Paige and Peter in St. Louis

While Paige and Peter were visiting they got to take a vacation within a vacation: the four of us went to St. Louis. We weren't in St. Louis for very long, but we sure played hard while we were there. One of the reasons that we went to St. Louis was because my brother was there working for the summer. We met up with him on Saturday morning for breakfast, and then we sent him to work while the rest of us played.

First we went to the St. Louis Zoo. Where we saw: 1) river otters, 2) a baby elephant with his mom, 3) puffins and penguins, and ...

4) this giraffe giving birth. If you look closely you can see the little legs of the baby giraffe sticking out from under her tail.

After lunch we went to check out the science museum. I really liked the exhibit on structural supports and building. I carefully constructed my own skeletal frame skyscraper. Paige, Peter, and Nate all worked on this lovely arch.

Paige and I tested our memories. And then my little sister grew into my giant sister.

On our way out we posed like the rockets and the spaceship, but really we just look kind of like The Incredibles.

We really enjoyed the science museum, and after all that fun we were ready for a little break. So we went to the hotel to swim, rest, and revive before picking up Taggart for dinner and a trip to the City Museum, which will be featured in the next post.

New Job

You may or may not have heard that I recently took an new job. After 8 years of supporting a fledgling flowers business, Hallmark decided to close up it's doors and walk away. In doing so, they dismissed me and about 100 employees that worked on their internet e-business. I worked at Hallmark for three and a half years, and while there are many things that I won't miss at all, I decided to make up a list of things that I really will miss. Here they are.

Top 10 things I will miss about working at Hallmark.

1. Not having to explain to people what my company does.


2. Receiving 20+ Christmas cards from coworkers every year.


3. Missing the tears and sniffs of my coworkers at the quarterly viewings of upcoming TV commercials.


4. Snagging food outside the conference rooms.


5. Monthly birthday celebrations.


6. Passing YoYo in the hallway (I never did meet Hoops).


7. Turning in my cafeteria t-shirt labeled "Body by Crown Room".


8. 50% discount on cards, gifts, and flowers.


9. Market tours (code for taking the afternoon off).


10. Not playing trumpet in the Hallmark band.

I'm currently working at Adknowledge, an internet advertising firm located in Kansas City. I'm working on their behavioral targeting system which attempts to match ads to consumers most likely to respond to those ads. I'm working with a great group of people in a small but growing company. Basically, the company is everything Hallmark was not: small, fast-paced, flexible, young, and high tech. Now if only Adknowledge had a concert band.

The Joys of High School

This post is brought to you by LeiAnn (who tagged me) and Jackie (who told me that LeiAnn had tagged me.)


1.What was your school's full name? Rampart High School

2. School mascot? Ram

3. Did you win anything in Seniors Who's Who? I don’t think we had these awards. The best award that I won in high school was a city-wide scholar-athlete award. All the schools would nominate one person from every sport and then the winner for each sport was announced at a banquet. I won for girls' cross country my senior year. Here I am with my medal.


4. What kind of car did you drive? A blue, Ford Taurus station wagon. It was perfect for taking everyone from seminary to school. And Paul Simon was always playing in my car. Sadly, no picture.

5. It's Friday night...where are you? We had a lot of cross country parties, which basically consisted of everyone on the team watching movies or playing pool at one of our teammate’s houses.

6. Were you a party animal? Definitely not. If I wasn't at a cross country party my preferred weekend night activity was watching TV with my mom. Seriously.

7. Were you considered a flirt? no

8. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? I sang in choir all four years of high school. The picture below is from my senior year. Our choir teacher was unable to come to the concert so the boys all decided they weren't going to wear their shirts. And the thing is that the guys shirts were just plain blue and not crazy, big plaid like the girls.


9. Were you a nerd? I'd probably have to say yes. I took all the TAG (talented and gifted) classes I could and some AP classes. And, if not nerdy, at least a little quirky. Remember the stick figures post?

10. Did you get suspended/expelled? Not even close.

11. Can you sing the fight song? Of course. “We are the Rams of Rampart. Fight for the blue and gold. We’ve got a spirit that sets us apart. We have a story to be told, for we are the Rams of Rampart. Winners as you can see. Fighting. Striving. There’s no denying that we’re headed for victory.”

