Life has been a tad hectic!

It has been over a month since I updated the Waage's life up in the northwoods. I'll try to to give the quick version......but you know I can be...blah blah and more blah!

December 6th I started school/training program at Xcel Energy. Life as I knew it was gone! School was from 3:00 pm - 11:30 pm and with the 1 hr commute on the front & back side....it made for a very long day/night. At first I was running the business in the morning but as the lack of sleep caught up with me, Big Joe stepped in to watched e-mail and answered the phone while he let me sleep in.

Christmas was the most memorable Christmas we had have in many years. We started Christmas Eve day out by celebrating the 1 year anniversary of Joel & I permanently moving to the lake. Then it was time to pack up the truck and head to the cities for Christmas festivities. Jonathan was unable to come along as he needed to work, so Joel & I went alone. We started by picking up our adopted family members, John Young & Rita Koch and headed to Old Country Buffet to meet up with Grandma Waage, John, Joanne and Courtney for dinner. After a lovely dinner we all went back to Grandma Waage's party room for dessert and present opening. John & Joanne were behind us with Grandma W & Courtney in their car and once we dropped off John & Rita, Grandma W & Courtney got into our truck and we headed to the lake for more Christmas. It has always been a tradition in our home for everyone to get into their Christmas jammies before opening Christmas presents. Well, Courtney didn't have jammies, so when we opened presents earlier we had given some to her. Once we all got our Christmas jammies on we opened presents. On Christmas morning the kids awoke to find out Santa came and left presents for them. With dinner in the oven we waited for John & Joanne to arrive for dinner. Later in the evening we sent Grandma W back with John & Joanne. Once they were off safely, we all suited up to do a little snowmobiling........ the end to a perfect day! The following day we loaded up Courtney and off we went to return her back to her apartment.

New Year's Eve was slated to be a blast with my classmates Susan & Diana and their spouses coming for the weekend until we learned of the ice storm coming then they needed to cancel. So the evening was filled with doing errands while Jonathan headed up to his Chickie's house in Shell Lake. When the ice came....it hit hard & fast and as fast as it came....it was gone! I think Joel & I were in bed by 10:00 pm! Whoopied Do!!!!

January 10th Joel & I celebrated our 26th anniversary.......he in Minneapolis and me still in training in Eau Claire! With the price of fuel steadily rising, Joel has been staying in Mpls during the work week and just coming home for the weekends. On the weekends he & I have had the opportunity to do a shit load of snowmobiling on the trails! Loving every bit of it!!!

Big Joe got a job and will start trucking driving school with Roehl out of Marshfield, WI. Due to unforeseen circumstances I turned in the notice at Xcel Energy....they left out a little detail such as we are expected to work until midnight and weekends.........screw that!

So that is pretty much everything in a nut shell!

Take Care all
Joel, Amy & Jonathan