The Road Less Traveled

This is one of the back roads I sometimes take. It is a long, skinny road lined with trees on both sides. (I don't take it at night since there is wildlife close by!) Just sharing one of my places of peace!

Here is the same road in mid-May; I love the seasons and watching the surroundings change!

There are a few back roads close by that are quite peaceful ... here is another one that we took this afternoon on our way home from the mall today.

The Way of the World

The Way of the World is a book that was loaned to me by Beth, my friend and co-worker (for the record she and I have opposing political views, but I love her so much!). The book started out really good and really interesting. It is about people who have come to America from foreign places and how different (not necessarily wrong) America's practices are than their own. It was eye opening, but again ... not that how we do it is more right or wrong than their culture - - just very different.

After about a third of the way into the book the author's personal distaste for President Bush was outweighing the other stuff and I couldn't handle it any more so I stopped reading it. I am sure many of you reading of this (judging from my poll half of you don't share my views!) don't LOVE LOVE LOVE Bush either, but it was just flat disrespectful at times. I vow to never be disrespectful to Obama; he is the man who our nation chose to lead us. It's nice that I live in such a great country that I CAN talk smack about my leader, but I choose not to.

Girls Night Out on the Kansas City Plaza

The boys went hunting for the day/night so we girls hit the Plaza for some sight seeing and just a little bit of shopping!


I feel it's important to explain some of the main attractions in the KC area: The Plaza, Crown Center, Kansas City Power & Light District and Westport. All of these are in the same general vicinity and quite frankly, I don't get out enough to where I can distinguish them. That being said ... my intent was to head to Crown Center for the lighting of the Mayor's Christmas Tree at 5:30 ... but then it occurred to me as I was headed there .... I have no idea where Crown Center is. I really only know where The Plaza is ... and I know that two blocks either side of The Plaza is baaaaaaaaaaad news (think East Waterloo only Kansas City sized!). So I decided to just go with what I know and headed to The Plaza. I needed to go to the Apple Store anyway to see about getting Hunter's iPod fixed.


Dayne and I picked up her friend, Parker, about 5:00 and headed that way. While we weren't there for the lighting of The Plaza (it takes place Thanksgiving day ... and it turns out our American Idol David Cook was the one who flipped the switch - - wish we had been there!) all the lights were beautiful. Here is a picture of The Plaza with all the lights.


The Plaza was bustling with holiday shoppers! (Stimulate that economy, people!!). We spent about four hours there tonight ... just walking around, sight seeing and we stopped in for some Cold Stone Ice Cream .... mmmmm .... Never too cold for that! It was actually about 46 degrees, so it was a great night for a stroll!


Here are the girls at the Apple Store while I waited for Hunter's replacement iPod (still under warranty ... by 17 days!)!


We parked in the parking garage through Hall's department store and realized this was a problem when we walked back to the store, only to see the doors being locked. We parked in the garage and then walked through the store to get to The Plaza. I had no idea how to get back to the car! At that point I wish I had the GPS so I could have marked the coordinates! I knew it'd be a while before we were resting comfortably in the car! All along though, the girls and I were laughing ... it was funny after all! It only took us about 15 minutes to find the car ... but it reminded me of the Seinfeld episode when the lose the car. Funny. That happened to me in Vegas once, too. Needless to say, I am not much of a natural navigator (thus Graden bought me a GPS for Father's Day!).


After we settled into the ol' Caddy and were on our way we stopped off at the store for the girls to pick out a movie (I LOVE REDBOX!!!) and as I type this they are watching "Space Chimps."

Next time we have visitors I plan to take them to The Plaza ... I feel like I know my way around now!

Mom, I have a stupid question ...

On the way home from the grocery store today Dayne says to me, "Mom, I have a question ... and I know it's stupid but ... Are pirates real?"

I had to explain that pirates are real. I tried to compare what they do to car jacking, but she didn't know what that was (I guess that's good?!). Oddly enough just a few hours later on Fox News Radio the story about the pirate hijacking off the coast of Somalia (I guess that's not real uncommon there?) came on and that offered more details on what Pirates are and what they do.

I did have to explain to her that they don't wear eye patches, have wooden legs or have Parrots perched on their shoulders. : ) What a pathetic thing to have to explain to your 9 year old daughter. Our world is so messed up ... I also had to explain to her that terrorists don't care if you're a kid: they'll kill anyone. How frightening it must be to a kid ... heck, to all of us.

Someone really wants to go hunting ...

Poor Oz ... he wants to go hunting!

Graden was getting all his hunting gear all ready to go and Oz took this moment to cuddle with the gun. I think he is going through withdrawls. Poor fella!

Happy Thanksgiving & Birthday!

... and Happy 15th Birthday to my "two lines"!

Hunter,

I am so happy to have you in my life. You will never know what a blessing you are, and always have been (yes, even on those days we fight like brother & sister!). We are so proud of you and all you accomplish and do well in. I love your humor, your creativity, your eagerness to debate any and all topics ... and your dimples! You truly are a blessing in my life and are what inspired me to puruse the happy, successful path I am on. I would not be the person I am today without you. Thank you for all you contribute to the family. We all love you very much.

Mom, Dad and Dayne

These are the flowers Graden gave me on Hunter's birthday. Sweet! XOXO

On our way to being rich!

Okay, maybe that's a stretch ... but I am a lot more educated on stocks and trading! This weekend was the weekend Beth and I had signed up for the Investools educational seminar on investing. Wow was it a lot of information! The main speaker, Andrew Scott, promised us at the start of day one that by the end of day two we'd all have that 'light bulb moment' where it all came together. Well, I don't know that my light bulb was fully illuminated, but there was a strong flicker anyway!

Graden is very well informed on how stocks work. By working at home and having the TV on all the time, he learns a lot. He learns easily, I have learned. He decided to make it a competition between the two of us to see who can do better in the stock market: Me, who spent $99 and 16+ hours educating myself, and him, who spent zilch time of official education on the subject matter. He put $500 in seperate accounts for us and the challenge is on!! I have about 6 hours of online education courses before I will make any moves, but he has already chosen who he is going to invest in. I will keep you all posted ... either way I think we are winners (assuming we don't both FLOP!).

Wish me luck, everyone!