Hello Christmas Break..Yah!

Well the semester has come to an end. I am all done with finals, and papers. I am thoroughly going to enjoy my Christmas break with the kids. I got up all the decorations and it looks like a winter wonderland at my house. I am one of those people that have tons of decorations. To give you a little bit of an example I have put up three christmas trees this year. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
To my English  class, it has been a fun semester and I hope to see each and everyone of you around campus. I hope everyone's holiday is great.

Light at the end of the Tunnel!

This semester has been by far one of the most hectic semesters I have experienced since I began taking classes at SWIC August of 2009. I think the worst part is that I only had 9 hours of classes this semester and 12 - 14 hours for the previous two semesters. This does not make sense to me, but I am so glad it is almost over. I am looking forward to having about a month off for the Holidays.

We have been doing more construction on our sun-room  last week and this week. I have painted the room twice because the first color I chose was a darker brown and Tim hated it. Now it is a light tan and it looks very nice. We are almost done with all of the trim and crown molding. In that room there are two large beams that run the width of the room. We wrapped those beams in cherry stained pine, and it is so beautiful. We are finally almost done with the construction stuff for a while.

I had an interview yesterday to start driving the school bus again. I start my refresher courses tomorrow. Prior to going to school I had driven a school bus for 7 years. I miss it believe it or not. I figure it is the perfect job for someone attending classes full-time. I only have to drive two hours in the morning and two hours in afternoon, and what ever field trips I take during the school year. The best part about the job is I get to be off in summer when the kids are off of school. This is cool to me cause I don't have to miss this time with my kids. However, next summer I hope to be starting the nursing program at the Belleville SWIC.

Well on top of all the construction, homework, studying, and stress this semester has been fun. I have learned a lot about the community I live in. It has some interesting history, and members. I hope everyone has a great week, and good luck to all on finals!

Ready for a Break!!

The semester is winding down to an end and I am ready for a break! The last few weeks of school are the most stressful, so by the end of the next three weeks I will be even more ready for a break. I am disappointed in the fact that I have not been able to sit down with Glen, the oldest original member of Lake Ronnie, but I hope in the next week he will be able to sit down with me. Mary has been so helpful. She has sat down with me a few times to talk about Lake Ronnie and the old files that I have been digging through. I never realized how unique this place was until doing this English project. With there being a couple weeks of school left I hope to dig up a bunch more information on Lake Ronnie Incorporated for my ethnography.

On a lighter note, I am so excited about Christmas and hope to get up the decorations soon. We just got a brand new 7 foot pre-lit artificial tree. I would love to have a real tree but Adam, my oldest son is really allergic to any type of tree pollen and the allergist strongly suggests no real Christmas trees. Anyway, it is beautiful. I am surprised at how real it looks too. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

YUCK!! I hate being sick!

I have been sick and feeling like crap since this last week Wednesday. I hope it goes away soon..UUUGHH!! Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I don't want to feel like crap for that, plus I want to start doing my P90X again. This is totally not on the subject of my English project, but this week I was crushed to find out that my oldest son Adam now knows that Santa Claus is not real. He was so crushed and mad at his dad and I when he found this out. He called us liars. I felt so bad. He is doing fine now...thank goodness. Today is kind of a gloomy day, but the lake is always beautiful. There is a bit of a breeze and it makes the water ripple, it looks so neat. The trees are loosing all of there leaves, and we have a lot of trees around the lake, so the ground is just littered with leaves. You can start to see all the houses around the lake now since the trees have thinned out. It is such a neat place to live. I can't wait for Christmas. I am one of those people who has tons of Christmas decorations. The kids love that I a decoration nut. They like all the lights, snowmen, and reindeer. I am especially excited now that we have a new porch on the front of the house for hanging various Christmas decorations...its going to be so pretty. Even though I am looking forward to the holidays, and I love the cooler weather, I am not looking forward to driving on this road when it snows. That's another thing when it snows here and the ground is covered the lake is even more beautiful than ever. When it starts to get really cold the lake starts to freeze, one year I was able to walk on the lake. Anyway have a great day everyone!!!

A little about the Lake!

This post is a little late, but here it is. I spoke to Mary Vahlkamp this past weekend again, and she was telling me that when someone purchased land here they actually purchases stock certificates in Lake Ronnie Incorporated. She gave me a couple of old certificates to use for my ethnography project in my English 102 class. I also found out from Mary a little bit about how the older lake members use to stock the lake. To the left of the South Ronnie Drive damn are two small lakes that are sort of dried up. I always thought they were overflow lakes when the lake got too full. According to Mary, those two small lakes were used by the old members for raising their own fish for the lake. She did not know the whole story, but the old members would raise their own fish to put in the lake, instead of paying someone else to stock it. We don't do that here anymore because it requires a lot of time and effort and no one has the time to do it. I thought this was really neat, because it kinda gives you an idea of what the original owners were like. I am still trying to find out when the lake was founded and by whom. The oldest records I have been able to find so far are from 1952, but Mary heard it was founded in the 1940's...I am still investigating this. I hope to find a lot more interesting things about Lake Ronnie Inc.

More Construction!!

We continue to do more construction on our Lake Ronnie home. We just got done insulating the sun-room on the side of the house opposite the lake. Since I have been writhing this paper on Lake Ronnie I have learned so much about the different rules and regulations. I knew a lot of them already, but I had no idea that there are that many and they are so strict. I think when they first made the by-laws there was a whole different group of people living here, because most of the people who live here now are laid back and more lenient than the group that founded the Lake Ronnie Community. Yesterday we had one of the lake members come by and ask for permission to use the clubhouse this coming Saturday for his daughters sixteenth birthday party. We told him it was fine and made sure he knew he was responsible for cleaning up after himself, then gave him our key to the clubhouse. This particular member is fairly new to the lake and this is first time using the clubhouse. There are only a few members around the lake that have a key to the clubhouse and most of them are Lake Ronnie Board Members. I have been interviewing the lake members and have to add that to paper three. I am going to interview some more members to find out some more history of the lake.

Halloween Candy...Yum!!!

Well Halloween is over, but the kids got two huge buckets full of candy. It is hard to say "NO" to all that candy. Isaiah trick - or - treated for about an hour then decided he wanted to go sit in the car. It was boring but after walking for a while it was nice to sit and take a break. All in all everyone had a lot of fun.

There has been a lot going on with school in the last couple weeks. This part three of our ethnography has got me a little worried because the people who live at Lake Ronnie dress no different than anyone else. My group does not have a certain dress code. So If anyone has any ideas about what I could write..it would be helpful. We also have to make this glossary and there is not a whole lot of slang at the lake. This paper is going to be a challenge.