Entry 508: Birthday Girl

Julie's sister, Mary, and Lance decided to help Julie celebrate her birthday a few days ago. We took her to The Olive Garden and the staff got together and sang Happy Birthday to her.

Entry 507: Clingy

While Julie has been away, the dogs have been a little clingy as you can see.

Entry 506: A Weekend Apart

Thursday morning Julie left for a mandatory meeting in Jefferson City. Her mom and dad asked if she would like for them to pick her up so she can spend some time with them and they could celebrate her birthday a little bit early. Julie liked the thought of this and Lance thought it would be good if he stayed home and did some of the home improvement projects that Julie had for him to do (i.e. painting). Julie had a great time with her parents and here are some of the pictures that she sent to Lance.

Julie's mom and dad.

Julie and her dad.

Julie feeding one of the calves.

Julie and her dad outside of Ragazzi's.

Julie eating custard at her favorite place, Ted Drewe's.

Entry 505: Glasses No More

Julie has been trying to tell Lance for the past 3 years that he needed to get his eyes checked and get some new glasses. Lance has been resistant to this because like a typical guy he doesn't like to admit that his wife is right and that he is wrong. Julie finally gave Lance an ultimatum and this Friday Lance went to the eye doctor. The eye doctor gave lance the choice of getting glasses or contacts. Lance thought about it and after some thought he decided that he wanted to go back to contacts, so glasses no more for Lance.

Entry 504: Kitchen Cabinets

We are very close to making all of the changes that Julie would like to see in the house. The upstairs has all been repainted and rearranged and even the living room has been painted, except for the accent wall. Julie decided that she wanted to paint the cabinets a different color and she had two colors in mind. She decided that one of the colors would be the cabinet colors and the other would be the accent wall color. After much discussion Julie decided that we would be using the green for the cabinets and the grey for the accent wall colors. Stay tuned for pictures of it being completed because Lance plans on doing it next weekend.

Entry 503: Dog Day Afternoon

The dogs enjoy nothing more than chewing a stick in the backyard on a lazy, Sunday afternoon.

Entry 502: Milwaukee Trip

On our mission of going to all 32 Major League Baseball stadiums, we made a trip to Milwaukee in September to see the Milwaukee Brewers play the New York Mets. We had heard a lot of great things about the stadium, but honestly we were not all the impressed with the stadium. The outside of the stadium was amazing and probably our favorite, but when you got inside it almost felt like you were in a tin can. The stadium has a retractable roof, so the stadium is built up meaning that you have almost no sight line to see any of the scenery outside of the stadium. Julie ranked this stadium as her least favorite because she felt closed in and Lance ranked it as his 2nd least favorite behind Busch Stadium. We both still rate Pittsburgh's stadium as our favorite.

Entry 501: We're Back

Yes we realize that we have not blogged for awhile and some of you (Pam) have reminded us also. We promise to get better at this and plan on updating every Sunday with things that we have going on. Now let us get you updated about what we have been doing.

Entry 500: African Wedding

We have been pretty busy lately, so here are some updates from our time away from blogging. A few weeks ago we were fortunate enough to attend a wedding between two people from Africa (Malawi and Zimbabwe). Your probably wondering how this happened, so let us give you the quick explanation. Lance works with a team of teachers in his school and one of them is a science teacher named Chiku. Chiku immigrated with his parents from Malawi and last May he became engaged to Samantha who also immigrated from Africa. Lance and Chiku became friends and thus we were invited to their wedding. We both weren't really sure what to expect, but we both enjoyed it. There was a lot of singing, yeling, and dancing during the wedding which we both enjoyed watching and listening too. The reception was just as entertaining with a lot of yelling, singing, and dancing. Congratulations to the Bikoko's.

Entry 499: Train Concert

One of our favorite music groups is Train and we were really excited that they were coming to Kansas City to put on a concert. Lance's dad, Paul, also likes listening to Train and since his birthday was the day before the concert we bought him a ticket and invited him along for his birthday present. As you can tell from our previous post, Julie had a broken toe and wasn't feeling very well but there was no way she was going to miss this concert. We decided that we were going to grab a bite to eat before the show and decided to take Paul to Arthur Bryant's so he could get some authentic Kansas City barbecue. He was a little amazed at how big the portions were.

