Sleeping Beauty

Whitney has been taking a nap every day since Sunday. Like I mentioned in the previous post, THIS GIRL NEVER TAKES NAPS. I don't know what's up with her, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts!

Father's Day and the Iron Man

Happy Father's Day to all the great dads out there. I am so thankful to have a great dad myself that put up with living in a house of two daughters. I'm thankful for all the things he taught me: how to ski, how to skate, how to build a model rocket for school, how to love the Edmonton Oilers. Dad you're the best!

I'm also thankful for Steve and what a great dad he is to Whitney and Joshua. We have some high-maintenence kids, and he always has great patience with them. Even as a busy student he always finds time to play with them. Thanks for all you do!



This week I participated in the Iron Man. Well, sort of. I volunteered for the Iron Man. I signed up to help check in the athletes Friday afternoon so I could run the Rock Chalk 5K/10K Saturday morning for free. I couldn't believe all the people who signed up. It's $250 to register and people flew from Brazil, Australia, Canada all over the U.S. to particpate. These people are hard-core. The Iron Man is a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run. (That run is a half marathon folks).

The 5K was so much fun. The weather was great and the course had some good shady areas. I actually ran pretty well too. I came in first place in my age division and 16th overall in women. Comparing it to the Iron Man, it doesn't seem like much, but it was fun to win and I got a cup. No, nothing like Lord Stanley's Cup, more like a table glass. Also, congrats to my friend Katina, who did her first triathalon in Topeka. You're awesome Katina!



(I know, not too attractive)

And to end this very long post, a picture of Whitney--napping. That girl hasn't taken a nap since 2006

Joshua's Art Project

For those of you who know Joshua, you know that he hates drawing pictures. He would rather practice and perfect his printing skills over and over again than sit down and draw a cute little picture of a house. If you want him to draw a picture of a house, you basically have to tell him or show him a square and triangle.

So you would imagine my surprise when on the kitchen table I found this abandoned piece of paper. It was definitely crafted by Joshua. He has those signature people at the bottom with the big coloured-in ears. I asked him "What is this a picture of?" and he said "Joshua eating a cookie, Joshua eating cake, Joshua eating ice cream." (So that's what that circle and upside down triangle is) Wow, you can tell we like to eat a lot of those things around here :) Of course on the back of the paper he had written "cookie" "ice cream" "cake" and "jayhawks." I knew he just HAD to write something somewhere. Hooray for Joshua! I guess next time I want you to draw a picture, I should just ask you to draw food!!!


One of our favourite family games right now is "Guess Who." I found it at a garage sale the other day for $2 and got nostalgic. The kids love it. And they're both really good at thinking up questions like, "Does your person have brown hair?" all on their own. The best part is that it forces Joshua to actually listen and RESPOND to Whitney. He listens to me and Steve just fine, but often he just ignores Whitney and drives her crazy. Now, he listens to her question, looks at the card, and says, "No Whitney, no brown hair." It's great! So if you want a game that encourages sibling cooperation, give Guess Who a try!

P.S. I bought the old school version of Guess Who. I looked online, and they now have an ethnically-diverse version. I'm all about encouraging my kids to accept and embrace ethnic diversity (I bought Whitney an African American baby doll when she asked me why some people are chocolate) I just don't know if I want my kids asking, "Whitney does your person have brown skin?" or "Joshua, does your person have yellow skin?" Aren't we trying to get our kids to look past skin colour?

Driving on the Wild Side

Storm chasers, spotters, crazy--call us any of these names. We are certified in all 3 after yesterday.

Yesterday we were driving back from Fargo, and at the border of Nebraska/Iowa, hit a huge mass of severe thunderstorm cells. We had the radio tuned into the weather reports, which started to freak us out after a while. Then the driving got really bad. There was so much lightning, and rain, and then the wind picked up. We decided to pull off the road, so we drove into a McDonalds in Rock Port, Missouri (the middle of nowhere). Just as we parked, we heard the sirens go off, and ran into McDonalds as fast as we could because of the rain. We came in soaked. There were about 50 other people there who had the same idea as us. The staff was giving out free coffee, hot chocolate, and juice for the little kids and had the weather radio on. They were asking for flashlights (we happened to have one in our car--Steve ran back out in the pouring rain for it) and had everyone crowd in the bathrooms. About five minutes we hear on the radio that a tornado touched down in Fairfax, Mo--less than 20 miles south of us. It was crazy, everyone was on their cell phones, people with laptops were trying to get the weather radar up, water was pouring into McDonalds. Fun stuff.

When we thought it was safe to drive again, we didn't get much farther. We heard the warnings again on the radio (this time it was pitch black dark so you can't see anything). We stopped at a gas station just north outside of St. Joseph, Mo, and once again it was filled with people. Then on the radio, we heard that a tornado had touched down at Country Club road--4 miles west of us. Yikes!

Well, driving on pins and needles, we finally made it back to Lawrence safe and sound. I usually love big storms, but this time I just kept praying we'd make it home alive!

For more on the story click here. That semi turned over--we saw it and two others between Fairfax and St. Joseph.

Adventures at Grandma and Grandpa's

Last weekend we went down to Wichita to visit Grandma Gail and Grandpa Dave. We had such a fun visit. We were able to go to their indoor and outdoor YMCA pool (the kid's favourite place by far!), experience some crazy Kansas storms at night, and even discovered a very large, fast moving turtle in their backyard. Here are some pictures:




The kid's favourite book right now is Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. Grandpa read it a million times to them: