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.