Entry 454: We Bought A Zoo

In our earlier post we mentioned that we decided to start some of our own Christmas traditions, and one of the new traditions is to go to a movie Christmas day. We decided that we would go and see the matinee showing of We Bought A Zoo. We promise that we won't give away the whole movie, but it was basically about a widowed man who has 2 children. They are all struggling to move on with their lives and decided to move. They find their dream house, but it is on a zoo. They decide to buy it anyway and the rest of the movie is about trying to make the zoo successful and moving on with their lives.

We both really enjoyed the movie and even though she won't admit it, Julie cried at least twice during the movie. Lance enjoyed it more than the Twilight movies, but Julie thought the Twilight movies were better.

Entry 453: Christmas Eve

This year we decided to do Christmas a little different and to start some of our own traditions. We started off by deciding to cook ourselves a nice Christmas dinner. This consisted of a brown sugar ham, spinach mashed potatoes (new recipe that we tried because we both enjoy spinach), broccoli and rice casserole, and a nice cranberry orange salad. We spent most of our day cooking this, but in the end the work was well worth it because the meal was great.

We also decided that we wanted to attend the early Christmas Eve church service. We went to the service at 4:30 and it was absolutely packed. Julie made sure that we left early, and for once Lance was glad that she did. We were there 15 minutes before the service began and we still struggled to find a place to sit. It was a beautiful service and as always the music was wonderful, but then just when we were thinking that we were going to get out of their relatively quickly the associate pastor decided to give a sermon. It was a novel idea, except for the fact that it lasted for 20 minutes. Lets just say that the sermon talked for a good 5 minutes about the Indiana Jones movies. Saying that the people and kids weren't happy would be an understatement.

After church and eating we decided to finish the night off with a nice bottle of wine and watching The Sound Of Music. All in all it was a nice night.

Entry 452: Early Christmas Gift

Julie has been asking Lance for quite some time to get a keyboard for her Ipad. Lance got onto the Best Buy website on Black Monday and found a really good deal on a wireless keyboard that came with an Ipad stand. The item was backordered and unfortunately the day that it finally came in Julie got the mail and opened it. So far Julie really likes it and won't let Lance even touch it.

Entry 451: Junior Matha Stewart

Julie is a fantastic cook, but this year she has decided that she really wants to bake Christmas cookies. The past two Sundays have consisted of Julie slaving away in the kitchen and trying out some new cookie recipes. So far Julie has made some delicious new recipe chocolate chip cookies, cranberry orange cookies, and pecan ball cookies (which you can see below). Lance really enjoys this because he gets to taste test all of them.

Entry 450: Giving Back

As many of you know, Lance transferred to a middle school this year and now works with 7th graders. So far he loves it, even though there are quite a few differences between the two groups of kids. There are four 7th grade teams and every year each team adopts a refugee family for Christmas. When Lance heard this he set a personal goal for himself of raising at least a $1000 for this cause. He talked to his paraprofessionals and they came up with some great ideas. One of the great ideas we came up with is to make duck tape bracelets and bows and to sell them. We researched it on the Internet and after some practice we began making them at a pretty good clip. We had a few nights where students stayed after school to help and ended up making around 500 bows and bracelets. For a week straight we sold bracelets for $2 and bows for $3 before school. At the end of the week we made a little over $700.
Lance also thought of a great fundraiser that he had once seen where a local custard shop came and sold custard to students during the school day. Lance contacted the custard shop and set everything up. They came during all of the lunch shifts (which was almost 2 hours) and Lance helped them collect money and put the toppings on the custard. We were making so much money, that we were having to put money in our pockets because the money bags were full. It was an exhausting two hours, but rewarding because when we were done our cut was a little over $250.
When it was all said and done Lance and his paraprofessionals raised $983 which was just a little short of the goal, but it made us all feel good because the money will be put towards a great cause.

Entry 449: Aaron Crow Signing

Lance noticed last Thursday that one of Julie's favorite Royals players, Aaron Crow, was going to be signing autographs at US Toys in Lenexa, Kansas. Aaron Crow is a relief pitcher for the Royals and one of the players that Julie really wanted to get an autograph from. We loaded up the car on Saturday and picked up one of our friends who wanted to go along. Julie was really worried about not getting an autograph, so we showed up an hour and a half before the signing and were the first ones in line. Aaron Crow was a really nice guy and he ended up signing a Crow shirt, baseball, his rookie baseball card, and a bat for us. You can see the pictures below.

