Family, Friends, and Snow

Merry Christmas everyone!! We had a superb Christmas at our house. Slept in to about 8am, opened gifts, got everything I have always wanted and more! It truly was a perfect day. I hope yours was as well.

Last weekend my sister Barb flew to NYC with her husband Scott. He was attending a medical conference and she came along for the fun. My friend Ellen and I hopped on the train last Friday....


and had lunch with Barb and a friend of hers. We ate at Manhattan Deli and Produce. Kind of a combination of a deli, small buffet, and grocery store. They had a nice seating area in one corner. Very common downtown. One deli/produce shop we checked out had the seating in the dairy isle of the grocery area. Not quite the ambiance we were looking for.


After lunch we hit a few candy stores - Lindts Chocolatiers and Dylan's Candy Bar pictured below.


Saturday brought the East Coast snowstorm. It took Charles, Nick and I 2 hours to dig out! Charles and I ate ibuprofen for three days after that! This picture was taken on Wednesday so what you see has been melting for three to four days already.



Made for a very nice white Christmas! It rained all day here the day after and every bit of snow is gone. Makes me regret all the shovelling!

Happy Birthday Charles!!

Yesterday was Charles' 42nd Birthday. Charles had a nice relaxing day at home.


We had a low-key celebration. Made his favorite meal, opened a few presents, then we went to see the movie "A Christmas Carol." Even though it is an animated film there are some scary parts. At one point in the movie Isaiah sat up and loudly asked, "Is this rated PG-13?" Overall a pretty good flick - I'd give it a 3.5 or 4 out of 5. After the movie we stopped at ColdStone Creamery for a treat on the way home.

You know it's been too long when...

You know it's been too long when you can't remember your password to post again!!! But I was persistent and prevailed as you can tell.

I want to finish up with some pictures from our visit to MN of some good friends of ours from Forest Lake - the Gemuendens. We had supper together at Pizza Hut while we were in town over Thanksgiving. Bob and Carol have four girls the same ages as our four. Carol and I were destined to become friends as we often ran into each other at Scandia Elementary where our kids went to school together often being in the same classes together. I'm sure there were a few teachers who groaned, "I have a Causey and a Gemuenden again this year!"

Nick and Maddie G. have a friendly rivalry as to who is the tallest. I think when we squished Nick's hair down it was a tie. They also arm wrestle but that's another story for another day.


Maddie C. and Megan are quite a pair - inseparable! Megan had the advantage in this card game. Megan!


Hannah and Amanda are also special friends and enjoy each other's company. I think Amanda is drinking more milk than Hannah.


Isaiah and Katie have been competing losing their teeth. They are tied right now but I think Isaiah just mentioned he may have another loose one, Katie!



Shortly after we got back to NJ, Uncle Nathaneal came to visit. We had a little early birthday party for Uncle Than.





I know that there were many games played that weekend beside Risk such as Acquire, Masterpiece, and Lost Cities and football outside in the rain.



Everyone had a great time. We probably stayed up too late visiting but we sure enjoyed having Uncle Than around.

Belated Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving! I trust you did as well. We made the annual pilgrimage to the frigid state of MN and had a wonderful time. I was going to do a quick post but now realize that I have more pictures than I thought and we packed quite a lot into a week. On the way out the kids had a treat! They went flying over Columbus, OH with our dear friend Jo Kirk (Charles' bosses wife) in her small plane. Chaplain Kirk and Jo are pictured in my previous post. The kids had an incredible time!



Once we all arrived in MN we started the week visiting many great friends in the Hugo area. Again I did a horrible job remembering to take photos. If you have photos from our visit please email them to me and will put them on my next posting. I have been sent pics from Carol G. already and would love to have more from the rest of you! Carol - tell the girls I hope to put the pics up next week.

We then headed up to Alexandria for the rest of the week. Everyone made it to Mom and Dad's! Of course we had a fabulous meal.


Kids from L to R: Jake A., Isaiah, Luke O., Nick, Maddie, Hannah, Ava O., Maggie A.

We also managed to squeeze in another Rookfest. For some reason I only have pictures of these two teams. You can check out Barb's blog for the winners and losers (the two teams not pictured.) We had a Veggie Tale theme this year. I was Larry the Cucumber, Mom was Madame Blueberry, and Sara of course was Laura Carrot.


Barb was Petunia Rhubarb and Andy was Mr. Lunt. See any resemblances?


The cousins played and played,






the big guys got some hunting in,



and we made the most of a light dusting of snow.





On the way home we made a slight detour through Chicago to eat at one of our favorite restaurants - Giordano's Pizza. It was awesome!



I leave you with a shot of a typically beautiful sunset in the midwest with too much to be thankfulful for!

San Antonio

November 15 Charles and I headed for San Antonio. Charles had a chaplains conference there and I went along for the fun of it - warm place, no kids, maid service... Two very special families took in our kids for the week.

We toured the Alamo. Neat place with a beautiful courtyard all around. It was interesting reading the history of the building.


You could go in and tour and see many artifacts. There was no photography allowed inside however.


I loved the huge old trees. This huge tree had a well under it. There were aqueducts that ran through the courtyards but they wisely dug one well inside the walls so they would have access to fresh water if anyone ever dammed up the aqueducts from the outside.


Tuesday evening we took our nephew David out for supper. He is currently stationed at Ft. Sam Houston. He had just passed the national EMT certification that day! I have kicked myself a hundred times for forgetting to snap a picture together. I thought of it during the middle of the meal but decided to wait until we were finished eating - dumb, dumb, dumb! Sorry Carol! After we brought David back to the barracks we did a little exploring. I'm sure you have heard of Major Hasan on the news lately. Well, he is in Brooke Medical Center located on Ft. Sam Houston. We drove over there and snapped a few pictures. I wanted to sneak up and get his chart and make a notation that he needs an enema daily (a little revenge Schoon style). May not have been the best thing for Charles' career if I had gotten caught so I refrained.




Down through the old part of San Antonio they have the Riverwalk. It is an area below street level with canals that have been landscaped beautifully. You can walk along and eat at all the different restaurants, shop in the stores, and tour the downtown by boat.



We ate supper down along the Riverwalk often and one evening had the mariachi musicians play for us while we dined.




We had supper one evening with Charles' boss Chap. Kirk and his wife Jo. We ate at Mamasitas. The food was delicious but the entertainment left a little to be desired.



One nook we found while wondering around downtown...



It was a lovely week!

I know you think I'm a loser but I can explain...

Believe it or not there is a great explanation of why I dropped off the face of blogland. (BTW - thanks for all the comments posted from concerned readers...not.) A enterprising teammate of Nick and Maddie's from the Cross Country team happened upon our blog. The Cross Country team has their own "chatroom" where the coach posts their times and scores from the meets, posts announcements, and the kids can post comments encouraging one another. Well, the enterprising little teammate posted our blog address for all the team to check out. Nick came home and said, "My life is ruined." I had pictures from the first day of school, etc., things that are not very cool when you are in eighth grade but suffered through only to humor your mother. Needless to say, I felt his pain and ceased posting until the "fun" with our blog was over. Everything done was in good humor and we all got a laugh out of it.

But we are back. Cross Country is over and it was a very successful season for both. Nick finished with a record of 5 wins and finished 2nd three times! He won the conference championship and broke the record for the home course time. The most valuable lesson learned for him was when he didn't double-knot his shoe laces before a race and his shoes came untied. He ended up running the last half of the race without shoes on at all. I guess one came off and it was harder to run with one on and one off so he kicked the second one off and won the race in his socks. It was comical watching him blaze down the finishing straight-away in his socks!





Maddie finally geared up and ran her first race. It went well. She finished 23 out of 33. He biggest fear was conquered - she was worried she would finish last! At the end of the race she came up to me and said, "I know I can do better next time." And she did. Each race she improved her time from the race before. The season ended on a disappointing note for her as she was sick the last week of the season and wasn't able to compete in the conference championship meet.





Isaiah started going to Sparks in October and loves it! Sparks is a Bible club for grades K through 2nd grade. There is one handbook for each grade. You receive a ribbon for each book you finish and a Spark plaque if you finish all three. Isaiah's goal is to finish all three books this year as this is his last year to be a Sparkie! He has already finished his first book and has started on his second. Go Isaiah!


Hannah has been bitten by the acting bug. She and Maddie were in a play here on base and she really enjoyed it. She decided to try out for the school musical "Willy Wonka." She had to preform lines and sing in front of judges!! She is a brave little soul! Her bravery and talent won her the part of Mrs. Teavee, mother of Mike Teavee.

In October we camped at West Point, NY. The weather was beautiful and the leaves were just starting to turn. We spent some time on campus and went to an Army football game. The campground had some great hiking trails and the kids spent a good part of an afternoon catching little salamanders.






It was a great relaxing weekend.







A couple weeks later we did our annual pumpkin carving.



Hannah and Isaiah enjoyed trick-or treating as "The Mysterious Moustache Woman" and "The Valiant Knight"





Afterward Hannah said to me, "I come up with the best costume ideas because no one can ever guess who I am!"

Well, hopefully, you can find it in your heart and forgive my reticence in posting since I have forgiven you for your silence as well. :)