Happy New Year

So... Obviously I'm no longer an active blogger, but since I completely failed to get a Christmas/New Year's letter of any sort into the mail, I thought this would be a great place to post one so I could share it with family and friends via email. When I took at peek at my blog I realized I hadn't even updated it last Christmas, so I set out to find the letter I sent (after Christmas 2015) and upload it here. That's when I discovered it had been saved as a draft in blogger, but never uploaded. Good grief. My brain is mush--completely unfocused and constantly thinking of other things!

For what it's worth, here's the synopsis of 2015. Hopefully in the next couple of days I can get one written for 2016 too!
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Happy New Year, dear friends and family! While my plan to do Christmas cards was obviously not successful this year, I did want to compose a quick letter to let everyone know that we haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Our Christmas letter wasn’t my only holiday fail this season--there were two boxes of decorations that never even made it out of the storage room!

This year has certainly been a challenging one, but we survived and are hopefully better people for it! Chad is starting his 13th year with Westar Energy, and although his job keeps him busy, he usually enjoys the challenges--except when they involve being the on call person during an ice storm. Over the Thanksgiving break he answered/made over 200 power outage phone calls (at all hours of the day and night) in a 48 hour period! He travels all over the eastern half of Kansas on a regular basis and took a couple of longer trips to Phoenix and Houston this year as well. In non-business related travel, he went on his annual golf trip to Florida last month with Dante and some other friends, where they played eleven rounds of golf in five days. I guess it’s obvious that he still loves golf. :)

Thankfully, we had a few opportunities to travel together this year as well. For our 21st anniversary in June, we went to Omaha for a couple of days to see an Old 97’s show and hang out with Chad’s brother Matt and his wife Julie and their family. For my birthday in August, Chad surprised me by flying my brother in to hang with my mom so that we could take a quick weekend trip to beautiful (albeit very hot) San Antonio. We saw another 97’s show while there, visited the Alamo and spent lots of time on the gorgeous river walk! Although Chad wasn’t able to join us, Mom and I also made a trip to Houston to visit her sister Merry Jo and my many cousins in the area.

Speaking of my brother and my mom, the most exciting trip of the year actually happened in September when Chad and Mom and I flew to California for my brother Eric’s wedding! We spent a fantastic five days in a cute rental house, did some sightseeing, and enjoyed the beautiful wedding celebration with Eric and our new sister-in-law, Jiffy. We are so thrilled to officially have her as part of our family!

While this letter sort of makes it sound like we had nonstop fun in 2015, in reality our lives completely revolved around my mom (who is in the latter stages of dementia) and her care. I spend around 60 hours a week with her, as she can no longer be left alone unsupervised for more than a couple of hours at a time. I try hard to fill her days with joy, so this year we spent lots of time going to art galleries, shopping, swimming, doing puzzles and art projects, taking day trips to nearby towns, going to plays and concerts, taking walks, and attending other local events. We even did a little horseback riding! Although she still has days in which she can enjoy life and certain activities, her memory for anyone besides her immediate family is virtually gone. I laugh/cringe when people ask me (usually in front of Mom) if I work, since even though I’m not technically employed, this is by far the most emotionally and physically demanding job I’ve ever had! With that said, I’m so thankful I am able to do it and I’m so thankful that my Mom is still with us. It probably goes without saying, but I most definitely would not have survived the year if it weren’t for the amazing support (emotionally and financially) of my incredible husband!

With Mom keeping me busy, our furry children haven’t received the amount of attention they were once accustomed to, but they have adapted pretty well. At age 9, Fresco is pretty laid back and can deal with just about anything (except a person walking by in front of our house). Flower, however, continues to be a challenge! She needs multi-mile walks daily and still has lots of energy to burn. Although we’ve had her for almost 2 years, she still acts like she’s six months old most of the time. She still has major issues with strange people and other dogs, and unfortunately my lack of schedule flexibility has made it nearly impossible to get the training help we need to correct her behavior. Even though she’s pretty high maintenance when she’s outside our home, she’s a pretty good girl when it’s just Chad, Mom and me! We love her and she definitely adds lots of laughs and excitement to our lives.

We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas season full of peace, love, joy and all the things that make you happy! We pray that 2016 is full of blessings and happiness for each and every one of you.

