Our little musician!

Isn't this so cute! She is just barely tall enough, you can see every inch of her stretched out to it's limit. I love it!

Happy Birthday Libbers!

Wow! I can't believe she is already one. Everyone tells you it goes by quick, and you don't believe them until the first year is gone. We had her birthday party on Saturday and it went as well as expected. Nobody could come because it has been continuously snowing since Thursday. I feel a little secluded in this valley. So our neighbors across the street (the Olsens) came and we had a good time. Libby was the most delicate cake smasher I have ever seen. It took her about 10 minutes until she any cake on her face. She touched it and licked off some frosting, and then ate the cake. It was really cute. Libby has a lot of new things. Here are just a few...
-She says Uh-Oh when she drops things. Sometimes before she drops them.
-She has started to say "Wow!" when she likes something.
-She has started free standing.
-Libby pushes everything around the room. Stools, chairs, toys, anything she can reach.
-She waves randomly to strangers at the store and say "hi" to them.
-Libby also says "yeah" if I ask her a question.
-The Olsens gave a toy piano for her birthday and she will pound a couple of keys, then look up at me to see if I am watching. If I am she will wait until I clap for her, and she will clap and say "Yay!"
She is getting such a spunky little personality. She has an opinion about everything, and lately diaper changes have become a wrestling match. She keeps us on our toes. We love you Libby!

Jordan's letter's #2 2008-01-11

Krys and Nick (and Libby)



It sounds like Nick's Halloween concert went really well. The food and music is always a huge hit.I guess that's how we Idahoans get down. (Ha ha).There is about 42 days left of training, and 1/1/2 weeks of basic. All we have left before we go to AIT is our NIC at night (night Infiltration course), a 10 km march and a APFT. Then it is on to AIT until December 19th when I come home. My drill Sergeant are way cool,they are tough, but cool. Drill Daviage looks like Will Smith and talks like Evil Knievel. [Nick asked Jordan he advanced a rank because he knows how to fire a potato gun.] Most people don't even know what a "potato gun" is. They ask me what it shoots... "take a wild guess junior!" that is what I tell them. Are you going back to finish your music? I can't remember. I am starting school in January or March at one of the base Universities. Then when I am done with my service in the army I am going to ISU to get my degree in Engineering. I am excited for that. Anyway, church is almost over so I had better go. Thank you for writing me letters, it is like Christmas when I get letters. Also thank you for the pictures of you, Nick and yibbers. I taped them up in my wall locker. Keep praying for me, I love you all and I'll be home soon. Your loving brother,
-Jordan (pv2 Lund)

For those of you that don't know, my little brother Jordan just joined the army. I am not sure exactly how I feel about it. I am very proud of him for wanting to serve our wonderful country, I am very scared he will get sent to Iraq, but mostly, I hope and pray that our new president will use my brother's service for a worthy cause. I don't know much about what is going on over there, and because I didn't even know anybody in army, I am kind of ashamed to say, I didn't pay much attention to what was going on. Boy have things changed. He is still at boot camp at Ft. Lenerwood in Missouri, but he only has a couple more weeks left, and then we don't really know where he will be going next. I am sharing his letters with all of you, so you will help our family by praying for him to be safe and healthy and to have the spirit with him. Thank you, and I love you all. This is the first letter I received. He doesn't put dates on them so I am note sure, but it is from about a month ago.

Letters form Jordan #1

Germers,

Thank you a FREAKING BUTTLOAD for the letters, I have gone 11 days without hearing from the outside world. How is Grace I-der-ho? It is finally starting to cool off, these last 3 days have been in the low 50's, high 40's. It cooled off pretty quick. Last week it was in the 70's 80's. I did get a chance to watch conference. The LDS branch here is funny. It is super small and everyone wears camouflage to church, and it is a little weird to bless the sacrament in our ACU's (Advanced Combat Uniform, the camouflage.) We watched president Monson speak and Dallin H Oaks. I get two hours of church every Sunday. It is nice to just relax and listen to people talk. Last week was testimony meeting...very interesting...anyhoo! Congrats with Libby! I bet you are in for a surprise and lots of messes with Libby High speed. Ha Ha! You should tell me what is going on it the world, gas prices & elections and so forth etc. By the way, the food here is AMAZING. We get hot meals, three times a day. Except when we are on the ranges, the drill sergeant issues MRE's. I 'll have to admit, it is a little weird eating sloppy joes at 5:30 in the morning. But it is good when I am hungry. New things...Nothing really. I have goofy tan lines. You know how when you wear gloves and work outside, your hands are white and your arms are dark? It's the opposite here, hands are dark and arms are white. No matter how hot it is outside, we wear our jackets. But it is starting to cool off a lot. Last Thursday it rained. And rained. and rained etc. The next morning it was freezing outside and has been since then. We are supposed to get snow in two weeks. Which is pretty cool, there are people in my company who have never seen snow before. I think it is a little weird. I look forward to letters from anybody, so please keep writing me. There is only 6 weeks left until I graduate (YES!) Till then, I love you all, and keep praying for me.

-Jordan

Our CA-RAZY thanksgiving!

Wow, I love the holidays but this one was a doozy. I don't have pics because I broke the camera,( we won't go into that), but I can still tell ya about it. Well, we headed up to Russ and Ritas on Friday, visited my sister and her very sick child,( double earache) and had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We left on Friday without cleaning the house, and got back to a messy house on Sunday night. Well, we had one day to rest before we did it again with my parents. We left on Tuesday night at about 8:30 at night, (again the house not very clean), so Libby would sleep, which paid off, she did. We wore ourselves out up there as well. We went Christmas tree hunting, made gingerbread houses, went out in public on black Friday, our car broke down, we punched it to get back for our rehearsal in Soda, and the poor girl, Libby got a double ear infection. This meant of course, that nobody got any sleep before we found out what it was. She is feeling a lot better though, so that is really good. We finally started recovering from our stressful, but fun week, and two days later we mad the three our trip on the yellow school bus to SLC for Nick's concert. It so amazing. He is doing such great things with the kids, and all I hear from the mothers around here is "My son/daughter just loves Mr. Germer." It is great to know that he is appreciate by the kids for all of the work he does for them. Well we drove back that night and didn't get back till midnight. We have more family stuff this weekend as well. Ella is getting baptised and my sister Heather is blessing Gage. So we are busy busy with the holidays, and we love every minute of it. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

ISU, here I come!

I am so excited right now. I know I blogged a while ago about going back to school, and how I had just registered, but didn't know anything else. Well a lot has happened since then.

I got accepted, which I wasn't too worried about that, I have pretty good grades. I found out that I have to pay out of state tuition. A small sum of about 7,000 dollars. Yeah. Well needless to say things almost fell through. I was looking at scholarships online and found a Utah resident transfer student scholarship. Bang. But I had to be accepted for it and I didn't know if I would get it. So I took the necessary bureaucratic University steps and just waited.

Meanwhile, I met with the counselors and music advisor, have started practicing for auditions, got back on my ADD meds, have started weaning Libby off breast milk, signed up for classes, figured out where to take Libby ( I'll talk more about that,) and hoped.

Off on to a tangent now that has little but a lot to do with this. I am so glad that Heavenly Father answers prayers and that we have the knowledge about prayer. My Mom ( understanding my impulsivity) told me I needed to pray to make sure that this is what I am supposed to be doing. I did and today I got my answer. I was awarded the Utah resident tuition scholarship and a transfer student scholarship. These along with my Pell grant will cover everything with about 1500 left over. I was bawling about 5 minutes ago, I am so happy and very thankful. Heavenly Father knows what we need and knows us as individuals. This has definitely proven this fact further for me.

So where will Libby go you ask? Well for this semester I am going Mon Wed Fri. Nick doesn't have school on Friday, so he will be home to watch her. This is my long day as well. My neighbor Katie across the street, we trade babysitting. I have been watching her kids about once a week since we moved in. She doesn't work Mondays, and said she would watch her. My other neighbor runs a daycare and can take her Wednesday. I really like the idea of Libby being close to home, and it will be really cold in the winter, so this way she doesn't really have to go outside. We were worried about paying Kim( the daycare neighbor) but the second scholarship I didn't expect or ask to be considered for which makes it even a bigger blessing. This is just proof that if you put your trust in Heavenly Father, and work hard, things work out the way they are supposed to.

Staying warm in Idaho

We just got a huge heating bill for the October month and it was scary! Lots of locals here have told us that to survive -20 degree weather we would need lots of wood to burn.

Most people bought tags to cut down trees then haul the lumber to their homes. We didn't have anything to haul (or cut) the wood, but Krystal found a guy in town that is a logger and sells and delivers large amounts of wood.

So we recieved a half of a cord of wood last week. But how to chop it? We don't own an axe yet. Our neighbor was chopping his wood and he said that if we helped chop his wood, then he would help us chop ours. So I (Nick) went out there and began helping him chop and stack wood. His beer-drinking buddies arrived (with 12 packs of beer) and many of them helped us chop and stack. After we chopped his wood, he and his buddies came and helped me chop our wood. Got it done in 30 minutes! Really nice of them.

Our fireplace has had problems getting enough ventilation. I got up on the roof and looked at our chimney and found about 1/2 an inch of soot caked all over the inside of the chimney. I borrowed a 15 foot chimney sweep and swept it. It made a foot tall pile of soot in our fireplace. I cleaned it out and we got a roaring fire in there last night. It warmed our home to a cozy 75 degrees while it was 30 degrees outside.

It may not be the cleanest solution, but it's how we survive in this cold weather climate for now.

Libby Update...and her stitches.

Wow has she changed in the last couple of months. She has been doing the crab crawl for a couple of months, and she is so fast! She has such an adventurous personality. It is cute and sometimes very scary. On thursday I was cleaning up the toys ( a daily ritual, about three times a day) and I heard her open the oven drawer. I went running in and she had her hand stuck somehow. I pulled it out and a part of the drawer sliced her finger around the knuckle. She was bleeding pretty good, so we hurried up to the ER in Soda and they glued it instead of actual stitches. She didn't even cry, and they gave her a teddy bear :)

So her new things:

-She has started pulling up on everything, and it scares Mom half to death. Dad says she has to fall to learn to walk, so I relax.

-She loves to empty everything, with anything in it.

-She just started to climb up on things, like the shelf table in the front room.

-Libby has two top fornt teeth. Cute!

-She also has her own launguage. One of her favorite words is "Nawaja, waja, waja." She does say real words like Dada, Mama, doggie, Hi, and she barks like Chio. It is so funny;)

-Libby is becoming alot more independent. She loves to feed herself, and now drinks out of a big cup. Cute!

-Libby loves her Daddy. She wakes up when she hears him leave in the morning, and will cry if he doesn't give her hugs and kisses bye bye.

We are so blessed to have such an angel in our home and we enjoy every minute of her. We love you Libbers!

-

Halloween Eventfulness

We are still alive, we have been some poor excuses for bloggers lately. Since the last time we blogged, Halloween happened. We had the annual (I guess starting next year) Grace High School Spaghetti Dinner/Concert/Fundraiser. Kids performed without fear, and no food was thrown = It went awesome. Plus our music program made over $800 in one night thanks to many parents and friends.

Our next event was the actual Halloween Night. It was our first time that we've had the opportunity to give out candy (no one came to our creepy apartments in Ogden, with good reason). Krystal was scared out of her socks by a kid wearing a two foot devil-mask with evil eyes and a scary grin. Our Obama pumpkin unexpectedly lived through the night without being smashed, and all went well.

Visit from Rhett, Holly, and Lucy!

We had a short and awesome visit from Rhett, Holly and Lucy. We just had time to show off the new house, Wii, Battlefield Russian quotes, church, the slag flow, pictures, staying up all night with two crying babies, and some eating.

I am going back to school!

Well I am very excited to tell everyone that I just applied to ISU and I am so excited! I have missing school so bad. Don't get me wrong, I love being a mother, but I love learning as well. I am just full of butterflies, and I haven't even sent my transcripts in yet. I have been giving myself a little guilt trip for having the desire to become more educated. I don't want to leave Libby, and sometimes I feel like it will make me a bad mom if I leave her with someone. I have just been thinking a lot about it lately and decided I need to finish. Libby is old enough that she can be left with someone ( at least for the Spring semester, then she can be with dad for summer) for a couple of hours. This is something I need to do for myself, and I constantly have to remind myself that it is not a bad thing to do something for me once in a while ;). I only had a year left at Weber State, so we will see after the credits transfer over, I would regret it if I didn't go and finish. I don't want all of that 4 years of hard work to be for nothing. I also was thinking, what if something happened to Nick? How would we pay the bills? I don't like to even think about it, but reality is, it could happen. They have a general music program also, and I think that is what i want to do, but I still have to look into it a little bit more. YAY!

Summer's End

I love summer. It s by far the very best season. Here is a little video of our past summers and we look forward to fall and winter for some new adventures. Every season has it's perks. I love the cool crisp fall sweater weather. There is a little nip in the air that lets you know cold is coming. The people in Grace love to ask me if I like snow, so I think this winter will be a doozy.

I can only name six quirks?

Well Since I am limited to only six, let me think here......

The one that bothers Nick the most is that I squeeze the toothpaste from the middle of the tube. I know this bothers him because he tells me, but I guess it doesn't bother me at all, so I have never stopped.

I have just realized that i don't like apple cider because it tastes like apple pie. I like apple pie, so I don't know what the deal is with that. Weird.

I have this deep, embedded love for buffalo. When I was in High school, my family and I went to Yellowstone and saw about a hundred. I was obsessed for a while, but now I just like them. I didn't tell Nick that, but on our first date he made a buffalo sound.(next time you see him, ask him to show you.) That is why we got married.

I am the Vice of the Enemenopee society. It is a club that my cousin and I started while we were camping. There is a big list of stupid rules, and to join you have to eat a well ketchupped, well roasted marshmallow. So far we have around 40 members that range from family to friends to obscure relative friends (feel free to join). I even sent out a newsletter once.

Dumb jokes. Need I say more. Nick's favorite is: I say "Holy Cow!" as I pass a cow pasture and anyone caught looking at the cattle is pointed and laughed at. Here's another: What's Beethoven's favorite fruit? Ba-na-na-naaaa.

I like to give my plants (and fat spiders) names. I have a tree named Bob, a cactus named Jethro, and a catface spider named Jimmy. Care to meet them?

I Played a Part in the Potatoes That You Eat

Here in Grace, school is let out for 2 weeks for Spud Harvest. Just about everyone gets involved with all of the work available. I was hired to drive a big Mack truck to haul potatoes from the field to the potato cellar. Here is a little "documentary" we made, for your enjoyment.

Libby's new things

Libby is getting so big, so fast. I have just noticed in the last few weeks how heavy and how strong she is becoming. She is filling out and I think any day now she is going to get mad at something I do and beat me up. Just kidding. My favorite cute things she does: Wow where do I begin on this one? Well, she really is getting to recognise her favorite foods and she lets you know she wants some when she sees it. Her favorite things are bananas,(she takes bites out of the banana and can eat about half of a banana. Crazy!) grapes,(she will eat these until you stop giving them to her, she is our grape monster) pasta (newly introduced but she loves it), potatoes (Idaho grown, Daddy trucked), peaches ( She can eat a half a peach) and green beans. When she sees any of these foods she makes several excited cute grunts. We went to the grocery store today and she did this when I put the grapes in the cart. I fed her one, then decided I probably shouldn't do that because you pay by the pound. Whoops! She has started to know our names. When we ask her "Where's Chio?" She looks at the dog. The same with "Where's Ma Ma" and "Da Da". She loves to take baths. She starts to fuss to let us know that she is ready for her nightly bath and bedtime stories. She splashes like crazy in the tub, and makes a huge mess. But it is cute, so we don't make her clean it up. (Just kidding.) Libby loves to play outside. We get a blanket and sit on the lawn, and play fetch with Chio. She loves to watch Chio chase her stick. She has started to pull up onto things, but she couldn't care less about crawling. She just rolls and rolls until she get stuck in the corner, and mommy and daddy have to rescue her. Libby has started to imitate the sounds that we make. She has a "fake" laugh. That is what we call it because she only does to copy Mom and Dad when we laugh. It is really cute.

I took the political compas test.

Interesting test that I (Nick) took. http://politicalcompass.org/test Try it out!

The Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -1.50Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.08

International Chart
A diverse professional team has assessed the words and actions of internationally known contemporary leaders to give you an idea of how they relate to each other on the political compass.

Brian Regan at his best!

This is Nick

My first post is about my first real job: teaching music.

I teach a 6th grade band, junior high band, high school band, junior high choir, high school choir, and an elite show choir, with pep band on the side. It's not hard though, some of the kids read music.

I just did a big instrument presentation for the 6th graders considering playing in the band. I just thought back to how Dad did it when I was little. I'm proud to say that I safely performed the trombone "racecar" that Dad was famous for. And because of my horrible performance of saxophone, I won't have a lot of sax players. (But I have a load of trumpet players.)

I've been teaching for about 4 days so far and it has been very enjoyable. Kids have learned my real title of Mr. Germer (instead of Lord Germer like in Ogden). I've been able to lay down the law in my classes as I enforce my rules. The toughest part is trying to find fun music in our school library. We've got loads of music, but about 90% of it is either too boring/hard/easy/stupid/and/or/christmasy.

My first big challenge has been a concert/fundraiser that I've been planning. After sending out letters to parents with the concert date I was notified that it was conflicting with another important school event. So now I have to send out another letter to the parents with a revision.

Libby has done something amazing!

For any of you that know the hard time I have had with Libby going to sleep on her own....tonight we had a breakthrough. I was searching online about 4 days ago and came across a blog. A woman had the same issues and she saw a program on TV about it and suggested a method. So I tried it.

Here is how it goes:

The first night, you establish a routine with them. Bath time, PJ's, stories, in the same order every night. Then have ten minutes with them, and you get in the crib with them. This is really a weird step, but it makes sense if you think about. Before we would just lay her in her crib and let her cry herself to sleep for an hour at night which made her associate the crib as being an unsafe place to sleep. So by climbing in there with her she sees me in there, and now it feels safe because she can picture mom in there with her. Then you get out, snuggle and kiss her and lay her down in the crib and leave. You let her cry for 3 minutes, then go in and snuggle her for no longer than 2 minutes. (we are at 5 minutes total now). Then you lay her down and wait 5 minutes and do the same thing, then 10 minutes. The first night I had to do 3, 5 and two tens and she was asleep on her own. So that totals to be about 36 minutes until she is asleep on her own. That is a lot better than an hour of screaming, and maybe, if your lucky she will fall asleep.

The next night you do everything the same except get into her crib. You sit on the floor by the crib. This night I did 3, 5 and one ten.

The next night everything the same but don't sit by the crib, just hold her and snuggle her, then lay her in bed. (3, 5, 10, 10)

Tonight there was no crying. She rolled over and went to sleep. This works and I am so happy that we have found a better, more peaceful solution for Libby and for us. Well that is it, thank you and good night. He he.

The Real Pit Bull

I decided that after all of the goofy stuff we posted we should probably post something worthwhile. I was looking online and I found a really cool website about "the real pit bull." We get a lot of critisizm for owning a pit bull so I think this website will help anybody that might be misinformed about the breed. It is http://http://www.therealpitbull.com/
I cannot see how in the world anyone could see Chio as a mean dog. She would lick your face off before she would hurt you. She sure loves to chew though. We bought her a bone of rawhide. I bought the biggest one thinking that it would last her a couple of weeks. It is almost gone and I gave it to her this morning! Well that is all, thanks for reading, and I hope this blog was somewhat informative......well I can't find the camera to take her picture, so I guess I will do that later.

krys' sibs

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A talent few know about....

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pictures at Pine view

Germer reunion 2008

Well this last week we had a great trip down to Utah ( we can say that now because we are Idahoans. It still feels weird.) We went to pine view and camped, Rita, Sev and I saw Batman,(sorry again Rita), our dog almost got caught by the dog catcher, I met my long lost twin sister cousin in law, we babysat a houseful of kids, Georgia, Addy, and I stayed up all night because we thought Mojo was having kittens, Chio met Emmett, there was a whole lot of football water passes and sand canals, and a million other exciting things happened. It was great and we look forward to next year.

We are blogging!

Now we are new to this blogging thing, but since we like to try and be cool and hip, we will give it a try.