Happy New Year!!

WOW! 2008 is here. Crazy! I'm still trying to figure out what happened to 2007! We hope you all had a wonderful and safe New Year's Eve. We traditionally stay home and watch movies or whatever is good on TV. Too many crazy folks out there on the road.

We've survived the Caucus...hope you did your civic duty and went to the Caucus...I did. Now we just have to wait to see who gets nominated in a few months!! It's also Tax Time... God has blessed us this year with good incomes and now we have to go see just how much Uncle Sam & Uncle Culver get to keep!! Maybe if the right person gets into the White House, the taxes won't be so much in a year or two. Yeah right!! No matter who gets voted in for President and all the 'promises' made about change or whatever...that person still has to get their wants approved by Congress...and there won't be a darn thing done!! It's going to stay the same and the 'Good Ole Boy Club' will get what they want done and nothing else. It won't matter what the people really want or need! Sorry...sometimes it's hard for me to be an optimist about this stuff. I guess we hope for the best and expect the worst. Keeps one from being too disappointed about everything. Enough about politics!

January is a busy month for us. Lots of birthdays in January...including mine!! To celebrate, this Friday I'm having very minor foot surgery and will be gimping around for a week or two. Not really looking forward to that!! But better to get it done before spring and summer when I'm going to want to be wearing sandals and be outside in the yard doing stuff! Mike's daughter, Lisa's birthday is the day after mine, so we are planning to go to Lunch at El Rodeo in Des Moines on Saturday the 19th. This has become the tradition every year and we have a great time getting together with everyone. That I AM looking forward to!

The boys started their 2nd semester of school. Boy, that 1st semester seems to have gone quickly! It will be Spring and Easter before we know it. Time to start thinking about getting ready for Easter since I heard it is the earliest Easter in like a 100 years!! March 23rd! I must admit the earliest I ever remember was like April 8th or something like that!! The boys usually get a 4 day weekend for Easter, but looking at our school calendar, this year it falls during Spring Break!! They get March 14th through the 24th off. That's 10 days, almost the same amount of time they had off for Christmas!! And then School will be out for the Summer, May 22nd!! Now, there were about 4 days for the ice storm, so the end may not be until May 30th, but that's still better than June 4th like last year!!

Backing up to February...The boys and I leave Valentine's Day evening for Orlando, Florida!! Disney World, Epcot and the Animal Kingdom...Sea World, if we have time and the last morning we will be at the OCEAN!! This is going to be a very exciting thing for the boys, I hope. They have never flown anywhere and then to see the ocean! WoW! I'm very excited just to be able to share this with them. Hunter likes to travel in the van on long trips, but we will see how he does flying!! Alex is a little nervous, but that's just Alex! We will only be gone until the evening of the 17th, so we will have to pack as much FUN into our trip as we can. The boys don't even have to miss any school because the Friday we will be gone is a day off from school! Yes, I planned it this way!! And flights were cheapest for us then too! I just realized it's only a month away!! But trust me, we will fill you all in when we get back!

For now though, we hope you all have a healthy and prosperous 2008!