Much love,

Kim (and Chad)

Don't Get Body Slammed by a Lowland Gorilla

Obviously I haven't found it necessary to blog regularly here in the past few years, but this commercial's a keeper, although I definitely might be biased. :)

The Year in Pictures 2011

After a bit of a production delay, I'm excited to finally present the third annual Year in Pictures slideshow! I intended to share this on January 1 as I've done in the past, but a desire to spend time with my hubby on his days off (and my deranged attempt at perfection) kept the project going for a couple of extra days. Last night I was up entirely too late trying to finish it, primarily because I kept going back and tweaking and changing the tiniest little things. I'm a complete nut job sometimes.

There are definitely pictures included that will seem a little random, but let me just tell you my rule for choosing them. Every day that I picked up either my DSLR or my point-and-shoot, I had to include one picture from that day. It might have been from an event I was asked to photograph, a portrait session or a vacation. It might have been something I intended to blog about or a moment I just wanted to preserve. While we all know my standards for "picture worthy" aren't exactly high, at the time that I grabbed my camera, I truly thought there was something that needed capturing! Hopefully most of the time you'll agree, but please be advised that this is 7.5 minutes of your life that you will never get back.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, there were a couple of times this year that a) I didn't take pictures because someone else already was, or b) someone else had their camera more handy, or c) I actually forgot my camera (which I know is hard to believe). In those few cases, I used a picture taken by someone else from that particular day. I think there are three pictures included that didn't come from one of my cameras, so thanks to Beth, Mel and Sarah for sharing their shots!


Please note that I spent several hours picking and adjusting the music for this video, so if there is no sound by the time you get to it, please leave me a comment and let me know. YouTube is in the habit of disabling the audio of any copyrighted material, no matter how insignificant the use!

Month Gone By

I knew it had been a long time since I'd blogged, but I didn't realize how long it had actually been until last week when I was setting up my mom's Internet access and wireless network. I used her shortcut to my blog as a test to see if the connection was working, and I about fell out of my chair when I saw the date of my last post was exactly a month before!

There's so much been going on this summer--especially in the last 2 months--that has been keeping me busy. So many of these things I intended to blog about and still might dedicate entire posts to, but for now, here are the things that have been keeping me away from the computer!

1. The 3-Day--As most of my friends know, last weekend I walked 60 miles in the 3-Day in Chicago. The last several months have been filled with lots of soliciting money, writing thank yous, and walking--lots and lots of walking! Pictures from the event can be found here!

2. Moving--We obviously didn't move, but in the middle of July we helped my mom move to Lawrence! We are so thankful to have her here, but I've been very busy helping her get settled. There's always just so much to buy and to do when you move--for example, getting her Internet connection hooked up!

3. Houseguests--This summer we've had lots of people visit, which has been wonderful. My friend Kati and her son were here for several days in June, my brother was here for several days around my mom's move, my friend Emily and her sister stayed a couple of nights in July, our friend Jason stayed a couple of nights with us a few weeks ago, and our nephews stayed with us this weekend. I'm so thankful for our guest room and thankful that we've put it to use!

4. Traveling--We haven't done much traveling this summer, but we did spend a terrific 4th of July weekend in the very nice town of Kearney, Nebraska, visiting our friends Jake and Amber. Even if I don't blog about it, I hope to at least share the pictures at some point!

5. Car Shopping--During the month of June we spent many evenings scouring the Internet researching and shopping for cars. We ended up getting a new Hyundai Elantra at the beginning of July and we've already put over 3,000 miles on it!

6. Growth Groups/Journey Group--Our regular "Journey" Group that started at our old church many years ago continued to meet and study all summer, and then Chad and I also attended an 8 week Growth Group study through our new church. I also led an activity growth group of walking women on Saturday mornings, and it took quite a bit of time to plan out the routes each week!

7. Reading--I reread the first book in the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum series while I was in Chicago, which I'd started years and years ago and only got about 4 books into. I recently finished collecting the whole series from Half Price Books, and now that they're all in my possession I can't put them down. My OCD really shows when I start reading, because I lose all self-control and become completely unproductive. It's why I don't read more often!

So there are all of the excuses for my absence that I can think of. Hopefully in the near future I'll get back into the habit of blogging regularly--I've missed this creative outlet!

Happy Funkin' Birthday

Today is my big brother's birthday, and even though I got the chance to wish him happy birthday on the phone, I of course had to send him an e-card as well. Of course I made him a JibJab card and of course I think it's ridiculously funny. Thankfully, he thought it was pretty funny too and didn't even yell at me when I posted it on his Facebook page.

