First Day of Kindergarten

First day of Kindergarten. 9/2/09

Gavin and mom waiting for the bus.

Gavin getting on the school bus for the first time.

Gavin after his first day of Kindergarten.

Gavin started Kindergarten on 9/2/09. He was very excited to start and to ride the bus all by himself. He said that he had a good day at school. He likes his teacher and his favorite parts of the day were recess and snack and of course, riding the bus. I am very excited for this year for Gavin. I think it is going to be a big year for him.

Canada

On August 9th, Max and I took a trip to Canada along with Sarah and Chris. We drove up making many stops along the way for the various items that we forgot and stayed the night in International Falls, Mn. We got up bright and early Sunday morning and headed across the border to Canada. Across the border, we saw saw a wolf and then a bear, which was a sign of what was yet to come on this trip. We drove to Hyatt's Manion Lake Resort where we got checked in and loaded up the boat with all of our gear to head to the cabin. We had to drive the boat across the lake where we then had to load it onto a trailer and portage it over to the next lake. My rain gear served a double purpose as we were waiting to portage both boats over to the other lake because it was not only raining, we were also being swarmed by bird-sized mosquitos.
We got both boats onto Petitt late safely and got to the cabin. We unloaded pretty quickly and the guys went out fishing. We spent most of the week fishing, eating, or reading. On the warmest day, we headed out to Sand Beach. We brought our supplies for a shore lunch and spent the day there. We fished, climbed to the top of a mini water fall stream, and picked lots of blueberries on Sand Beach. There were an amazing amount of blueberries on the beach. You could look back into the forrest and they seemed to go on forever. So we ate a ton of them and also brought back a bunch to eat in the morning for blueberry pancakes. At lunch time, we took our fish and supplies and went to Hyatt's cabin that was on Sand Beach. There is a beautiful cabin there that looks like it is sitting on a huge rock. We cooked up our shore lunch, ate, and then fished our way back to the other lake and back to the cabin. We were all tired and had gotten a lot of sun that day.

The next day Sarah and I decided just to relax at the cabin while the guys left to hike over to another lake. I wasn't feeling the best and decided that I didn't really want to hike into another lake to fish. Sarah and I stayed at the cabin and read our books. It was getting nice out so we went down on the beach and read for a while. It was a little windy and the waves were crashing against the shore very loudly. It sounded like ocean waves crashing and was starting to put me to sleep. I decided to go into the cabin to take a nap and Sarah went out to lay on the dock and read her book. She was there for quite a while reading in the warm sunlight with the waves crashing. She said that it felt like she was sitting on the beach in Mexico when she rolled over and looked toward the cabin and suddenly it WASN'T like Mexico AT ALL. Standing near the cabin was a Black Bear. Sarah sat a minute but decided she probably shouldnt sit there so she waited until the bear turned toward the woods and ran into the cabin. She woke me up and we went and looked out the window. In a few minutes, we saw the bear again. We thought that we would wait a while before going outside again since we were alone at the cabin. We played some cards and blasted the radio hoping we wouldn't see the bear again. But after about an hour I saw the bear just wondering around outside the cabin even though the radio was blasting pointed out the window. So we decided not to go outside for the rest of the day even though it was gorgeous out.
The guys got back from fishing and we told them about the bear and we were getting ready to go over to our friend Dan's cabin when I noticed that I was very sunburned on my ears from the day before. I got a little too upset about it and passed out and scared Sarah. Sorry Sarah. When I was feeling a little better, we went over to Dan's for a while, but ended up coming back because I still wasn't feeling good. Bummer of an ending to our trip, but overall an Ok trip. Probably not the vacation that I would choose for myself in the future. Next year....something tropical and closer to civilization.

Summer 09

Its already the middle of summer! We have been very busy this summer, but it has been a fun summer. I was very glad to see summer break come. I was exhausted with working at school and helping to get the business up and running. I am continuing to work with our business with the accounting and paperwork end of things. It is still a lot of work but feels much better to not have to do both jobs at the same time. Everything is going well with Scrubs Direct. Max is on the road quite a bit, but I think that this business venture is going to be successful. We have the traveling sales and the website up and running. Our website is http://www.myscrubsdirect.com/.


After school got out in THE MIDDLE OF JUNE, my friend Jolynn and I were excited to go to Country Splash. It was the first time that either of us had tried out this country music fest and we had a blast. We saw Kenny Chesney, Little Big Town, Lady Antebellum, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Miranda Lambert, Clay Walker, SheDaisy, Jason Micheal Carrol, The Dweebs, and others. It was a great time. I think our favorite was Darius Rucker by far. He threw his hat out in the audience and Jolynn caught it. Oh yeah, we were sitting in the second row by then. We will be looking forward to attending next year. We should find out where our seats are soon.

