Happy 1st Birthday Mia!

Happy birthday Mia Eakin! We went over to the Eakin's house today to help celebrate Mia's first birthday. It's hard to believe it was one year ago that we got a phone call at one in the morning to come pick up Tristan at the hospital so he could sleep over here while his parents worked to bring his little sister into the world. We had a lovely afternoon with our friends (who we have now known for almost 8 years--wow!) having pizza and cake and watching this adorable little girl walk like a pro. At first Christopher put himself on babysitting duty...

But soon after eating, Chris joined the first graders and disappeared for extended periods of time. It was nice to watch our preK-er play so well with the older kids. Anyway, we had a nice afternoon with our friends and we are so happy to know little Mia!

Brontosaurus

We are having a nice rainy Saturday morning here in Kansas and what better thing to do on such a morning than to build a Brontosaurus! We were going to go out to the Overland Park Fall Festival like we did last year but instead we are staying dry indoors. When Jack was here this week, he brought a dinosaur building kit for Christopher that he found among his things from childhood. It's funny that he brought the Brontosaurus because a) it was the same model I made as a child and b) paleontologists no longer use the the name Brontosaurus for this dinosaur! But it doesn't matter to Chris. We built it together and now Chris is playing with it along with his planes. Apparently the people on the plane are trying to get away from the dinosaur! Here is Chris helping with the sanding of the dinosaur bones...

Christopher 01, Reporting for Duty

Yesterday, my cousin Jack came into town from Colorado on his way to move back east to Westchester. For those of you who don't know, Jack is a pilot so you can imagine how excited Christopher was to talk to him and ask him all of his millions of plane questions! After his arrival, we went out to dinner at Seasons 52 with Daddy and Grammy. On the way back home, Chris and Jack sat in the back seat and they "flew our plane" back to our home airport. It was wonderful to hear Chris in the backseat while Jack told him all the actual things pilots say to the air traffic controllers as they fly. For example, when we were "100 miles" from home he had to do one thing and then at "10 miles" he had to do something else (request permission to land I think?). Chris was beyond excited to learn all of this stuff. Also, in his class, they are doing a plane project so the kids generated a list of questions for Jack to answer so we interviewed him at dinner and submitted his answers to Ms. Rommel. Then at bedtime, we read this book about flying planes on an aircraft carrier that we had gotten from the library and Jack said it was a very accurate book. It was cool to have someone read with us that has actually landed a plane on a carrier! We had a wonderful time seeing cousin Jack and we are excited that he will be moving to Westchester so we can see him more often on our trips back home! Oh, and surprisingly, Chris got a little silly at dinner too. :)

In other news, Holly (our new girl) is doing very well and fitting in nicely in our home. She is very playful and sometimes that's okay with Kasey, but Kasey will let her know when it's not!

And finally, it was 11 years ago today that Brian and I went on our first date at Willy McBride's in Hoboken, NJ!

Doggies

As you can see, Christopher is very happy that he now has two dogs to snuggle with! We are all settling in nicely with the addition of Holly to our family. Sometimes it's tricky because she has a lot of energy but she is also very sweet and is mellow when we are hanging out. Looks like I'm going to have to start running with a dog again! Kasey puts her in her place when necessary and Holly seems fine with being the submissive dog in this house. And the best thing is that I have been able to leave the house with the dogs on the couch (and a few doors closed too!) and all is in one piece when I get back. It seems like Holly just likes to follow Kasey's lead so whatever Kasey does, Holly does. The trainer we used when we got Kasey is coming back next week so we will re-learn all the stuff we needed to know 8 years ago. Woof woof!

Lions and Tigers and... Servals?

That's right. Believe it or not folks, there are lions and tigers in Kansas! We went out on Saturday to the Cedar Cove big cat sanctuary in Louisburg, Kansas to visit some of those big cats. The sanctuary is a safe place for big cats (and other animals) who have either been in other sanctuaries or zoos that have had to close or, as we found out about one woman and her pet... leopard, have had to give up their exotic pets when they realized it wasn't a good idea to have them. (This woman in question got a pet leopard so her Rotweiler would have a companion...Yeeeahhhh...). Anyway, it was actually quite nice and the animals were very clean and well kept. Chris loved it, especially the lions. They also had wolves, mountain lions, leopards, servals and others. Here is Chris watching the cerval...