In all seriousness, my brother is nearly as awesome in real life as he is in this video.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Happy Birthday, Brother! Can't wait to see you next weekend!

Bad Mother Father

First of all, I have to just say that I feel like a bad wife, because this morning I forgot to give my doggy daddy the Father's Day cards I bought him from the dogs and from myself! I don't think I even remembered it was Father's Day until I got to church and started seeing all the people with crazy mustaches for the Father's Day mustache contest. Yes, our church is a little goofy, but we love it!

Although I didn't remember Father's Day this morning, thankfully I remembered it earlier in the week and sent my dad a paper card and also an email card. I know he already opened it earlier today, but I just have to share it here as well because I think it's hilarious.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

There's just something so funny about seeing my Pops beating up on people! Happy Father's Day to my dad and all the other fathers out there!!

Uneventful Easter

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend! Chad and I had a nice day together, although we didn't really do anything special or out of the ordinary for the holiday. Church was great, but since we're regular churchgoers it wasn't necessarily that special, except for the fact that our new church broke their old attendance record by 159 people. Our lunch together at Ingredient was marginal, which was a bummer since I usually LOVE their food--it's one of my favorite places in town! After that we tried to spend a little time outside to enjoy the sunshine that we hadn't seen in so long, but within just an hour or so the clouds came out and it was too gloomy and chilly to stay out on the deck. We spent the rest of the afternoon laying in bed with our laptops, planning out our upcoming vacation to Texas. Not very exciting stuff for such an important holiday!

Although Chad and I obviously have no special traditions for Easter, I have fond memories of the holiday from my childhood. I don't remember doing a big Easter dinner like other families do--I think maybe because all of our extended family members were connected to their own churches so no one was willing to travel. I do remember decorating and dying Easter eggs though, and then having Mom hide them all over the house (or outside if it was nice) for Eric and I to find Easter morning. We each got a small basket with some Easter candy, but I don't think we got presents like kids get these days. As Eric and I were discussing recently, somehow our society has turned Easter into mini-Christmas. I'm all for a few fun traditions, but it kind of makes me sad that most kids probably think that Easter is only about presents with some eggs and chocolate thrown in.

Having no traditions now that we're adults can certainly be a blessing since it gives us lots of freedom and flexibility. It also makes me a little bit sad, since lots of our friends were going to be with their families over the holiday. I guess since we're always interested in going to our own church for the resurrection celebration, we've never wanted to go out of town for Easter weekend. While my mom has sometimes come to Lawrence to join us at our service, now that she's connected to her home church in Topeka, we no longer invite her to come with us! We invited several other people to join us on Sunday morning, but it seems that everyone except for us was with family members!

Even though I didn't get to see any of my family on the holiday, I did get to see my dad and his wife Mim a few times in the weeks leading up to it. Although I obviously failed to blog about it in a timely manner, they were driving through the area in early April and stayed with us one night on their way to work at my dad's childhood home near Salina. A few days later we got to hang out a little more with them and Dad's sibling's at my aunt and uncle's in KC, which was great since I hadn't seen two of my aunts/uncles for several years! After staying with us that night, they went on to Texas for a week and then came back through and stayed one more night at our house before leaving for Ohio early the next morning. That night Dad and I spent an hour or so together at my favorite new yogurt place, Orange Leaf, but I realized as they were leaving in the morning that I hadn't taken a single picture while they were here. This was the one shot I got from their visit! I guess seeing family for a brief and early Easter is better than not seeing them at all! :)

Mom's Big Day

I've been absent from blogging for the last couple of weeks primarily because of the big 65th birthday shindig we threw at our house last Saturday for my lovely mother. There was so much to do in the weeks leading up to the event--reminder sending, housecleaning, menu planning, grocery shopping, food preparing, airport shuttling, decoration purchasing, present buying, houseguest hosting, and picture searching/scanning for slideshow making. My brother flew in last Tuesday (which was our mom's actual birthday) and was very helpful in getting a lot of this done, which was great since my dear husband was sick in bed a lot during the last couple of weeks!

Overall, I have to say that the party was a big success. Although it poured down rain and even hailed for a little while in the early afternoon, we still had over 40 people attend. My mom looked beautiful and had a really great time visiting with so many very dear friends. Everyone was very complimentary of the food, of the decorations and of our slideshow. My friend Leigh Ann made fantastic cupcakes which were so beautiful people didn't want to eat them. I took tons of pictures of the festivities and my brother took a bunch too, and most of them turned out pretty good. I hope to eventually put them into a scrapbook with all of mom's birthday cards, but for now the online album will have to do.




