Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Wow how 2012 flown by!
What a blessed year it has been too! I was able to send out Christmas cards this year for the first time on my own.  I would have liked  to have had a letter inside all of them to give everyone a year update, but it just didn't happen.  Feel free to scroll down and read other posts to see other happenings from the year.  I'm going to pick up from my last post.

Since my last post we harvested our garden several months ago and have several quart size bags of peppers and glass jars of tomatoes in our freezer that we are slowly enjoying.
September we started a new year of Royal Rangers and Girls Club.  I started teaching my first year and Chris is teaching his second full year.  Our wednesday night activities were quickly out growing our down town facility so God blessed us with a new FREE facility.  It's actually the church building Chris and I were married in and is two doors down from my parents house.

we now have plenty of grass to enjoy, our class room space is still a challenge, but nothing compared to before.  We are all very thankful and have had a terrific semester already!  I am teaching girls grades 3-5. I currently only have two 3rd graders and 1 4th grader. Next year I will gain more girls.  Chris is teaching 5th-8th graders right now.

Looking back over this past year Chris and I did a lot of traveling. In march we took a last minute trip to Colorado Springs for a weekend getaway.  June we took a week long trip up to Minnesota to see Chris' grandparents.  Here are pictures from that trip.

We spent about a week up there.  While up north since we were only 2 hours from the Canadian boarder and both Chris and I have passports we decided we'd like to go see Canada.  We also learned that when touring a country and going through customs when asked the question, "What is your reason for visiting Canada?" the answer, "We just want to see Canada, we've never been there before." is one that will keep you in customs for 30 minutes or longer.  We did get through after being asked the same question by 3 different boarder patrol officers! We did a little shopping had lunch and left.  It was great fun.  I enjoyed being up in Minnesota.  It was the first time for me that I could remember most of the visit. I knew I had been up there when I was really little, but I didn't remember much.  Since we drove through 3 states to get there, and we also drove through all 3 state's capitols we of corse stopped at those, along with seeing Lake Superior and wow was it cold! 

The first part of october the whole Dinkel family was able to travel to Branson, MO for the annual Foursquare Conference.  We also took some leaders from Liberty, but it was such a blast to be able to have some quality time outside of Hays.  The conference was in the middle of the week, and since it was a 10+ hour drive to Branson we arrived a day early which allowed for more family time, in addition to the drive out to Branson.  Matt was only able to stay for one day, but the rest of us enjoyed meetings and on the last day Chris Amanda and I went to Silver Dollar City for the day.  Amanda has finally met her match for thrill rides. They both had a blast! and I enjoyed a leisure day in the park.  I did ride all of the roller coasters at least once which was huge entertainment for Chris and Amanda because I screamed....loudly!

Then later that month we traveled to Tulsa to see family and friends and to Celebrate Chris' 30th birthday.

Tulsa was a blast, just like it always is. The year always flies by way too fast it had been a year since the last time we had been down there.  We were able to make it to a Victory service while we were there and it was fun to go back and for it to feel like we had never been gone, and just like we were at home.  

God really had blessed us this year! I probably could keep going and going with more stories like how we also built our deck for 1/2 what it would have cost to buy a kit or to hire someone else to do it for us, and that we also put in a carport 100% paid for, and both projects were around $1000 or more. We are still loving our new home, funny at lunch today we had a whole discussion on the fact that we live in a "Manufactured Home" not a "Trailer" and I'm learning that there really is a difference! Not much but there is. (To me anyway).  If we want to at some point we could very easily move our house onto a real foundation and add onto it with no problems and possibly without anyone knowing that it used to be a mobile home. *sigh* some day.....

Anyway that's all I can think of for now. Thanks for reading!

Harvest time

I love fall. It's hard to say if I like Fall or Spring better....both are so refreshing. This spring and summer we planted our very first vegetable garden. I quickly learned we have REALLY good soil, as our tomato plants grew taller than me by the first part of July. Had we put another cage on top of the cage this plant was in it probably would have grown even taller. In this garden we grew lettuce, onions, banana papers, chili peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, green papers, and cilantro. It all was great fun. This past week has been sad though. It froze two nights in a row and then again last night. (A few days later). I was shocked to learn that one of my tomato plants survived along with our peppers....I think. Now comes the fun part. Pulling all of the fruit off the plants that died. If you see the picture with all if the bags. Those are all tomatoes and 4-5 green bell peppers. We had a good year.

Oh how time has passed! It is June already! Just celebrated my Dad's birthday this evening and two weeks ago we celebrated my Golden Birthday (I turned 24 on the 24th).  Then two days after we celebrated with all of our family and friends we left for Northern Minnesota to visit Chris' grandparents for the week. We left Sunday morning at 6:00am and made it all the way to St. Paul. We then traveled on the next day to arrive that afternoon.  We stayed with them till Friday at which point we started our way back home by way of the Mall of America and Some State capitol buildings.  We saw Minnesota's, Iowa's and Nebraska's So I have not seen 8 State capitol buildings up-close and personal.  (Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas? Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and I'm probably forgetting one.) One thing on my bucket list is to see all 50, but I think I would settle for 48 if I had to.
The Mall of America was everything that anyone has ever said it was and more.  I was overwhelmed by the massiveness!!! That's pretty much all I have to say about it too. I really can't even begin to describe it. More shopping that any woman could do in one day. Plus and amusement park. AWESOME! I had a great time and am definitely looking forward to the next time we get to go. I'd say I, but there's no way I'd go to that place all by myself.

