Happy birthday, Kansas!

Kansas' 150th birthday Saturday was 70-degree beautiful day, a perfect testament to how wonderful it can be to live here. A few additional photos of my Kansas-born baby on the state's sesquicentennial:






Brian, Eric and I later watched the KU-KSU basketball game together while enjoying bison burgers and Free State Beer. Happy birthday, Kansas!

Click to view more photos from the day.

Snuggly Meowsers

My brother-in-law Eric visited this weekend. As Meow Meow was lounging on my computer bag in the living room, I overheard this comment from E:

"Meow Meow, look at you. You're like a pillow. With a head."

You know it's cold ...

... when even the statues are bundled up!


Douglas Avenue, downtown Wichita

Keeping tabs

I love volunteering, especially when helping others is a no-brainer.

That's how I feel about the aluminum can tabs that the local Ronald McDonald House collects and recycles. The money goes toward the organization's general fund, which, among other things, pays for lodging when guests with sick kiddos cannot. That's what I call trash to treasure! If you have tabs, I'd be happy to take them off your hands. (It's called being a "McHelper.") Or click here to learn more about the mission.


Volunteers at the house tell me that home baked cookies are the guests' favorite. So I baked these up to take in with the tabs:


I'm conspiring with our church's youth group director to challenge the tweens and teens to collect tabs, too. Two more no-brainers: teens and pop!

Silly monkeys

Westley and I spent the evening with Auntie Jen Jen and Cousin Kaden tonight. The cousins shared toys and even changed into their footed monkey jammies at the same time. Kaden and I traced hands and feet with crayon and played Wii mini golf for about three minutes.


Shhhh! Jen and I delayed splitting the rest of Brian's cherry chocolate fudge birthday cake. The secret to having your cake and eating it, too? Waiting until the 2-year-old is asleep.

Lean on me

On Thursday, Brian and I attended a funeral service for dear family friend Faith Holmes. My parents, sisters, brothers-in-law and mother-in-law ... and lots of friends and former neighbors and middle school teachers were there.

I haven't been to a funeral in years, but it was wonderful and terribly sad and hilarious and inspirational all at the same time. There were laughter and tears and hugs and reunions and goodbyes.

Coming from a large Catholic family, my relatives seem to know how to do funerals. A very odd thing to admit, I guess, but it's a comforting truth that I'm proud of in an odd way. We toast our loved one. We tell stories. We remember. We celebrate the life that is lost. But then life goes on. We have a party. We dine. We play.

I have lots of good memories of family funerals (from the parts that comes afterward, of course). I can remember playing in church halls with cousins, eating too much of the scrumptious desserts made my loving church ladies, swimming in hotel pools when we've needed to travel and visiting around a bonfire with sisters, aunts and uncles. I think we just like to celebrate the connections and the family and network the loved one had surrounding him or her. We fall back on our faith and remind each other that the one whose loss we're mourning is feeling no pain, is not hungry, is not sad. And we try not to be, either, but know that time will help. Our loved one's death also is a reminder of how precious life is, how very miraculous and limited our time here together is. As with Faith, we're ready to follow the example of our loved one's success stories, chiefly to love more, to live fully.


Last night after the memorial service, we picked up kiddos from daycare and met for dinner at Jason's Deli. There were lots of musical chairs and trips to the soft serve ice cream machine and plans for possible future vacations.

Yep. We were THAT family in the restaurant dining room: the party of 10 at the tables pushed together. The one that had lots of jokes and laughs and noise and spills. The one with the half-eaten hot dog and cracker wrappers on the floor and coats piled up. The one with all of the hugs and the sitting-on-laps and the stories and the love.

Fittingly, I think that's what Faith loved about us.

Great eight

This week, Westley James turned eight months old!


He's experienced so much in the past month: his first Christmas and New Year, family introductions, his first time to play in the snow, his first college basketball game, green beans, peas and cauliflower. We're also teaching him baby sign, which I'll have to blog more about soon.

The weather was pretty enough in late December to go for a walk outside. Look how big he's grown since Halloween, the first time we used this cute Radio Flyer:


Some of West's favorite things are to play peek-a-boo ...


... and play with the pet dishes, especially if they contain water.


He's learned how to open cabinet doors in the kitchen and bathroom, so a trip to Lowe's for baby-proofing items was in order. The baby gate we bought for the top of the stairs didn't fit, so a return was in order. Installing everything is still on our to-do list.

Westley loves to grin a big cheesy smile. He scrunches up his face and cheeses it out, showing off his adorable two top and two bottom toofers. Cute, cute, cute! He also has started to grind them. Not cute. It makes my skin crawl, in fact. I asked him very nicely not to do that anymore, but he doesn't listen to Mama on that one.

Life with an 8-month-old is busy, wonderful ... and busy!