For the birds

 Winter is for the birds. All of us feel bogged down with work and cooped up in the house, except for Maya. She runs home from the bus stop every day and heads straight out to the back yard to sled down the hill. Jake built a jump for the kids and sometimes her brother or the dogs will join her. I have a couple of times, like when we built this tiny snow creature. Luna attacked it the first chance she got and the flowers from the lei were everywhere.

 

 

Anna and my foot posing together. Anna's got 6 college classes this semester, and then she'll be a junior at Mankato. This will probably be the most classes she ever has to take at once in her life.

                                                       Esther, the cat who can do math. (Not pictured, S'more, the cat who drinks out of the toilet and was recently given a middle name by Maya. S'more Ian Hawley.)

 

We took a day trip to the U of M Raptor Center and the Bell Museum, home of the best taxidermy specimens in Minnesota. While we were there, Dylan and Jake fought for an audience of tundra swans, Dylan picked a buck's nose, and it unexpectedly (for me) snowed about 4 inches, making the drive home a bit treacherous.

Our bird trips were to help Maya prepare for her Imagination Fair project. It included the poster below, a cd of bird sounds, a bird tree, a book she wrote about Baltimore orioles (not the baseball team), and her portfolio of bird art and pictures. She worked very hard!

 

 In other news, Kayla's been looking for a hospital CNA job and had a couple of good interviews this week. Maya lost her 3rd tooth. Dylan's been doing rec basketball, some baseball clinics, lots of homework, and the occasional guitar lesson to keep busy. Anna's still working at Byerly's. Jake, Kayla, and I have been working out, getting huge, as Jake says:). Anna's boyfriend is taking a trip to California over Valentine's Day, so she says she'll babysit so Jake & I can go out. Pretty sweet! I hope all of you are doing well. Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy 2013!

 

 

Our winter break has been a blur. It started with 4 consecutive Christmas gatherings, 2 of which were at our house. Then we had Maya's birthday, Katie's wedding reception, strep, and the stomach flu (if anyone got these illnesses from us, I am really sorry!) Today, we had to call a tow truck. Tomorrow it's our 15th wedding anniversary and we go back to work and school. We did have fun, though. We baked cookies and Jake brought gingerbread houses home for the kids to decorate.

 

 

 

Christmas with our families

 

 

At the beginning of the evening...

 

 

and later on. Note that many have lost their footwear and composure.

 

 

Christmas at home

 

Maya's 7th birthday party
 

 

 



Note the attendant rubbing her face, Maya picking her nose,
and the wastebasket in between them. A picture of hygiene!
Maybe this contributed to the strep throat and stomach flu.

 

Sledding with cousins in the backyard.

 

 

 

 

Anna's debacle. I couldn't say much. I did something similar in the same driveway 17 years ago. It was Christmas and I had Kayla (2) and Anna (6 months) in the car and was heading to my parents' house. My departure was a bit delayed. This was the 3rd time a car from our driveway ended up in the same neighbors' yard. Jake reminded me that our former renter did it, too.

 

After it was all taken care of, Jake said, "I'm going to go move Anna's car back to her spot." I told him to be careful. He said, "I'm just gonna gun it and not look in my mirrors. Tell Anna I ended up in the other neighbor's yard."

 

 

Jake signing the waiver absolving the towing company of fault in case of a rollover.

 

 

 



Go Skippers!

Watching "Gossip Girl"

 

 At Byerly's, off duty

 
 playing in the snow is fun from maya




 Happy New Year to all of you!

High speed chase ends under our deck

Two nights ago, I awoke with a start at 1 am. I believed I'd heard a noise. Nothing looked out of place, so I checked on all four kids. They were all sleeping soundly. I felt fearful enough that I woke Jake and talked to him about renewing our home security system. Jake fell back to sleep immediately, as he is always able to do. I watched Wild Russia and fell back to sleep shortly before 2 am.

About an hour later, I was awakened again, this time to Luna's persistent barking. I quickly became aware of strange lights and noises. It wasn't the plow; there was no snow. No, it was a helicopter, hovering directly over our house, shining light as bright as day. 

Out the front window, cop cars lined the street on both sides. The excited whimpering of an unfamiliar dog beckoned me to the back yard. It was a K-9 German Shepherd. Our other dog was cowering against the back of our fence. Men were yelling for us to get her out of there. Jake had to drag her in.

From the sliding glass door, I spied a bald, middle-aged, black man in handcuffs, 2 feet from Kayla's bedroom window. (Later, I discovered that was one of the 2 windows in our entire house that wasn't locked.) I ran downstairs, peeked out the basement window, and counted 11 police officers outside in my back yard, between Kayla's room and the basement living room window. There were more in the front yard and street.

The officers continued to shout over the sound of the chopper. Anna, 12 feet away, had to be hauled upstairs half asleep and quite confused. Kayla's wide eyes had to be pried away from her window. Not knowing if there were any other criminals loose in our yard, I ushered them both upstairs.

The view from the front window was equally surreal. We counted 14 cop cars, including some State Patrol, on our dead end street, the same street that attracted exactly 2 trick-or-treaters this Halloween. It felt kinda like the end of the Tom Hanks movie, The 'Burbs. All of the action had triggered our motion lights and outdoor Christmas lights, so things were looking bright and festive. I felt momentary relief (followed by fleeting shame for my pettiness:)) that Jake had taken the leg lamp out of our front window.

Jake, Kayla, Anna, and I watched from our darkened living room as the 11 officers ushered the one man in handcuffs from our backyard into the street in front of our house and then into the back seat of a State Patrol car. Once he was in custody, the mood in the street changed noticeably. One officer asked jokingly,"So was this his girlfriend's house, then?" That was where the guy had told them he was going.

A couple of police officers came up to the house to talk to me and Jake. They told us that this had been a high speed chase that started with a routine traffic stop 10 miles away. The man was drunk, took off when police pulled him over, reached speeds as high as 130, and crashed a couple blocks away from our house. (The next day, I found 2 hubcaps and a downed street sign where he crashed.) At that point, he took off on foot, zigzagging through our neighborhood. They said he ran through our front garage door, out our back garage door, jumped our fence, and went under our deck, where they caught him. The officers said he was a repeat offender, with multiple DWIs, and that he had fled police before. Recidivism.
 
We'll be replacing those 60-year-old warped garage doors. They don't even shut tightly. And we're reinstating and upgrading our alarm system. In addition to these steps, it has taken 2 days and 3 phone calls, one to each police department involved in the arrest, to assuage my fears. Unfortunately, the chase started in the same neighborhood where a child protection case involving one of my students also began. It took some convincing for me accept that the two were unrelated. It really was merely a freakish coincidence that a high speed chase ended under my deck at the same time I was being threatened by an angry parent from the same neighborhood. What are the odds?

Last night, we started to wonder what the neighbors think. I mean, we had a helicopter hovering over our back yard. Jake talked to a few of them. One had been awake and witnessed the zigzagging footrace through the neighborhood. The whole thing is unbelievable. But I hope you believe me. More importantly, we are all okay, very grateful for each other and for the police who apprehended him before he had the chance to get into our house.

Kayla boldly snapped these pics: