November 16th, 2005?

That is when Nicole started this blog and after spending some time scrolling through it tonight it is hard to believe how fast the time has flown by. Addy was only 3 months old and Paige was just a few months into being a 2 year old back then and it is absolutely mind boggling to see the pictures and read about what was going on. Back then I figured this blog was a cool way for us to keep friends and family up to date with the happenings in our lives but after tonight it is apparent that this media is an excellent alternative to the traditional journal of days gone by. I am sure with the frequency of the updates we have lost most of our extensive audience (ha!) but since we got on Facebook that has taken over as the media of choice for corresponding with friends and family. If you are on Facebook send us a friend request and we would gladly take you up on it.

Things around our house have been busy as usual and there actually have been some changes in the past several months. Clearly the economy has had a drastic effect on millions of Americans and we have not been immune. Beginning in August we made the tough decision to pull the kids out of daycare and Nicole took on what could be the toughest job on Earth - a stay at home Mom. She still helps Bruce out with his clients and maintains her securities licenses but she is really making the most of spending the extra time with the girls. Obviously we may not have planned for it to workout this way - but so far it has worked out well. I think the girls love having Mom at home before and after school and they stay just as busy as ever.

Paige started first grade in September and she is really having a great year so far. Her reading is absolutely amazing and she is among the top of her class. She can read books to herself regularly and she has aced nearly all her spelling tests. Seeing her blossom and learn is a treat and she continues to amaze us with each new day.

Addy is having a good year in her 2nd year in pre-school and she is loving all the activities and time spent with her friends. Addy has some of her closest friends in class and from what I have heard they make the most of their short time together each week.

Both of the girls started dancing and gymnastics class in September at Jam Hops in Blaine. We spend 2 nights a week at the dance studio and they both have improved tremendously over the past few months. They do tap and ballet dancing an then they both have a introductory gymnastics class.

Something that I think is good for all of us that we have been going to church every Sunday for the past couple of months. We had been hearing about a place called Eagle Brook Church and decided to check it out. It has been great and not at all like any church experience we have ever been part of. I won't go into too many details but it seems to be a positive thing that we will continue to do for the foreseeable future. In fact we are all looking forward to the Christmas service on Thursday.

I am sure we can go into more details about what has been happening but for now the biggest news is that we are heading to Orlando Florida to visit Disney World! We booked this trip last spring and we are going with my Mom, Ed, Karen and Bryon. We are staying in a timeshare so each couple will have a room and we will be able to cook meals in a full kitchen to save some money. We decided to hold off on telling the girls and to make it more exciting they will be told on Christmas. (Plus they would ask ever 5 minutes when we were leaving!) We are really looking forward to it and we are both so excited to see how the girls react when the find out that not only will they be going on a airplane ride for the first time - they will be going to Disney World to see the princesses they spend so much time obsessing about!

That's about all for tonight but I will try to post here more regularly in the future so I can look back on it myself in the future and see just how much our life has changed.

Crawl 4 the Cure

This last weekend was the 5th Annual Crawl 4 the Cure benefiting the MS society. Dave's club Twin City's Off Road along with another club HTR put on the event. The final numbers are not in but they have raised at least $35,000 this year. That is really great! They are making some great progress with their event. I didn't get a lot of photos - really not any of Dave's jeep wheelin'. Dave will probably give you all more details of the week - I am sure.

It was cold and raining 3 out of the 4 days we were there. It was about 55 degrees on Thurs. afternoon when we arrived. Needless to say we through on a couple of layers - I think I wore 2 - 3 sweatshirts and my raincoat almost the whole weekend. Thank goodness we had the furnace at night - I am sure we would have been fine in a tent - like most people. I was just happy to have the warmth :)

The girls met several new friends - there were a lot of little girls all around the same age this year - so that was fun. They were always off having their own conversations - it was pretty cute :)

We all rode in the Jeep for 2 whole days with Dave as he was trail guiding for the "easy" group. I was pretty impressed with how well the girls did. They have been troopers the entire summer so far on all our adventures. We have only been home for a few days at a time in July.

We are home today and tomorrow - then it is off again tomorrow night for a few days again. Laundry is almost all done - just though it back in the bags and on the road again! It has been a little crazy! But we are having lots of fun family time together!

What a great birthday weekend!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVE!

We celebrated Dave's birthday this year at the Bunker Hills campground, it was very nice. The campground is close to our house - about 10 minutes away. It is a little get away, great bike trails, especially for kids, nothing is to far. They have a waterpark that we enjoyed all day Sat. with not a cloud in the sky! Karen, Bryon and the Crandall's joined us for a day at the waterpark. Later that evening we grilled at the campground - Bryon brought Dave his favorite present - Beer :) Jodi and Ed came right about dinner time and camped with us for the night. They were going to tent for the night but they discovered that they packed a bottomless screen tent by mistake - whoops. Luckily our trusty new camper has an extra full size bed and we were able to sleep the six of us inside - worked out really well actually. Dave cooked us up some great breakfast on Sun. and then we took a real quick bike ride with a few stops at 2 playgrounds along the way. It was time to pack up around lunchtime. It was Laureen's birthday party of Sun. and Paige and Addy did not want to miss it. So we headed out of town towards Osakis at about 1pm on Sunday for a quick round trip - little did we know that a fuel tanker was overturned on 94 by albertville and that we would have over an hour detour to get there. We finally arrived fashionable 2 hours late dripping with sweat. Yeah - we took our beater Honda up there with no air. The van was packed to the max and we wanted to hit the road - so we just jumped from one vehicle to the other in a effort to save time. Needless to say - the air is broken in the Honda and stop in go traffic is not a good thing with no air and 87 degrees. We waited until the rollover cleared to head home - we finally arrived home at 10 pm last night from our adventous weekend. The girls were troopers the whole time! We figure Paige rode about 8 miles on her bike over the course of a couple of bike rides - she really loves her bike! I think Addy is addicted to the trailabike - she always wants to go FAST :)

Paige had to pass a swim test to go on this water walkway - I was pretty impressed she passed and was able to cruise across it. Man she is getting so big!

