Hunter







Vern has had a busy fall. One thing he has kept busy with has been hunting. Now while I do not enjoy the sport, Vern does, so I support his endeavors. Below are a couple photos of the spoils of his hunting.

 

 

First is a photo one the day after raccoon hunting.  Vern's words "Do you see how much fat is on it?" I guess the raccoon was getting ready for winter. Vern went swimming on this hunting trip in a creek up to his chest. That had to be cold! 

 

 

This next photo is from this past weekend when Vern went deer hunting. He got his very first buck. It was SOOOOO cold outside. Vern had on a few layers and boy did he sleep well last night. He ended up hurting his ankle on this hunting trip.

Vern is enjoying his fall.

 

Top Jr. High Dog

Wow it sure doesn't seem possible that my baby is in 8th grade this year. The years are flying by.  I have been doing Vern's blog for quite a few years now and you have watched him grow on this page. Soon he will look more like an adult with all this puberty we have going on. What a ride!

Second day of school picture. It is a tradition to get your photo taken each year with your book bag, new outfit, and shoes. It's always in same room, same spot so I guess you get to see how little I change things up in the house. LOL

The 8th graders are each issued an iPad. This can be good or bad. For our household with Vern in it I would go the bad route as it is yet another electronic device for him to play on instead of doing something constructive. Sigh...

Here is an up close and personal shot of the iPad. The identify them in school by the picture they each took on day one.

Next I am tossing in a couple photos from Vern's court of honor we had a week or so ago. This is where they are recognized for the badges they have earned. Vern had a few he earned at summer camp.

Vern said he becomes "Life" at the next meeting. He is doing well and I hope he continues to advance.

Here is to a successful 8th grade year!

Summer Camp 2014 - #3 aka Farm Camp

Vern attended year two of farm camp recently. He had a great time as usual. (Thanks everyone!)

My sister did comment "Boy I forgot how boys that age eat." She needed a loan to feed him for the week. :-)

Vern did comment that by the end of the week he was tired of pizza.

Some other activities for the week included riding motorcycles. No Vern did not ride his own!

He also rode 4 wheelers and had some fun with his older cousin.

He got quite a few bug bites in bad places. (You just can't spray that thing....)


Sis did say he fed the animals and did some chores.

Finally they did some fishing. That guy is still in my freezer!

Vern had a good end to his summer and now it is back to learning at school...

Back to school shopping - BLACK WEEKEND

If you have never had to back to school shop for kids consider yourself LUCKY, as in winning the lottery lucky.  These first few weeks of August are terrible. Stay far away from the office and school supply isles in stores. Don't go clothing shopping in kids or juniors areas of department stores. This is my warning to you!  It is just as bad as black Friday. Yes you heard me right.  To make it worse the only time this event fell into our schedule was on tax-free weekend. That equates to oh about a bazillion more people in the stores just to save 8% on their purchases.

There are mobs of people. A lot of times on black Friday there are only occasional children but during back to school shopping you have all the parents and all the children as the children just H-A-V-E to select their own pencils and pens for an unbelievably long list of school supplies needed each year.  Oh don't go thinking just because they had a pencil box last year that they can in way use the same pencil box this year.

1. The kids would be laughed at and made complete fun of if they came to school with last years "stuff".
2. The teachers/schools require completely different supplies from one grade to the next.

So here we are in the midst of the mob looking for: book bags, pens, pencils, paper, folders, trapper keepers, planners, composition notebooks, calculators....on and on. Trying to get everything shoved into a shopping cart so the next mob can make their way down the isle. BUT WAIT...on top of all that you need to do your best price comparison shopping. They hide the sales items and have the expensive stuff prominently displayed.  Yes, there is a large price variance on items. One set of pencils $2 - next pile same set of pencils in different packaging $4.  You grab the wrong thing...double the price and with 10,000 people in same isle as you it is very easy to get the wrong item or the most expensive item.

After that traumatic experience we have yet to get the first day of school new outfit. This requires one store for the boy and 16 stores for the girl. Finally, after an exhausting day we complete our mission and head home exhausted with germs. Yes both Ann and I caught colds from this mess.


Next I am moving onto public school itself. When childless people say its a free education, they have absolutely NO idea what they are talking about. Public school is SO FAR FROM FREE it is not even funny.  So on top of the new clothes, shoes and school supplies I now need to write checks for things such as:
Ipad "insurance"
Activity passes
Lunches
Additional check to be in activities
Plus another check for clothing to be in activities listed above

Each item requires a separate check. The kids each start school with about 5 checks for this and that. Ann lost one of her $75 checks but a nice lady found it and called me. THANK YOU good Samaritan.

No, you can not go shopping for good deals on these items. You must just smile, bend over and write a check for whatever dollar amount the school says.

That my friends is back to school time for parents.