Entry 448: A Sad Loss

Last Friday Julie's great Aunt Jackie passed away. We traveled to St. Louis today to celebrate her life with her friends and family. If you would like to see her obituary please click here. You will always be loved and remembered Jackie.

Entry 447: Christmas Cards

The Christmas cards are officially here and now the envelopes just need to be addressed. It was easy this year to pick the picture for the card because we both loved this picture with Bobby. For those of you still wondering, yes we still do have Maggie but just didn't include her in this years picture.

Entry 446: Remembering Kay

We had not had a chance to see Lance's moms grave marker, so we decided after Thanksgiving dinner to go and visit it.

Entry 445: Thanksgiving 2011

This years Thanksgiving was a little different because it was the first Thanksgiving Lance's family has celebrated since his mom passed on. We decided that instead of cooking a meal this year that we would all go out and eat. We made reservations for a Thanksgiving buffet at a good restaurant and met all of the family there. It was a good meal and we both had our share of ham, roast beef, and turkey along with stuffing and pumpkin pie. We really enjoyed the meal, but enjoyed catching up with family more.

Entry 444: Godson Time

When we were finished at Powell Gardens we went to visit with Julie's mom and dad because they were in town watching their grandbabies for the evening. We went over and had a nice dinner with them and spent some time playing with Tyler and Brody. Below you see a picture of Julie with her godson, Brody, who must have been really excited to see her because he was up almost the entire time smiling and giggling.

Entry 443: Scarecrows

While we were at Powell Gardens last Saturday they also had a scarecrow exhibit that was going on. They had about 20 different scarecrows around their garden area and you could vote on which one you liked. We unfortunately did not get around to all of them, but we did get to snap a few pictures of the ones we saw.

Entry 442: Powell Gardens

Last weekend the weather was so nice that we decided to go and visit Powell Gardens. We had never been there before, but we love Shaws Garden and had heard that this was just as nice. We really enjoyed the visit and got some great pictures, so enjoy.



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Entry 441: Happy Halloween

I know most of you are waiting to see our yearly pictures of the dogs in their costumes, but we are sorry to disappoint you this year. We decided to go and help Mary and Phillip this year by handing out candy at their house, while they took Tyler trick or treating. It was a good time.

Entry 440: Just Another Day

Today was just a typical day at work for Lance. His day started by helping a boy open his locker when he turned to Lance and whispered to him that he had an accident and needed to see the nurse. We will leave it up to your imagination as to what the accident was. Lance's day then ended when one of his students tried to call his mom, but instead dialed 911. You can imagine Lance's surprise when the police called his room and asked if everything was okay. Like the title says, just another typical day.

Entry 439: Cowboy Love/Hate

Last night we went to a wedding of the daughter of one of Julie's co-workers. It was a beautiful wedding and they had a photo booth at the reception. We stepped in to the photo booth and decided that we were going to have a cowboy theme. As you can see Julie choose the pink cowboy hat and Lance choose the hillbilly country cowboy hat. We then reenacted two cowboys falling in love and then it ended badly. We loved the photo booth.

Entry 438: Pick The Paint Color

Julie has decided that she wants a new paint color for her bathroom and has it narrowed down to two choices. Which do you prefer? Julie's choice will be revealed at a later date (probably next week).

Entry 437: Home Improvement Time

Since the Royals season is finally over, Julie has decided that it is time to do some home improvement projects around the house. Here are some of the projects that Julie has for Lance:

1. Painting all of the trim and windows in the house, so that they are all one uniform color. Some of the trim and windows have never been painted, so Julie has decided that everything is going to be a bright white.

2. One of the pictures that we recently took from Shaw's Garden, Julie wanted blown up and put into a frame.

3. Put the rest of the Royal sherseys in their shadow boxes and hang them in the Royals room.

4. Hang the autographed baseballs in the Royals room.

5. Pick out a new paint color for the bathroom and paint it.

6. Sand the vanity in the bathroom and repaint it to match the new bathroom paint color.

As you can tell Lance is going to be pretty busy for a while. You can see Lance's progress in the pictures below.



The trim painted.


The window painted in the spare bedroom.


Here is the picture that we blew up from Shaw's Garden and hung in the living room.


