The death of a blog

My blog has gone seriously down hill here! I haven't posted in months and months and wow the stuff that was missed! LOL Hmmm actually probably not much!

I promise to update soon, but the good news that I will share is Dave passed his big USMLE test and is off to start clinicals in about 3 weeks. He'll be in Baltimore from June 15 until the end of November, then home for a month or so, and then off to Michigan where he will finish the rest of his core rotations. That is the big update for now and I promise to get better again at blogging...no one is probably even still checking this old blog...poor thing! LOL

And then it was over....

After Christmas, Dave and I had a nice date night where we went out with some of his old classmates from high school. It was a fun night and nice to meet people from Dave's past. One of the girls we met that night said that she never would have guessed, after knowing Dave in high school, that he would be one to go to medical school. Dave was not so popular in high school and kind of ran with a bad crowd, so I think he was proud of himself for the life he has made for himself. He's succeeding in medical school and has a great family to share it all with, he's a lucky man!

We had a great New Year's Eve night with our good friends Katy and Andy. We went over to their house and again shared some great food and great wine! Hmmm seems to be a trend! I'm going to gain 100 lbs living here! There were 8 adults and 10 kids and believe it or not the kids were not that loud! I was shocked! It was a great time and way to bring in the New Year.

So after that celebrating it was time to get back to reality! Dave left for Dallas on Sunday for 7 intensive weeks of studying with a program called Falcon. This will help him prepare for his Step 1 test in March. He'll be back at the end of February and then study on his own for a few weeks before taking the exam. It's the single most important test of this career, so I guess we can give him this time to prepare to the best of his ability, it will only pay off in the long run.

Since Dave left, Reece started school. The Principle here decided to keep Reece in the 4th grade, instead of putting him back into 3rd grade with the class he left. We're keeping a close eye on him to make sure he'll be able to keep up and not get left behind. They had their first math test yesterday and the teacher asked Reece to take the test purely to see what his level was. Reece was proud to report that his teacher, Mr. Fox, said that he did so well on the test it is going to go towards his grade. He only got one wrong! Mr. Fox also thinks that Reece's reading skills are right with the others in the class. So, so far so good on the Reece front.

Carter is going to start pre-school next Monday. He is going to go to Cottage Grove for pre-school 4 days a week. I figured he needed as much time as he could get since he'll be starting kindergarten in the fall and hasn't had any pre-school experience yet. I'll be sure to keep you informed on how his first weeks of school go.

Gavin is going to be evaluated for speech therapy in the weeks to come. We have been noticing that his speech is hard to understand and a little behind for his age so the public school is going to evaluate and see if they can help him. He'll start pre-school next fall. So the two of us will be doing a lot with the local library and the MOMS Club so he'll get his time out to socialize.

So things are starting to fall into place. The house is mostly put together and day to day routines are starting to emerge. It's just really strange to not have Dave around, but we'll get through it...one day at a time!

Christmas at home

This was our first Christmas off the island in 2 years. We arrived on St Maarten on Christmas Eve 2006 and spent that and Christmas 2007 in St Maarten. It was so strange to have snow and cold weather for Christmas, but it does seem a lot more festive. The kids and I made Christmas cookies and decorated them, and I also did some chocolate dipped pretzels and marshmallows. It was so nice to be able to do those things with all the kitchen appliances a girl could ask for!

We spent Christmas Eve with Dave's Mom, Dad, Uncle Craig, Aunt Patty, and cousins Cayley and Cullen. We had a great time opening gifts, catching up, and eating some wonderful food...the wine was pretty great too.

On Christmas day we woke up early and the boys opened their presents from Santa. Santa left each boy a bike in the garage and we sent Reece out twice and he never even saw them, we finally had to just open the door and say "Hey what is that in the garage?" Totally ruined the moment! Here they each are with one of their favorite gifts. Reece was so excited to have his own alarm clock so he didn't have to get out of bed anymore to see what time it is!

After presents we all got ready and went to my brother Matt's house for more presents and more food...oh and a little more wine. Here is the Johnston Clan on Christmas. It was a fun day and we were so glad to be together again.