Although the party itself went very well, the evening before the big day, as we were trying to prep all the food and finish picking out the music for the slideshow, Mom and I took a trip to the airport to pick up her very dear friend Linda, who was flying in from Montana for the party. Unfortunately, the construction traffic on I-70 put a big kink in our plans, since the normal trip of 50-55 minutes took us almost 90! After getting to the airport so late and then having dinner at Zona Rosa (which is always busy on a Friday night), we didn't get home until way later than anticipated. I didn't get nearly as much of the food prepared as I had hoped, and I still stayed up until about 1 a.m. working on mom's slideshow!

The point of that whole story was just to make an excuse as to why the food wasn't quite done when people started arriving on Saturday. I think everything was on the table at 1:10 (the open house started at 1), but I would have much preferred to have the whole thing set up and the kitchen cleaned prior to guests getting here! Thankfully, Chad's mom Joanie and our friend Linda were hugely helpful in refilling the food as needed during the afternoon and even assembling appetizers!

Other than the delayed food, there was only one other tiny detail that I didn't anticipate that could have been kind of disastrous. About 3o minutes into the party someone requested coffee, and not only had I not made any (we only made yummy punch), I only had my tiny one person coffee pot that makes 20 ounces at a time! I never thought about the fact that almost everyone in my mom's generation would want coffee at our afternoon party. Thankfully there was a newly opened bag of coffee, so my awesome mother-in-law started brewing, and she didn't stop the rest of the afternoon! We used the 12 little cups from our china set (that had never been used) along with all the other random mugs in our house, and Joanie's husband Rory still ended up washing dishes for at least an hour. My dear coffee-hating husband even got into the coffee-making action, which is a sight I thought I'd never see in my life! I was so thankful for all my awesome kitchen helpers that helped to avert a crazy coffee crisis. Our successful party was definitely a group effort!

Decompression

This evening Chad and I are just laying here lounging with our laptops, and I'm definitely enjoying the time to decompress a little. This might have been evident by my lack of blogging, but the last week was a busy one, and I'm definitely relieved that it's behind me. Since my last post just over a week ago, my schedule has included lots of activities that aren't part of my normal routine as chief homemaker. We've taken our nephews sledding and hosted them for a sleepover, I've started a new small group at a new church, we've taken all the dogs to the vet, I've been to my nephew's basketball game in Kansas City, and I've helped to plan and host a baby shower for my friend Leigh Ann, for which I made almost all the food. I think this was all complicated by the fact that I still did my volunteer shift at the food pantry, still made my regular weekly trip to Topeka, spent my regular afternoon with my baby friend Eli, had a medicated dog who needed to go out every couple of hours, a crazy dog who needed to be re-crate trained (more on that later) and a sick husband whose congested snoring didn't allow for much sleep on my part. Whew. Now that I write it all down, I understand why I'm a little pooped!

This week I'm hoping to get caught up on my sleep and my blogging! More posts coming soon!

Planning for a Parent Party

Clearly I've done a really crappy job keeping up with my blog lately, and I know that confuses a lot of my friends who are picturing me as retired these days. I'm sure it sounds strange, but the last few weeks have just been so busy I've had very little free time. I spend a couple of afternoons a week in Topeka with my mom and another afternoon during the week with my little friend Eli, and the other two days of the week are filled up with errands and housework. It's crazy how I can fill my days up so easily without ever turning on the TV!

One of the things that's been keeping me busy lately is party planning, as I've been working on preparations for a big upcoming event--my mom's 65th birthday party! My brother and I decided that for Mom's big birthday we wanted to have a gathering of all her close friends and family members, since we've never done anything like that for her before. Sixty-five seemed like the perfect age for a big party, so I put together invitations, gathered emails and mailing addresses, and have since been taking lots of RSVPs. We already have 25 confirmed guests and another 10 or so that are probable. It should be so much fun! Here's the invitation I sent out via email that I designed myself, which I thought turned out okay. I did another version without Mom's picture that went out through the mail.


It will be so wonderful to see so many of Mom's dearest friends--many of whom we haven't seen in years! I'm so looking forward to the big event, and also looking forward to planning the food, entertainment and decorations. It won't be anything too terribly elaborate, but it still should be fun!

