Check This Out...

For any of you who have met my stepdaughter Paige, (and yes, she will always be like a daughter to me, even if I'm no longer married to her dad) I'm sure you will agree that she is an amazing young woman.  And I am completely certain that anyone who ever spends even a short amount of time with her comes to that very same conclusion!  I was very blessed to be a part of her life for the past five years, and spend time with her while she was at William Jewell during her first two years of college. What fun times those were - weekend trips to visit Paige, meeting her friends, and spending time with her, Ryan and our friends Garry and Heather.  Some great memories! 

Now Paige is abroad for her junior year, at Oxford University.  I know her dad, mom, boyfriend and many non-Oxbridge friends will miss her terribly, but thankfully she has started a blog to keep us all updated about her experiences while she is there.  Her blog address is http://inhabitingoxfordblog.blogspot.com/ so check it out.  (And I love her background color and pattern, so you may be seeing it on my blog very soon!)

Pancake Night & Paigey

Jace and I have had a Wednesday night tradition for the last couple of years - pancake night.  One of my favorite things for many years has been breakfast for dinner - cereal, oatmeal, pancakes, eggs and more.  So, since he especially loves pancakes, we've turned that into our weekly treat.  For awhile he wanted to help me, then he wanted to be the one to make them for both of us (a treat for Mom!).  But the novelty has worn off, and now I'm back to pancake duties - he does, however, get to do the dishes afterwards.

Tonight we had a special treat, in addition to pancakes - Paige came over for a visit, now that she's home from Jewell for the summer.  It was great to see her and catch up; she's done with her research project and working at Andy's again until she leaves for Oxford in September.   I know she and I will keep in touch, even though Dave and I aren't together - she's such a special young woman, and I so look forward to remaining a part of her life. 

Preparing fruit to put on top of the pancakes

Dinner is served!

After dinner, Paige helped me finish planting the perennials I bought last week.  It has been so hot, I've been watering them each day but needed to get them in the ground, soon.   She is going to be here over the weekend while I'm gone to Kansas City; the doggies will love to have her keeping them company while I'm gone!

Speaking of Kansas City, this is a weekend I've been looking forward to for the last couple of months.  I'm heading to KC early Saturday morning with friend Laura, and we are meeting my sis Tara and BIL Luke at Geather's house around noon.  Then we'll head to Arrowhead Stadium mid-afternoon for the Zac Brown Band & Kenny Chesney concert - how cool is that!?   Haven't seen Garry and Heather for a few months, so it will be great to spend a little time with them, before and after the concert - hopefully they'll join us for a little tailgating.  Jana is also going to be there with a friend, and I have a couple other Springfield friends that we'll also hang out with, have seats near us.

As for the concert itself, we have some awesome seats, we're in Section 123, Row 9:

And I couldn't ask for better company than Laura, Tara and Luke.  I saw Kenny Chesney in concert with Tara & Luke in STL a couple of years ago, and we had a blast.  Now to see ZBB and Kenny will be even better!   It has been a little bittersweet, knowing that Dave and I love both of these groups and had planned to go together, and there will be a few songs that will be hard to hear without thinking of him (I may have to excuse myself and head to the bathroom during "Colder Weather").  But truly, I'm just excited to be going with TT & Luke, and now Laura. 

I will hate to miss Jace's tryouts for the Tribe baseball team on Saturday, but I know his dad will be there, and I'll be checking in with him to see how Jace is doing.  In the meantime, I'm still on the hunt for a cowboy hat (think beach-style) for the concert, and cannot find one anywhere!  Luke suggested I check with Dad, since he has a couple of straw hats he wears out on the tractor when he's mowing (thanks, Luke).

I'm excited to take my new camera to the concert, although I have already realized that I need a longer lens - my point-and-shoot didn't take near as clear of pics, but it did have a longer zoom than the 18-55 lens that came with my SLR.  But the longer lens is another $200, so will have to wait for awhile on that... maybe a Christmas present to myself.

Time to close, and finish up some laundry before heading to bed.

We traveled to KC this past weekend to attend Paige's inducton into William Jewel's chapter of the freshman honors society, Alpha Lambda Delta. She's been back at school for six weeks now, and it was great to make the trip up to visit her. The only downside was that Jace and Neil didn't get to go with us, since Jace had a baseball game and time with his dad over the weekend, and Neil had a football game (and dogsitting duties, now that he's driving- very helpful for us!).

Dave and I gave Paige a guitar as a "congratulations" present, and she couldn't have been more surprised. She started learning how to play last year after having several friends who played, and she borrowed my guitar over the summer while she was home. But Dave wanted her to have her own guitar at school, instead of borrowing friends', and it was a perfect gift for her! I was impressed at all that she already knows, from her friends helping her AND her looking up chords/songs on YouTube - pretty impressive!

