Sohre Trip - Lake Vermillan 2009

The last week in July we went on our summer vacation to Lake Vermillan, MN with the Sohre clan. This year my entire family was able to come for the entire week, even Darrin from Washington DC. This is a huge deal for everyone to be together at once, because it has been many years since everyone has been able to join in the fun for the entire week. We had 3 cabins, 3 boats, 13 adults, and 11 kids! No pets allowed! The thought of everyone together for a whole week, kids and all, at first seemed like it could be a little overwhelming, but it really wasn't at all. We absolutely had the best time. All the kids played non-stop and I think the adults were following suit as well. Fishing was not great, actually it was terrible, but it didn't stop us from having fun. It rained on and off the entire week also, but we were still able to enjoy the beach most afternoons. Zach and Gracie both did fairly well. Gracie loved the Papa's boat. She kept calling it "My boat." One evening Papa took Daddy out fishing and boy did she not agree with that situation. I was on the dock with her and as they are pulling away from the dock with the boat and she is crying out "My boat, my boat!" then "My daddy, My daddy." She was not happy that her Daddy and her boat were leaving her.

The men (Marty and Jason) frying fish for supper...

we found a good Sunny hole that gave us at least one meal of fish!

Zachy and his Cousin Kate.

Gracie and her Best Friend/Cousin Paige.

They played non-stop the entire week.

Gracie loved her life-jacket and often refused to take it off.

Such a change from last year where she screamed bloody-murder when we put it on her.

Sister-Brother love! I wish Gracie was always this nice to her brother.

Mommy and Zach.

Fun in the sun and sand.

Zach's first time in lake water. He enjoyed it.

Gracie and Cousin Jesse throwing rocks in the water.On the way home. It is about a 6 hr drive. Gracie did pretty good. If she has her blankie... she usually is a pretty content kid.
Zachy on the other hand needs to hold his Mommy's hand in order to be content. I spent half the trip with my hand curved behind my seat so I could reach his hand. If I let go for a second he would cry.


The wonderful Sohre Clan - all 24 of us!!!
I think on Sunday when we were all back at our respective homes we were all missing each other. It is hard to spend an entire week together and then go our separate ways again. I hope next year we are all able to spend the week together again.

Thanks Mom for making this possible!

Thanks family for being so GREAT!

Zachariah Crawling

This is old news, but Zach is crawling and climbing around all the furniture. He has been doing this for about 3 weeks now. So he started around 8 1/2 month old. He is growing up soo fast! (This blog also acts as my calendar of events for the kids... so when I go to write it in the baby book... I have some better idea of dates/ages).

On the 1st of July he turned 9 months old. He is in supreme separation anxiety from his Mommy. If I am in the room he needs me to be next to him. Every time I drop him off at daycare he starts to cry, but Sue our daycare lprovider assures me he stops shortly after I am gone. I remember Gracie being the same way.

Yesterday Zachy woke up with a fever at 4 am of 104.3 degrees. He was sooo warm and lethargic. After I picked him up then he vomited all over me. So at 4 am Marty and I are giving Zachy a bath to clean him up and cool him down, then I take a shower because he got my hair all full (all at 4 am mind you!). After dosing Zach with some ibuprofen I sat on the couch and cuddled him for the next several hours. We kept the ibuprofen and tylenol in him all day and he still ran a low grade temp. I am not sure what the deal is. He has a bad cough too, which I think is getting worse. I thought it was just teeth moving, but maybe it is more. Last night didn't go to bad and now he is still sleeping at 8:45 am so we will see what the day brings. It is so hard to know... do you take him in to see a provider or wait it out? Poor little guy, if only he could tell me what hurts or aches... is it an ear little guy? or your teeth? or just this misserable cough? Hopefully today goes better.

Sad, Sad, Sad...

Today I am Sad, Sad, Sad. It has been a real rough month for our hog business which we call, Mor-Pork. Due to extreme financial difficulties a couple of days before I left for my Annual Training for guards Marty and his Dad made the decision to liquidate the hogs. This means we are selling all our hogs and we are no longer going to be owning our hogs. During the two weeks I was gone 1700 sows were halled to market in semi-trucks. These are our Momma pigs that are not suppose to go to the meat market until they have given us several good pregnancies and litters of baby piggies.

This means Mor-Pork as it has been for the last 20 years will no longer be.

This makes me SAD, SAD, SAD.

A little over 2 weeks after this decision was made the farrowing barn is completely empty. Before the pigs started to move out I had Marty take the kids and I over to the farrowing unit for one last look. This is the first time Zach has seen piggies. When I looked to the future I always pictured the kids someday going with Daddy on maybe a Saturday and helping with chores and feeding the pigs, just as I had done when I was a kid with my Dad. Now we don't know what the future will hold. Circumstances over the last year have what lead us to this decision. First is was high grain prices - corn which is the primary ingredient in pig feed. Then it was the falling hog market. Then we get a disease TGE that effects our newborn piggies. Then the Swine Flu hit which again made hog prices drop even farther. Then we get another disease. We kept hoping that if we just hang in there for a couple more months, or till spring, or till the end of summer... things would turn around and we would be just fine. But it is like a bleeding wound that just doesn't seem to stop. We keep bleeding and Marty and his Dad decided to make it stop so we could start to recover.

Right now we still have nursery pigs and finisher pigs. The finisher hogs will grow out and be sent to market and the nursery pigs will be sold in a month or so as roaster or feeder pigs. Marty says by the beginning of September the barns will be completely empty. At the beginning of May we owned around 20,000 hogs. This liquidation will also contribute to the unemployment world as we had 11 employees who are gradually being layed-off as our hog population decreases.

For the future we hope that some investor such as a larger hog business or a feed company will want to put hogs in our barns and then Marty can take care of them. Maybe a few years down the road we will own hogs again... but it is hard to say.

As for all of us we are doing OK. Somedays the reality of what is happening hits us hard and brings out the SAD's but then we have to just remember that we put forth our best effort to make this work - especially Marty and his Dad and hopefully something better is waiting for us. I keep praying and telling myself and Marty that hopefully this is the terrible end leading to the beginning of a much better situation. God must have something waiting for us which hopefully a year from now we will understand. Please keep the Malecek's in your prayers.

Annual Training 2009

For the last two weeks I had my two weeks of Annual Training (AT) for Guards which was at Camp Ripley. My battalion spent almost the entire time out in the field (the woods... for those not accustomed to military lingo). I captured a few pictures with my cell phone camera. Amazingly I was able to keep the charge on my cell phone and get reception so I could call home in the evening and talk to the family. We have generators that run occasionally giving us power in our tents. I haven't been out to the field for an annual training for about 5 years or so. It never fails that when we are at Camp Ripley sleeping in tents and not getting showers it rains... and rains... and then rains some more. Then of course it is hot and humid... and there is an abundance of ticks. We came in to contonment (the base) about every 3 days for a shower. We did lots of good training. My role is of a nurse in the military... so mostly I help with the training of the medics. In the real scenario I would be in charge of Patient Holding. This is an area that I could keep soldiers for a max of 72 hours who are in need of medical attention. The platoon I am part of if Treatment Platoon. My platoon is made up of about 20 medics, 2 doctors, 1 physician assistant, 1 nurse (me), 1 dentist, 1 dental assistant, x-ray techs, pharmacy tech, a platoon leader, and a paperwork person. Our responsibilities are to treat the injured soldiers, trauma and non-trauma. We get soldiers from the Ambulance Platoon - who go out and get the injured soldiers. So during AT it is all about running scenarios to better prepare us for the real thing on a deployment. We do simulations of Mass Cals (mass casualties) and different possible injuries such as sucking chest wound, amputations, gunshot to the abdomen, head wound, etc. I am fortunate to be with a great group of soldiers and even though the living conditions are not quite like they are at home it I am always able to reflect back and say I had a good experience and was able to learn.

Our company TOCC

Our Treatment Tent - this is where my platoon works out of.

My living quarters for 2 weeks. The picture above is our tents and the picture below is my sleeping bag and cot. I also should add that the first night it rained I did get wet due to a poorly put together tent!

Our means of transportation while in the field.

We did some helicopter training on a Black Hawk. We put our litters (patient stretchers) on and off the rig and then we got the pleasure of having a ride!

This is me all buckled in the Black Hawk.


This is one of the training exercises we did... low crawling with a litter (stretcher).
I sure missed the kids while I was gone, but luckily I have a wonderful husband who took on the job of Single Dad. Thanks Sweetie! He did get a little help from my Mom and his Mom. Thanks Grandmas!

A new set of wheels...

Check out who has a new set of wheels.... Cousin Jesse! It's a battery powered mustang with a foot pedal and everything. This was on Memorial Day. Jesse took Gracie for a spin around the block (the Daddy's rode along on teh bikes). It was absolutely adorable. Then to top it off they put on their shades! I think someday Little Jesse might be a bad influence on my Little Gracie.... it is awfully cute right now!

Planting Trees

At the beginning of May we planted some broad leaf trees out in our yard to go with the evergreens. Gracie had a blast playing in the dirt, jumping in the holes, and helping put the trees in the right spots. We planted a maple, sunburst honeylocust, 2 apples trees, and 2 flowering crab trees. The yard should look pretty nice in a few years!

Zach's 8th Month...

