time to time, but that’s to be expected with an almost 4 year old…

Suzie is up and walking; and her toothless grin is disappearing with the addition of teeth. She’s got two on the bottom and I think another four coming out (two on the top & two bottom). She’s got quite a personality already! She knows what she wants, and doesn’t want — and she has no qualms about letting you know.

As for me, I’m trying to get used to the idea of three hours, three times a week, without Charlie. It’s nice to have only Suzie for a while, but it’s also strange not having Charlie around. I’m still in a ‘newbie’ state, where I’m not quite sure what to do with the time (other than the usual errands, cleaning, laundry, sorting, etc).

We’re starting to plan for Suzanne’s first and Charlene’s fourth birthdays next month. We’re having parties for both of them this year. It’s going to be hard doing two parties in such short succession, but I guess I’m going to have to get used to it! I’ll be doing it every year for a while!

So, that’s it for my first blog entry of 2004. Hope it was a bit newsy, at least!

time for a new look

Saturday, October 11th, 2003

As we enter the last few months of 2003, I figured it was time to give the family website a new look for 2004. What you see isn’t necessarily final, but there’s three distinct changes. First, the color scheme, which I don’t know if I’m happy with or not. The second, is having the 5 rotating thumbnails which get selected at random from the pictures (not the videos) from the past three months. Yes, the code doesn’t prevent the same picture showing up multiple times, so it can happen. Third, the homepage shows the excerpts for the three most recent blog entries, so you can see if there’s a new one right from the homepage without having to click into the blog itself.