After we finished dinner it was off to the concert. We had a little but of a traffic jam on the way there, but fortunately Lance knew a detour that got us out of the jam and on our way. When we got to Starlight Theatre the people there were so accommodating. They saw Julie was struggling a little bit, so they gave her a ride from the parking lot to the front entrance and then got her a wheelchair and took her to her seat. We were all amazed at how nice they were. The opening act for Train was Andy Grammer and even though we knew who he was we were amazed at how good he was. He did an awesome set and at one point walked through the crowd while performing. He stopped the row in front of us as you can see.

Andy Grammer got the crowd warmed up and then the second opening act, Mat Kearney, took the stage. We knew quite a few of his songs and he also put on a great performance. He really had a lot of crowd participation.

Then it was time for Train and we were not disappointed. They did all of their hits and even a few covers. As soon as they hit the stage everyone stood the entire time and sang along with all of their hits. I included a few pictures below and a video that we took during the concert (please don't sue us Train). We loved every minute of the show and were not disappointed one bit.

Entry 498: A Strange Night; Part 2

We finished our little trip around the neighborhood to see what the storm had done and then our night took another unexpected turn as soon as we came back in the house. As Julie came in the house, her canes slipped on the linoleum floor and she fell into the house. At first we didn't think she was hurt, but as soon as she started standing it was obvious that something was very wrong. Julie has a high pain threshold,, but when she put weight on her left foot she started screaming in pain. Julie's little toe started becoming black and blue and swelling up, so we decided it was time to make a trip to the ER. The ER trip was uneventful, but it did take us 3 1/2 hours to get out of the ER. They diagnosed Julie with a broken toe and prescribed her some pain meds and gave her a nice shoe to wear. We finally started heading home at 1 in the morning (we both had to be up at 5:30 that morning) with the plans of stopping off and getting the pain meds prescription filled. The only problem with that was that the storm knocked out power to nearly all the businesses and the pharmacy was no different. We ended up getting home at 1:30 and got a nice 4 hours of sleep. A very eventful night.

Entry 497: A Strange Night

Last night started out like any other night. Julie came home after a long day, we ate a nice dinner, and we settled down to watch some TV for the night. That's when the night changed from ordinary to strange. We had been watching the news and it said that some storms were possibly headed our way. The storms came and when they did they brought some major winds with them. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees in 15 minutes and the trees just started blowing all over the place. Tree limbs started littering the street and as you can see from the bottom picture our neighbor had a tree blown into his house. This lasted for 15-20 minutes and when it was over we decided to walk around the neighborhood and see what kind of damage was done. We were amazed by how much debris was in the street and the tree limbs that were just laying all over the place. Little did we know that our night had just begun.

Entry 496: Royals Game With Kent

Julie's dad, Kent, was in town this weekend so we decided to take him with us to the Royals game Saturday night. The Royals were playing the Rangers and it was a pretty packed house. Julie enjoyed going around the stadium and introducing him to all of her Royals friends and showing him all of her favorite places in the stadium. It was a good game, but unfortunately the Royals ended up losing in the end.

After the game we decided to go and grab a bite to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, Corner Cafe. Unfortunately Julie's mom, Nancy, could not go with us because she was babysitting the grandkids. We decided to see if she could figure out where we were eating and we sent her the picture below and she got it right off the bat.

Entry 495: St. Louis Trip

Two weeks ago we went to St. Louis to celebrate Julie's dads birthday. We had a great time catching up with them and we all went to the Lantern Festival at Shaw's Garden. As you can see from the video below it was really amazing.

Entry 494: Bella Problem

Look at this little dog, how can you not love it? Well don't let the cuteness fool you because under that ridiculously cute exterior lies a holy terror. During the weekdays we are up by 5:30 at the latest and this suits Bella well because she starts getting up then and playing with the other two dogs. It works well for all of us, but on the weekends we run into some problems. Julie decided that she really likes Bella to sleep with us which is fine because she sleeps really well and doesn't bother us. Once 5:30 rolls around though it is a different story. Once Bella is awake she will come and lick us both in the face continually until we are both awake (let me tell you that there is nothing worse than being in a deep sleep and being awoken by a tongue in the face). Lance lets her out, but by this time Bella is wide awake and keeps right on licking us in the face for a good 2 hours. Now your probably thinking, why don't you just put her on the floor??? Great idea that we have tried, but unfortunately she will sit by the bed and bark and also jump at the covers pulling them down. Quite the smart dog. So right now Bella is playing some major havoc with our sleep patterns.