All of the Royals sherseys hung up in Julie's Royals room.


The autographed baseballs and baseballs from the stadiums that we have visited.

Entry 436: Bobby At The Game

If you do not check our Royals Season Ticket Holders blog, then you probably don't know that we took Bobby to a Royals game recently. Below is a picture of the great time that we had. If you want to read all about it click on the Royals Season Ticket Holders link on the right hand side.

Entry 435: A Ride In The T-Bucket

Last night we had a chance to meet up with some friends for dinner. One of our friends had a classic car that Julie has been wanting a ride in for quite some time, so she was invited over for a ride before dinner. Thanks Chuck, Anita, and Tyson, we had a great time.

Entry 434: Cardinals Game

As many of you know we have a goal of trying to visit every major league baseball stadium. Monday we went to Busch Stadium in St. Louis to watch the Cardinals play the Brewers. We both went to the game wearing our Zach Greinke stuff because he plays for the Brewers, but we loved him when he played for the Royals. The stadium was beautiful and it was a fun game to watch because both teams were battling for first place. What made this game even more memorable is that we were able to see it with Julie's mom and dad. Three stadiums down twenty seven more to go.

Entry 433: Nephew Cooper

We were lucky enough to be able to see Carol, Michael, and their baby Cooper while we were in St. Louis. We both agreed that Cooper has to be the most content and calm baby that we have ever met.

Entry 432: Incredible View

Lance always loves going to Julie's mom and dads house because it is so beautiful. He always tries explaining to people how beautiful it is, so hopefully these pictures can do it a little bit of justice.


The view as you drive up to the house.


The walkway to the house.



The view when you walk out the front door.

Entry 431: Shaw's Garden

Saturday we all went to Shaw's Garden in St. Louis and were able to see the Japanese Gardens. We have been there before, but we always love going and seeing all of the beautiful flowers. What made it even better was that the weather was beautiful, even though we did have a little bit of rain when we first got there. Enjoy the pictures.

Entry 430: St. Louis Trip

This past weekend we decided to go to St. Louis and visit Julie's mom and dad. While we were there we visited Shaw's Garden, went to the Hill, and went to a Cardinals game. Prepare for a barrage of posts.

Entry 429: Something Different

Since we both started working again, we have both decided that we need to try something different for our health. Julie leaves for work every day at 6:30 and we usually don't get home until 5:30, so it makes for a long day and usually we don't want to cook. This usually led to us going through drive through and grabbing something quick, but we decided to try something different which will hopefully help. We are going to cook a weeks worth of meals on Sunday and just eat them as the week goes on. It makes for a long Sunday, but hopefully in the end it will work. Last week we didn't eat out, so it is looking good so far.

Here is what we are making for this week: grilled shrimp, lemon pepper chicken, General Tao's chicken, and stuffed green peppers. Enough for now because the stove is beeping for us.

Entry 428: Just Another Day

Lance was upstairs making the bed when he noticed this out the window. Yes this is the kind of neighborhood we live in.

Entry 427: New Centerpiece

Julie has been wanting a new centerpiece for the kitchen table for quite some time. While walking through Sears yesterday Julie came upon a candle centerpiece that she really liked and ended up buying. Below you can see the end product.

Entry 426: New Camera

We have been talking for awhile today about getting a new camera and for some reason the stars aligned and we ended up getting a camera today at a very good price. The story about how we got it though is a little bizarre.

We were hungry when we left the house, so we decided to go and grab lunch at our favorite pizza place, the Dish. We got there a little past 11:00, but found out that it didn't open until noon. We decided to kill a little bit of time by going to Lance's favorite place, Best Buy, and to just look around. We gravitated towards the camera section and spent quite some time looking around. We knew the zoom that we wanted and the minimum mega pixels we would accept, but we still weren't ready to buy one yet.

When we left Best Buy, we still had a little bit of time left until the restaurant opened. We decided to go by the place where we got married and see if anyone else was getting married today, but our plans changed when we drove by Sears and saw that they were having a clearance sale because they were changing over to a K-Mart. We thought that we would go in real quick and see what they had. When we ventured to the electronics section we saw a camera that we had been looking at for a fantastic price. We decided that we couldn't pass this deal up, so we ended up getting a new camera that we love.

Below you will see some pictures of the dogs we took with our new camera.