From the Heins'

Ditto Lynn's blog! :-) It has been stressful around here. I hope all of you will consider writing the Kansas legislators in support of the schools. They have to find funding somewhere, the more letters they get the more likely they are to "find" the funds!

We went to the Catholic schools mass this morning. The singing brought me to tears...hopefully my other two kids will be able to stand up there and sing those same songs!

We are all doing great! I might need at little R and R at OKC and St. Lucia. I can hardly wait for those two dates! See you all soon, Stacy and Family

News from the Redeker Ranch

I guess I read the blogs but don't contribute!

I am going to use this opportunity to blow off a little steam. If any of you have talked to Mary Beth lately, you have probably heard that we are going through the very painful process of discussing consolidation of Olpe and Hartford public schools. I am not even going to get into those details. What REALLY pisses me off is to hear comments like, "well why don't you just close St. Joseph School and send those kids to the public school. That would equal $175,000 in State funding." First of all, the USD 252 budget deficit is $400,000. As you ALL know, we work our ASSES off to keep SJS open, not to mention all the personal sacrifices we make to be able to afford to send our kids there. There are a lot of material things that I would like but I would not trade them for my kids' catholic education. AND no one can promise that if we close SJS that the public schools would never consolidate. Now that would be an even bigger tragedy to lose our catholic gem of a grade school and the public school. I think the public patrons need to donate money to their foundation and fight for their school and not look to someone else to solve their problem. Sorry to be such a rambling idiot but I cannot express the joy that fills my heart every time I hear my kids saying the prayers that we used to recite and singing the songs that we used to sing and just learning those valuable lessons that we learned. I would not trade my kids' catholic education for all the riches in the world! And we shouldn't be asked to. By the way, I am equally as passionate about not consolidating with Hartford because it will impact my kids in the long run. I consider it my responsibility to help with both causes.

Okay, I'm done.

I am really looking forward to GINER WEEKEND and also we are going to St. Lucia with Travis and Stacy and another couple. Talk about bad timing with the whole school budget issue. But we did not know about these problems when we booked and paid for our trip and honestly we have been saving for this trip for a long time. I think a drunken weekend in OKC and a drunken WEEK on a paradise island will do me some good. If you are still reading this, I am sure you will agree!

The kiddos are doing great. How did Mary Hoelting survive raising 11 children?! Three boys are a handful and I wouldn't trade my life for anything!! The kids are actually pretty well behaved most of the time (and honestly, their mother has high expectations for their behavior).

Kadon has been doing excellent in school. His teacher told us she would take a classroom full of Kadons. He makes us proud but Justin and I are suspicious that he might be sneaky. We will have to keep an eye on him. He is a walking encyclopedia of sports knowledge.

Nolan on the other hand is pure onery and honest! He found one of his Christmas presents and told me right away. It was hard to be mad with him smiling at me and telling me that he was "snooping" when I asked what he was up to. At Nolan's parent teachers conferences, his teacher's face lit up as she talked about his great personality and I surely know why. He is the most considerate child I have ever met.

And Ethan is wild man, funny boy, and all around just the kid that has both Justin and I smitten. I take him to Murphy Oil twice a week to meet Dad, who then transports him to Mom's so I don't have to drive all the way over there. He is Mr. Popular with the guys at the "coffee shop". As soon as we walk in, he struts over there and all of those old farmers greet him good morning. Every one knows him by name. I think Grandpa Henry is pretty proud of him too!

I will try to write a shorter blog next time. I guess I had a lot on my chest and I knew the Hoelting family would understand. We are supposed to get snow tonight and after being stranded here over the holidays I am ready for spring.

Love you all and March cannot get here soon enough!

Tomlinsons

Ok so this is getting ridiculous. I had to get a post on here because it has been rather sparse on this Hoelting blog. Not to much new with the Tomlinsons just flying through this January. Truthfully we are ready for some nice weather, feeling a little house bound. Feels like this semester at school is just flying by which is awesome. Greg has started his second semester at Rockhurst University working towards his education degree. While we are so excited for him to get his degree it feels like he will be in school forever. We know the reward will be worth the wait.