The above picture is Jolynn and I with someone who looks a whole lot like Kenny Chesney, but actually was a guy that was sitting a couple of rows back with his wife.

















During May and June, Gavin played TBall. I think that he liked it, but will be looking forward to playing on an older team next year. It is hard for kids that young to pay attention for that long. It gets kind of boring for him sometimes waiting for all of the kids to take a turn at bat.




















During the Last week in June, I went to Summerfest in Milwaukee with Jolynn. Summerfest is the world's largest music festival. We originally bought tickets to see Bon Jovi, but ended up buying tickets to also see Counting Crows and Keith Urban (my favorite). It was a great time and a new experience traveling down to the festival on the shuttle bus from a bar near our hotel (the carry-on drinks were great and much cheaper than the ten dollar drinks at the fest) Both concerts were great, but of course my favorite was Keith Urban. We made a mad dash for the aisle when he started playing his guitar while walking up to the middle of the ampitheatre. He is so great in that he always goes out into the audience. I got a chance to see him up close and grabbed his arm while he was playing. ;) We are looking forward to seeing him at Country Splash next year. We are hoping to have great seats for that.
















Here are a couple of pictures taken from the Summerfest grounds looking out onto Lake Michigan. Its a really gorgeous place.









During the first week in July, Max, Gavin and I traveled up to Minong for the Ericson family reunion. It was nice to catch up with everyone and had a fun time with the family. As always there were lots of activities. We golfed, played frisbee golf, fished, had a skeet shoot, watched fireworks, played washers and beanbags, and ate a ton. Gavin had a fun time playing with all of his cousins. He never wanted to leave at the end of the day.












During the second week of July, Gavin had swim lessons every day in the afternoon, so we kept busy with that. He passed another class and is starting to swim like a fish! He loves dunking under water and swimming under water. He is learning new strokes like the back stroke.
Gavin and I also went on a sales trip with Max this summer to South Dakota and Nebraska. Gavin was a very good traveler and even helped us move the scrubs in to the sale when we arrived in Nebraska. He spent much of the trip under a table watching Rugrats while we worked at the scrub sale. But we did take some time out for some fun at the pool. Swimming was Gavin's favorite part of the trip.



Brynn and Derrick got married on July 11, 2009. It was a gorgeous wedding. Here is a picture of the whole Burnosky clan.








This week, at the end of July, Gavin and I flew out to Denver to visit my Dad, Lori, and Jacob. We had a great time there. We visited the Denver Zoo, went to the water park, went to a couple of estate sales with Dad, ate lots of local food, swam at the hotel pool, and visited a lot. Gavin and Jake were really looking forward to seeing each other.

April Snow

Gavin had fun today playing out in the new snow with his four-wheeler. Today was the first day we let him take it out since fall. Usually he doesn't ride it out in the snow. He was spinning his wheels quite a bit and getting stuck, but he was having a great time. Shouldn't we be done with the snow by now? C'mon Spring!

Kindergarten Roundup

Gavin had Kindergarten registration in the River Falls school District today. He said, "Mom, I'm nervous". But he did really well. I was afraid that he wouldn't answer any of their questions, but he did. The kindergarten teacher came back and said that he did really well and he's ready for kindergarten. She asked him to draw a picture of himself and he drew a box first and then drew a picture in it. She said she has never seen that before. Well leave it up to Gavin to be different.
We have been contemplating whether to send him to River Falls or Hudson. He got accepted to Hudson with open enrollment. But he would have to be driven everyday if he went to Hudson since we are out of district. But if we sent him to Hudson, we would be on the same school schedule. I just don't know what to do. I am leaning toward sending him to River Falls.

Minong

Here is a link to a blog that someone wrote about Minong. Interesting.....

http://sawyertravel.blogspot.com/2008/08/visit-to-minong-wisconsin.html

Spring is here.

It is going to be a busy spring for us here. Max is continuing with the sales and it is going well, just extremely busy. On Friday, someone ran into the back of the trailer while he was on his way home from a sale. So now, we have to deal with that and get that fixed. Luckily, there wasn't too much damage. The person at fault had a lot more damage than we did.

Today, Gavin decided that he needed a haircut and chopped the front of his hair. I was NOT happy with him. Here is a picture of him after he gave himself a haircut AND another after I had to take him in to get it straightened out. It is very short now. He is making a face in the first picture because he knew he was in big trouble and didn't want to get his picture taken.

Here are a couple of pictures of Gavin riding his bike out in the driveway today. It was really nice out today, almost 70 degrees. He put a 2x4 over a puddle and was riding over it and trying to do tricks. He was pretty proud of himself, so I got the camera. He thought that I was going to take a picture of him, he didn't know that I was taking a video of him. Watch the video below. It was pretty funny. Gavin likes to watch it over and over. He has watched it about 15 times already.