12. Who were your favorite teachers? Mr. Clark: U.S. History and my track coach. We used to go downtown and run at the park for practice. Mr. Clark had a Sesame Street tape in his car that we always listened to on the way. I can still sing 3 of the songs. Mrs. McCombs: My awesome senior English teacher. She really got me ready for college. At the end of the year she had her senior English class over to her house for breakfast. The only stipulation was that we had to try grits. I was not a fan. Mr. Bierman: My sophomore English teacher. He taught me how to write a thesis statement. Madame Kozhevnikov: She was my French teacher. She had lots of funny stories about when she was a cheer leader and her Russian husband. One time Katherine accidentally locked Eddie in the closet in her class. Mr. Duggan: My junior English teacher. Lots of funny things happened in Mr. Duggan's class. His TAs gave him a goldfish for his birthday, which they christened Bitey. When Bitey died Mr. Duggan wrote a hilarious elegy for him. Then he got some new fish named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Also, Mr. Duggan had us rewrite the Beatles' song "She Loves You" in Shakespearean English. I have never forgotten it: "She loveth thee and thou knowest that canst be bad. She loveth thee and thou knowest thou shouldst be glad."

13. Where did you sit during lunch? The lunchroom opened up to the central portion of the high school where all the halls came together – sort of like an atrium – and that’s where we always sat. On the floor. Usually over by the auditorium doors. I can only remember sitting at a table for lunch in high school once.

14. Did you date someone from your school? Yes, Dave Gotsill.

15. Did you go to Homecoming and who with? I went to Homecoming with Dave Gotsill my junior year and Hadley Henshaw my senior year. This is Dave. His outfit looks kind of funny now. I look so young.


16. If you could go back and do it again, would you? No way. Life after high school is so much better.

17. Where did you go senior skip day? We went out to breakfast and then to the park. Senior skip day was lame. I ended up going back to school. See, I really was a nerd.

18. Were you in any clubs? Sports. I ran track and cross country in high school. The track team was really good. We won state my sophomore and junior years. This picture is from my junior year. The picture of me running is from my sophomore cross country season.


19. Who was your prom date? Chris Guillan. Prom was so lame. Ask anyone. The music was terrible. Plus, my date and I were both on the track team, and Prom was held right after the conclusion of the two-day Regional Track Meet so we were so tired.


20. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion? Who wrote this quiz? Is this supposed to make me feel old? My 10 year reunion was last year, and I did go. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. It was kind of scary how little people changed. The "cool" people still didn't really talk to the rest of us.

21. Do you still talk to people from school? A few. Jessica (we went to collage and grad. school together too). Rebecca. Some people I recently found on facebook.

Paige and Peter in KC

Paige and Peter came all the way from Utah to visit us so we had to show them a good time. We went to the Deanna Rose Farm. The last time that Paige visited this cow and this bison were little babies. They lived together as babies, and now they are adolescents, and they are still friends. Paige and Peter also had a chance to feed the goats. The goats really like it when people feed them.


I took Paige and Peter to the World War I Museum. Paige is teaching WWI next year, so she was really interested in seeing the National WWI Museum. Here's Peter and Paige at the museum with the city behind them. One of the cool things about the museum is that there are a bunch of interactive consuls where you can learn more about the weapons, airplanes, and camouflage, etc. that were used in the war. On one of the consuls you can design you own memorial. Here is mine.

While we waited for Nate to finish up at work, the three of us went to the Kauffman Gardens. Paige really liked the fountain.


After we picked up Nate and went to dinner we went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The weather was pretty nice so we walked around the sculpture garden. The sculpture below is made from wood. Paige and Peter got a picture with the Shuttlecocks, and Paige and I played a rousing game of badminton.

At the Zoo

After I got back from Arizona, Nate and I decided we needed to have some fun because he had just finished his first week at a new job and I had been away. So we went to the zoo. The Kansas City Zoo is really great if you want to see African animals or Australian animals. If you want to see North or South American animals you will have to go to some other zoo.

The African section of the zoo is like a mini safari. The animals have a lot of room to roam. Highlights in Africa included: 1) the week-old baby zebra, 2) the lions, and 3) the meerkats who all came over to say hello. We also saw this enormous African vulture. He has a 9 foot wing span.

Highlights in Australia included: 1) the soft-looking tree kangaroo, 2) the curious lorikeets, who explored our shoelaces and their food jug, and 3) the kangaroos. The kangaroo section of the Kansas City Zoo is pretty great because the kangaroos can roam throughout most of the Australian section of the zoo. Usually they just lounge around in the shade, but this kangaroo was hopping down the path like a tourist.




We also took a picture of this pig. We wanted to see if this pig was as photogenic as the pigs at the farm (pictured below). And, we decided that he does indeed take a mighty fine picture. We are starting to wonder if pigs are just naturally photogenic.

A is for Arizona

I abandoned Nate over Memorial Day Weekend and flew off to Arizona to visit my pal Jill. Jill showed me a great time. I got to meet all of her fun friends, check out her cool ward, and chill out at her condo. Jill and I had a great time just hanging out like old times. (Beware there will be a lot of self-taken pictures in this post.)

