What We Did This Weekend: Out Like a Lion

Last Thursday we thought we would be in for one heck of a busy weekend. But by Saturday afternoon, we realized it had turned into one of our laziest.

Friday was the day set aside for a big youth activity at church. Brookie was helping with it, so I was going to tag along. They were taking the youth that had made progress in their respective programs out for some miniature golf, all in the name of a job well done. But the weather didn't cooperate (more on that later), so the activity was moved to the church.

The timing of the activity was going to force our date night to be a little later than normal. But we were fine with that. It wouldn't be the first time we ate dinner after 9:00pm. It was soon discovered, however, that there was a wedding reception at the church, and they didn't want to share the gym with our youth. So, in the end the activity was canceled, and we went to Applebee's in time to eat and get home to watch the Kansas Jayhawks lose their Sweet Sixteen™ match-up with Michigan State. After Thursday's game where Missouri man-handled Memphis, Friday's game was a let down. Then, although they fought hard, Missouri lost to UCONN Saturday. Now we have no ponies left in the race.

On that note, I seem to be noticing a pattern. Every year, the further we get into March Madness™, the less exciting it becomes. Am I alone on that? I love watching a 10-seed beat a 7-seed on day two, but I can barely bring myself to even check on when the Final Four™ will be televised.

Saturday was going to be a full day as well. The Stake Young Women's leaders had planned a dinner prior to the General Young Women's broadcast that night, but it was eventually canceled due to weather. So, instead of Brookie leaving for a dinner and conference session at 6:00pm, we watched some old episodes of Monk Saturday night as we ate our home-made version of Rumbi rice bowls.

But we did get out of the house Saturday morning to attend a baptism in our ward. Luckily the storm held off until after we got home. March definitely went out like a lion this year. I don't remember the trees ever being ice-coated from freezing rain this year, until it happened on Saturday. That sleet and freezing rain eventually turned to snow, and that snow kept falling until 7:00pm.

Sunday morning, we were a little worried about getting out of our driveway because of the snow. A few minutes before we left for church, I went downstairs to shovel away some ice and snow and spread some salt. Our garage is in our basement, so to get out, we back the car up a slope. The bit of shoveling and salt did the trick though. We backed out without a single skid. I jumped out of the car to close the garage, brimming with pride for my insight in purchasing ice melt the day before. It wasn't long, however, that I realized if I had been as smart as I thought, I would have also bought a snow shovel. When I got back in the car and tried to drive out of our driveway, the tires just spun. We were stuck. I seemed to be able to reverse just fine, but we couldn't go forward. It had never been a problem before. The difficult part had always been getting out of the garage.

I'll spare you the details, but it was an hour of pushing the car, laying down some well-placed twigs for traction, and shoveling paths through the snow with an edger on our runway of a driveway before we were finally on our way to church. Luckily we made it just in time for Sunday School. The good news was that I burned over 300 calories with all that work, which allowed me to partake of a brownie at the youth fireside later that night – a tender mercy if there ever was one.

And that's what we did this weekend.

What We Did For Spring Break (Part II)

After our first rental car barely made it to our friends' house, we had arrived in Thatcher, AZ. It's probably not your first choice for a vacation destination, but we had a great time. Since the only reason we went was to see our friends, we could have done anything, or nothing at all, and it would have been a wonderful vacation.

We pulled into their driveway just before dinner time Thursday evening. After a little discussion, it was determined that we should be treated to some really good Mexican food. It's surprising how many good Mexican food restaurants were available to choose from. I knew it would probably be harder to stick to our diet and exercise regimen, but I didn't understand how difficult it would be until mounds of fresh salsa, tortilla chips, and excellent Mexican food were placed within striking distance. That said, we did at least muster up the courage to turn down what looked like the world's greatest fried ice cream (a decision on which I'm still second-guessing myself).*

*It should be noted that Brookie exerted a great deal more self-control at meal-times (and snack times) on our vacation that I did.

The next day was Friday. John had to go in to work, so we played with Julie and the four kids while we waited for him to get home. When they moved back to Arizona, they had three kids and one more in the oven. It was so great to get reacquainted with their kids, and to meet their youngest, who is a living, breathing, baby doll.



Once John was home we put our plan into effect. You see, I thought that since we were in Arizona in March, it would be a shame not to attend a Spring Training game. And Brookie felt it would be wrong to be in Phoenix, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home, and not take the opportunity to see all of his buildings in the area. So we decided to spend Saturday in Phoenix and do both. The problem was that Thatcher, AZ is three and a half hours from Phoenix, which would have made a long day longer. Luckily, we were able to drive most of the way Friday night and stay with some of our friends' family.

