Thank You...

...to all the men and women who serve our country.



I lived for a while in Emporia, KS. The birth place of Veteran's day. Veteran's Day used to be called Armistice day, which celebrated the cease fire of WWI that is said to have occurred at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month. A business man in Emporia worked to get it changed to Veteran's Day in order to honor ALL veterans of the military. Because of this, Emporia takes great pride in Veteran's Day and everything is shut down. Businesses are not open, there is a very large parade and other events, and of course there is no school. Now, ever since having lived there I have always taken the stand that there should be no school, just like other national holidays.

Today was different. I went to school knowing that today would be a different type of school day. The kids were going through a health fair in the morning and then after lunch we were having a Veteran's day program to honor all those who have served or are currently serving our country. Little did I know just how powerful today would be.

At 12 we all gathered in the gym and welcomed local veterans into the gym with the band playing. We had Veterans from every war from WWII to one individual who was leaving at 2:00 TODAY for Afghanistan! They were all recognized, the choir sang the Star Spangled Banner, the band played, students read Veteran's Day essays, and many of us had to blink back tears throughout the presentation.

After this the students were lucky enough to be able to listen to our heroes speak about their experiences. We heard stories of years at sea carring bombs to the Pacific Islands, having to pull the bodies of fallen soldiers on the beaches of Normandy to be buried, flying aircraft in Vietnam, experiencing "friendly fire" and marching in the hot desert in Kuwait. WOW. What an awesome lesson our middle school kids learned today.

I now firmly believe that EVERY school should do something like this to honor our Veterans. If we would have let out school not one of those kids would have showed our soldiers the type of respect they saw today. What our teenagers learned today was far more important than any algebra problem or science experiment they would have done otherwise.

Far too often we take for granted the things that are most important...for all you who have served, are serving, or have lost loved ones, thank you.

Be careful what you say around your little ones...

Me: Hi "John" how are you?
"John" (Name has been changed to protect the innocent...or in this case, the cute kid): Hi
Me: Have you been practicing your 10 Commandments?
"John": Kind of.
Me: ok...why don't you give them a try.
"John": Well...I really only know the first one "You shall have no other gods besides me" and the 9th one "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." Cause that's what our neighbor does!

I love 2nd graders!

Happy Halloween!

Our Little Houdini

I awoke Tuesday morning to barking dogs. This is not unusual. Ethan and I live out in the country a bit and there are many things that grab the attention of our two "guard dogs." However this was different. This was louder. Hmmm...I wondered what had those to all wound up, so I got out of bed (moving rather slowly, as it was the 2nd day I was waking up with the flu) and checked out the window. All I could see without my glasses was some blur of a shape that looked to have four legs. Great. Some animal has our girls all excited and I'll never get back to sleep. I grab my glasses and go to the front door to see if I can't make out exactly what is causing all the commotion.

It was Breck!

How in the hell did she get out of our fenced in back yard???

After getting her safely back inside and causing enough commotion for Ethan to decide to come upstairs and see what was going on. (He slept downstairs while I was sick...how nice of him to give me the whole bed to myself!) He bundled up and went outside to investigate the situation and see how our little magician worked her way outside. All gates were closed. No chairs were next to the fence. Hmmm....

He decided that there was a tree branch that had grown low enough for her to use that to propel herself over the fence, and we decided to keep her inside the crate until he could cut down the branch.

True to his word, Ethan got the chainsaw from his parents house and cut the branch off the next day, and just to make sure the problem was solved we took Breck outside to see if she could still get out...

Yeah, she climbed the fence.

I'll tell you again...SHE CLIMBED THE FENCE!!!

There is roughly 1/2 acre of fenced in backyard for her to run and play in. There are many dogs who would give anything to have that much yard. Not Breck. She needed more.

We should have named her Houdini...

Wedding Planning Surprises

As I am in the middle of trying to plan my wedding I am finding out more and more that the "perfect wedding" I had in my mind as a kid sure has a lot more to it than just pretty dresses and matching colors. There is so much more to wedding planning than anyone can really tell you about. Here are just a few of the things I am finding out as I go...

~ EVERYTHING is expensive. That stupid TLC "Wedding Show" that had me hooked into watching and getting ideas when I was in my early 20s in college should really include the prices of these beautiful weddings they show. Cause I'm betting not one of them was less than 10,000.

~ You will constantly want to talk about it. I can't help it. I even make goals NOT to talk about it today...and at some point I mention something about it.

~ You will count down the months, weeks, and days. It's so corny...but true!

~ He might just care about helping with the planning. Mine does...and it's nice. :)

~ All the little tiny details...like writing the petitions for Mass or feeding your bridal party lunch on the day of the wedding. (Good thing Bird got married a couple weeks ago so I could see what all I had to do)

~ Everyone will want to be invited. I've had people tell me they had marked the day down on their calendar so they would be sure to be there... How nice of them to remember my wedding day, but I hope they make other plans when they don't get an invite...

~ Apparently it is absolutely necessary for you to have background music while the guests wait at the reception hall for everyone to arrive.

~ The hard part about registering for gifts is actually picking the places you want stuff from. When Penny's has the bath towels you want and Wal-Mart has the shower curtain and Bed Bath and Beyond has the dishes and Sears has the grill and Target has the fire pit it sure makes it hard to narrow it down.