Vacation 2014

I debated on which of my blogs I would post this and I decided here this time. Let's get going on our family vacation 2014!!!

Because of all the hail damage and expenses we all decided to go on a smaller vacation this year but in place of fanciness the kids were allowed each to bring a friend.  A very relaxing fun vacation was had by all as you will see by the photos that follow.

First off, as we are driving I just had to have a picture of this water tower. It is the absolute coolest water tower I have ever seen - an 8 ball!~! The water towers around here are all boring compared to this one.

I also "had" to include this photo as it is a joke. On every family vacation we have gone on with Superman he ends up intentionally or not taking us down some spooky out of the way gravel/dirt/other type of road. This year was no exception! :-)

Next we are onto swimming.  I don't know what is going on with this child but she decided eating rocks was fun.

Superman tried and tried but this was the closest photo we could get of all 4 kids looking at us...we got 3. They had a beautiful day to swim while I lounged on the beach in the shade.

No matter what I tried on this photo the blog turned it sideways. Even when I uploaded it was horizontal until I brought it into the blog so we will have to live with the photo the wrong direction. Even with that you can see the kids were all getting along great and having fun with the bunk beds.  NO they did not sleep like this!!!

Next we are going fishing!  We even got the girls to fish and Ann caught her very first fish ever. You can see them holding it here. Right after this shot was taken the fish decided to "beeee freee". He leaped out of their grasp and went flying through the air landing on my second toe spearing it as it landed. Blood gooshed from my toe. Ann's friend ran to get paper towels. I am healing and that was the worst injury on the trip.

Here is Vern with one of his MASSIVE  catches.  Hey ~ at least they were catching fish.

Here is a much nicer sized fish for a photo.

I am including this next photo because I think it is a great photo of Vern's friend!!! He and Vern had a great time doing boy stuff. Yes, we let them do a bit of playing on games in the evening...

I also included this next shot as it is my favorite of those silly boys of mine. They were chilaxin in the hammock. I could barely pry Superman out of the thing!!!

                                     

Next is Vern on one of the zip-lines. The proprietors were very safety oriented and no one was going to fall out of their lines!

Next is a shot of the two younger guys relaxing in that same hammock.  It was the favorite thing to do after zip lining.

And here we have rock eater posing for some crazy reason. No wonder her and Ann get along so well both are drama princesses!

Another zip line shot of the kids having fun.

Here is a nice shot of Ann on the zip line. She of course thought it was not nearly exciting enough. My dare-devil and fearless child.  She is so beautiful in this photo. (Yes I am biased just go with it k?)

I will end with this scenic shot of the lake the kids swam in. It was so peaceful and not crowded. I loved the afternoon we spent here.

Now back to work and reality...vacation is over.

Summer Camp 2014 - #2

Vern was home for one night and then off to summer camp #2. This was a Boy Scout Camp near Medicine Mountain in South Dakota.

There were many hurdles for this trip. First his dad backed out at the last minute. This did not leave us any time to arrange for Superman to go. Coincidence? I think not.

Next Vern's second day there entailed a long trip to town to a doctor!~~!!!  Vern's allergies were acting up so badly he said that his throat was getting tight. So in addition to his normal allergy medication, he got additional nasal spray plus Benedryl. He was stuffy the entire trip. I heard from another mom that the pine trees were pollinating so I am guessing that is what made Vern so stuffy and miserable.

Then it was onto the bug bites. Camp number 1 left him with chiggers and bug bites on his legs so on camp #2 he scratched and scratched until they bled. He may have some scars with those horrible bites.  When he got home I had him use hydrocortizone and now he is doing better.

Rain, storms and more rain. There were thunderstorms every single day of his camp. Not fun but he managed. It was also cold.

Yes there is more!

Vern had a run in with some nails in a board in tall grass. He wasn't wearing his boots as they had given him some nasty blisters so he just had on his running shoes. Well you guessed it, Vern was walking through the tall grass and bam. He stepped on the board containing the nails and one punctured his foot. Thank goodness it didn't go all the way through his foot! He had a nasty hole in the bottom of his foot and a limp for a few days.

Next was the bad food. If Vern says the food is bad, it is BAD!  He said some of the food was expired for 3 years.  The Oreo cookies had green stuff in the middle instead of the normal white.  Thank goodness his tent mate had a lot of snacks and was willing to share.

Finally Vern was home but that is not the end of the story.


Vern had been away from mom for 2 weeks so he had none of her "Eat your vegetables." "Don't eat so much junk food."  or the infamous... "Eat that crap and you won't be able to poop!"  Yep I get home from work on Tuesday night and the tummy was hurting. Vern was also having issues going P. Finally we got tired of the screaming and took him to Children's ER. We arrived around 10:30 pm. You know how ER's are...wait-wait-wait.