Paige and Addy enjoyed the wave pool

The girls thought it would be funny to spray dad with silly string right after we sang happy birthday and he blew out the candles - It was cute - would have went better if mom would have check that the caps were taped on before it was time to spray dad :)

Paige and Addy wrote out this card - I hadn't looked at it before Paige sealed it up in the envelope and taped it to the presents they wrapped up (by themselves) for dad. I love how she wrote "The Liers" on her dad's card - so cute.

Here are the girls at the Hannah Montana party with Laureen, they had fun and I know they are glad we went :)

Happy Birthday Laureen!

$1 Jimmy Johns - nice!

Jimmy Johns by our office had $1 subs today for lunch. Nicole and I went and grabbed ours and I can tell you it is worth every bit of that dollar. Sometimes live just throws little things you way...

Tomorrow is my birthday and all week I keep getting free stuff in my email box that I probably won't take advantage of. Free Red Robin, Free Texas Roadhouse, Free Cold Stone Creamery (okay, I will probably use that one!) - the internet sure makes having a birthday these days exciting. I even got a free gift from Menards in yesterday's mail. Don't you just love a good deal? ;-)

The Nalgene Irony

Nicole got me hooked on the Nalgene OTG water bottle about a year ago. If you haven't seen one it is a 22 oz. Nalgene water bottle with a flip top over a smallish spout making it really convenient and easy to drink from with 1 hand. Plus - it fits into most cup holders, water bottle cages on bikes, etc - nice. The 2 of us have been hauling these things all over the world - literally we took them to London I think - trying to drink our daily dose of water. All was well until a few weeks ago Nicole misplaced her beloved lime green BPA free Nalgene bottle. She told me that she has been struggling without it - so Monday she made a special trip to REI to buy a replacement only to find them sold out. Later that night she drove to another REI location to again get skunked forcing her to instead go for the standard small mouth Nalgene 32 oz. water bottle in a stylish pink hue. It isn't quite the same one handed flip and drink convenience of the OTG - but it holds water and the small mouth should prevent the water up the nose phenomenon that happens with the old style large mouth bottles. Anyway...

Tuesday I made my normal lunch hour thrift store run and was more than pleased to find a blue OTG Nalgene for $.60 - my kind of deal since they normally sell for around $10. Sure it is the old polycarbonite #7 and not the BPA free stuff - but according the the Nalgene website this has been the case for almost 50 years with countless products so I feel safe enough that if the bottle is used for it's intended purpose I will be fine. Anyway - I felt pretty good about it and left my new used bottle at work so as to not have to haul my water back and forth everyday.

How ironic is it that when I got home last night and was carrying my normal armload of crap (remember John Candy in Summer Rental?) in from the car that my Nalgene bottle dropped to the ground and broke spilling water all over the garage floor! Dangit. These things are marketed as being darn near indestructable and mine breaks the day I buy a spare? WTF? I am chalking it up to yet another bout of Karma I guess. What a bummer.

We have another 2-wheeler!

This weekend up at the cabin Addy asked me if I could take her training wheels off her bike and put on "the handle" and a kickstand. (The handle is a really handy device I picked up to teach Paige how to ride a 2-wheeler that allows me to hold on and run behind her to help teach her balance without having to be hunched over - nice. Google "Balance Buddy") Anyway - I took off the training wheels and we messed around for a little while before she decided she had had enough and was ready to move on to other things.

Last night she wanted to try it again and I am happy to report that she is now officially riding a bike with no training wheels! She picked it up almost instantly and when I let go and let her ride she did wonderfully, even turning and stopping herself! She did really well and both Paige and I were super proud of her. (Paige is her cheerleader and encouraged her the whole time.) Addy was riding along with me running behind just talking and singing the whole time. She was singing up a storm and making comments like "I don't need training wheels anymore because I ride a 2 wheeler", "Look at me Paige - I am pretty good at this", and other cute stuff. It just made me smile to see how proud she was of herself.

We rode all the way to the park and back and when we got back home I let the girls make themselves a treat of chocolate milk to celebrate. I am sure there will be some tumbles and scrapes but an entirely new world of freedom is opened up to both my little girls now that they are riding bicycles. I can't wait to go on bikerides with the family and watch them explore the world on 2 wheels.

A Celebration of Freedom

After work today we get to load up the family truckster and head up north to the Workman cabin on Lake Osakis. The kids are super excited and they love spending time up at Grandma and Grandpa's cabin riding on the boat, fishing, swimming and just being away from home. I am sure a few beers will be drunk, food will be eaten and lies will be told! ;-)

Let's not forget what the 4th of July is all about - the signing of the Declaration of Independence - declaring independence from Great Brittain for the 13 Colonies.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Our lives are in a constant state of flux - and unfortunately our family is far from insulated from the trying economic times facing America today. Like many, I hope that this little break from reality will help rekindle our spirit and rest our minds from the challenges of daily life. Maybe it isn't glamourous or exciting, but a little trip to a place other than home can go a long way toward gaining back one's perspective on what is important. As you sit with your friends and family gazing in awe of the bursts and booms of the holiday fireworks please remember what the day is all about and why our forefathers thought freedom was important enough to risk everything.

The government's role as stated in the document above is to secure the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness endowed upon us by our Creator. I don't want to get political so I will leave you with your thoughts and interpretations since that is one of the things that makes America the greatest country on Earth - our freedom to think and express our opinions. Be thankful for this freedom and embrace it. Happy Independence Day.