Briggs is great, growing like a weed and really feeling his independence. I have started to get sassed a bit. I am not sure whether to discipline him or laugh, his sassiness is pretty funny. I am sure the funny will wear out. We love his school more than ever, he has some really cute little friends and he learns so much everyday.

I am getting very excited for the upcoming "Giner Weekend 2010". I could use a little girl/adult time! Please keep posting I would love to know how everyone is doing. Take care and have a great weekend.



Briggs and Lydia at Christmas

Happy 2010

Hello Everyone,

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve! Wow where did the year go? Now I'm sounding really old, huh! Christmas was so much fun except for the blizzard. Dad and I can't remember a storm that bad since I was born. It was really scary how dangerous it was. I didn't take my kids to Christmas Eve mass because of it, and I really missed going. We have enjoyed seeing all of the family throughout the holidays. It stretches out the celebration for the whole 2 weeks instead of it being over in just a few days. Jeff and Allie did great in school. Jeff has about 3 weeks left in basketball and is MORE than ready for it to be over-it is not his favorite sport! They are undefeated so that makes it a little more fun. Allie has been a great help decorating and undecorating as well as cooking. She loves Christmas so much. Mom and dad are so housebound because of the weather. I know they have to be stir crazy but they never complain. They enjoyed all the visits and calls so much. We want all of you to know how important you all are to us. We feel so blessed to be a part of such an awesome family. I will toast all of you at midnight. We wish you all only the best in 2010. By the way...at the moment we have no new babies to look forward to. Could someone please work on that?!?!

XOXOXO,

Mary Beth

Happy New Year

Here's hoping you all have the best NEW YEAR ever. We are still enjoying Christmas memories and TOYS! Some Christmas memories we made this year:

- Kinley's first Christmas...she was lots of fun!

- A very Nasty Christmas Eve blizzard. We went to the Christmas Eve program at Ebenezer and barely made it home. Travis and I had never seen such driving conditions!

- Pictures on the snow drifts that Uncle Mark Stueve plowed with his grater.

- So many jewelry kits we can't count...Marley will be able to make us all jewelry to wear to the next Giner!

- Lots of boy toys...Darren can't decide which toys to play with! He loves them all.

Posted are some pictures of our favorite holiday memories. Talk to you soon, Stacy and Family

Merry Christmas From Texas!

Hope everyone is doing well! Things are great down here. It's hard to believe that Christmas is only a few days away! We still aren't quite done, hoping to finish up tomorrow. If you ask Landry, Christmas came on the 3rd. That's when we had our first snow. You know whenever it snows it's Christmas! We put up our tree that weekend. When Dad asked him what he was going to do the next week he said "Take down our decorations!" We had 4" in Nazareth and the boys were able to build a snowman and have a snowball fight. They were very excited. Thank goodness the weather man is predicting snow this week on Wed/Thur so hopefully Christmas will come again! I hope so, Landry asked Santa for a chihuahua, and he asked Santa to bring his dad a new cotton stripper and a new combine! Hope those don't weigh down the sleigh too much.

We are looking forward to the next semester of school. Not the school part as much as all the other activities. Thank goodness the boys have straight A's, so missing a few days of school won't hurt them too much. We have 3 pigs to show. We are taking 2 to San Antonio and 1 to Houston. We had 4, but our luck with show animals hasn't been too good this year. One of our pigs broke it's leg, so it's going to make some nice sausage in a few weeks. The girls at work are shocked that we would eat our animals, but that's life on the farm! He has 43 days and counting until all the drugs they gave him clear his system. I asked Garrison what he would do if he only had 44 days to live and he said "Kiss all the girls I could!" I think he gets that crap from my dad or Grandpa Ed!

I was happy to hear that if my nasty cat that gave Landry a ringworm on his head comes back Nub could help me get rid of it! After Brad hauled it off the second time, it never came around again! Maybe it got eaten by a coyote! That has been quite an ordeal! He took his last dose of antifungal medicine tonight!!! He has been taking it twice a day for 8 weeks! The worst part was it made his hair fall out! That is not a good thing for a Hoelting man. It has grown back in thank goodness.

