Christmas Break is over....

Well it is a sad day in the Bear Cave, Christmas Break is over and the kids head back to school tomorrow. Hubby also heads back to work, he has been off for almost the entire 2 weeks the kids were off. I also head back to work this week sometime, now sure when since I am a substitute teacher so I am thinking by the end of the week, I will be getting called. I work for 6 districts, so I get called pretty much everyday by at least one of them, most days by at least 2 or 3 schools. The kids actually had an extra day off this break due to a snow day on the last day of school before break. In the past 17 days we have crammed in a lot of activities and a lot of bad weather. We sat with out power for almost 20 hours due to a huge ice storm, we spent a lot of time playing board games as a family, Saphira the Rat passed away, Santa came, Christmas with my side of the family was cancelled, so for the first time in my kids lives we stayed home in our PJ's and just opened presents and played with new stuff. I sort of liked that and may cancel Christmas with my side of the family in the future...LOL. We went to a movie, ate out way to much, spent the night at an indoor water park, the kids went ice skating for the very first time an loved it. We burnt through a ton of wood in our fire place, camped out in front of the fireplace and Christmas tree all night one night. Spent many hours with friends, baked cookies and did a lot of family time...I am sad to see it come to an end.

Saphira...."The Rat"

My daughter's pet rat, Saphira, died last week and we tried to bury it today. Since the ground has been frozen here for the past 2 months, we did not succeed. So Saphira is back in cold storage until the spring thaw. Saphira came to this family from my daughter's 4th grade class, almost 2 years ago. She was a class experiment and after a weak moment, I let her volunteer to bring it home for a weekend. Well she brought it home toward the beginning of the experiment, when it was still very little and cute. Everyone, well almost everyone, everyone but Hubby thought the rat was pretty neat and I gave permission for Brandi to tell her teacher we could adopt it when the class was done with it. Let me clarify right now the experiment was seeing what would happen when the rat ate junk food, it was not harmed in any way. So a few weeks later we were the proud owner of "The Rat", so we went out to get a cage. We bought a cage at the pet store, and when we bought the cage, the pet store was running a special that when you bought a cage you got a free hamster. which is how we got George. (George is Monty's hamster, and is a whole another story). So we now have 2 cages (needed to get another cage for the FREE hamster, since it could not co habitat with "The Rat"), one hamster, and a rat. Well when we went to go pick up the rat, it was not small and cute any more, it was triple the size and had a long tail...UGH. But Brandi loved this rat and as long as she kept it in her room we lived happily. Saphira was entered in the County Fair as a small animal 4H project and won Champion in the rat division and Reserve Grand Champion over all the small animals (which includes birds, snakes, turtles, lizards, hamsters, gerbils, and I think there was even a hedge hog there that night). So now Saphira is a star in the house, she had all these big purple puffy ribbons adorning her cage and my daughter was in heaven. I still referred to her as "The Rat". We were told when we adopted Saphira, she would only live about 2 years, and we had her about 22 months. My daughter was heart broken last week when she came home and found her curled up in the bottom of the cage. She painted a shoe box, for her to be buried in and lined it with material. Our only problem was how were we going to bury it in the middle of December in Chicago. So Saphira has been waiting for burial, and we thought it might have been warm enough today. So we pack up Saphira, a shovel, a little cross made out of wood that we were going to spray paint pink, a medium size rock, (also painted pink), and a bunch of silk flowers into the van and drove 24 miles out to the barn where Shali, the horse she rides, lives. We figured we would bury it out there, because we might be moving in a couple of years and Shali's owners are there to stay. But needless to say, we couldn't budge any dirt, so no hole was dug and Saphira came back home with us. I am thinking "The Rat" will be with us for a few more months, and we will try again. So this is Saphira's legacy...or as I have always called her "The Rat".
R.I.P. Saphira!

84 Degrees and Sunny in Chicago....Well almost....

We rang the New Year in with a trip to an indoor water park, which is the only way it would be 84 degrees and sunny in Chicago at the end of December. We spent the 30th and the 31st at Key Lime Cove. We swam, ate really good food, swam some more and just relaxed. It was a wonderful mini get away. The kids were totally surprised, since we kept it a secret from them. I planned for us to just be in the area and then we would stop in an look around to check it out for a future visit. Once we were inside and looking around and they thought it was so cool, I asked them if they were ready to go get their suits and they thought I was was kidding, they couldn't believe we were actually staying. The looks on their faces were priceless. So we went back to the car and got our stuff and had enjoyable 2 days. Here are a few pictures from our stay.



This is a picture of Brandi and Monty enjoying the wave pool.



Monty and Frank going down the "Toilet Bowl". This was their last rip down, because at the bottom, they came out backwards and Frank flipped the tube, Monty went flying in one direction and Frank in another, and his glasses in another. They sure gave the life guard a good laugh, I am sorry I missed it, as I was up top of the loading tower taking pictures.




These pictures are from a kids parade they had at the resort, all the kids wore parrot hats and marched and chanted through out the lobby, Monty loved it ...Brandi found it to be a little embarrassing.

Christmas Pictures

We went and had our annual family Christmas pictures taken yesterday, with my friend Amanda's family. I will post some of the pictures when I get them back next week. We all went and had haircuts done together on Friday. She has 2 boys, Sam is the same age as Monty. The are 7 months apart and her other son, Ben is 5. To say the least it was interesting. Trying to get all 4 kids to do what we wanted at the same time was interesting, but we did end up with some cute pictures. And this year for the first time all 8 of us took a group picture. Our families do, do everything together, but we never had a group picture done before. I am actually closer to her than to anyone in my dysfunctional family. I cant wait to get the pictures back and display them around the house and try and figure out how to upload them here.

Why it is the Bear Cave....

Well here is my first post....I thought I might explain why we call our home the bear cave. When I married my hubby 15 years ago, I decided to keep my maiden name. I thought my own identity was important, and still do, so I told him before the big day I was keeping my name. I was engaged for 2 1/2 years, and told him frequently that I was not changing my name, so it would not come as a surprise. Even with all the advanced warning it came as a surprise....but he got used to it, my family got used to it ( that took a while ), his family never did. So when we decided to have our first child, of course I thought it would be a "no brainer" and he or she would have a hyphenated last name. Well once again I prepared hubby for this, he excepted it, no major complaints or fights over this. ( except with my family, once again! ) His family once again never got used to it, or excepted it. So since none of our last names match, except for our kids, we decided to use the last name Bear when ever we would get anything personalized with our "Family" name. That is how we became the Bear family and live in a bear cave. ( Hubby and I actually talked at one time about officially changing our last name to Bear, but never did. )