I did read my last post about tripod and my new years resolution. I had actually forgotten I put that on here, but I've stuck to it.  She now knows "go lay down" and will go lay down out of the way, but close enough to see or hear anything drop to the floor.  She is such a wonderful addition to our family.

Also happening at the Lofstrom residence...
We have planted a salsa garden.  Almost everything we are growing can/will go in salsa. The only thing that won't is our cucumbers and lettuce. I'm pretty excited about it. YUM!
My amazing husband built one of the nicest porches in the neighborhood!!!

Spring Spectacular!
So over the past few months it seems just as we would fix one thing something else would break. It all started with the AC we had a hot spell in the beginning of May (I think) and we quickly learned that our AC was not working fixed that. Then the kitchen faucet started going out.  We knew is needed to be fixed soon since it would constantly drip, which in the winter time we used to our advantage, but over time it got worse. So we ordered a new faucet. The week after that the hot water heater got jealous and couldn't hold her water in anymore and spilled her guts on our floor. Thankfully I had taken most of the hot water when I took a bath, but soon found out that when I used all the hot water she wasn't going to fill back up without spilling most of it on the floor. Wet-tacular! Oh and the wonderful thing about our house is that if there's a water issue anywhere the only way to stop it is to shut the water off to the whole house. So we spent a couple of days without water. Thankfully it didn't take as long as some of the contractors thought it might to track down supplies.  OK....so I guess I'll just tell the whole story.
Sunday night. I decide to take a bath...a nice "hot" cozy bath. I'd been soaking for a few minutes, but realized my water was kind of cold so I turned the hot on to warm it up. Well it wasn't hot....it was colder than my bath water. Chris goes and checks the water heater and finds a rather large pool of water by the water heater. so he shut the water off and I finish my luke-warm bath, and then go assess the damage the next day some people come out and look at it, and give me an estimate. I decide I want a second opinion since the kid looked my age....probably younger and had looked at it for about 30 seconds. The next guy comes and looks at our hot water heater and gives us the bad news that it's toast and a new one like what we have will be around $1.600 which is a specially designed mobile home gas hot water heater. (Rather than venting out the top like normal hot water heaters do, a mobile home one vents out the bottom) He went on to suggest that if we wanted to go that way he wouldn't put it in for us because he thought it was a dumb idea to begin with. He recommended getting an electric water heater, and that's what we did.  While we are out at home depot trying to pick out a hot water heater we run into the plumber and he was able to help us get what we needed. Since we were putting in an electric water heater that meant we had to get the spot wired.  Which the plumber was friends with an electrician and about 30 minutes after we had decided we were going to get an electric water heater the electrician showed up to survey the situation.  He rattled off a bunch of stuff I didn't follow and said he probably wouldn't be back till thursday (this all happening on a monday) Tuesday rolled around everyone was there and working by about 9:00am and they were all done by noon on Tuesday.  So by Tuesday evening not only was our water back on...it was hot too. We've had the water heater for about a month now and it works really well and it is sooooooo much quieter than our old one.

other than trips and fixing things not much is happening in Lofstrom world. Thanks for reading!

New Years Resolution

Tis the season of making goals and planning out the new year.  I'm sure you all have a list of everything you hope to accomplish this year, as do I.  The biggest goal on my list is to not feed my dog whatever I happen to be eating at the time even though she looks at me like this

any time I sit down for a snack or a meal. We are working on "Go lay down" and it works for a little while, but if I jump like i dropped something she is at my feet in a split second to sniff out what it is that i may have dropped. I find it very interesting in the few months that we have had her how well she knows us already and knows how to work us over to get what she wants. This year however I will not bow to my dog! I am her master and she will be doing what I want.  My goal is to not give into her adorable face, and her stubborn beagle side of her.  I will prevail!!

All is well at the Lofstrom house hold, Christmas was good, and we are having a pleasant New Year so far.  We are thankful for the many blessings in our lives.  The past one that I'm still rejoicing over is our new washing machine.  We had been saving up to build a porch before winter....well it's now January and it's been winter for several weeks now.  Inbetween Christmas and New Years our washing machine started to make weird noises, it was old when it was given to us and it had multiple owners before us....nedless to say it was no surprise it was now starting to act its age.  I got online to look for a new one.  We could have repaired it, but why spend $150-$200 on an old one when you can spend $500 - $600 that we had in savings on a brand new one?  So we got a good deal on a brand new high efficiency one.  I like it.  I think what i like most is how it doesn't shake our entire house whenever it goes into the spin cycle. But that's about all that is new around here, and a new washing machine is about as exciting as it gets =)