We stayed the weekend at Garry and Heather's house, but didn't get to enjoy their company, as they were celebrating Heather's 40th in Las Vegas! But we did hang with their 16 year old, Christian, who joined the three of us for dinner at an Irish pub on Friday night, and Cold Stone Creamery afterwards. There was no shortage of calories over the weekend, unfortuately - but it was loads of fun!

After spending a couple of great days with Paige and some KC friends, things got a little crazy on the way home. As we headed home on Sunday we got a call from Dave's stepmom; his dad had a balloon procedure last week to clear out some heart blockages, and was having complications that the doctors couldn't quite figure out. So Dave made the decision on Monday to head to Boston on Tues AM to be there with his dad for a few days. The report as of today is great, his dad is home from the hospital and feeling much better. I was on the road as well on Tuesday and Wednesday, heading to Poplar Bluff for my great aunt's funeral. She had been ill for sometime, and I was glad that some of our family was able to make the trip and be there for our grandmother.

My allergies, in particular sinuses (and ears) have continued to be the worst I've ever experienced - I have heard the same from many others this year, it must be a particularly bad year for pollens. Poplar Bluff is about three hours east of us, and just slightly south, but it must have been just enough of a change to trigger additional symptoms for me. My eyes watered non-stop while I was there, but it has gradually subsided now that I've been back home for 24 hours. I'll be glad when we get the first frost of the season, hopefully that will mean a big improvement in sinus symptoms.

Off to bed, ready for a good night's sleep.

Just in case you thought I wasn't blogging anymore...

Nope, I'm still here. Just not as often. "Oh, I'll have to blog about that" has been a passing thought several times over the last couple of weeks, but I haven't made it any further than that! Nothing too crazy here, but more of my weekday evenings have been busy with the gym, which has been a good thing. Hitting the road to Florida with Dave and the kids in less than a month, and although I've been lax the past couple summers about working out (even with us having a boat the last two summers. You'd think that would be a motivator to look GOOD, but it didn't seem to happen - well, the workout didn't happen, and the excessive wine did happen, and neither were good for the waistline), I really want to get out of that rut. I have lost 2% body fat since my last visit with my wellness coach at work back in Feb, so it definitely is progress. I've decided that my goal from the last two years of wellness visits, which has been to lose 10 pounds, is not what I need to focus on - it is the body fat. That's more the key, and I think I'm doing it... we'll see, I'm going to stop in and check my numbers again in a couple of weeks.

I'm not doing anything crazy, because I want it to continue to be attainable for me, and not just a mad dash to fitness and then slacking back off. I'm loving my cycling/cross training class on M-W evenings, have been doing that for about 12 weeks now. The instructor is one of Paige's high school teachers and she is awesome. She makes the 45 minute class very enjoyable, even though it is a hard workout. There is a class that it titled the same thing on Friday mornings and 6AM, and I tried that last week since I knew we were eating a big dinner Friday night. It was a far cry from the M-W class; everyone in there had cycling shoes on, and the teacher was a harda**; it was 1.5 hours long, 45 minutes of intense cycling (C'mon, Friday morning people, you can do it - go go go go GO! She bellowed like that for the entire 45 minutes!) and then we headed over to one of the open floor areas for the cross training. I have to say, I only lasted 10 minutes on the cross training and then I was out of there. To be fair, she did tell me that I could just go at my own pace, but all of these people were hard core, and it was just not comfortable for me.

My friend Gail is doing a "Couch to 5K" training over the next several weeks, so she has talked me into meeting her during her daughter's class on Tuesday nights and running. Tonight was "walk 3 minutes/run 3 minutes" five times. She is supposed to do it 3-4 times a week, which she has been doing. I'm only doing it the one time with her, the rest of my nights are cycling and other stuff. Sooo, I think as she gets further into it (next week is "walk 2.5 min/run 5 min") I won't be able to keep up as well. We'll see.

Hmmm, let's see - other news. Neil turned 16 Sunday and got his license Monday, and Paige came home from William Jewell on Thursday night and then left for Okazaki, Japan on Monday for five weeks. Her minor is Japanese, and she applied for and received a full grant to stay with a host family and study Japanese at a university there. We had birthday dinners for them Friday night, it was so good to see them both, especially since we haven't seen Paige as much now that she's 3+ hours away. Here's a couple pics:

Dave and kids

(I made Neil smile; he should more often, don't you agree!?)