We also finally met our new niece Calleigh and she was as sweet as can be! I got to feed her dinner and it was nice to feed a little baby again!
We had a great Christmas! Thanks everyone for all the nice gifts...the kids won't need anymore toys for sure for a long time! It was nice to be back home and with our families for the holiday!

I know you have all been wondering...

How are trip back to the US has been. I'm sorry I wasn't able to post until now. It took the internet company 2 weeks to get to our house to install the cable and internet...not to far from what you could expect with "island time."

So I'll start a few days before we left the island (which already feels like a life time ago...and not in a good way!). Reece's class threw a big surprise going away party for Reece. He had no idea but the teacher let us in on the surprise so we could come and take pictures! They were all so sad to see him go and his best friend Max was almost in tears by the end of the day. It was very touching to see that Reece had such a great group of friends while we were in St. Maarten.

We got all of our cleaning done on schedule! Shocker I know! We got busy that Wednesday before we left, and although it took all day we were able to check into the hotel that night with the load off our shoulders that all the work was done! Dave took his last test that Thursday and then we came back to the hotel for some relaxing and we had a nice dinner out for our last night out on the island.
Friday my friends Jill, Hanna, Carlyn and Meagan all showed up to help us get our suitcases to the airport and then we all shared one last lunch (for a while, but not forever) together.

This picture is the only one I got of all our luggage. It is lined all the way down as far as you can see.

So the plane ride went pretty well. We got a lot of dirty looks all day for having so much luggage and so many carry ons plus the cats! But we got through the day ok and the kids were great on the plane...even the cats did a good job and were barely noticed the whole day of travel. So we got back on Friday very late and were hit immediately by the COLD! It was horrible outside, I believe that night was below zero. The kids were frozen because we didn't have very good winter coats for them, Dave and I were already questioning why we left the beautiful weather of the Caribbean to return to fridge conditions! Saturday we went out right away and bought my dream car. I had been doing research for months and many of my island friends already knew that an orange mini van was in my future because I never stopped talking about it. So Tange became the newest member of the Reimer family. A 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan..now the kids don't have to touch each other, oh how nice to have a car we can fit in, and one I'm not afraid is going to break down any minute.

Reece's birthday was the 17th. We took him to Chuck E Cheese as promised. And the boys all had a great time playing all the games.

For dinner we met up with Dave's parents and had a yummy dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings and shared Reece's birthday cake. I can't believe he's 9! Holy crap do I feel old now!

I'll have to get to Christmas in another post...it has just been a whirlwind with Reece's birthday, Christmas, and moving back into our house. Dave leaves Sunday for Dallas until February 20th so we've been trying to spend a lot of time getting things together around here before he leaves. The house right now is just a disaster with stuff everywhere. We've also had to go shopping a lot for Christmas presents and clothes. Carter and Gavin had a ton of stuff that I had saved, but Reece had nothing in his size at all. We've also of course, hit most of our favorite restaurants that we had been missing for so long. So we've been really busy around here! We hope everyone had a good holiday and I promise to update very soon with photos of Christmas!

This will put you in the Christmas spirit!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Happy Birthday Cullen

We just wanted to send Cullen a huge hug for his 11th birthday today. Cullen is Dave's cousin and one of Reece's best pals. We hope you had an awesome day and we can't wait to see you very soon!

Holiday Concert

Reece had a Holiday Concert at school on Wednesday. He was so excited about it and made us arrive 45 minutes early because he was afraid we wouldn't find a seat! He sang first with the CIA choir and then did a song with his class. Each of the classes 1-6 did a song or little play that they acted out. It was really cute. This was CIA's first Holiday Concert and for being the first I think it was a hit!

Last night, Dave and I went out with his group of friends for a goodbye dinner. Dave will see almost all of them at Falcon in January but I may not see many of them again so it was nice to have one more dinner together. The kids stayed home with their best pal Carlyn! They had a great time and could have cared less when we got home!

I really can't believe how soon we will be home now. It seems surreal! I'm doing so well getting the major stuff done it doesn't look like we are going to have to bad a time on Wednesday and Thursday getting the last of the stuff done, which will leave more time for fun at the hotel! We are really pushing to have everything done on Thursday so we can just be lazy by the pool all day...hopefully it all goes as planned!