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!

Happy Birthday, Mama!

Happy Birthday, Mama!

Again, wishing I were closer so I could be there to celebrate with you! Sorry to hear you spent the afternoon in the dentist office and couldn't even enjoy your birthday dinner/cake! At least you had wonderful company!

Hugs,

Sissy

P.S.

You didn't really expect your birthday card on time, did you!!??! : ) "I learned it from watching you!"

Happy 81st Birthday, Papa!

Happy birthday, Papa! I am so glad you had a nice little celebration with Mom, Patrick and Brian (with several phone calls from family!).

Wish I were closer so I could have been there!

Love,
Tiffy

I Got Motivated!

Get Motivated! Seminars came to Kansas City today and Beth and I went for the day long event! We were super excited to get motivated, get new ideas and to hear the speakers! Most exciting for me was Rudy Guliani and Colin Powell ... but all the speakers (about 10 in all) were great. It was a day long event that was jam packed with information!

It was a little different than I expected. It wasn't a "let's get moved and feel great about ourselves" kind of seminar; it was really more about empowerment.

Rudy spoke about leadership and recounted some of the events of September 11th and Colin Powell talked about his journey and his challenges. They were both very moving; it was surreal being so close to them!

One of the other speakers was Phil Towne, an investor educator (Okay, I made that title up). He spoke about the stock market and how easy it can be to understand when to buy and when to sell. Beth and I fell for their sales pitch for the weekend long seminar (it was only $99 for a two day seminar!). We will be spending all of next weekend at the downtown KC Marriott learning about stocks, options and when to buy and sell! I'm excited! I sent Graden a text message and told him 'I'ma make us rich, baby!'. He welcomed that! Wi$h me luck!!

Hansens & The Hawkeyes

On Friday night the Hansen family headed to Cedar Rapids, IA to spend the night at Graden's friend, Adam's place. We were in town so the boys could go to the Hawkeye game that Saturday afternoon. We arrived in Cedar Rapids about 11:30 that night so didn't do much more than unpack and hit the sack!

The next morning Adam made us pancakes for breakfast, then they headed to the Kinnick Stadium for tail gating before the game! While they were at the game, Dayne and I headed to Jennifer's house for the day (for those who may not know, my BFF Jennifer recently became engaged to Graden's BFF Chris "Asswagon”). We started out the day by going to David’s Bridal for Jen to do some wedding dress shopping. She had seen a picture of a dress and was pretty certain that was the one she wanted. They had it … she tried it on … she bought it! It was meant to be! After our successful shopping trip we went for a nice lunch at Granite City then headed back to Jen (and Chris’) place for a nappy-nap!

We woke up from our nap and turned the TV to the Hawkeye game and caught the last minute of the game - - which turned out to be the best minute of the game! Even I, who knows (or cares!) nothing about football found it exciting!

After the game we all headed over to Adam & Renee’s house for dinner and socialization! It was so nice to hang out on a Saturday night with friends … reminds me of the things I miss about “home”! : (

Sunday morning we slept in a bit and then headed for Waterloo about 10:00 to spend the day with Donna since it was her birthday just a few days before (the 7th). The kids spent the day playing with TJ and Kylie and we just hung out with Donna and Gretchen. Later that evening the Hansen family went to visit Trista and her family. Little Lexi is getting so big so fast and we don’t stop in to see them often enough!

After spending some time at the Benham home we met Chad at Pepper’s for dinner … another reminder of the simple, fun times we miss by not being “home”. We headed back to Donna’s for the night and enjoyed more time with her. Since the kids didn’t have school on Monday, we decided to stay one more night.

Monday I went to visit my “peeps” at Affina and catch up with them for a bit. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to have lunch with me (Georgene makes them work, I guess!) but it was nice to see them!

“Uncle” picked Kylie up from school so she and Dayne were able to spend some more time together. It was a nice day so the girls played in the front “yard” and jumped in the leaves! We headed back home about 3:00 Monday afternoon and got home about 8:30 that night!

Nice weekend … only thing missing was seeing my daddy! : (

Happy Halloween!

How exciting! We have visitors for Halloween this year! Donna, Gretchen and the kids came down on Thursday for the weekend! That night we carved pumpkins to proudly display on the front porch (above).

... and on Friday Rocky and his family also joined us! Rocky is Donna's nephew and his son, Luke, plays football for Joplin and they were playing a local school on Friday night!

TJ was Anakin (from Star Wars) and Kylie AND Dayne were Hannah Montana! Gretchen and I took the kids around the neighborhood while Donna and Mindy (Rocky's wife) passed out candy. Of course at the start of the night the kids were pumped up and full of energy ... with big plans to trick or treat at EVERY house! About an hour into the night, they were pooped and ready to call it quits. They got a good loot though!

Saturday we took the kids to see High School Musical 3. It was very good, actually (and that Zac Efron sure is dreamy <and 21>!!!). TJ really enjoyed the movie, singing and dancing during all the signing parts! It wasa nice to get out and do something with the kids! After the movie we went to some local consignment stores to hunt down some bargains!

When we got home the kids all played basketball in the driveway. Again, it was nice for them to get out of the house and enjoy the outdoors and the company of each other! Uncle even got out there with them and showed them some moves!

The Peterson-Hansen crew left Sunday morning, but since it was daylight savings time and we set our clocks back an hour the night before, we got an extra hour with them! They played some more basketball just before they left ... great for the kids to get some energy out before they hit the road for the 5 hour trip! It was great having them visit!