Darin and Judi Ramsey welcome you to our sadly neglected web site. Come in, have a look.

It's been a while again.  We are living in a little apartment outside of town and put about 100 miles a day on our car, but other than that things are going great!  We are expecting Darin's parents in the next few months, and plan to spend much of the summer with them.  Darin has been promoted and is working toward his next promotion.  Allen’s taking 8 classes in school (one before and one after school) and is doing well.  William has added science to his ‘at school’ schooling, since I wouldn’t let him do ‘labs’ at home.  (Sorry, I just don’t fancy blowing up the kitchen.  Call me crabby.)  He made Honor Role 1^st semester.  Robinson loves preschool and is looking forward to going again next year.  His school is actually through the local area multi-school technical training center, called Tri-Tech.  The Early Childhood Education program has a preschool/daycare program to help the high schoolers have practical application to what they are learning.  As a result the preschool student to the ‘teacher’ (high school student) ratio is 1:1.  We all love it.

I (Judi) am back at Sears, in the appliance department.  I still watch Kassidy and Madison during the week.  Mostly I just spend my life in the car, as you may have surmised by the miles per day figure in the previous paragraph.

I have started a new photos page, so take a look at that. I am thinking about changing the look of the site, dropping the ‘It’s a boy” thing, but I don’t know that I have that information anywhere else and my memory isn’t as good as it used to be, so I am hesitating.  * shrug * Anyway, thanks for coming by.

June 12, 2004 Update

Hi everybody.  Life is good at the Ramsey's.  Darin's mom and step-dad have moved in to the town next to us, and we are super excited about it.  They have been "snow birds" for many years now, but kept their drivers and car licenses in Texas.  They now have Washington plates and an address.  The whole 9 yards.  They are working at an RV park in North Richland for the summer, and expect to come back every year.  We are so glad to have them close by.

School is out and Allen is a junior.  Man, are we really that old?  William starts at Highlands Middle School for summer school in two weeks.  He will be going part time just like Allen did.  Robinson is three next month, but it is hard to convince him that he isn't three yet.  Not that it really matters.  We are really going to be involved in Allen's school this year.  Darin is the Music Booster Club president.  We hope it will be lots of fun.  Kinda scary, too.

We have given up on commission sales, and Darin starts at Starbucks on the 20^th.  He is really excited since he loved working there the last time.  He expects to be promoted quickly, and hopes to have his own store (be the manager) by next year.  They have started construction on one new store and hope to have two more started soon.  They really need people in management, and Darin wants it.  Several people have talked with him about going out to Hanford again, and he just isn't interested, even though the money is so much better.  The stress isn't worth it.

Over the last few years we have been trying to find out what causes Darin to have constant headaches that don't even notice pain killers.  We have tried eliminating nearly every 'vice', coffee, coke, beer, etc., bought expensive pillows, a new mattress, chiropractic, everything we could think of.  Last spring we started thinking that the problem might be wheat, and after some experimentation have confirmed that hypothesis.  In the fall we visited with some friends who suffer from Celiac disease, and decided that is what ails Darin.  His constant headaches have limited themselves down to only once in a while and they are no longer debilitating.  Now any time he says his head hurts I check the labels on what ever we have eaten lately, and more times than not there is a wheat ingredient.  He has even begun to react to soy sauce.  We have to be very careful.  The biggest side effect of cutting all flour out of his diet has been he lost nearly 25 pounds.  We didn't know he had that much he could loose.  He feels worlds better. 

So that illness I commented on in the last entry turned out to be a really bad one.  The three days I was REALLY sick, I lost 10 pounds.  Boy that was a happy thing.  But then it took 5 weeks to recover my strength.  I had serious fatigue and could barely do anything, that was very discouraging.  My latest health complaint is allergies.  Nothing new there, but this year they caused a serious cough.  Well, coughing has caused a rib on the right side to dislodge.  Talk about painful.  So again the house work isn't getting done.  What can you do?

A friend gave us their old (5 years old) couch and loveseat since they were getting a new set.  It is so nice to have a set, and the living room is really cozy now.  They look new, and are very comfortable.  The best part is they go with the furniture we already had in the room.  It really looks planned now.

February 21, 2004 Update

Hi everybody.  Robinson is two and a half now, and talks very well.  He thinks he can cook, fix his own breakfast, pour his own milk, and everything.  At least he tries.  He will climb up onto the counter all by himself, stick his food in the microwave to reheat it, and turn it on.  We cannot leave him unsupervised.  He loves to read and be read too.  He will bring stacks and stacks of books to bed with him for us to read to him.  We usually only read two, unless it is really early.  He got his first cold this year (school year) and it has been a dozy.  First he got fifths disease, and not he has a head cold that makes breathing a challenging thing.  Night time is very loud lately.  He is house broken now, but I will do a whole page about that later.  He loves going to Allen's high school, that is how he refers to it, and gets a kick out of every band performance.  He pulls his shirt over his head and marches around the house claiming to have a marching band hat on.  He calls the movie Music Man the marching band movie and loves to watch it.  His current favorite movie is Ice Age.  Aunt Joanne bought it for him because he was sick. 

Those of you who know us know we quote movies all the time.  Robinson has started naming where the quotes are from as we say them.  He is quite good at it.  Robinson loves to answer at meetings, too.  Sometimes his answers just consist of the word microphone.

Darin is working at the Mattress Outlet now.  We both got very tired of the annual layoff working at Hanford, and he has gotten very far away from it.  He is in a commission only job, and we are worried about whether we can make it or not, but we are going to give it a good try.  Allen got all As and Bs at the semester, and William is still plugging along.

The boys were off medications for 6 weeks.  They sure found out that the medications work very well, and off them the boys had a hard time with nearly everything.  Williams mood disorder continues to worsen, and his doctor and I think it is only time before it becomes bi-polar disorder.  He tries really hard to stay even keeled, and we appreciate his effort.

If this is inane and redundant, Im sorry.  Ive been really sick the last few days and just couldnt spend any more time in bed, though this much has made me dizzy and I have to go lay down again now.  Thanks for reading.