Kansas City, Kansas City here I come!

We finally have our plane tickets! In 44 days I will be in freezing cold Kansas City, 2 days after my dad's 57th birthday and 4 days before my mom's 56th. Now that I haven't lived there for just about 3 years I finally can appreciate parts of the city that I always took advantage of while we were there. The girls are now old enough too, that I can take them to the places I loved to go when I was little.

I definitely want to take them to see the plaza lights at night.




And then I want to take them down to Crown Center. There's nothing like Crown Center at Christmas. I think that's where we'll visit Santa Claus...and they'll love the Crayola area!




Probably after that we'll take them over to Union Station to see the trains, see the mayor's tree...and then maybe down to see the apartment we lived in before Richard joined the army. Can you see it?




And can you tell what this is??? Num yummy. Burnt ends, french fries and cheesy corn bake.




I also want to take them to see the giant shuttlecocks. I think they will really like them, of course visit the art gallery until they start misbehaving, and then over to Winsteads for steakburgers and chocolate shakes!

Richard will probably want to drive out to Riley just to check it out, so between that, family, and Christmas shopping I think we are pushing our limits on time.

I can't wait to bake cookies with my mom! Expect me to come back to Hawaii slightly larger than I left. We may have to buy me an extra seat!

Politics and Religion

The two things that you shouldn't discuss with friends if you really want to be sure you'll stay friends with that person. A friend and I had this conversation the other day, but we left it at that. Just the simple fact that it's not really a couple of topics that need to be out there on the table. People get butt hurt too easily, or make snide remarks that don't need to be said. I bet the majority of the people that I'm friends with would have a ton of issues with my beliefs, tis why I keep them to myself!
No one with the exception of my husband knows where I stand on all of the issues and it's good that he has about 95% of the same beliefs. I feel bad sometimes because I feel as if I corrupted him in small ways here and there, but I have to look at it as that I opened his eyes into becoming a man that can think for himself.
Ignorance is not bliss. I am proud of the parents that we have become. Gillian did a mock election at school last week. She came home and we asked her who she voted for. The response that soon came out of her mouth was a bit of a surprise to us, because we hadn't talked about that particular candidate much in our home. With that said we didn't chastise her, or question her decision. It was her choice to make, not ours. One day she will be old enough to vote in elections just like this one and I can only hope that she votes for her beliefs and not ours.
There are so many people in this society that can't break past their mother's apron strings and develop a complete rational thought on their own. Put aside what your church is telling you, what your family is telling you, what the media is telling you. Sit down on your own and write out the issues that are important to you, and rank them in importance. Then do a little research on your own and make an informed decision. A decision that has no spin on it. With that being said, neither of the candidates are perfect for me. Neither one of them are perfect for you either most likely. But I do know what direction I don't want the country going; therefore, a person has to chose one.
Our country is at war and it's economy is in the toilet, but I still hear every day people voting strictly because of how they feel about abortion. Broaden your horizons a little. If you turn your back on all the issues with the exception of one, then how do you know exactly what you are signing off on?
Off my soapbox now. I just woke up a little preterbed this morning.

Trick or Treat!

The girls had a really fun Halloween this year. They are at the perfect age to start enjoying all of these fun holidays. It makes me wish I were still a kid. Christmas is going to be so awesome this year!

Brenna and I started off the day finishing up the decorations on the front of the house since I had been sick all week previous to this. We then ate some lunch and headed off to see Gillian in her kindergarten parade at school. Let me tell you, I think cliques start way early! Her and all of her little girlfriend were such divas in their little group posing for all the pictures about five feet away from the rest of their class.

The only problem with these costumes is that the girls not only looked like cats, but they thought they were cats. I heard meowing all night and pretend licking. It was all I could do to keep them from not rubbing all their make up off their faces because they were trying to do kitty nudges. I think we need another cat.

The girls scored big with their candy, but their favorite "treat" of the evening was the playdoh I decided to try out instead of candy this year. Apparently it was a huge success. Richard said that he overheard kids yelling 'that house over there has playdoh!'. Next thing he knew we had a line of about 30-40 kids down our sidewalk. He said he ran out in about 30 minutes. I was only gone with the girls for about an hour, so I was super surprised to see our porch light off and the front door shut.

Halloween was fun, but I'm glad we get to move on to the rest of the holidays now. I'm ready to put my tree up now...does that make me a nut? Oh..and I've already stocked up on the almond bark while I was last minute Halloween shopping lol. You can never plan too early!

Where have I been?

Stole this from Megan...


visited 26 states (52%)


If you are the genius that can see the pattern and realize that I didn't visit California until after I moved to Hawaii, then you understand why I never saw the ocean before we moved here lol. I need to go northeast and northwest. Guess that means that Patti will have a visitor!!!!

It's been a no good terrible awful very bad month

Our computer has decided that it wants to be stupid. It kept crash dumping on us and we tried every fix possible before we just erased the hard drive and started from scratch. I'm hoping I can find the pictures of Gillian's cast somewhere on one of my many random upload sites because they've all been deleted :(

Speaking of the cast, she's finally getting it off today! Woot! She should've gotten it off two weeks ago, but the doc said since we were just keeping it on for protective reasons that he wanted to leave it on for a couple more weeks. She's had the stupid thing on for 7 weeks today. I can't wait for the kid to be able to take a shower again! And no darn bags to cover it! And maybe we might be able to go to the pool or beach without feeling guilty about it!

Richard and I were having a conversation about how October is his favorite month of the entire year. It's the end of baseball, the leaves change, his favorite holiday is Halloween back home he gets to eat chili all the freaking time, and normally you get to pull out sweaters. I love sweaters. But then we started talking about how for the past 5 years of our marriage it seems that we've been cursed during the month of October. I won't go into details of how and why, but October hates us. November isn't much better until around Thanksgiving and our anniversary, and then everything always turns around by Christmas. Of course October seems to be hating the world right now with the financial crisis and economy. All I can say is that I'm soooo glad we made the decision for him to stay in the military for the time being and go to OCS.

Oh and for more blabbering before I end this, Richard and I have decided that we are going to have a little competition between the two of us from now until we go home for Christmas. We are both trying to lose at least 17 lbs by December 19th, but whoever loses the most wins. I know I'm in over my head trying to lose more weight than a man, but I think it'll be the shove that I need. I've been trying to lose that weight for the last 3.5 years. I should have a good head start on him because I've been eating really well for the last week with the exception of a trip to McDonald's and our weekly trip to Baskin Robbins for Gillian staying on the green light all week. I did get a kid cone though! Ha ha. I think he padded his beginning weight though. He lost 5 lbs overnight *rolls eyes*. I guess it's a good thing we didn't discuss what the winner gets! It's all negotiable now lol.

So, no pictures today until we get the computer totally fixed and I can reload all my software. We think it's a memory issue, so we need to buy new RAM. Much cheaper than buying a new laptop!