Basketball for Brother

Tonight we're watching our beloved Jayhawks on TV, and I have to say I'm thankful that we're not actually going to tonight's game since the windchill was about 15 at tipoff. Walking from the shuttle to the fieldhouse and back to the shuttle does not sound like fun at all in this weather. With that said, I'm actually a little sad about not being at the game for other reasons. If my brother had been able to come home for the holidays, tonight's game would have been the one that I tried to get tickets for, so that we could continue our tradition of going to a game together while he's in Lawrence for the holidays. If he would have been here then we would have be there!

Since I didn't get to take Eric to a game this year, when Chad and I were at the game last week I decided to take a few pictures especially for my bro, so he would at least feel like he was at the game virtually. There have been a lot of changes at Allen Fieldhouse in the last year--the biggest change being a new lounge area for all of the important donors that looks through to the practice gym. The far ends of this lounge area have these awesome and huge see through murals with a picture of Mario's shot from 2008. It's hard to describe, but hopefully you can kind of see what it looks like from the slideshow below. There's also a new hallway with a long timeline of our best players--a hall of fame of sorts. It's all pretty darn cool! If no one else enjoys the pictures (and the videos that you can watch if you click on the slideshow), hopefully my brother will!

My Public Apology

I would just like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to Joel Nichols, Gary Lezak, Bryan Busby, whoever does the Journal-World weather, and the whole darn team at Weather.com. Several days ago, when they predicted that we would have 6-8 inches of snow on or around Christmas, I completely poo-pooed their forecast. I did not believe for a minute that we would have any significant snowfall here in Lawrence, since in the 15+ years we've lived here, we've rarely had more than a couple of inches. I was completely wrong, and the weathermen and weatherwomen were completely right. I'm sorry to all of them for doubting their expertise!!

Seriously though, I can't even believe how much snow we've had! It started snowing soon after my first post on Christmas Eve, and it had snowed so much by the end of the day and was blowing so darn hard that every Christmas Eve church service in the city was canceled. It was still snowing pretty hard when we went to bed around midnight, and the blizzard winds continued throughout the night. All I could think when I woke up Christmas morning was "how am I going to get the dogs outside to potty in this mess?"

Thankfully, the drift on the back deck didn't form right up against the door, so the dogs had a little space to walk through and only a small drift to jump over to get to the stairs. I actually shot video of the event thinking it was going to be funny, but the only funny part about it was Hope balking about going outside entirely. She absolutely hates the cold and snow.

I have to say that while it was miserably cold and windy outside during all this, I absolutely loved having a white Christmas. I'm sure many people will hate me for saying so since they were trying to travel to see loved ones for the holiday, but since we'd already celebrated with all of our family members, we had no place to go and were totally happy! The more it snowed, the happier I was! We laid around the house and relaxed and watched movies and read and blogged and it was wonderful!

After being holed up for two full days, we were ready to get out of the house for a while on Saturday. We anticipated just driving over the snow covered driveway with our 4-wheel drive until Chad opened the garage door to find a huge undrivable drift. Although we'd probably only had 6 inches or so of snow, the snow was 27 inches at its highest point! Poor Chad spent over an hour shoveling just one half of the driveway so we could get out, and much to his dismay, by the time he was done it was snowing pretty hard again! It snowed off and on most of the day, and after we got home he took another hour and a half to shovel the other half of the driveway and the walk.

While we were out and about, we were kind of shocked at how horrible the roads were all over town. It looked like the snow plows had been through overnight, but there had been more snow after the plows, which hadn't really gotten much of the snow moved in the first place! There were cars stranded all over the place. Right on our own street a car had gotten stuck and been plowed into a 6 foot snow bank, blocking all but one thin lane of the road. Another car was stranded just around the corner on Bob Billings.The roads were a combination of packed snow, ice and fresh powder, so the hills out by our house were pretty treacherous! Today the sun came out a little bit, which meant that much of it turned to slush, which wasn't much better. Hopefully when the work week starts tomorrow the road crews will get out and get some more plowing and salting done.

Quite honestly, even though driving around town is a little difficult, I wouldn't mind if another big storm hit us tomorrow and snowed us in for another two days. All the laying around the house has gotten me really spoiled and I'm really not ready to go back to work!

Christmas Greetings

For those of you who didn't receive our Christmas letter in the mail, I wanted to post the online version before this lovely white Christmas is over. I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday!

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Greetings dear friends and family!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! You’re probably shocked and amazed to be receiving our Christmasletter so early this year–I’m actually starting it on Thanksgiving day, which I’m pretty sure is a first for me. This year I had to get my holiday greetings done relatively early, because as many of you know, we have a new address! Since I never got around to sending out change of address cards, I thought I’d better take this opportunity to let everyone know we moved. In July, after 11½ years on Golden Rain Drive, we sold our house and moved to a new home on the west edge of Lawrence.

It’s kind of amazing how much of our year was actually consumed with the whole moving process. We started shopping for a new home very early in the year, only because the buyer’s market made it a good time to invest in a new house. Our weekends were full of open houses and our evenings full of searching for houses online. After many months of looking, we finally found this house that seemed like a good fit, so we made an offer as a 15th wedding anniversary present to each other! We spent a few weeks getting our old house ready for the market before it was listed in early June, and it sold just 16 days later! We moved in mid-July and are so incredibly thankful. The new house has been a perfect fit for us and we just couldn’t feel more blessed! The pictures are still being hung and a few rooms are still being furnished, but overall we are feeling very settled after just a few months.