It was a beautiful day to go out to the country and we followed our visit with a nice picnic before heading back to civilization. We will definitely go back to Cedar Cove!

Welcome Home

We want to welcome the newest member of the Kansas Wogloms, Holly! We visited Wayside Waifs today with the intention of getting a different dog that we saw online but ended up getting sweet Holly, a coonhound/pointer mix. (This was the same story as Kasey's). She is really good with both Kasey and Christopher, which of course is extremely important. Anyway, it's weird having two dogs underfoot as we cook but we'll get used to it! We are just so happy that we could give Kasey a new friend and Holly her new forever home!

Mad Scientist!

Several months after our young scientist received different experiment kits for his birthday, we are still working with them! Today we opened up the Outrageous Science kit that has a lot of experiments about mixing colors, mixing water and oil, trying out the effects of temperature on fizzing tablets and much much more. After we tried a few suggested tests, Chris started going rogue and was making up his own experiments!

Go Raiders!

The Wolverines aren't the only football team we'll be rooting for this weekend. Tonight we went to the Pembroke Hill back to school BBQ and opening football game and Chris really got into the Raiders spirit! It was our first trip to the upper school and it was fun to watch students of all ages getting fired up with school spirit for the beginning of the season. We brought Grammy with us too:

After having a bite to eat, we wandered around, visited with some people and watched Chris run around like a maniac outside the dining hall. He wanted so badly to join the groups of boys playing pick up football on the lawn but sadly they were twice his age and twice his size--not a good combination for your first football game. Later we made it down to the bleachers but when we realized we were smack dab in the middle of the student section, we thought it best to move down to the field level so Chris could see a bit better.

We watched the Raiders score two touchdowns in the first quarter. Meanwhile, Chris proceeded to tell us that he was friends with all the Pembroke football players. "Number 4 is my friend and I'm friends with the one with the 5 and the 1 on his shirt and number 80 is my friend too!" So cute. Maybe he'll ask for autographs next time! This morning at drop off some of the football players were helping the younger kids into their classes wearing their jerseys which was really sweet so maybe Chris was thinking of that and thinking they are his friends...

Go Blue!

In preparation for this weekend's big Michigan/Notre Dame football game, Christopher and I spent yesterday afternoon outside putting up our new flag and decorating the driveway...

Can you tell we're getting excited for the big game? Christopher's contribution to the sidewalk drawings included an airport and a racetrack for his scooter that was just too big to fit in a picture. :)

Meet T.S. Elliot

A few months ago, Christopher and I went to Loose Park to enjoy the beautiful early summer weather we were having. One part of the park has a duck pond that bustles with ducks, geese, fish, turtles and all kinds of birds. The duck pictured above was there that day and Chris decided that, because it looked so different from the rest, it deserved a name. His idea was "Toy Story." Hmmm, I thought, interesting. Maybe we could call him "T.S." I suggested. Chris was happy with this name but when I added the "Elliot" part, he was even more satisfied. And that is the story of how this duck got his name...

Fast forward to today... After a few weeks of real Kansas summer weather (aka--scorching and in the high 90s) we had a gorgeous Labor Day so we headed back to Loose Park. Daddy (recovering from eye surgery) still had to stay out of the sun, so CJ and I spent a couple hours running around and observing the ducks. To Christopher's delight, T.S. Elliot was still at the pond! He was fascinated and we hung out by the side of the pond just watching him and all his duck friends. Of course, there were lots of people feeding the ducks so they always stayed nearby. They would even come up pretty close to see if we had anything to share! Other duck and geese names that were added by Chris today included Ping, Rosa, and Kauai. Here are some pics from our morning:

Christopher also found a great spot in one of Loose Park's many fields to pretend to take off as an airplane...

And after all that duck watching and running, Chris just needed a place in the grass to chill...