Saturday morning Brookie and I were on our way to Phoenix for our Frank Lloyd Wright tour before any of the adults were awake. I lost track of how many buildings we saw that morning, but we got to all but two of them. There were single-family homes, a college auditorium, and a ritzy resort. Brookie had all of her maps, and stories about all of locations we visited, and I'm sure she'll eventually post them along with lots of pictures on her blog.



Since the Spring Training facility for the Royals is on the extremely north-east side of Phoenix, in Surprise, AZ, we couldn't quite see all of the FLW buildings in the area. Luckily we left ourselves plenty of time, because we got a little lost looking for the stadium. Like I said, Brookie had maps and directions for her activity, but I didn't print off anything for mine. A quick stop at a gas station, and we were soon picking up our tickets and meeting our friends at the ballpark.

The game was really fun. We had great seats behind the Royals dugout and in the shade. The atmosphere was much more informal than a regular season game. The stadium was much smaller, bringing the fans closer to the action. The kids really enjoyed it too, especially little Sarah, whose blue eyes coaxed the folks behind us to offer her the remainder of their cotton candy. The offer was declined, but I'm not sure if she could have had it anyway – she'd already eaten a good deal of John's pulled pork sandwich. Brookie had a big hot dog, and I had myself an amazingly messy philly cheesesteak. After John saw my sandwich, smothered in ballpark-style nacho cheese sauce, his pulled pork lost some of its luster. His ill-fated plan was to share his BBQ with Juile, who was supposed to get a cheesesteak to share with him later. Unfortunately, the plan was foiled when Julie found she wasn't hungry until towards the end of the game. By then, she just decided to wait for dinner.

The game itself was kind of a wash. The Royals, minus most of their regulars, were beaten badly by the hometown Arizona Diamondbacks. Nonetheless, we all had a great time, and I can finally saw that I've been to a Royals Spring Training game.



We finished off our Saturday in Phoenix with dinner at NYPD (New York Pizza Department), and a quick trip (John's first) to the nearby IKEA. But after a long day, we decided to spend another night at the our friends' family's house, and drive back to Thatcher Sunday morning. On the way back to Thatcher, it occurred to me that Monday was going to be the only driving-free day our trip.

Sunday was a nice relaxing day. John made some ribs and Julie's brother David, cooked some Portuguese style rice. John's mom brought a cake, and 2,400 calories later (just kidding), I was stuffed.

Monday the kids were back in school after their Spring Break, and John was back at work. Brookie and I took our time getting out of bed that morning, but eventually got up, had breakfast and then powered through a workout session thanks to the Nintendo Wii and Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party. We burned enough calories to justify meeting John for lunch at Chalo's (another great Mexican restaurant in the area), and for John's steaks and Julie's mashed potatoes for dinner. As we'd done every night, after the kids were in bed, we all just sat in the living room and talked.

Tuesday was time to head for home. We left early, but not early enough that we didn't have a chance to say goodbye to John, Julie, and the kids. On our way back we went through Albuquerque and stopped at the temple for a session. Afterward, we found something to eat before getting back on the road for our pit stop in Amarillo. Wednesday we left even earlier to be able to finish the nine hour drive from Amarillo to Kansas City in time to return the rental car by 3:00pm.

Brookie had really wanted to go somewhere for her Spring Break, and we were glad we had a chance to take this road trip to Arizona to spend time with our friends. We had a great time, and can't wait until we can visit them again (although I think we'll probably fly next time).

And that's what we did on our Spring Break.

What We Did For Spring Break (Part I)

I actually thought that I would take a few minutes to write a quick blog Sunday night. Unfortunately, we were enjoying ourselves so much on our Spring Break road trip to Arizona that I didn't get around to it.

Because I'm pretty sure that a post about our trip will get pretty long pretty quickly, I'm going to break it into two parts. This first post will be about the road trip to Arizona.

We have some really good friend that moved back to Arizona in December 2007, and we hadn't seen them since. So, a few weeks ago, convinced that we needed to go somewhere and do something fun while Brookie's school was out for Spring Break, we started playing with the idea of visiting our friends. If money had been no object, I'm sure we would have flown. But, taking our budget into account, we decided our best option was to rent a car and drive.

Our trip began last Wednesday after Brookie got home from work. We picked up our rental*, packed it up, and headed for our hotel in Amarillo, TX by about 3:00pm. Ever since we started taking monthly trips to St. Louis, we've embraced the journey instead of worrying only about how quickly we can arrive at our destination. This road trip was no different.