Good Jayhawks and Bad Jayhawks

Tonight we watched our awesome Jayhawks beat the Memphis Tigers in the Jimmy V. Classic, and although they were quite sloppy in the first half, it was a much better showing than our one point win over UCLA last Thursday. That one was slightly embarrassing, although a win is a win is a win and we're still undefeated.

Watching this game tonight made me think of the one and only game I've gotten to go to this year, which was thanks to my friend and former colleague Kevin, who provided me with tickets to the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi game so that Chad and I could take Eric to a game while he was here. We had SO much fun because the Jayhawks were absolutely astounding, but also because last year Eric wasn't home for basketball season and he hadn't been to a game since 2008 at least. It was a fantastic evening with my two best guys!

The great thing about the timing of Eric's visit last month was that he also got to go with us to a KU football game. Although our football team left a lot to be desired this year, it still was a fun day at the stadium with relatively good weather. In a surprise turn of events, we actually got to see a good first half of football too, which wasn't expected since we were playing the number 12 team in the nation--Oklahoma State. After scoring a couple of touchdowns in the first quarter and holding the Cowboys to just 20 points at halftime, our 'Hawks came unglued and completely derailed in the second half. We ended up getting slaughtered and leaving before the end of the game, but I was still glad Eric was able to see a tiny bit of good football and have the game day experience, even if it isn't the most spectacular of game day experiences! Maybe some day our program will get permanently turned around and it will be!

The Farm

Back in September, when we were in Salina for the celebration of Grandma's life, I obviously spent a lot of time taking pictures of Chad's family. The pictures I forgot to share from that day were actually of the family farm--a beautiful 160 acres west of Salina where no farming is actually still done. This homestead was originally built by Chad's grandparents, but when Grandma Decker was widowed moved into town back in the late 80s, Chad and his family moved into the house and his parents have lived there ever since.

The farm is such a peaceful place and I love taking pictures of the landscapes whenever I get the chance. The day of Grandma's funeral, a big storm came rolling in late in the afternoon which made for some dramatic horizons. My pictures (especially resized for Picasa) don't really do the beauty of the place justice, but I was looking back at them this evening because I was thinking about using 6-8 of them for kind of an art project for Chad's parents for Christmas. I'm not sure if it will really turn out like I'm picturing it in my brain, but I'm going to attempt to make something interesting and attractive. The only reason I'm sharing that here is because Chad's parents don't have a computer and I'm 99.9% sure they won't ever read this!

Anyway, I put the pictures online so that I could compare them all and try to pick out the ones I want to use for my project. Let me know if there are any you absolutely love!

Thankful for Family

My brother and I had a great time together this last week and I'm so thankful he was here. We always have so much fun no matter what we're doing. We watched movies, did some shopping, visited my cousin, went to the KU football game, watched and went to KU basketball games, went out to eat, went to church and brunch with my mom and did lots of other stuff with my mom, did the Insanity workout together each day, walked the dogs, ate Thanksgiving dinner (after I spent the whole day cooking) and I'm sure did lots of other stuff that I'm forgetting. It was a fun and busy week! I'll share a few more pictures later, but first I wanted to share a few pictures from our amazing Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin Darren's house yesterday. This was the Turkey Day dinner to top all Turkey Day dinners!

My cousin Darren and his partner Oscar built this incredible house in Shawnee earlier this year and it was absolutely designed for entertaining, so they hosted 20 people at their house yesterday and the food was just phenomenal. Darren and his sister (also my cousin) Debbie are both amazing cooks (just like our Grandma was) and Deb's son Mike is a great cook as well. I can't even explain how much food was there and how fabulous it was!

We had a great time seeing my Aunt Lois and her husband Bill along with Deb and Darren and other family members, and it was also nice to get to know Oscar better. He's a great guy and it's just so nice to see my cousin so happy.

I had a great time taking tons of pictures of their gorgeous home and beautiful Christmas decorations that were already up. I also had lots of fun taking pictures of all five dogs in attendance, two of whom are Darren and Oscar's and three others belonging to my aunt and her sisters. How adorable are these guys?

Kobe

Ralphie

Lucky

Effie

Scrappy

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of great food and lots of quality time with family and lots of adorable canines!

DC 3-Day Pictures

I've obviously been home for several days, but I haven't had the chance to blog until now because every free evening I've been trying to get the pictures from the 3-Day ready! Initially I didn't think I would spend much time editing them, but since most of the shots were taken while I was walking, there were plenty of crooked and blurry pics that needed a little attention. Plus, since I got the new Photoshop over the summer, I just can't help tweaking pictures a tiny bit even when they probably don't really need it!

Anyway, I added captions to some of the pictures, but many of the shots are just buildings that I thought were really cool even though I had no idea what they were! Maybe my DC knowledgeable friends Jake and Amber will help me identify some of them. There were so many awesome things to see on days 1 and 3 when we were in the city. I can't wait to get back there for a vacation to get a better look at the sites and learn more of their history!

I'm really going to try to write more about the 3-Day on my other blog, but in a nutshell, it was a great location for the event, the weather was darn near perfect, and my dad finished strong without any problems at all. Not that I had any doubts that he would!

Margie's Family

Although last week was a sad time for Chad's family with the loss of Grandma, the celebration of her life at her funeral was really very nice. We had a great time sharing stories about Grandma with her pastor the previous day, which he then retold at the service so that even those who didn't know her well learned what a strong, hard-working, giving, generous person she was. While we were talking with her pastor I realized I had a ton of first hand stories and memories of Grandma, considering she wasn't my actual grandmother at all. Then it dawned on me that she had been my Grandma for 17 years now--no wonder I felt like we were actually related! I think she was even more special to me since I lost my last grandparent, my beloved Grandma Seaman, over 11 years ago. Grandma Decker and our dear Grandma Luce are all I have!

Anyway, as it happens with many funerals, it was nice time to spend with family members that we don't get to see very often. After the burial on Thursday we went out to Chad's parents house and ate and chatted and relaxed with family, and it was really nice. Of course I took lots of pictures, and as I often do, I took lots of candid shots, which I think best capture real moments and real personalities. In fact, one of the few posed pictures of the entire day is one of the few I totally messed up! Candid shots are definitely more my strength!

Grandma

Yesterday the world lost a wonderful, selfless women when Chad's grandma passed away at about 3 p.m. We will miss Grandma tremendously, but we are so thankful that she is in a better place now and her suffering has ended.

After moving to an assisted living facility in early 2009, Grandma's health had continued to decline and she'd finally been moved to a nursing home just a couple of months ago. Although she seemed to be improving initially and even talked about possibly coming to visit us in Lawrence like she used to, a couple of weeks ago she took a turn for the worst. On Friday Chad's parents called to tell us she wasn't doing well, and we started discussing when we would go to Salina to visit her, but she was gone just over 24 hours later. Thankfully Chad saw her just a couple of weeks ago when he was in Salina for work, but I was so sad that I didn't get the chance to say goodbye.

Grandma was such a generous, loving woman who spent most of her life volunteering her time and talents and giving of her own resources to help those who were less fortunate. She loved the Lord and was a leader in her church, where I know she'll be missed by so many. The good news is, she's now free of that 88-year-old earthly body and is running and jumping for joy in heaven! Save a place for us, Grandma--we love you!

The Beta Test--Episodes 4 and 5

I've totally failed as the #1 fan of my brother's web series since I've failed to blog about the last two episodes! New ones have been coming out every two weeks, so #4 came out just over three weeks ago and #5 came out just last Friday. You should definitely watch them if you haven't already! Each episode is only about five minutes long, so it would only take you 25 minutes to get up to date on the entire series! All five episodes and the trailer can be found on The Beta Test YouTube page. I probably won't be embedding them here anymore because they're starting to contain a little more adult content than I'd like to feature directly on the Chatter! According to The Beta Test Facebook page, "If you haven't watched episode 5 yet, get to it! Violence! Mayhem! And even more cats!"

Speaking of their FB page, they're steadily gaining followers, and today they gained five whole fans in one day! I think having 171 people who "like" you is pretty great, but it would be wonderful to see their popularity explode and "go viral" like so many YouTube videos do. Feel free to email this post and help spread the word about The Beta Test!

The Photo Session

I was initially thinking that my last California post would be about the lunch we had before we left for the airport, but then I decided that our lunch probably wasn't really blog worthy. It was a good lunch, don't get me wrong, but just not super eventful. We walked down to Fatburger from Eric's and I had a great turkey burger while Chad attacked a gigantic burger of monstrous proportions. It was yummy and I liked it lots better than In and Out Burger because there was a great selection and the meat seemed like better quality--but that's just me.

