oh my gosh... where did 2009 go??

Ha ha ha! This year has just FLOWN BY! :-) I can't believe that in less than a month my baby girl will be THREE years old! eek how time flies!

I know i'm always saying i'm too busy to update this thing, and you probably think i'm just making it up, right? lol! Here's a little sample of all we've had going on since July:

We've moved all of our belongings up here to the farm and somehow found a place to store them :-), tore off the falling in roof of a small block building up here on the farm, repaired the blocks where needed, added new windows to that building, built a new roof and porch for that building and worked on repairing the floor. (that little buidling will eventually be josh's office so he can work from home)

I pulled off the siding of one of the collapsing outbuildings up here to de-nail and recycle that siding for use on a woodshed, cleaned out that building while i was at it (that took 3 days by itself!)and whatever was salvageable from the stuff i cleaned out i had to find a place to put it too. ha ha ha! And Oh my gosh.. you should have seen the huge amounts of termites!! I was LITERALLY running from them, there were so many of them, it reminded me of a scene from the movie 'The Mummy' eek! and bugs don't usually scare me!... don't worry, i ran back at them with lots of termite spray.. take that ya darn bugs!! lol!! Luckily, they weren't a fan of whatever the outbuilding siding was made of, and just some of the framing boards. so Nearly everything was usable! hallelujah!
Then We've built a 8 x 16 x 8ft high woodshed, roofed and painted that and have been busy cutting and chopping wood to fill that up, since our only heat source is the wood stove. Also, painted the gable of mom's cabin, patched the garage roof, got rid of a literal ton of old tires left from the previous owner, collected and got rid of 3 sixteen foot long flatbed trailer loads of junk to either the dump or the scrapyard. fixed a water line leak. and baked about 70 loaves of zucchini, pumpkin, apple, and rhubarb/strawberry breads for christmas! WHEW! I'm tired just recounting all that..

believe me now? ha ha ha! seriously though!I absolutely LOVEEE every minute of it, Green acres is totally the place for me! We hope to have some chickens of our own next spring and I can't wait to get planting next years garden too! woohoo! We are enjoying the 14 inches of snow we had last saturday! sooo beautiful! HERE IS A PHOTO ALBUM from Joanna's first snow day out in it! she had a BLAST!!! she bawled and bawled when we decided to bring her in because her gloves and pants had soaked through with icy water! ha ha ha! she quickly recovered though when i gave her some cookies and hot chocolate! ha ha! Joanna has been loving all the wonderful decorating for christmas and I hope to get some video of Joanna to post here soon too! *fingers crossed* maybe later tonight I'll get that done! :-)

((HUGS TO YOU ALL)))

Sherah, Josh and Joanna :-)

The Song of the Angels:
"Glory to God in the highest
and on earth, Peace."

~ Luke 2:14

Happy July!

Hi All!

We are FINALLY moved up to the farm and I can hardly believe it! Wooohoo!!
I just thought I'd let you know we are no longer at our old address and I'll be sending out the new one within the month after we get all that moved over. :-) I hope that all of you are doing great and that you will have an awesome 4th of July holiday! We're so excited to be traveling down for josh's family's get together for the holiday! I will even get to swing by and see my sister Saron and brother Jon! YAY! Here's a little picture of joanna for you since the move, we haven't found our little swimming pool yet, so in the meantime she gets to cool off in a bowl! rofl!
oh yeah, and Pamela, the hat joanna is wearing is the one you gave to me in Rockford, so i thought you would get a kick out of the fact that she always wears 'your' hat outside :-D

Easter Pics and Spring Cleaning :-)

Hi Everyone! :-) I'm just now getting Easter pictures scrapped so I thought I'd share them with you here :-) We had a great time hanging out at my sister in law Allison's house for Easter sunday and she took these pictures of us, i love them all but i think my favorite is the one where joanna is giving me the flower :-)



This was soo cute, joanna just plopped down in the middle of her easter egg hunt and started eating the candy and then Allison's dog 'baby' came over to investigate and they ended up sharing the candy, it was adorable! lol Allison has a lovely flower garden and apparently joanna thinks so too! Here is her little 'hand stand' that she learned from her cousin Brooklyn almost a year ago she does this all the time, its so funny!

in our town we had a free trash pickup day sponsored by the local lions club chapter so josh thought it would be a good idea for me to stay at the farm one week with MIL and FIL and get up everyday early and pick up the some of the junk that the previous owners left. This is the result of 5 days of cleaning up ( and this doesn't include the 300+ tires or close to 4 tons of scrap metal! arg... lol) Those are our two dogs, mine, the black lab Reagan and MIL and FIL's dog, Muttley Our awesome neighbor Bill was doing some spring cleaning of his own and gave this riding lawn mower to FIL, it was an awesome answer to prayer! :-)

Joanna's Birthday and alot of water problems :-)

Hi everyone!