Paige and Kathleen

Landscaping/flower garden update: Our back yard is looking great, AND I've been able to skip the chore of watering nightly or even every other night, with all the rain lately! I planted a bunch of bulbs in our front flower beds this time last week; but with all this rain, I just hope they're not rotting under there. I did see four of the hostas peeking out today, but we'll see about the irises and poppies. I still need to finish painting the pergola on the back deck, because our wisteria is already up the posts and heading for the top, so I want to get it painted before the vines reach the top. Hopefully this weekend's weather will be SUNNY, we've had rain for almost two weeks straight.

That's all for now, time to finish up a bit of work and head to bed.

Moving Day

Whew... Heading back to work almost felt like a break,compared to the whirlwind we've been in the last four days! I wanted to get this posted last night, but instead needed to get some domestic duties done - figured laundry, dishes and cleaning were more important than blogging!

Here was one big part of the weekend, loading up the car and taking Paige to where she will be spending the next four years immersed in higher education:



But more on that in a minute. First, we kicked off our crazy weekend on Wednesday night with a celebration of Jace's birthday and Paige's transition to college. Dave fixed dinner for the five of us and our friends Dan, Gail and their kids. It was great to have all the kids together the night before Paige left for college; we know we'll still see her often, of course, but it is still somewhat sad to know that she won't be just 15 minutes away anymore.


As for Jace, he is now officially one year closer to being a teenager and, as he likes to remind me, one year closer to having that cell phone glued to his ear (or more likely glued to his fingers, thanks to texting). That's his big thing-- can't wait to be old enough to have his own phone. (Here he is with his buddy, Connor, who also has the meanest parents ever, just like me, and won't let him have his own cell phone yet either!)




On Thursday, Dave had a work project that was 2 hours southeast of Springfield, and would not be home until 7pm. So I worked most of the day on Thursday and then met Paige at our house about 4:30 to ride with her to KC. We are so lucky that our good friends Garry and Heather live about 15 minutes away from the WJC campus, so they will be right there if Paige needs anything. And, we will be lucky to have a place to stay when we visit Paige, just like we did on Thursday night. It was great to catch up with them, and enjoy some dessert and drinks with them before Dave arrived about 10:30 that night. Then it was off to bed shortly thereafter, since we had to be at the campus at 7AM.

Jewell is an absolutely beautiful campus, and it was so interesting to me to see the obviously long-standing traditions at the college, and how intimate the entire college experience will be for Paige. With only 300+ incoming freshmen, and 1200 students total, it will be a very individualized experience for her and totally different from the college experience at a big university like Missouri State, where her dad, mom and I all attended. I found myself so excited for her, for all of the people she will meet and the things she will experience over the next four years.

One of the traditions for incoming freshmen is the walk around the quad; they will do this again in cap and gown when they graduate in four years, as well. The walk started with a group (gaggle? chorus?) of bagpipers, followed by the faculty, and then the students, who were all hyped up about their first day.







This took place at 3pm, after we had spent eight hours getting Paige moved into her room (you will notice there are no pictures of the dorm room - it was rather old and nondescript, although it was one of the bigger rooms on her floor), going to lunch with her and her mom/stepdad, and generally just enjoying the campus and all of the activity. The walk and the welcoming ceremony were the last two things of the day before we left, and her dad was in pretty good spirits, considering he was saying goodbye to his little girl.

After the walk around the quad, we all crowded into the chapel to watch the matriculation (I type that like I knew what the heck it meant before last Friday- nope, I didn't, but to bring you up to speed it means "to enroll or begin at a university") ceremony of welcoming the freshmen class of 2013 to William Jewell.

The speaker giving the address will be Paige's Arts and Literature professor in her Oxbridge program, and he was such an interesting individual. I don't if I've ever been so captivated by an address at a program like this- most of the time one just listens, waiting for the address and, quite truthfully, the entire ceremony to be over. But this professor was just so interesting, with a quiet and eloquent diction, a dry sense of humor, and a absolutely fascinating and insightful manner. Paige had already met him when she enrolled, and I look forward to hearing about her classes with him. I have no doubt that he will be one of her favorites, because he will challenge her and expect top notch performance from her and all of his students.

After the ceremony, we headed back to Paige's dorm to say goodbye and let her get acclimated to her new surroundings. The orientation was an all-weekend event, designed to get the students ready to start school on Monday and to keep them busy and not give them enough time to think about missing their families. I know Paige will be fine, and will jump in with both feet, as she does with everything in life. Her dad has already talked to her a couple of times since Friday, and I talked to her last night. It has been non-stop activity and she has already made a ton of new friends. We can't wait to see her in October for Parents' Weekend, and hear all about her first six weeks.



The rest of our weekend was just as busy, with a trip to my folks and to St. Louis to see the Cards play on Saturday night. Jace and Neil had a great time, it was Jace's first St. Louis Cardinals game! More pics on the rest of the weekend very soon.