Let it Snow

It seems we have waited awhile for a good snow here. Well, it came today and is still coming. We made out for some fun tonight as you can see if you follow the link below for some pictures.
I also have video that I will post here when I figure out how.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11029&id=1503742134&ref=share

Another Year

Every January it seems to hit our house like a ton of bricks. I am not talking about the flu, or colds or bills, those hit to but I am talking about change. January seems to be the month that we have to prepare for the changes that are coming in the next year. This year seems to be the biggest yet.



We will have three kids in three different, "real" schools, for the first time.



It hit me last night when we were at the "open house" for Marquette High School. Emily will be a lowly freshman when the next school year starts. We have been inundated with five year plans, class scheduling, tryouts for teams and that is just the stuff she has brought home. Last night we were herded into two gymnasiums and a theater to learn all about the programs, classes and clubs that Marquette offers. In true 13 year old style Emily left her mother and I to fend for ourselves while she ran off socializing with her friends. She saw what she needed to see at the club tables and left the academic stuff the us. I guess we are blessed in the fact that she has no real troubles in school and is taking honors classes so there was not much of need to discuss things with teachers.



I don't think we were the only parents walking around with dazed looks on our faces. The kids seemed to know what was going on, I just went with flow. I of course did dutifully pull out my wallet so Emily could get her first Marquette Mustangs sweatshirt and sweat pants.



Emily did discover a talent that she has earlier in the month. Her Girl Scout Troop/Venturing Crew went snow skiing. I dropped her off hoping the best yet preparing for the worst. Remember, we are talking about a kid who as broken three out of four limbs just walking. I was asked to stay and ski but I begged off a fourth knee surgery at that time. ( Besides if I would have stayed Emily would have broken something because we are always trying to out do each other.) When I went back five hours later to pick her up I saw her gliding effortlessly down the slope like she had been doing it all of her life. I am taking full credit for this. I taught her to ice skate and to balance herself so this one is mine.



As if the month is not crazy enough we have Alex and all the planning that goes along with starting middle school. In the fall he will be 6th grader at Crestview Middle School following in his sisters footsteps, not really. Where Emily was in "challenge" classes and was the social butterfly Alex will be in "stretch classes" and will develop his own network of friends who I am sure will be a little "different." We have been down the middle school path before so the only thing new to us is the gifted part but Michelle has a handle on that. We did figure out that Alex did not inherit is mother's musical talent so he will not be enrolled in band next year.



In keeping with the year of change Alex is moving on from Cub Scouts and into a Boy Scout Troop. As the den leader I had to take the boys to a meeting of their new troop. I guess it really hit me when we got there and I saw the older boys leading the meeting and took my guys right under their wing. When we adults were separated for a meeting away from the boys I could just hold my breath and hope they did OK. At the close of the meeting we all met back up and I was proud when the scouts told me about how good they were and how ready they are for the next step in scouting. I guess maybe I did do an OK job with them over the last five years.



Now that baseball is starting back up we will have a few more months of utter chaos!



We have always said that Mallory is our artist. She is constantly drawing. painting, cutting or gluing. I have a stack of stuff that she wants me to scan for her online gallery. She recently saw the television commercial for a "starving artist sale." She announced she wants to work for that company! It is good to have an ambition... I guess.



Michelle and I are doing fine and just trying to keep up. I am going to try and update this blog more frequently so check back often.

Going Live

If you are reading this you either received an email or some how stumbled across the new and improved Poorman family piece of cyber real estate. After playing with all of the features and controls of blogger.com I decided it was time to finally "go live" and let everyone know that thepoormans.com is back, not that it every left, in a new and improved format. I was going to wait to until I had everything the way I wanted before sending it out to everyone but after looking through the archives at older versions of thepoormans.com I realized that I never really had a complete version. The website was always evolving into something different. I decided that this format will be no different.

As I explain in the posts below, this is designed to be easily updated and interactive. You can subscribe to it and get updates automatically, comment on posts, or simply ignore us. Whatever you choose is fine with us.

In the future the other pages will be coming online. I am working on Mallory's first and Alex will be doing his thing soon and I will be starting one up soon too. One person you probably won't be seeing one from is Michelle, she generally deplores blogs and is hesitant to embrace the Web 2.0 culture.

If you have any questions, suggestions or just want to say hi, feel free to post a comment or drop us a an email.

THP

Getting There

I have been messing with this blog for the last two days and I think I am finally making progress. As you can see content is appearing, and disappearing and reappearing as I figure this thing out.

When I moved thepoormans.com to this platform my hope was that it would be shared. After unning this idea past them it would seem that at least two out of the three of them seem to want there own forum. Alex is always looking for an outlet for his interests and Mallory told me that she wants to put her art on line. With that in mind I have created a space for Mallory that she will be posting her art on, with some help of course, and I am waiting for Alex to come up with a name for his space. So this space is coming to become sort of a "main" page for general family stuff and the rest of them will be linked to this site.

We will let you know when the other pages get up and running and if any other members decide to create a page. Please feel free to subscribe to our blog.

Here we are

I am trying to figure out how long we have had our family website, thepoormans.com. I know it has been many years and in those many years it has gone through many different incarnations, revisions and at times just sat there taking up cyber real estate.
Well, this is another incarnation of thepoormans.com. I have decided to move it to a place where the enitre family an use it with relative ease. The kids, for sometime, have shown an interest in working on but it proved to difficult and cumbersome at times so to that end we have moved thepoormans.com to blogger.com. You can still get her by typing thepoormans.com. Hopefully in the coming, days, or weeks or months we will get this up and running. The really cool thing is that it will let the viewers or readers of the blog to interact. I guess you could say thepoormans.com has moved to Web 2.0. All of our email addresses are still the same or you can email us here at thefam@thepoormans.com