Anyway, while I was looking through the pictures I took of the family at lunch, which were generally pretty horrible because the back lighting was really bad at our outdoor table (which also made them a good Photoshop exercise in how to sort of salvage blown out backgrounds), I came across a series of pictures that my dear husband took when I asked him to take a picture of my brother and me. Instead of taking a picture, he pretty much just held down the shutter release continuously. This was the ridiculous result.

I clearly wasn't ready, and I had no idea my brother was pretending to pick my nose.

Still not ready and completely unaware.

I'm finally smiling instead of talking, not realizing Eric's still picking my nose.

Okay, finally a good one...

...and one more good one.

Now I'm realizing Chad's getting out of control.

Oh boy...

Oh jeesh...

Oh my...

You have to laugh at my hubby's photography skills!

Time with my brother is always entertaining! I'm so glad we were able to go visit him last month!

The Hike

This weekend I’m really going to try to finish up blogging about our trip to California. My goal is to complete the last few posts by Monday—a mere (cough) month after we left!

After our lovely brunch on Sunday morning and a subsequent change of clothes, we headed up to Griffith Park, which is one of Eric’s favorite hiking/running spots. I was super excited, mostly because I knew it would be a great place to get some good pictures. Of course I was also looking forward to getting some exercise, spending time with my dear family, seeing the hiking spot Eric always talks about, and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

Our goal was to hike up to the Hollywood sign, which is apparently about a 7 mile trek round trip. There are several ways to get up the hills, some which are a little more challenging and treacherous than others. We started out on a pretty wide trail with a fairly low incline, but soon the California heat started kicking in, which made the incline feel a lot steeper than it was! The temperature wasn't especially high (probably only around 80), but that So Cal sun was intense!

Since Mom isn't able to tolerate the heat very well and wasn't really prepared to walk 7 miles this summer (as opposed to two summers ago), a mile or so up the hill we decided to leave her in a shady spot for a rest. The remaining four of us continued up the path on our own, but after a little while Eric went back down and walked with Mom a bit more and sent Dad, Chad and me on our way. There wasn't much in the way of trail signs in Griffith Park, so Eric gave us the best directions he could and we headed up into the hills.

We followed Eric's instructions and headed off the main trail to a more interesting and difficult smaller trail. It was definitely a more challenging hike, with lots of rocks and steep drop offs. Dad actually slipped on one of these rocks and it looked for a moment like he might fall right off the side of a cliff right in front of us--I about had a heart attack. After Dad's near fall Chad and I were definitely were a lot more careful as we went--although I don't think my ambitious father was!

I should mention that my dad was not only undaunted by the heights and challenging terrain, but he was also completely unfazed by the 7 mile trek, since he's walked even farther recently training for our upcoming 3-Day in Washington, DC. My dad is in incredible shape for someone who's nearing 70!

Anyway, after we'd probably gone another mile, in the approximately 30-45 minutes since we'd left my brother, we were heading along this tiny path, not really sure if we were even going the right direction at all. Just as we're thinking it would have been really nice to have cell service so we could call Eric for directions, we round this corner and glance up the hill to see a guy sitting cross-legged on a clearing who kind of looked like he was meditating. As we got closer, we realized that the guy was actually my brother, which was quite the shock since we'd left him so far behind, going in the opposite direction! As it turned out, he was not meditating but rather recovering, since he had walked Mom safely to near the bottom, and then turned around and RAN straight up the side of the hill on a super steep trail so that he could literally cut us off at the pass. He'd only gotten there minutes before us, so his timing and his stamina was pretty incredible!

The four of us finished the last mile or so of the hike together, and made it to the Hollywood sign for some incredible views and pictures before heading back down through the hills. We took a slightly more challenging route on the way down, with lots of rocks and sharp bushes, so we were fairly pooped when we got to the bottom and met back up with mom.

That evening we walked up to Trader Joe's to get groceries, and grilled some awesome steaks and other stuff at Eric's apartment, so it was a great end to a fun day!

The Beta Test #2

Tonight I really intended to continue blogging about our California trip, but most of the evening ended up being filled by pottery painting and dinner with a bunch of good friends. That really worked out fine though, since I have something else way more awesome to share instead: the second episode of my brother's web series The Beta Test!

Apparently it was finally posted to their website a few days ago, but I didn't even know until this morning since I hadn't checked the site or Facebook for several days. Now I've subscribed to their Youtube page so that (hopefully) I'll be notified as soon as a new episode airs. I'm so looking forward to it!



If that made no sense, be sure to watch the trailer and episode 1 on Youtube as well!