Doc finally sees Vern and we take an x-ray. Vern is all backed up. He gets his first enema in his life and low and behold it does not work!!!! We get a prescription and head home. Finally climb into bed around 3:15 am. Talk about a short night... Zzz  Here is a photo of Vern in his hospital garb.

Happy Pooping!!!!

Summer Camp 2014 #1

Summer camp #1

Well Vern is back from his first camp of the summer. This was confirmation camp through the church. As you can see from the photos below it is a lot more than studying the Bible. It is fun together time with great counselors. 

I asked Vern so what did you learn?  His typical response, "Oh stuff I all ready knew like God loves you."

This year they got to stay in a new building - more of a dorm style. This was much nicer than the old sheds converted into sleeping quarters they had in prior years.  Vern did say he did not like his counselor and one time a counselor hit a boy. I don't know what was all up with that but plan on looking further into that.

This week Vern is off to Summer camp #2. I do not know if I will get any photos from that camp out but will be sure to update how it went.

Paddle boating -

Fishing - Vern said they only got to fish for a short time and the other kids kept catching his line. No fish either. :-(

Vern is the second kid on the high ropes. He ended up with a nasty scrape down the front of his leg from falling once.

Zipping down the line at the end - always fun!

 

Schools out for summer!

Well Vern is now finished with 7th grade and onto 8th grade. His final grades were similar to 3rd quarter with A's and B's. I was happy but the part that made me the happiest was there were no "N's" or needs improvements from any teacher!!!! Vern was using his time more wisely and trying harder. That is what we have been asking for and Vern finally pulled through. GREAT JOB VERN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Next year in 8th grade each student receives an Ipad to use for the year. We have to attend meetings in August on this. If it helps Vern with studying I am all for it. I just hope he doesn't sit in class playing games. This will be quite the test of his abilities to resist temptation. I am sure you will see blogs on the topic...

Vern has a lot of summer activities planned. There are camps and vacations and trips to see people. He will keep busy.

We are trying to push Vern to get off the electronics and get out and do different things. This is a huge challenge. Last weekend we "made" the teenagers go on a bike ride.  Vern actually had a good time and enjoyed it. His sister....let's just say she hates us and can't believe she had to be seen in public with a stupid helmet on. My God, we are trying to ruin her!  The drama was unbelievable.

For the summer we are hoping there is more of this:

And less of this!!!

We shall see how it turns out!!!

Just like all the others...

Vern is very much into puberty. Not so much yet on the outside but zowie on the inside. His emotions are all over the place. He is mouthy. He ignores you. He is disrespectful.  Yes, he is 13.

Now I as most parents probably try to curb this bad behavior. I believe those same parents have about as good of results as I do - NILL.

We talk about it. We inflict punishments for poor behavior. We talk about it some more. We dole out more privilege restrictions. Things get better until the restriction is released or the item returned. Then the poor behavior returns.  Can I say frustrating???

How do I know this is typical 13 year old behavior, because our nephew turns 13 this week and he acts the exact same way!!!! He hasn't seen his uncle in months and the first thing he tries to do to him is rack him in the balls!!! After that he is super mean to Uncle and wrestles and fights with him the entire time.  He is rude and mouthy and just like Vern. Hmmm, I see a pattern.

OH PLEASE let this phase pass quickly.  Soon it will be driving. AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

April 2014 - Happy Easter!

I was looking at the blogs and thought CRAP, it had been a month since I have updated Vern's blog. There has not been a lot going on. I have been working, working, working so have not done any blogging, even reading blogs.

Vern is really starting to get into puberty. His attitude is typical teenager - BAD. Mouthy, not listening, and all he does is mess with his iPod, XBOX, or computer.

He is doing OK at school - Had one detention this past month.

Today was Easter. He looked so handsome all dressed up. We had to make a quick trip to get dress shoes as he didn't have any that fit. The weather was beautiful so we spent the rest of the day outside.

Vern and his sister helped me with leaves and they picked up stick and pine cones. Then they drove the garden tractor over to a giant burn pile with all the stuff we picked up.

It was a good day and our evening meal Vern loved. We had ham, potatoes, green beans and fruit salad! Vern has bowlfuls of fruit salad the way I make it.

They worked really hard and even got a bit sun burnt. Tonight we are getting a bit of rain. April showers.


Happy Easter to all. May God Bless you all.

Third quarter Grades

You previously read about conferences and things not going to well. Conferences
I thought I would give you an update now that report cards have come out.

English -            1st quarter C                  3rd quarter B  YEAH!!!!!
World History - 1st Quarter A-               3rd quarter B- BOOOO
Science -           1st Quarter C+               3rd quarter B YEAH!!!!!
Math -               1st Quarter B                 3rd quarter A YEAH!!!!!
PE A+
Choir A
Art A+
Skills for Live Pass

Only one BOO. I think this is fantastic improvement!!!!!

