Happy Birthday Thomas!

He's 21!

Oh My Heart

Walked past the wrestling room right into 2023.

Baby face Philip, Small shaggy hair Thomas, and Terrible beard Father Lee.

 

Blizzard 2024

Snow Day Eve, January 7th:  School administrators call off school for the next day at 5 pm.  Awesome!  We'll eat comfort food and watch the first Hobbit movie and go to bed late!

Snow Day 1, January 8th:  Yay! Fun!  We will do all the snow day things, play, bake, update the blog, enjoy not driving anywhere and stay warm! (see earlier post)

Snow Day 2, January 9th:

Yay! Fun again!  We'll play some more and bake some more and dig tunnels and text old friends about whether they remember going to Les Mis in college and be grateful the roads and weather are good enough to make it to Les Mis with Julia! (see earlier post again)

School Day 1, January 10th:  But I have a sub because I knew Les Mis would make for a late night.

School Day 2, Jan 11th:  Oh, a normal day.  Nice.

Snow Day 3, Jan 12th:

(seemed appropriate)

  Oh, okay, yay!  This will be fun! we'll watch movies and start cleaning up Christmas!  Hobbit #2, here we come.

Wait.  It's really snowing a lot. Look at those drifts. (Well, these photos are technically after the snow stopped.  There was no seeing anything while the snow was coming down.)  All the roads and highways around are closed while they tow out cars that got stuck (like 30-40 between Wahoo and Mead alone) and try to plow while the wind still blows the drifts around.  Good thing we don't have to go anywhere!

 But what about my plan book?

Snowy Day but it's the weekend, January 13th:

Well, we're not going anywhere but we can get outside to play and blow snow and actually put the Christmas stuff away and we can finish up the Hobbit Trilogy and make more comfort food!

Snowy Day but it's still the weekend and it's Nick's birthday, January 14th:

Wind chill -22, too cold and drifty to make it to Mass or anywhere else.  Highways are starting to be passable if you really need to get out and mostly just need to go north or south.  East and west, still not great.

Snow Day...wait let me count...number 4, January 15th:

We've had so many snow days even the administration doesn't know what day it is when they send out the message that school on Monday Jan 14th is cancelled (Monday was the 15th).

Ok.  We can find stuff to do.  Let's dump out a puzzle. And Grandma Raleen dug out Grandma Vrana's kolache recipe over Christmas, it's been a long time since I've tried making kolaches with her recipe, that'll be fun!

Oh, and Thomas has to go back to school because classes start tomorrow.  We'll celebrate his birthday a little! (He made it just fine.  Hwy 77 and the interstate are okay by now.  The east/west state highways are iffy but he didn't have to take any of those.)

Mary of the drifts.

Call at 3:45 pm.  Two hour late start tomorrow.  Guess I should probably plan the rest of the week.  I think I'll just start over...

Anybody have any homework?

January 16 School Day 3.  Nope.  Nevermind.  Snow Day 5.

I was this much ready when the call came in at 7:30 that I didn't have school because not enough teachers can make it in.  The hilly highway between Valparaiso and Weston (which 5 of our 11 staff members take) is still closed.  The highway between Wahoo and Weston (which 4 of our 11 staff members take) was closed last night but marked as open this morning.  It's known for drifting so who knows what it's really like.

At 7:50 St. Wenceslaus and Bishop Neumann follow suit.  The busses can't make it on their routes and they have staffing issues too.

Sooo....what fun should we find for today????

January Birthday boys!

 

Moving In

Thomas had to head to school for a two week bridge program before classes start.  It sounds like they will have various college skill classes in the morning and group bonding in the afternoon.  

After being assigned to the wrong dorm, having he lady in charge of assignments take the week off immediately after sending assignments out (a month before classes start and only two weeks before Thomas had to report) and then getting no response for another four days after she got back, Thomas got his correct dorm room and roommate assignment.  Except by then there was no personality matching going on.  He got stuck in what was left open.  He and his roommate don't have a lot in common, including what year they are in school, but Thomas says he's nice enough that getting along for a year should be fine.

Thomas seems to be settling in and enjoying the time with the other Scott Scholars.  Classes start soon!

When You Think You'll Never Have to Label Your Kid's Stuff Again

and then you do.

Time for the Fair- Rides and Food

The kids and Jeremy went to the demo derby on Friday so Saturday was ride day.

Nick rode some rides.  We didn't set up to meet a friend and we should have.

Philip decided not to ride any rides so he spent his ride money on food.  The half hour wait for fried Oreos might have been worth it.  They did give us two extras and he did let us all have a taste.

He did play one game with a ticket we had left over.

Rides just aren't the same after you outgrow the tractors, boats and motorcycles!

Thomas went to the fair with friends and while we were waiting in the half hour line I saw what his food of choice was!  I'm sure they were delicious.

Leadership Camp

An amazing time was had by all

Thomas was senior counselor for the silver cabin, the Soldiers.

Philip was in the blue cabin, the Storm Troopers (think Jesus and Peter walking on water).

Karen and I went up Sunday when we took our campers and stayed to help cook on Monday.  Since we got there at 3 on Sunday we had lots of time to check out camp...and find a lovely local grocery store where we got ourselves some refreshments for a lovely ladies night with nurse Jodi and Julie Hefte, who Karen already knew but was a new friend for me!

All the counselors- after Thomas made the non-insurance approved mudslide.  Everyone loves the mud slide, they just do it unofficially.

Yep, he's pretty happy about it.

One of Philip's favorites is the obstacle course.

They do lots of other things too, like archery.

And of course, Mass.

At the end of the week they get mission crosses.

Here's to another great year of camp!  Thomas lived it up as it might have been his last year.  He has to do an internship next summer, per his scholarship but he was being recruited to be an assistant director next year, so he'll have to see what kind of time off he's given. 

 

Future Plans

 

The Last First/Last Day Split

 This one hurts my heart a little.  

Week O Fun 2nd Edition: Sunday

Despite my worries about Thomas's party that either no one would come because it was Mother's Day or everyone would come and stay and eat a lot because there were no other parties, the party was great.

People did come and stay and eat a lot but thanks to my great family, there was enough food.  I "deployed the aunts" and asked all the ladies in my family to bring something again.  Everyone brought a big batch of whatever appetizer they wanted (or four, again, in Pat's case) and we had a great variety of tasty treats.  Thomas made a nice display of his things, Philip put together a great slide show, my mom made a fun cake and Nicholas brought things for the kids to play.  Beth brought her confetti cannon which was super fun, and maybe showed some guests a different side of the Vrana family.  Julia made an appetizer and Jeremy cleaned and set up the hall before hand so it was a family affair just like last year.  

We used the weird half Thomas to trick people when they walked in.  If you don't remember the story, this is what I got when I ordered a big head of him earlier in the year because the big head manufacturer said they "couldn't crop to just the head."  Some of his underclassmen friends asked if they could have it because they wanted to take it to lunch at school the next day.  I decided I could let go of it!  😊 The actual big head is somewhere in the decorations...

In hindsight, I'm glad Fr. Kennet found the confetti cannon hilarious.  He even wanted to push the button.  There are other priests I know who it would have made anxious about clean up.  The kids loved sweeping up the confetti so clean up was actually not a problem.  For my future reference, I bought two pounds of confetti (1 pound each red and yellow) and we used about 2/3 of it which was setting the cannon off every half hour or so.

It was a great ending to a fun week!