Month 8 has been a busy month for Zach. He has finally learned how to sleep through the night... not every night, but a good majority. He has learned how to clap his hands... see the video below, he has learned how sit up without being held... see pictures below, he has learned how to get up to his knees, no crawling yet, but it I don't think it will be to terribly long. Seems like all at once he is developing all these new skills. His hair is growing fast too, I almost sent him along with Marty to get a hair cut last weekend (J/K)! Zach and his sister get a long pretty well. Mostly Zach is facinated with Gracie and will just burst out in laughs sometimes. It is pretty cute. Gracie likes Zach too, except when he gets a hold of her hair or her toys or sits on Mommy's lap... then some jealousy can come out.

One year ago...

I know I am very, very behind on my blog posting... and I was doing so good at the beginning of April. Anyways I downloaded the camera tonight and realized I have all these cute pictures of Gracie's 2 year birthday party, coloring Easter eggs, planting some trees in the yard, going to the park... the list goes on and on. My hope is to put a few of these events up, but I thought I would put the following pictures up tonight. I am sure my sisters will appreciate remembering what we all looked like 1 year ago in May 2008...

One year ago May 2008, Christy was about 8 almost 9 months pregnant, Shelly was around 6 months and I was 5 months. Christy, I am sure was completely miserable at this point, Shelly was just about to get to that point and I was in the stage that the bump was finally looking like a baby and not an excessive weight gain!

One year later and we all have the following cute bundles of joy.

Kate almost 1, Joe almost 9 months, and Zach almost 8 months.

Boy how a year can go by so fast.

Stay tuned for hopefully more postings later this week... (key word is hopefully...)

6mo and 2 yr pictures

Zachariah Martin 6 months old and Gracelyn Elizabeth 2 years old.

They grow up soo fast!

The All-Nighter

• So I am sitting here thinking... about what the term all-nighter means. I think I had my first all-nighter back in grade school when my church youth group did a lock-in at a bowling alley and we stayed up all night of course bowling, and then watching movies, eating pizza, drinking pop, eating popcorn... who knows what else. The point of course was to stay up all night.

• Then I think in high school the all-nighter may have been a post-prom party hosted by the school. Again the goal was to stay up all night doing activities such as a hypnotist show, movies, popcorn, games, ect.

• As I approached college the all-nighter started to change a little. It now could be staying up all night to study for the midterm, or it could once again be staying up with friends doing, you know, what you do in college.

• Now I am thinking what the all-nighter currently means in my life. It is very much the opposite of years past for now it means my little boy has slept ALL NIGHT and I also had the long desired pleasure of sleeping ALL NIGHT (last night) as well. Little Zachy has only done this less than a handful of times in his 6 1/2 months of life... so it is very much appreciated.
  
• So what would I rather have the crazy days of staying up all night to party and hang out with my friends or sleeping all night as my little boy sleeps. I don't know. I think it is a toss up. As I love my children dearly and wouldn't trade a million, trillion bucks for them, I do miss the carefree days of when all I had to worry about was myself. Now that I have my head thinking about this thought, I guess it really isn't that hard of a decision. I choose my all nighters that I get now. I cannot imagine for even a tenth of a second not having my Marty, Gracie, and Zachy in my life. I wouldn't trade them in a million, trillion years for that once carefree-only-worry-about-myself time.

• Thanks Zach for giving Mommy an all-nighter. You can do it again real soon, she won't mind.

Funny Gracie

I have to share this story with you all, cause it is just so cute. Gracie for the most part sleeps very well in a big bed and rarely will wake up at night. A few times she will come into our bedroom or she will wake up crying. A few times I will be sleeping in bed facing the edge and I will for some reason wake up, open my eyes, and see Gracie staring at me. That is a little disturbing, because initially it is kinda scary to wake up in the middle of the night and see someone staring at you, but also disturbing because... how long has she been standing there? Has she wondered to other places of the dark house in the middle of the night? This leads me to the adventure I had last evening and the funny part of this story, which was what I woke up to last night. My little Zachy is still enlightening me by waking up at least once a night to eat (just 3 weeks ago it was still 2 times a night!). So at 3am last night I wake up to him crying, which as I said is the usual for the night, but the unusual part was as I get up I find Gracie sitting straight up in the doggy bed that is in our room. She is wide awake, just sitting like a good little girl with her blankie. It was like she was just sitting there patiently waiting for me to wake up and find her. But this gets me thinking how long has she been waiting? Did she stand next to the bed and stare at me for a while? My only guess is she did, and when I didn't wake up she decided she would wait in the doggy bed. Luckily Willie (the dog) has been sleeping sprawled out on the floor because he is hot with his thick winter fur. What if Zachy hadn't woken me up? (I am patiently waiting for those nights). My best guess is she would have fallen asleep in the doggy bed and I would have found her in the morning all cuddled up with her blankie. Then I think, if only she would try to wake me, by touching my nose or talking a little... then I would just gladly pull her in bed with us. But no, my sweet little Gracie just sits and patiently waits. Why can't she be that patient during the day? So that is my adventure for last night. We will see what tonight brings.