Christmablizzardpalooza 2009

We wanted a White Christmas, we got a White Christmas (and then some!). After years of having winter storms pass us by, we finally got one. After rain on December 23rd and Christmas Eve morning, it started sleeting during the afternoon of the 24th. It turned to snow during the early evening hours and the National Weather Service issued a Blizzard Warning. It kept snowing on and off through Sunday as the main part of the storm actually pulled a U-turn and came back at us from the north. I think we shoveled the driveway four times. How much snow did we get? Hard to say due to all of the blowing and drifting, but from what we shoveled, it was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 to 16-inches throughout the weekend. This is the most snow that I've seen in the Kansas City area since I moved here in '89.

This was a familiar sight during the storm.

This may have been from Saturday. I kind of lost track of time with all of the shoveling.

And here's what the front of the house looks like now. We've got some pretty good mounds at the end of the driveway from removing what the street crews plowed.

Did we spend all of our time shoveling? Heck no! If there's snow on the ground, we're going to go sledding. There's a great hill at one of the parks in Lenexa that's never too crowded, it's easy to get to, and there's plenty of parking. We added another sled this year and it took Libby and I a while to figure out how to steer the thing.

Here's Libby after one of our runs (with Lori and Sara in the background).

And the other two members of the sledding team....

Bringing Home Some Hardware

We had our final game of this session of indoor soccer this morning. Our girls (The Inferno) were 6-1-1 going into today's game. The team that they were playing, The Blue Angels were 7-0-1. They beat our girls 6-1 in the first game of the season and tied our girls 3-3 a few weeks ago. Today was the championship game, or as Coach Steve put it, Super Bowl Saturday. Courtney and Libby were ready to go.

About 30 seconds into the game, Libby dumped a pass from the right corner into Kenna who was at the top of the box. Kenna put the ball in the back of the net. That was all we would need. The girls were up 4-0 at half, then completely flip-flopped positions with everyone who played offense in the first half switching to defense and vice-versa. We tacked on one more to make it a 5-0 victory for the Inferno. It was complete domination. Then, it was trophy time! Thanks to the coaches Don (in front), Tony (on the left) and Steve (on the right) for everything they've done for the girls this year.

Christmas Concert

Libby's been going to choir practice every Tuesday at 7:30 AM. One of their big events is the Holiday concert. Here she is after the concert with Zach, Tammy, and John.

Sara's 8!!

Sara turned 8 this year. Sara had her birthday party at Emerald City, which is a gymnastics place and a way cool play area with mazes, slides, swings and all kinds of other fun stuff. We were able to herd them into one spot for a few seconds and took a group shot.

After the few seconds were up, they took off for the climbing wall.

Then into the foam block pit. If they would have let me, I would have jumped in face first.

After an hour or so out in the play area, it was over to the party room for cake (we love cake!).

When we got home, there were packages on the front porch (we also love packages on the front porch!). Stuff from Aunt Barbara and Grandma Kathy and Papa Cory.

The Art Fair

Libby came home from school one day with a note from her art teacher saying that he had entered two of her works in the Shawnee Mission School District Art Fair. Needless to say, she was pretty excited (we were too!). Here she is with one of her two entries.

And her second entry. She was good enough to dress her surfer girl appropriately.

There was also face painting. Libby of course had to show her allegiance to Gus!

Falling Leaves and the Return of the Family

I put it off long enough since the weather was so good, the leaves weren't falling, but I finally had to rake leaves. Sandy had to get into the middle of things.

Sara couldn't let Sandy out-fun her.

And some exclusive video of Sara taking the big leap.

Sara keeps losing teeth. Here she is showing off her gap.

Once again, we had Mom & Dad and Karen & Steve (and their pack of dogs) in for Thanksgiving. Mom & Dad came in by train. Pretty cool. The girls put Mom & Dad through their paces while they were here. Sara got Mom to play video games for probably the first time in her life. Here she's 100 pin bowling on the Wii (I think Sara won the battle).

We also got to celebrate Dad's birthday. We decided against the one candle for each year thing. I don't think our insurance covered that situation.

