The Annual Christmas Letter! - Written by Team Gerbil

Stop chewing on those sticks, I’m trying to focus here. Oh, hey…..hi, I’m Ginger. Apparently it is a tradition in this crazy house for all new pets or people to write the Christmas letter their first year. Who ever came up with that idea?? So, that means you are in store for a wild ride provided by your very own Team Gerbil. Team Gerbil is made up of myself and my crazy sister, Flufferbutt. Yes, her name is Flufferbutt. And if you haven’t figured it out by the name, we are gerbils! A little bit about ourselves, we love to chew, climb thru tubes, sleep, and tease those big fury things in this house. But enough about us, let us tell you what else we have heard has gone on this year with Team Boelk.

Let’s start with “The Boyz”. Kinnick and Carver are enjoying 1st grade and terrorizing West Branch. They both played soccer this spring, baseball this summer, flag football in the fall, and just finished up their first year of basketball. In addition, they are proud Tiger scouts and have enjoyed earning multiple badges, belt loops, and other achievements. I hear they are doing really well in school and continue to stump their friends and teachers as to who is who. I don’t know what the big deal is; Team Gerbil can easily tell the difference. Kinnick really enjoys art projects, drawing, and drumming; while Carver enjoys playing this big thing called a piano (apparently starts lessons soon), and playing kickball any free moment he has. They both love to create and build whatever they can out of whatever they can find. That’s why we are often hiding under our bedding! Who knows where might end up. Hey, that reminds me of the time they put me in the Zu Zu Pet toys and……..Flufferbutt, back on track!

Okay, then there is our girl power companion Taylor. Tay is now in 4th grade and doing fantastic. She played softball this summer, continues her dance (tap, jazz, hip-hop, ballet), is currently playing basketball, and is really thriving on piano. There are also talks of her taking up swimming. Yikes! Hope she is better at hat than me. I fear the toilet. Anyway, she also has joined Girl Scouts and is busy earning badges, loves the color lime green and enjoys reading to us!

The big people in the house are always running this way and that. Luckily, they do check our water and food now and then or else I wouldn’t be writing this letter. Amy and Brian continue to be heavily involved in the Vineyard Church community. Brian plays in worship band, sings in the choir, teaches Sunday school, and helps lead Wildfire (youth group). Amy is on the church board, helps set up/clean up Sunday mornings, helps lead Wildfire, also teaches Sunday school. They both are involved in prayer groups, a couples small group, and taking care of the church building. Amy apparently has had a big change with this thing they call a job. (Glad we don’t have to work ). After working 11 years at Knutson Construction Services, Amy decided to take on a different career path and is now a project manager for Shive-Hattery. She truly is grateful for her years at Knutson and leaves with many wonderful friendships, but has really enjoyed the recent change. Brian is still with the City of Iowa City, and has enjoyed coaching the kids again this year in tee ball, softball, football, and basketball. In addition, he is the den leader for these Tiger Scouts. Hmmm…Tigers, don’t think I want any part of that.

Though Hawks aren’t really our friends, if you know what I mean, our owners seem to be in love with them. I’m always hearing about how they are watching the Hawkeyes play football, basketball, wrestling, soccer, field hockey, swimming, and any other sport you can think of. Personally, I prefer tube sliding….weeeeee! Squeeking of tube sliding, they had a blast on their annual family trip to the lake in Minnesota this summer. In addition, Amy enjoyed her family girl trip to Chicago and Brian on his co-worker guy trip to KC. They have recently been busy working in the dungeons of the house. I hear they are finishing off the basement and rumor has it……wait for it……it is going to be all for us! Well, maybe Fluffer made up that last part, but they are busy with wires, drywall, and various other items down there.

Amy and Brian want to make sure that we acknowledge the loss of two wonderful people this year: Uncle Gene and Barb Masengarb. We also give a shout out to those friends and family who are distant: Mikey, the Clark’s, and many other friends and family members. May God bless you over the holiday season as we celebrate with a joyous birthday party for our true savior, Jesus Christ.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY NEW YEAR, GOD BLESS, AND GO HAWKS!!!

Brian, Amy, Taylor, Carver, Kinnick, Holly, Butch, Ringo, Various Fish, and Team Gerbil

In rememberance of.......

The mother of my lifelong best friend passed away Monday morning, unexpectedly in her sleep. Barb Masengarb was not only the mother to Mike Masengarb and his siblings, but also served as a second mom to numerous grandchildren and friends including myself at times. Barb was a truly generous woman, who always gave her time to her family and friends first and foremost. She played a significant role in raising four wonderful children of her own, as well as nine grandchildren. In addition, she was a loving and caring wife to her husband John. Barb was only 63 years old and will be greatly missed by many.

Our prayers go out to the entire Masengarb and Newcomb family. Though as difficult as this time is, I know you will all continue living life with generosity and as a family just like Barb taught you. May the arms of our Lord embrace you Barb in heaven, and give all those suffering down here a great big hug!

Our Story - 10 years of wedded bliss!

10 years ago today, I married the man of my dreams. Most of you know my history, but I was married once before Brian and for reasons beyond my control, it didn't work out. Brian and I had known each other in college as we had all the same classes together. However, Brian had a long term relationship going and I was engaged to be married. The first time we hung out, I thought to myself, maybe if we had met at a different time, we could have gone out on a date. But both of us were committed to someone else, so we were friends. Not like super close tell each other all your secret friends, but there was a connection there. Years later after we were actually together, Brian would tell me he had the same thoughts running through his mind about if we'd met under different circumstances there could have been a relationship there.

In college, we spent many hours in the student union "doing homework". In reality, we spent lots of time with our friends laughing, drinking smoothies, eating cinnamon rolls etc... Brian spent lots of time trying to teach me to succesfully play Archanoid (hopefully I spelled it right) which is very similar to Pong or Brickbreaker. Those that know me well understand the difficulty I have with hand eye coordination with moving objects. So we had tons of laughs focused about my not so mad Archanoid skills.

One class we had together, I'll never forget was called "Soils". We had a teacher named Colby Swan who was one strange guy (and wouldn't you have to be to teach a class called Soils?). We would often sit in the back row and complete the crossword from the DI together. We had lots of running jokes about our teacher and class topic and I just remember spending most of my class time laughing with Brian. Another time we had to complete some project that required computer analysis. After doing the work and looking at the numbers, I said to him, "Those are some small ass numbers!" He thought I said "those are some suave numbers!". It has been something we still joke about to this day.

Right after graduation, I was getting a divorce, and our study group decided to take a trip to Hilton Head to celebrate our graduation. One our friends' parents owned a condo there and we only had to pay the $100 cleaning fee to stay for the whole week. Brian and his girlfriend were breaking up because he was moving to Chicago and she was moving to Kansas City. We had so much fun on this trip and I think it was because we were both free to think of what a relationship together could look like. I have so many memories of that trip: dancing on the beach at night to Prince's greatest hits, getting locked out of our condo because Tom put the key in his swimsuit pocket (that didn't close) and then went swimming in the ocean, having someone yell at us from their condo because we were too loud in the pool at 4 am, having treats at an ice cream shoppe where my favorite sundae (brownie with ice cream on top) was actually called The Amy Sue, crab races, playing golf, KC & Jo Jo, and the dolphin ankle bracelet Brian bought me.

After we came home from the trip we decided to go on a date. We ate dinner at the Wig and Pen (which we still do every year to celebrate our anniversary), played some pool and then went to the movie Hope Floats (not such a great choice when one of the people is getting divorced because her husband left her), but it is still one of our favorite movies. Two days later Brian moved to Chicago. Because of my divorce I had missed the hiring window for new graduates and I didn't have a job or have any idea where I wanted to go. I was thinking St. Louis, Kansas City or Chicago as they were all about the same distance from home. Rationally, I told myself Chicago would be best, I had other friends there and a cousin I could lean on for support. A friend of my parents owned a restaurant in downtown that I could work at until I found a full time job. But in my heart, I knew I was following Brian. Which made absolutely no sense because here I was getting divorced and he was getting out of a 5 year relationship.