Although the year wasn’t a good one for KU basketball (we lost in the Sweet Sixteen) and wasn’t a good one for KU football (5-7 with all sorts of coaching drama), we still enjoyed attending all the home football games and a few basketball games as well. This year we’re splitting season basketball tickets with a group of friends for the first time, so we’re looking forward to seeing our #1 Jayhawks play a lot of hoops this winter! Although 2009 wasn’t good for KU sports, Chad was of course extremely happy to see his beloved Steelers win the Super Bowl in February! (Chad wants you to know that’s 6 titles, in case you’re counting at home.☺)

We didn’t do a ton of traveling this year, although we were able to take a nice weekend trip to Tulsa, which was a much needed break in the midst of our house-hunting frenzy in May. We met our friend Jason there and went to see my favorite band in the world (Old 97's) at an art and music festival. The next month we went to San Francisco/Sonoma county for our friends Nate and Leigh Ann’s wedding. Even though we were just there last year, it’s such a beautiful area with so much to do we didn’t do any of the same things we’d done the year before!

In August, our regular life was put on hold for several weeks while we dealt with the yet another cancerous tumor on our sweet girl Hope–-her third tumor in three years. After another expensive surgery she was declared cancer free again, but we know we have to be vigilant about watching the tumors that are bound to return. Thankfully she recovers quickly from the surgeries, so we’ll just have to continue to budget for our very expensive puppy and plan on another surgery next year! Thankfully, Celtic and Fresco are both doing well. We celebrated Celtic’s 12th birthday in June, and he’s still walking over a mile almost every day!

Speaking of walking, last month I walked in the 60 mile Breast Cancer 3-Day walk for the 4th year in a row, after raising over $3000 in support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. This year, since I had no one to walk with, I decided to walk in the Dallas 3-Day because it was only a day’s drive. I trained relatively little compared to previous years, but the walk was still fairly easy and blister free! Chad drove along to Texas and went hunting with his cousin during the days that I was walking. I’m already looking forward to the walk next fall and am hoping to walk in the 3-Day in Washington, DC. Hopefully next year I’ll find some friends who want to come along!

Those are really the only highlights of our year–everything else is very much the same! Chad is still at Westar after 6 years, and I just celebrated my 11th year at KU Endowment. We are so thankful for the stability and security of our jobs and the blessings God has heaped upon us. We hope that this holiday season finds you and your family abounding in peace, love, joy and a multitude of blessings as well!

With Love,
Chad and Kim

Tulsa Mayfest

Here's one more blog post that I should have completed many, many moons ago, but since things were so busy with house shopping and packing and moving during the spring/summer, I just never could find the time to edit all the pictures from the weekend. When I was working on our Christmas letter for 2009 and thinking about all that we did during the year, it hit me that I'd never actually blogged about our trip to Tulsa!

It was a very quick weekend vacation, but one that was so needed at the time. We were just so overwhelmed with house hunting and trying to get ready to sell our house we just wanted to get away from it all just for a couple of days. It worked out perfectly that my favorite band just happened to be playing at a music/arts festival in Tulsa right in the midst of all our house craziness!

We took off on Saturday morning and made the drive south on Highway 169, and taking the scenic route was so incredibly relaxing! The pastures were all so green and lush, the skies were beautiful blue and the air was unseasonably cool. After an enjoyable drive of about 4 hours we arrived at our hotel, right near downtown, where Mayfest was held. Our friend Jason and his girlfriend Tracy met us there, and we headed to the festival, walked through the artist booths, ate horrible fair food and listened to a few bands along the way.

We started moving towards the main stage as the Old 97's showtime neared. There was a pretty big crowd watching the band before them, but as soon as that group finished their set, the crowd started to thin out pretty quickly. We jumped at the opportunity and quickly filled into the front row, which was actually (unfortunately) at least 30 feet from the stage because of a barrier. Regardless, we snagged our four chairs and then moved them up right against the barricade, just to make sure no one else would be able to stand in front of us once the show started. We were determined to be in the front row, even if the front row was 30 feet away from the stage!

The show was excellent, but that pretty much goes without saying when it comes to the Old 97's. Despite the fact that it was downright cold in Tulsa that night, the 97's went all out and put on a terrific show on the outdoor stage. While they didn't play one of my favs (Nightclub), they did play The One, which I'd never heard in concert before. It was a bummer that we were so far from the stage, because that meant my pictures turned out pretty awful, but we still had a great time jumping around and singing at the show!

We regained our hearing on the way back to the hotel, and after a good night's sleep, we headed back over to the festival in the morning and browsed through the art again before heading to a local restaurant for lunch. After a great meal with our friends we hit the road and headed home, taking a different route back just for a change of scenery. The drive home was almost as relaxing as the drive down!

It was really a terrific weekend overall, despite the fact that my pictures of the show turned out so terrible! Most of the shots are so over-exposed they make the guys in the band look like ghosts. If only I'd taken my good camera they would have been a little better. Regardless, here are the pictures from the weekend if you're interested! There are also a few videos if you go directly to my Picasa page!

Merry White Christmas!!

Merry Christmas, everyone! Since my family couldn't be together today in real life, I gathered us all up for a virtual snowball fight online!

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Hope you and your loved ones are having a wonderful Christmas!