The day after Thanksgiving was gorgeous (mid 60's, clear, and no wind). We all went to the Liberty Memorial and the National World War I Museum. If you're a history buff, it's a really cool place to visit. Very professionally done, with lots of cool artifacts. Here's the Liberty Memorial, with the entrance to the Museum below.

I told you there were cool artifacts. An actual French tank from World War I!!

And for a couple of extra bucks, you can take an elevator to the top of the Liberty Memorial and climb around on the outside observation deck. Not a bad view of Downtown. The building n the foreground is Union Station. The silver colored dome like structure is the Sprint Center (the Downtown arena).

Since Karen and Steve were here, we had to take the dogs to the dog park inside Shawnee Mission Park. 65 acres of open ground, woods, and of course access to the lake, all off-leash. Doggy nirvana. Sandy starts going nuts as we drive into the park. She knows that she'll be in the lake chasing sticks.

The October Surprise

After the cold start to the month, Indian Summer reared it's head for pretty much the rest of the month. Karen and Steve made a brief appearance this month as they stopped here in Lenexa on their aborted trip to the West Coast. They borrowed Steve's Dad's motor home but unfortunately it blew a brake line soon after arriving here, so they decided to turn back. We did get to celebrate Karen's birthday (although I won't say that she was born in 1970), and got to meet Miri, the newest addition to Karen and Steve's pack of dogs.

Here's the smoke clearing after Karen blew out way too many candles on the birthday cake.

And Miri acting tough with Steve.

Other than that, nothing too exciting. The girls had a blast on Halloween. They went out in a pack with the Johnsons and the McElroys. It was my turn to stay home and pass out candy, so Lori and the other Moms grabbed some beverages and wandered around the neighborhood.

Libby was an Indian, and Sara was a princess kitty.

Here's the pack on their way out the door. Courtney, Libby and Elizabeth in the back, and Natalie, Sara, and Adam in front.

The Snail Whisperer

Stupid me. I promised Sara that I would post this a while back. About a month ago, we re-laid the bricks (about 1,000 of them) on our patio in the back yard. We pulled the pavers up and made a big pile. While cleaning them, Sara discovered that a good number of garden snails had taken up residence. She took it upon herself to take good of them. Here she's showing off one of her favorites:




By the way, she's now adopted what may be the World's Largest Grasshopper (TM).

Tour de BBQ

Hey look, another blog entry on biking! That's just crazy! (Or repetitive.) Anyway, this past weekend was the 1st Annual Tour de BBQ presented by the LiveStrong Army of Kansas City. It was a 15 or 60 mile charity ride for local LiveStrong charities including the Cancer Center at KU Med. It began and ended at the American Royal Complex in the West Bottoms which was also hosting the American Royal BBQ Contest which may be the premier BBQ contest on the planet.

Keeping with the theme of the ride, the 60 mile route went past at least 15 different BBQ joints around the metro area, with rest stops at five of them (BB's Lawnside, Jack Stack in Martin City, Haywards, Oklahoma Joes (the original on 47th and Mission) and Woodyard on Merriam Lane) where we could load up on as much 'Que and fixin's at each as we wanted. Then at the end there was a BBQ lunch, pizza from Spin! (the coolest pizza place in the area) and tasty beverages courtesy of our friends at the Boulevard Brewery. All for the low entry fee of $48 which also got you a t-shirt, water bottle, and a recyclable shopping bag. The route made a big loop through parts of both Missouri and Kansas. The route was well marked, but was on regular roads, so we had to stop at all the stop signs and stop lights.

Saturday morning rolled around and the temperatures were hovering in the low 40's. Time to dig out the fall riding gear! I got all layered up, threw the bike and all the gear in the truck and left to get to the venue in time for the 8 AM start. They announced just before the ride began that there were 450 riders signed up and that they had raised over $45,000.

As I said, the temperatures were in the low 40's at the beginning of the ride. I don't think it got past 50 by the time I finished. Oh yeah, it was also overcast and windy. And the wind was coming from the east-northeast so it was a headwind for the majority of the last half of the ride (which was also the hilly portion of the ride).

On big charity group rides like this, you try and find a group of people that have roughly the same abilities as you do, so you can share the workload of being in the front. I found a group that was pretty good at first, but after the second rest stop at around the 20 mile mark, I think a lot of the riders hit their limit, so I found myself at the front of the group for a good chunk of the remainder of the ride. I'm glad I just took a sample sized portion of BBQ at each stop instead of filling up a plate.

I kept the camera in the jersey pocket for most of the ride, but dug it out at the last rest stop which was Woodyard BBQ. They had ribs, chicken, beans, and a guy on acoustic guitar.

Woodyard uses hand painted signboards to advertise what their special of the day is. It made a pretty cool background to take a couple of pictures.

And just a shot of my Madone.

After 3-1/2 hours of riding (which wasn't too bad considering all the lost momentum from stop signs, stop lights and rest stops) I made it back to Hale Arena at the American Royal Complex where the BBQ and pizza lunch and more importantly the beer was awiting me at the finish. The girls came out to greet me at the finish and to chow down on some lunch. Libby and Lori felt like dancing...

And Sara felt like posing...

Meanwhile, I was too tired to do either.

Overall, it was a fun morning, even with the coolish weather. BBQ, beer, bike riding, the girls, and raising money for charity. Good stuff.

Tour de Shawnee

The weather felt like Mid-October, but the calendar said that it was the end of August, so that means one thing... The Tour de Shawnee. The TdS is a charity bicycle ride which supports the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and is now in it's 20th Year. There were around 600 riders this year. There's a 25 mile or an 11.5 mile option. There used to be a 50 mile route, but it's been cut for budgetary reasons. This is the 5th time that I've ridden in the event and for the second year in a row, I've brought Libby along with me. The event is really well organized from beginning to end. Plenty of parking, breakfast (bagels, donuts, fruit, juice, coffee, etc.), rest stops (four total on the 25 mile route, two on the 11.5 mile route) stocked with cookies, fruit, and water, police at every intersection giving the right-of-way to the riders, roving bike repair from the local shops, and a box lunch at the end of the ride. Plus a long sleeve t-shirt. All for $25. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning.

I rode over to the start from our house. Lori and Sara drove Libby and her bike out. Libby forgot her helmet, so Lori drove home and picked it up. But, she made it back in time and Libby and I pedaled away when the air horn went off at 8AM. Here's Libby and I all geared up and ready to go.

And here's Libby just by herself.

I brought one of the cameras along with me and thought I'd attempt my first rolling interview.

Here's Libby "in action" on 55th Street.

I mentioned the rest stops earlier. If they had cookies we had to stop. I think Libby could have continued, but I can't pass up a cookie stop.

Meanwhile, back at the start, Lori and Sara ran a couple of errands, but came back to make sure that they would be there when we finished.

Sara didn't think that Lori was doing a good job of being the Team Photographer, so she took things into her own hands. She likes self-portraits.

After Libby and I had our cookie break, we finished up the last half of the ride, which included an 8 block stretch along Pflumm Road that is pretty much uphill all the way. Libby didn't complain, and she spun her way up the hill without stopping. She was doing better on her mountain bike than a lot of people were doing on their road bikes. I was really proud of her. She commented that these hills would be a lot easier if there was a chocolate stop at the top of each hill. I think she has a valid point.

After a couple more turns and a couple of additional hills, we made it to the finish line. Sara was there to capture the moment.

It took Libby and I about an hour of riding time to cover the whole route. I think that was about 15 minutes quicker than last year. Next year, we'll have to do the 25 mile route!

First Day of School 2009

It's hard to believe that Summer Vacation was over for the girls on Monday. After a fun filled Summer of going on vacation to Maui, seeing their grandparents, having fun at Summer camp, swimming, and on and on, it's time for school to start. Libby is in 6th Grade this year, while Sara is in 2nd. We'll let the pictures and video tell the story.

Since we're looking at this year's Back-to-School photos, we might as well look at all of the other Back-to-School photos that we have. August 2008 - Libby in 5th Grade, Sara in 1st:

August 2007 - Libby in 4th Grade, Sara begins Kindergarten:

August 2006 - Libby in 3rd Grade, Sara's still in pre-school

August 2005 - Libby is in 2nd Grade, Sara is in pre-school:

And finally, August 2004 - Libby begins 1st Grade. I can't remember if Sara was still at Kay's house, or if she was beginning pre-school.