One of the greatest things about vacationing with Jill is the food. We made the famous chocolate chip cookies. We ate at Cafe Rio, The Barrio Cafe, and The Wildflower Cafe. We also made some fabulous lunches, really tasty eggs, and great waffles. We even packed an awesome lunch on the day of our hike.



Jill and I also went on some adventures. I was all for seeing some desert flora, so we went to the Botanical Gardens. A few times a week the Botanical Gardens holds a flashlight tour where the gardens stay open late and visitors can move from station to station learning about the flora and fauna of the desert. We learned about the scream of the Woodhouse Toad, a really enormous beetle, king snakes (which we got to touch), tarantulas and scorpions. We also learned all about Mesquite tree, Saguaro cacti, and Palo Verde trees. Jill could pretty much survive in the desert now.

These cacti above were really hairy--they are called the Old Man Cactus. (Note the flashlight in my hands. We are prepared to learn on the tour.) We thought the cacti below looked like big, prickly beach balls.

And these cacti look like snakes. Below, Jill and I pose after dark on the flashlight tour.

On Monday Jill and I took a roadtrip. Our first stop was Montezuma's Castle, which is an ancient cliff dwelling built by the Sinagua tribe. The 20 room, 5-storey structure is built into a recess in a white limestone cliff about 70 feet above the ground. The Sinagua (Spanish for without water) began to built the structure around 1125 A.D. and lived there until the early 1400s when they left for unknown reasons, and the tribe virtually vanished; there is no Sinagua tribe today. The name, Montezuma's Castle, is a misnomer. Early explorers thought it was constructed by the Aztecs.
Next we made our way to Tuzigoot, another Sinagua ruin. This was particularly exciting for Jill because she had been involved in a case that dealt with land disputes around the area. Tuzigoot was built on a big mesa, and visitors can climb up and see the ruins up close. You even get to go inside one of the rooms. In its heyday about 300 people lived at Tuzigoot--about the size of my high school class. Here's Jill with the rooms and the valley beyond. And then the two of us with the ruins behind.

Just like Montezuma's Castle, these structures were begun about 1000 A.D. and then abandoned around 1400. During the Great Depression they were excavated with funding from the C.W.A and W.P.A.

Next stop: Sedona. Jill and I went on a hike among the red rocks. It was beautiful and so fun to hike. Here we are getting started.

Gazing at the view from the top of the climb. Jill looks so tough and prepared with her Camelback.

We saw a Mickey Mouse cactus and some pretty awesome rock formations.



What fun! Jill, thanks for all the good times. Here's to 11 years of friendship!

The Big S, The Big W, and the Big Z

When Jen and the kids were here, we were all really impressed with how well the kids did with the cat, and, more especially, how well the cat did with the kids. Zephyr was a big draw for Savannah and Will. They LOVED her. They followed her around the house; they called her (which didn't really work because she's a cat); they played with her. Zephyr was so into them too. She wanted to be right in the thick of things. As you can see, she's like a third kid. Zephyr was really nice to the kids too. She didn't ever scratch or bite them, and she even put up with Will's body-slams. In the process we discovered that Zephyr is like an 18-month-old. Will and Zephyr have a lot of common interests--they hate when any doors are shut; they hate when people leave them; they like the same toys; they'll eat off the floor. At one point, the two of them were even chewing on separate ends of the same toy. So, I think The Big S, The Big W, and The Big Z all made some new friends.

Stephenie Meyer

Some of my friends and I are just a little obsessed with Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Series. So when we found out she was coming to Kansas City on a book tour for her newest novel, The Host, we decided to fully embrace our nerdiness and started planning. We got our tickets, we made our shirts, and we figured out rides. Thanks to all of our great planning (props to Karen and Shannon) we got awesome seats--five rows from the stage. The ten of us took up a whole row. While we waited for the event to start we talked to some of the other fans. We met one group that came for a Young Women's activity. Lots of people had shirts, but we got quite a few compliments on ours. Several strangers even asked for our pictures because they loved our shirts so much. Here are some pictures of the Vampire Girls.


All TEN of us. Back Row: Karen, Trina, Shannon, Maren. Front Row: Carolyn, Jen, Michelle, Leiann, Me, Kim.

Here are the early arrivals before we got into the auditorium. And below Jen, Trina, and I save seats.

Stephenie Meyer talked for about half an hour. She did a reading from her newest (non-Vampire) book and answered some of the questions that had been submitted by the audience. She seems like a really impressive person to me--really nice and down to earth. She talked about how she never aspired to become an author but that once she started writing she couldn't stop. After her talk we waited to get our books signed. It took a long time. I got my book signed around 9:30 and the last person in our group got hers signed around 10:30. All the waiting was totally worth it.