Mason is onto basketball, which is going much better for them than football. They didn't score a single point in football. They are very small compared to the other school. In basketball they have won their last 2 games and are playing very well! He will turn 13 next month. That makes me feel really old! We've had a few previews of life with a teenager. It scares me to death!

Maybe I'll just run away to Kansas! I could take my old clunker that we hit a cow in last month. What would Nub say when I pulled up! It's missing a bumper and the radiator has a hole in it. Not to mention the windshield Dad cracked with his hard Hoelting head and the airbags hanging out! We all know what he thinks of the car Dad and Leon drove up there.

Hope everyone is healthy and staying warm this winter! Have a very Merry Christmas! We miss you all. I hear rumors of another Wild Girls Trip! (We just have to find another sucker to drive us up there!) Love Ashley

Thanksgiving '09

Happy Advent!!! Who can believe that Christmas is almost here.

With Lindsey's help, I've included some recent pictures. Two are from Brian and Darci Weiser's wedding in Nov. Brian's older brother from Topeka is in the orange shirt.

We had a divine Thanksgiving. All arrived on Wed. night so we had plenty of time to play and eat-what more could we ask for? Each of the kids took a meal so I got to relax as well as enjoy gourmet meals. Daryl, Kim and David joined us on Fri. night for cream cheese stuffed pork loin with cranberry chutney, grilled asparagus and sauteed new potatoes/brussel sprouts prepared by Lindsey, Michael and Paula Dean. The best was lots of laughing and stories. Karis, Kellen and Chad went international with taco soup, layer dip and brownies topped with raspberry-fudge topping. My meals were quite ordinary!!!

Lindsey won the pitch session and Karis won Apples to Apples. My greatest feat was Uno!!!!

Chad flies to Chicago tomorrow for a medical seminar to work a display table. Kellen seems to have her new bank established well enough for the time being to get away for several days. This was not the case when she first started. Lindsey was busy studying for a test on Mon. She knows that her hardest semester starts in Jan. but then she will be able to move to Texas for at least the summer and maybe clinicals in the Dallas area as well. Michael's project gets underway in January-they'll officially break ground in late Jan. Up to this time it has been all the preliminary planning-he is SO ready to get going on it. Karis is busy at the Alco distribution center in Abilene and enjoys the fast pace-her days fly by.

Dick has been retired a month now and is really enjoying it. He spent about 20 days on the farm in eastern Ks. helping with harvest-his first in 34 years. It is so relaxed knowing that he does not have to be up at 4:00 to go to work. We have had several ice/snow days already where the UPS guys could not go out west so he is relieved not to have to worry about it. Lots of long overdue jobs at our house here are being taken care of too.

We are taking a Christmas trip for the first time in 34 yrs as well. We are going with Jerry and Lois Schippers to a time share in Fort Lauderdale Dec.18-24. This will be unusual for a UPSer.

All of ours will be home over New Year's for Christmas and Stef Gasper's wedding on Jan. 2.

I guess this is my Thanksgiving and Christmas card-Hooray for the blog!!!!

Harvest is almost over!

Hello! I loved all of the cute halloween pictures. Not sure how to do that yet, so when I get some extra time I'll mess with it. We had family pictures taken on October 30th. What a mess that was. It was gorgeous the week before and the week after pictures, but we froze our rumps off that day. Kansas weather is great! Ha! Kevin is almost done with harvest and although he is tired; he is in a great mood. He celebrated his 30th birthday on Friday in the field. Alex stayed with Grandma Vicki and I hired a babysitter for Shawn so that I could surprise him with a six pack of beer and adult conversation! We talked about the kids the whole time anyway! I took Alex to a pediatric urologist last Tuesday to fix a little problem he has. I told him on the way to Kansas City that a doctor was going to look at his wiener so he wouldn't pee all over mommy's wall anymore. He said, "otay mommy" and acted like it wasn't a big deal. We were still okay when the doctor came in and asked Alex to look at his "tallywacker", but when he started touching it Alex started yelling, "my wiener, my wiener, he's touchin my wiener". For one of the few times in my life I was speechless. The doctor must have seen my embarrassment because he just started laughing and said he gets this all of the time working with kids! I definitely need to write that down in a book! (Alex will probably be mad at me someday for sharing this story!) Shawn can now roll over and scoots everywhere. He also has the nickname chunky monkey. Maybe we should have put him in a Bears costume for Halloween and MaKenna could be cheering for him! He would have to be on the O-Line. Lol! He is weighing in at 16.1 pounds. There are no meals missed by this little guy! Alex only weighed 18 pounds when he was a year old compared to Shawn at 3 months!! Yikes! Well, I had better get back to work. XOXO, Lisa