Sorry It's been a while since I've posted the last few weeks have been crazy.

Since the installation of the water line josh and I have had to repair 3 leaks
(and yes, digging a 2 foot deep by 5 foot long trench in the middle of frozen, muddy winter and laying on your belly to repair it is no fun at all. )

Also, as it turns out that the trouble i was having with my computer was indeed a nasty virus so thats been keeping me really busy at home trying to backup and recover files and transfer them to a new computer. (I still haven't been able to recover quite a bit of the images, so if anybody knows of a program... please lemme know :-)

Aside from that, we are all doing well. Joanna hasn't had any other bouts of the croup since her overnight stay on Christmas Day in the hospital so we are really thankful for that! :-) Our doctor said that if it happens again bundle her up and take her out in the cold to breathe the cold air (i guess the theory is that the cold air constricts the swollen tissues in her throat) and helps her breathe better. Anywhoo

I thought you might want to see some of the pictures from Joanna's 2nd birthday party so here you go :-)

Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone!

From our family to yours we hope that you all have a wonderful
and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

For those of you in my family who aren't familiar with my job,
I design digital artwork for use in digital scrapbooking.
Pictured above is a sample of what I create. :-)

WATER!!!

Never in my entire life have I appreciated city water as much as I do now... LOL

after the massive 1600 foot water line project we are happy to report that MIL and FIL's cabin has running water with great pressure and no leaks! WOOHOO!! A project that we originally thought would take maybe a weekend has taken nearly 17 days to complete, and each of those days have been totally physically exhausting. Josh and I feel like we've been on a chain gang with all the digging we've done on this project. I tell ya one thing, I sure can shovel a heck of alot better now than i could when i first started! LOL! Here are a few pictures from this massive project.. now here's to hoping the line never leaks! ;-)


the beginning of the project, starting at the road, from L-R my FIL Dale, my
brother in law, Todd and our Pastor, Steve.

view from the bottom of the hill.

view from the top corner of the hill.

check out the overalls and beat up truck... how 'country girl' is this? lol

Todd running the mini excavator here we are 20 feet from the cabin! :-) Almost Done!!


the 'chain gang' me, Todd and Josh




For those of you who haven't yet seen our property here is an old satellite image
with the property line in red, the water line we just dug in blue where we would eventually
like to build our home in green and my mother and father in laws cabin in yellow.

In other news, I had an external hard drive problem where tons (220GB) of data became corrupted somehow then dissapeared... (family home videos, family photos, all of my work related items etc. a real catastrophe for me!) I've spent the last few days on the phone with technical support and trying recovery software, switching cables, various other options etc.and according to my EHD manufacturer needed to purchase and additional EHD (80 bucks) and then their recovery software (130 bucks ) to recover my files. It's running now so hopefully it will work and I'll get all of that back. needless to say i was really upset about it, it feels strange having to pay so much money for data that i already owned. Especially now with the holidays right upon us and we haven't even had time to christmas shop yet. So pray for me if you think of it, I'm pretty bummed about that, so hopefully it will fixable.

Joanna is doing great, walking up steps, drinking from a cup by herself, eating with a fork and spoon (mostly with her left hand like her Grandma Madsen and uncle Jason K.) and learning soo much every day, she says the 'patty-cake' rhyme though really josh and i are probably the only ones who can make it out since we know her 'jabber' lol As far as words go she says 'Meh Meh' (for Mommy) and 'Dah Dah' (for daddy) points out her facial features and knows a few of their names (nose, mouth) and says: Apple, Banana, Go, Hi, Bye, I love you, Uh-Oh, Ok, Up,
Dog, Ball , No (thats her current fave LOL) and a handful of others, so not much on the talking department, but thats ok, I'm not in a major rush to see her grow up :-) She is really into reading, dancing, singing, coloring and studying things to figure them out. She loves little dolls and can play with them for hours. I'm really enjoying seeing traits of both Josh and I in her! :-)

Dad's Birthday

Last weekend at Dad's birthday party at Sarah and Dan's house:
Emma says 'HI!" from the other room :-) LOL isn't she soo cute!!

the girls made personalized stuffed animals (courtesy of aunt Lisa :-)

Bethany's masterpiece!

Bethany shows off the 'birth certificat' of her stuffed animal
Joanna and I played 'roll the ball back and forth' while Josh and Dad played ping pong
later we played the Nintendo Wii Fit and Rock Band and some American Idol
We really had a great time!

Hiking and Asian Pears...