*Brookie would tell you that all I seemed to care about was what car we would get from the rental agency. I not saying she'd be right, but I'm not not saying it either. Anyhow, I was really hoping to get one of the handful of new Honda Civics I'd often seen in the agency's lot whenever we drive by. I'd also seen Accords, Camrys, Corollas, and Chevy Malibus. But when we arrived Wednesday to pick up our car, the pickings were slim, and we ended up with an '08 Mazda6. Not bad. But definitely not a Civic.

The first two stops at points of interest along the way were both in Wichita, and were both designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright. I won't steal Brookie's thunder by telling you about these two buildings here. You'll just have to wait until she posts about them on her blog. We're fairly convinced that sooner or later, she'll have the most comprehensive guide to visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings on the web.

Amarillo is just under a nine hour drive, and it's almost half way to Thatcher, AZ. Adding the time we spent taking pictures in Wichita, along with a short stop to pick up some dinner at Subway, it was about 1:00am when we checked in at our hotel. Neither one of us slept very well (which turned out to be a common theme throughout the trip). And the next morning, after grabbing some of the complimentary breakfast*, we were back on the road, looking for the only Frank Lloyd Wright building in Amarillo before continuing our trek to Arizona.

*On our way home I had a thought: The person who checks you into your hotel at night is rarely the same person at the front desk in the morning, right? So how would they know whether you're a paying customer or not if you just decided to stop at a La Quinta Inn between the hours of 6:00 and 9:00am to partake of their breakfast? I guess that would be dishonest, huh...

We decided to make our way through the Land of Enchantment (after this trip, I for one, have become slightly disenchanted with New Mexico. Honestly, can you think of a better example of misrepresentation?) via US Highway 70. We thought it would be more fun than just sticking to the interstate and going through Albuquerque. I also was very intrigued at the opportunity of driving through Roswell, NM. Lucky for us, it didn't disappoint.












We're pretty sure that guy was just waiting for a bus... we hope... And we had no idea that aliens had such a love of fast food.

Leaving the less-than-enchanted land of New Mexico behind, soon after crossing into Arizona, we called ahead to give our friends and update. It was about then that our car started to act up. With only about 45 miles to go, it started to jerk every time I tried to accelerate. Of course, the check engine light had come on in Wichita, but I didn't think it was too serious. My best uneducated guess is that there was a problem with the fuel-injection. Luckily, when we called Hertz the next morning, they told us they'd tow another car out to us to replace the Mazda6. Too bad for them that our friends live more than two hours away from the nearest Hertz location. Glad I didn't have to pay for that tow.

It was a long two-day trip, but stopping at some fun spots along the way and listening to the Chronicles of Narnia series on CD helped the time go by quicker than it may have otherwise.

Once at our friend's house we did a ton of fun stuff, but more on that later.

What We Did This Weekend: Simply a Slow Saturday

Friday night we ate at one of our favorite Lee's Summit restaurants: Neighbor's Cafe. If you live in the area and haven't been there, make it a priority. The food is fantastic. It's not concerned about looking good, only tasting good. That's not to say that their food doesn't look good. Brooke and I were laughing at the mix-matched dinnerware we were served, and how it resembled some of the stuff in our grandparents' kitchen cabinets 20-30 years ago.

After dinner we killed some time in the nearby thrift store (we learned it actually has a name: The Bargainhaus, which I assume is mandatory to say with a poor German accent). We seldom go to a thrift store looking for something in particular. I think you'll be disappointed more often than not, if that is your approach. We go to see what they have and to see if we can find anything interesting. Mostly we were just hanging out.

We capped off our date night by watching Soul of the Game, a movie made for HBO about Branch Rickey's signing of the first African-American baseball player in Major League Baseball. The story followed an aging Satchel Paige, an ailing Josh Gibson (a.k.a. the Black Babe Ruth), and a clean-cut, articulate rookie for the Kansas City Monarchs by the name of Jackie Robinson. I'm guessing you know how it ends, but the story of how it came about was well worth the 90 minutes we spent watching the movie.

Saturday was nice. The weather was great, which gave me time to secure some gutter downspouts that had been blown off the house, while Brookie ran through the normal Saturday morning cleaning routine. We hit the gym. Got haircuts. And went to the library.

In preparing for our upcoming Arizona road trip we were looking for some audio books at our local library to help pass the time. Unfortunately their selection wasn't too great. But, in searching nearby library systems, we found a few good titles at the Kansas City Public Library. So we drove a bit to the Westport branch, applied for cards in that system, and checked-out some books for the road. We also stopped at the library at the Plaza to grab a few more. The Plaza library was sweet. It reminded me of the Salt Lake Library they built a few years ago. Like everything in the Plaza, it was all modern and slick. We love nice libraries. And it was surprising how much fun we had checking out a few new places to go for books and books on CD.