Heins Kids

Here are some Halloween pictures. The one with Kinley in the basket is from Travis' church. They had to dress as someone from the bible. Kinley was Moses, Marley carried Kinley in the basket (I know I am very brave), and Darren was a soldier. We had a wonderful Halloween, I hope you all did too! Love, Stacy and Family

Here a few pictures from the weekend!!

What a beautiful day it was today. November is starting out good. We spent the weekend in Kansas City with the kids. Gary had a meeting on Friday, so we stayed through through Sat. and Sunday. We went trick or treating with Briggs and Lydia. Lydia liked getting the candy, and would say Happy Ween to everybody. Briggs didn't get too excited about it. Saras neighborhood goes all out for Halloween. She had 200 or more. We are getting ready to watch the Yankees tonight. Johnny Damon saved the game last night. Happy Fall to all. DONNA

What a beautiful way to start November!

The weather was awesome in Kansas today a little breezy but still 75! Makenna is now a little over three months old and growing like a weed. I call her my little chunky monkey! She is a little young to actually have fun on Halloween but we knocked on a few houses anyway. On her first Halloween she was a Chicago Bears cheerleader (dad's idea of course)! We have started cooing and smiling. Every once in awhile dad can get her to chuckle! I will be 29 this month! Where does the time go???? Monica is still working on finishing up school and can't wait to be done! she should be done on dec. 18th and then she will student teach for her last semester.

Brad, Monica, and Makenna

Missing MAN!!!

Hello Everyone,
I just had to share the latest buzz around Olpe and my house. There is a missing man in Lyon County and he disappeared from the road right east of our house! I called the sherriff Thursday morning 10-22-09 to report a person that was apparently stuck. He was roaring around for about 15-20 minutes. The next thing we know we have two girls at our house looking for thier uncle. (That was Friday night.) On Saturday a helicopter was looking for him. It is now on the tv and radio that he is missing. When the sherriff reported to the road for the stuck vehicle there was no one around and the truck was still running. Supposedly there weren't any footprints anywhere!! PLEASE pray that they find him soon, so I can go to my house without being completely WIGGED OUT! Travis thinks I am ridiculous, but I just can't help it! The whole thing is completely weird. Anyway, I hope they find him and everything is okay. Talk to you all soon, Stacy

Good Morning! I am home from school for the second day in a row feeling like death warmed over! Allie was out of school all last week with a high fever and rash. Then on Saturday I got a fever and coughed like crazy. I went to the doctor yesterday because my chest hurt so bad and he said it was viral and gave me 2 cough medicines. I feel a little better today, but stayed home because I barely have a voice and once I start coughing it's hard to stop. Just let me state for the record I HATE winter! The 70th anniversary was so special for me also. I enjoyed how low key it was. I also love finally having a house big enough to hold my family. I think mom and dad really enjoyed it also. Thanks to everyone for making it run so smoothly. I also found out many interesting tidbits about some members of my family at the bar while playing games. So if any of you who didn't get to come want to know the scoop just let me know!! I sometimes feel like Lindsey might think to herself that she should run like the wind!!! Allie is going to be a fairy for Halloween and Jeff is too "mature" for such things. Their conferences went really well. We heard from both kid's teachers that they are extremely social. I'm pretty sure they got that gene from the Bonitatibus side! Jeff's football team went undefeated-yea! He has now started basketball practice which is his least favorite sport. This week they are reroofing the house, putting on new gutters, and replacing the skylights from all the hail damage. It will be nice to have it over with. Lisa- welcome to the blog, Believe me I know what it is like to be bullied into into doing things you don't want to. Welcome to what it's like being the baby of the family!!!!!! Welcome to our family Keegan Wayne. Love to all of you.