~ There are ultimately not enough of the "good" jobs for all your friends and family...someone has to be the guestbook!

Random Chatter

~ I only blogged one time in September. Where did this month go?

~ My nephew turned 2 today. He is getting so big and talking so much. It is so fun to watch them grow from a distance...

~ Why is it that the one night you actually want the volleyball games to go fast so you can get home in time for your TV show everything will be done in the universe's power to make sure that it runs as slow as possible and you end up late for your show and eating dinner at 8:15 at night.

~ I like to eat dinner as early as possible without seeming too weird...I don't like to eat past 7:00 or 7:30.

~ I'm coaching the JV volleyball girls this year and I find that no matter what level of girls you coach you will indubitably have drama, weenie-itis, and players that MUST leave practice early to go fix their hair for the football game.

~ Ethan and I are having our engagement pictures taken this weekend and I'm really excited. I think it will be a fun way to spend a Saturday evening along with dinner out downtown.

~ On Monday Ethan and I will have been seeing each other for 2 years...where does the time go.

~ My dad is planning on breeding our new puppy Copper. He is such a good looking and well-mannered dog that dad thinks he needs to help have puppies. I'm hoping that he helps have many litters and someday I can talk Ethan into getting one!

~ I came home tonight to a cleaned kitchen and laundry going. I love that man!

~ My friend Bridget, also known as "Bird" finally got married last weekend. It was such a beautiful wedding and everyone had such a good time. I am very happy for her and Ruben!

~ My mother has a facebook account... I helped her set it up...

~ I got my nails done again. It lasted about 2 months of not going in to have them all "prettied up." I am so glad that I have girly hands again and doubt that I will stop any time soon.

~ I know that I have plenty of time, but I just can't decide how I want to have my hair for my wedding... With the style of dress I have I really should probably have my hair up. But I just LOVE how pretty my hair is down. I guess I have a while to make that decision.

~ My sister is about to start her Senior year on the ESU basketball team. SENIOR! Wow.

~ HA! At the wedding last weekend my dad ended up taking over the bar tending... It was awesome!

~ We are in the process of redoing our bathroom. I will post before and after picture once we are finished. It will look so cool! I can't wait :)

Vacation in the Rockies!

Two tickets to see the Colorado Rockies vs. Arizona Dimondbacks...two nights in The Curtis, the hippest hotel in Denver...dinner at various sports bars downtown...a drive through the mountains...First vacation away with Ethan...Priceless.

Ethan and I took our first vacation together over Labor Day weekend. He proposed the idea early in August when he was browsing the Rockies baseball team's website and noticed that they played at home that weekend. Ethan is a huge Rockies fan, but hadn't ever seen them play in Coors Field. I hadn't ever seen the mountains...or even set foot in Colorado for that matter, so it didn't take much to convince me that it would be a fun trip. A week later, we had tickets bought and hotel rooms booked. It was set.

We left early Saturday morning on our 8 hour jaunt across KS and most of Eastern Colorado. I started out driving since E had just come home from Lincoln the night before and was sick and tired of driving. We had all the necessary materials for a long car ride; GPS, DVDs, and snacks (pretzels and jolly ranchers). Unfortunately Dillons does not sell Mad Libs, so no fun word games for us. We quickly began the alphabet game (I won) and even saw a high speed car chase (going the other way). I also found out that Eastern Colorado is just as drab and boring as Western Kansas. 7 hours driving full of nothing but flat land for days...

Then finally I got to see my first glimpse of the mountains and Denver...unfortunately it was a cloudy day, so it wasn't too clear. We checked in to our hotel, The Curtis, located smack dab in the middle of down town, and is the "hippest hotel in Denver" (which we booked for a discount thanks to hotels.com).

The Rockies played on Saturday night, but we had tickets for the Sunday afternoon game. We decided to just go into one of the sports bars across from the stadium and have dinner, a beer (or three...) and watch the game. After 3 innings and eating an enormous amount of food we decided to walk off some of our chili fries and finish watching the game at the hotel. Well on our way out we got stopped by guys who were still trying to sell tickets. We talked them down from 10$ each to 5$ each and ended up going into Coors Stadium and watching 4 innings of the night game! What a fun, unexpected addition to our weekend!

Sunday we got up early and walked to church. From the outside of the building it looked like any normal Catholic Church, but when we walked in, both our mouths dropped. Gorgeous!

I am pretty easy going and don't usually have any real "demands" on things I want. (Ethan might tell you different...) but I knew that one thing I really wanted this weekend was a hot dog, peanuts, and a beer at the ball game. Well this was not going to be a problem, because Coors Field is a "fan friendly" stadium. You can bring in any food or drink as long is it's not alcohol or glass. We bought our hot dogs, peanuts, and waters outside the stadium for 1/2 the price and brought those into the game. The beer was bought inside the stadium (for a ridiculous price...but hey, it's our vacation!) It was a great day for baseball with 7 home runs between the two teams and a Rockies win of 13-5!

After the game Ethan suggested we take a drive out to the mountains so I could really get a good view of them up close and personal. We decided to drive out to Breckenridge and have dinner. It was beautiful, and such a great day. We stopped to take pictures and the mountains are just breathtaking! Ethan was such a great guy, driving us there and back.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, and so did our vacation. Monday morning we packed up and head back to KS. It was a WONDERFUL trip which will hopefully be the first of many Labor Day Colorado Trips for us!