Sorry it's been such a crazy long time since I've updated the blog, it's been really busy around here :-) Better late than never, eh? We are working this week on getting the wood burning stove in the MIL & FIL's cabin. then next weekend will be the huge project of digging and installing a city water line from the road to the cabin (1600 feet to the road). It will be worth it though since the well water has been pretty low lately, and if we plan to get up there this winter, it will be nice to have water! lol Josh's brother in law Mike and sister Kristy were in last weekend, we had alot of fun with them and they took lots of pictures of our messy farm to show everyone. LOL :-) Here are some pics we took while they were here too, thought you might like to see

pictures of our hike around my Sister in law, Allison's property

Josh and I chillin' in my Sister in laws hammock

what a pair!

(and what a pear! or uhhh.. pears :-) LOL
we found an asian pear tree full grown up on the farm
and it had these wonderful pears on it! we were so excited, it
was such a wonderful fall surprise! Joanna has been eating pears like
crazy, she will walk over to the table, grab a pear (or two)
and start munching away :-)and here is Josh's sister Kristy and her husband Mike
(typical for Josh's family, they are both very tall, Kristy is 6'1")

The past few weeks :-)

Hi Everyone :-)

Things are going good here, reallllyyy busy but good. Its been an exciting month for us. Josh and I were able to get some time away and spend a weekend at a local resort. If you ever get the chance to visit it, you should. It was really very nice :-) Stonewall Resort ( http://www.stonewallresort.com/ ) is where we stayed and were able to spend some time Canoeing and paddleboating, hiking, biking and swimming. they had really delicious meals as well and golfing. Though I'm not much of a golfer so we didn't really do any of that.

My Mother in Law has been busy working on getting her older motor home cleaned out so I can start repairing and remodeling it for us to use as a 'bedroom' so that we can move up to the farm sooner. Their cabin is 900 square feet currently and we are planning to add on to it to give them an additional Library,Guest bedroom and bathroom in the future. Last weekend My Mother in Law and I worked hard to clean out a block storage building on the farm so that we can renovate it into an 'office' for Josh's work for when we move here to the farm. Luckily for us we can get high speed internet out here since both of us work with computers so that is a wonderful blessing! :-) The last few weeks have been really busy trying to sort through things to give away store and pack etc. for downsizing and moving out to the farm since there will not be alot of space right away.

Josh and I had a chance to stop up at my Dad's 'investment' house this weekend and the past few weekends to help him out a little on fixing it up for rental or re-sale. There are alot of tasks yet to be done,and hopefully we will be able to help him get all of that finished soon.

Alot of Josh's family has been in for the Labor Day weekend and we've really been enjoying all of them. We played badmitton yesterday getting into a huge 'tournament' it was really hysterical since none of us are really very good at it. It was soo funny everyone getting so excited if we actually hit the birdie! LOL! Even my Father came up for lunch and games and everyone had a great time. My nephew, Jason, had his guitar with him and was excited to show us all he had learned on the guitar in the last 6 months so that was really fun to hear him play. We ended up having alot of guitar players with us last night since Josh's friend, Jesse, Kim's husband, Michael and my Father all play guitar as well so they all passed it around and played for all of us and sang. It was really amazing to see all the different varieties of music that can be played from a single instrument. It was really wonderful. Since all the men were here my Mother in Law was able to get her upright piano moved into the cabin from storage and that was fun to have that in the house with everyone playing and dancing around. Joanna had such fun with all singing, dancing and games going on :-)

So far it has been a really great weekend, I hope you are having a great Labor Day weekend as Well! :-)

((hugs from all of us))

Sherah

Josh's Birthday

The other day,  (7-24 ) was Josh's 30th birthday we went out to Applebee's and then to the new Batman movie. Both were really nice.  While at Applebee's we were talking about options for moving out to the farm. We are currently thinking that we will enclose a space in the garage and finish that space for Josh to convert into an office and then fix up my Mother and Father in Law's 70's motor home to use as a bedroom. 

We have their cabin livable at this point with some extra projects that need to be completed but we are thinking that the faster we get out there, the faster all of these projects will be finished.  As it stands, we only work on the farm Friday Evening through Sunday.  And it will really be nice to not have to worry about paying for gas to get there and back all the time.

Please pray for us that we will be able to find a way to park the motor home in the garage or build a car port to protect if from winter weather as this is an obstacle we will have to work through. 

The Very First Post

Hi All!

We decided to start a Family and Friends blog because I just don't feel too comfortable sharing a bunch of personal information on the work blog. :-) It's kind of cool being the only Kraan's in the phone book, let alone the whole state! :-) We are doing well, putting up hay this year was sort of a bust, we only managed to collect almost half due to rain, and the tractor breaking down, etc. but who said farmin' was easy, huh? LOL :-) I hope everyone is doing great where you are! :-)