So I moved there and we dated for a few months and I knew in my heart that this was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and have children with (which was huge for me because I previously had not wanted children). We both commented on how easy it was to be together, something neither of us had experienced in previous relationships. After 6 months of dating, we moved in together and the rest is history!

Brian asked me to marry him on Halloween in 1999. We had a picnic at the Morton Aboretum in Lisle, IL and Brian wrote me a poem titled Candy Corn (my favorite halloween candy). He also had a trick or treating plastic pumpkin full of candy corn and amongst all the candy corn was a ring box. So so sweet he is!

Miraculously, it was a beautiful day on November 4, 2000. I had a sleeveless dress so I was worried about being cold, but God took care of us that day and has every day since then. It really was a perfect day, the wedding was great, the reception was awesome and we danced the night away! We honeymooned in Maui and that was wondeful! We vowed to go back on our 5 year anniversary but the boys threw a little wrench in that plan since I was staying home and we didn't have any money. At that time we said we'll go back on our 10 yr anniversary. Here we are at our 10 yr and we're still not in Maui. Just didn't work out schedule wise this year, but we'll get back there someday!

So many memories of the past ten years, although both of us have trouble remembering what we did before we had kids! :-) I could write for hours I think. But certainly the most noteable is the birth of our three children, building our dream home, following the Hawkeyes and most importantly both of us growing in our faith and finding the purpose God put on each of our lives.

Getting divorced sucked, but I believe God does not cause bad things to happen to us. I believe he takes the bad things and turns them into good. If I hadn't lived through that relationship, I would never had been able to appreciate a man like Brian. I believe God used Brian to bring me back to him. Here I was a woman who had little to no faith, didn't want children and had very little direction to my life other than I was following a man. God gave me Brian, then he gave me the desire for children, then the desire to find a church and then the desire to live a life like a woman of God. And that's what I will strive for always, to be the woman God intended me to be.

I love you baby and thank you for supporting me, helping me find myself, being a wondeful father to our children, your committment to our family and to helping others and most importantly for walking out this life with me!

A Boy's Dream

Kinnick and Carver took a field trip to the West Branch Fire Station a couple of weeks ago for school. Of course, they had a blast and had many details to tell us about that night.

One of the volunteer fireman we are friends with took this picture of Kinnick in full gear. He told me our boys are smart little kids, as they were figuring out how everything works the whole time they were there.

Down......Set.......Hike

Carver just finished playing his first flag football season, in which I was also the coach. Let me tell you, trying to teach 8 or so pre-K and kindergarten boys the basics in football is pretty entertaining.

Kids constantly running towards the wrong endzone.............

Pulling their own teammates flags off........

And diving after each other's flags.

Carver actually did a really good job. He had a lot of fun and was really trying to understand the strategic side of football (not surprising). We had a fun time and look forward to next year, in which I think Kinnick will be joining us after watching his brother.

The Beautiful Black and Gold

We enjoyed another Hawkeye filled weekend last week as we tailgated at our house throughout the day prior to the Penn State game. After that, I headed off to the football game and enjoyed the awesome display of black and gold at Kinnick.

We then followed that up by taking the kids to the Hawkeye women's volleyball game on Sunday with our friends the Clarks. Go Hawks!

Many First's

This past month has been full of a lot of firsts in the Boelk household. The biggest of them probably being that all three kids are now going to school!!!!! Almost as important, if not more, is the fact that we no longer have any daycare costs!!!!!!!

Pictures of first day outside of school

Inside classroom

Taylor at her own locker!


Off to school.....

Another first was the boy's visit to the eye doctor for a full appointment since they were one.

Check out the cool shades they got after their eyes were dilated.

Kinnick also recently lost his first tooth! Grandma Pat ended up being the final puller. Thanks Grandma! Kinnick thought the tooth fairy was pretty cool.........well, at least the money the tooth fairy left.

And last not but not least, Amy who refuses to ever ride on a "murder"cycle and keeps telling the boys they never will, took a ride on our friend Dave's Harley. Dave has been bugging her for a long time about this and finally she gave in. It was only a 3 block ride, but the agreement was she would never have to do it again.