Keep up the great work for one more quarter Vern.
 

Hog Hunt

Note: Before reading this blog please read this. There are graphic photos in this blog. If you have a squeamish stomach you may want to close the blog and not continue reading on.

You would think with this first picture - "What an angel. Sleeping so peacefully." My little baby was going to take a step to manhood with his first kill. He was going on his first hunt to shoot a wild boar.

I much prefer this first photo to the ones that follow. Here he is sleeping away during the drive. Vern and Superman had a long 7 hour drive to their destination so there was plenty of time for some zzzz's.

Here is Mr. Kool having some lunch. Where do you think the boys would go on a weekend away? You guessed it - Hooters - hamburgers and boobies!

Here they are at the destination and doing some target shooting. Vern is great about following the safety rules and listening. I am very proud of him for this. It was grey and chilly for most of the trip but that did not deter the enthusiasm.

Here is the first photo from the actual hunt. The guide is helping Vern set up the shot and aim at one of the boars. It is hard for me to tell from the photo but Vern said it was about 100 yards. When Vern took the shot no one thought he hit anything. Superman thought he saw one of the pigs stumble but they all ran off. Soon after, one of the other guides noticed some blood and one of the hunting dogs found the severely wounded hog a little ways away.  They took Vern over to the hog and he had to finish killing the pig.

Here is proud Vern with his kill. I think this is what they call the "money shot", as all hunters pose by their kills.  Vern told me it is a great way to blow off some anger and testosterone.  I believe him although I can't relate being female...it seems sick and wrong to me.

 Next is one of the more graphic photos. After they kill the hogs they ride in a truck and take them back to be weighed and gutted.  I just say YUCK!

They decided to keep the hogs and took them home. In this next photo they are skinning the animals and preparing them to eat.

Vern is 100% in on the entire process. In this photo he is taking the skin and head off of the boar.

Vern is very proud of himself and he should be. This is a big step for him. He kept begging Superman to bring the head and skin of the pig home. Superman kept trying to dissuade Vern from this. Nothing was working. What finally convinced Vern to toss the head and skin? Bugs (I can only assume fleas.) were found crawling all over the skin and head. Vern was finished with asking to bring it home after he saw those. (Mom cheering at that!)  Vern did bring home the meat which was bug free and gave to his dad. That was nice.  I asked Vern how it tasted as they ate one of the pigs that night for dinner. His reply - "Oh not to bad, I think the ham was chewy."

Here is Vern the next morning and a couple mornings after. He was very tired and worn out after his weekend away. Superman - well he ended up getting super sick and missing some work. Guess those boys shouldn't play if they can't take it. 

It's all up to you...

So it is that time of year again - school conferences.

This time there was a theme to the conferences but I will get to that in a minute. I believe I have talked before about how in middle school the conferences are student led. This means that the kids talk about their grades and papers they have done. The teachers walk around and talk a bit if you have any questions. I understand why they make kids do this but would rather have a more traditional talk with the teachers.

So Vern starts going through his papers. I see many individual grades below par. I ask him what is going on?  I get back "I don't know."  What can you do to improve this paper next time? "I don't know." You get the picture.

Finally a teacher shows up to talk about Vern and his grades. They proceed to say along the lines of the following: Vern is doing well but sometimes does not pay attention in class.  I think Vern could do better.  Next teacher: Vern is not working up to his potential. Vern is choosing to rush through his papers.  Next teacher: It is all up to what Vern chooses to do. Vern grasps the concepts very well but needs to apply himself. Next teacher: (Math) Wow, Vern has really improved his grades and how he acts in class. He is doing much better than first semester.

So the theme really rang true with all the teachers. Vern you are at a juncture in your life where you can choose the outcome. You are an extremely smart kid that grasps ideas at a much higher grade level. What will you choose to do with your gifts Vern?

It is all up to you!!!

Bulls Eye!

I know.
I know.

It has been a long time since a post. Chalk it up to 10-12 hour days at work. Doesn't leave much time for typing.

Vern finally got to try out his bow and arrows he got for Christmas. We had a break in our F-R-I-G-I-D weather for a day and we ran out bought a bale of straw and set up his shooting area.

He had a great time shooting his zombie targets.  One of the arrows broke on the first shoot.  The rest of us also tried shooting the zombie. John hit the zombie in the chin, Superman hit the zombie in the arm, I hit the zombie in the gonads, and Vern hit the zombie right smack in the forehead! Mind you the zombie on the bale was only a picture of his head so you get an idea of where we all hit the zombie in relation to the head on a bale of straw. Yes, I need either more practice or assume that zombies hit in the balls will take them out! HA HA

It is back to frigid so no shooting lately but maybe in a few weeks we will be back out shooting.  I can tell you one thing with Vern around we will be ready for the apocalypse.