And we also discovered a great little (or not so little) shop in Westport across the street from the library: Pryde's. It's hard to explain exactly what it was, except to say it was awesome. I saw every odd kitchen gadget that I've ever looked for unsuccessfully in the past few years. They had all sorts of stuff, including a little cafe tucked in the back where it's rumored they sell fresh pie.

Saturday night's movie was Harry and the Henderson's, so, yeah. It was an awesome weekend, made only more awesome by the fire alarm just after church got out today.

A Heartfelt Plea

Some of you may choose to read your favorite blogs with the help of an RSS Reader so that you don't need to visit 20 different sites to keep up to date with news of friends and family. That's understandable. I choose to go to each site because I enjoy the visual aspect of blogs as much as (if not more than) the information portion. Hence, I put a lot of effort into the overall design of our blogs. And, as I've said before, this one has a major redesign on the way (so major that it's taking much longer than I had anticipated).

With this in mind, I have a sincere favor to ask of each of you: Please, please, please, please, please, please, ditch Internet Explorer as your default browser. And, if you're still using Internet Explorer 6, add another 12 pleases to that request. I just looked at our blog with IE6, and margins were incorrect, pictures were not rendering, and the general feel was so much more amateur than it really is. There are a lot of technical reasons for this, but when it comes to web design standards, IE6 just didn't get the memo.

So, please... To get the most out of our site (and the entire internet, for crying out loud), consider a free browser upgrade. Might I recommend Firefox? But, if you are married to Bill Gates and Microsoft's monopoly, at least upgrade to IE7. It's free too.

Pretty please?

What We Did This Weekend: Better Late Than Never or Winter's Final Stand

Looking back, I think this was the mildest winter we've had since moving to Kansas City. Brookie wishes that she could have had just one snow day, but now that this storm has come and gone, the chances of that are not so great. Last week the weather was terrific. Highs in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Then came the cold front and an arctic wind straight from Canada. Thursday night it got cold in a hurry. By Friday there was talk of 3-4 inches of snow on the ground by Saturday morning. I was skeptical. But it happened.

The day before the snow we noticed that the tulips and daffodils we planted were starting to shoot up from the ground. Now we'd need to dig through a few inches of frozen snow to see them. Or, I guess we could just wait until it all thaws as early as today. Why did the biggest winter storm of the season have to be the last one?

Friday night we had the best Ward activity of all time. It was a belated adults-only Valentine's Day celebration. The gym was decorated to resemble a fancy restaurant. As people arrived, the host and hostess seated them at their assigned table, where there was a main course, salad, rolls, and dessert, each provided by one of the couples at the table. We sat at a great table. Fun people, and very good food. We contributed the manicotti (a pan of spinach and a pan of portabella mushroom variety), and some "bum" rolls. After dinner there was a spectacular slide show put together by yours truly. But I must admit that it wasn't anything I did that made it spectacular, it was seeing pictures of everyone in the ward when they were young and poofy-shouldered dresses and equally poofy hair was en vogue. After the slide show we all played Bunco. Brookie and I won the booby prizes for fewest games won.

Luckily the storm held off until we were safely home and in bed that night. But when it left, there were 4-5 inches on the ground.

But, the storm did give me a chance to run some errands while Brookie was at a baby shower Saturday morning. Normally I would have stayed home, but since she hates driving in the snow and I am the (self-proclaimed) World's Second Best Snow Driver (my dad is number one; taught me everything he knows), I took her to her party. With a few hours to kill I went to the local shopping center and to a few stores to pick up some stuff I'd been thinking about for a while.

I bought and then later installed a dimmer switch in our bathroom. Brookie really doesn't like to wake up any earlier than she must. So to fake sleep a little longer, she likes to shower in total darkness. I, on the other hand, prefer to get it over with and would rather have the lights on. It's not so bad in the spring and fall because there is usually enough light coming in from outside that I can see what I'm doing in the shower. In the summer it is so light outside that it's brighter than having the bathroom light on. But our winter mornings begin in complete darkness. But, now that we have a working dimmer in our bathroom, we can compromise with a little light. It's just too bad that we won't really be able to use it until next winter because by now the sun is finally starting to get up before we do.

Another purchase I made was a pair of hot water bottles. While on my mission in Portugal, I was treated to the unbelievable hospitality of Adelaide Pires. We called her Irmã Adelaide. She housed a pair of missionaries in her home and treated them all like kings. One of the incredible things she did for us was to place a hot water bottle under the sheets at the foot of our beds on exceptionally cold nights. I've never had warmer feet while sleeping in the dead of winter than when I had a nice, warm, hot water bottle to rely on. Now Brookie and I can enjoy the same comfort. It's just too bad that I didn't think to make this purchase in November instead of winter's final stand in March.