Entry 493: Pictures

Here are some pictures that we took of each other at the All Star Game.

Entry 492: All Star Game

Tuesday night was the culmination of two and a half years of waiting. We had a feeling that the All Star Game was going to be coming to Kansas City, so we began buying season tickets to make sure that we would be part of it. We were so excited that we decided to show up early and tailgate with friends to celebrate the game. We grilled shrimp, lemon chicken, and beans. Julie also made her famous German Potato Salad which made the meal fabulous. The game was everything that we could of hoped for and more. Julie's favorite part was the player introductions and Lance's favorite part was wearing the free shirts that were given out so that the stadium would look like a flag. Enjoy the video below with the pictures that we took.

Entry 491: New Back Door

Our back door seriously needed to be replaced because it would stick when you would try to close it and the dog completely tore up the shades that were above it. Julie found a door that she liked and Lance finally relented and let her buy it. We ended up getting a Pella sliding glass door that has the shades inside the door, so this way the dogs can't mess them up.

Here is where they took the old door out. They had to put all new trim on the inside and outside of the door.

Entry 490: Home Run Derby

Monday night was the All Star Workout Day and Home Run Derby and we were both really excited for it. We decided to tailgate which is always fun, but Lance decided to show people his disappointment that Billy Butler was not in the home run derby.

A little background knowledge for those of you who don't know the whole Billy Butler home run derby saga. The man who chose who was going to compete in the home run derby was a man named Robinson Cano who plays for the Yankees. He said twice in May during television interviews that he would pick a Royals slugger if he was chosen for the All Star Game. Well Billy Butler was chosen for the All Star Game and he currently has 16 home runs and for some reason Cano went back on his word and didn't chose him for the home run derby. All of Kansas City was upset and Lance was one of them as you can see from his sign above. The home run derby was fun and 40,000 people booed Robinson Cano which was amazing to see. The highlight for both of us though was listening to the Zac Brown Band before the derby.

Entry 489: Celebrity Softball Game

Lance was really looking forward to seeing the Celebrity Softball Game because a lot of the players that he loved watching when he was younger were playing in this game. He was really excited about seeing Andre Dawson, Rick Sutcliffe, and Ozzie Smith (can you tell that he was a big Cubs fan back in the days). He was not disappointed because he got to see a lot of homers and some good plays from his childhood heroes. The MVP of the game was one of the Wounded Warriors Softball players.

Entry 488: Mascots

Julie really enjoys the mascots at games, so she was in heaven because as they were getting ready for the Celebrity Softball Game the Royals mascot Slugger decided to have a dance party with some of the other mascots. The other mascots were from the Mariners, Rays, Blue Jays, and Marlins. Julie's favorite part was when Slugger played the song, Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen and the mascots danced around holding up their phone numbers. Lance's favorite was te finale when Slugger played The Time Of My Life from Dirty Dancing and recreated the part where Baby jumps into Johnny's arms, except Slugger jumped nto the mascots arms (for those that don't remember this here is the clip from Dirty Dancing that shows the scene). Poor Slugger though was unfortunately dropped by the mascots after jumping in their arms though. Julie loved the whole thing.

Slugger getting ready to start his dance party.

The Mariner Moose busting a move.

The mascots from the Marlins, Blue Jays, and Rays.

The Mariner Moose with his provocative pose.

The mascots holding up their numbers.

Slugger being dropped during the big finish.

Slugger is looking to kick some major mascot butt.

Entry 487: Futures Game

There were many things happening during the Futures/Celebrity Softball game today, so we decided to break it down into parts. The first thing we saw at the stadium today was the Futures game which pit the World against the United States. This is a same where the best minor league players are on the same field playing each other. We were excited because the Royals top two prospects (outfielder Wil Myers and pitcher Jake Odorizzi) were playing and starting. Julie was naturally rooting for USA, but Lance decided to be different and root for the World. Lance was disappointed again when the World lost 17-5. I think that 9 run inning that the World gave up was really the killer.

The All Star Game logo on the field.

The Pepsi Fan Cam where fans are chosen to sit in the air conditioned can.

The crown cut into the outfield grass.

The flags from all of the countries that were playing for the world in the Futures game.

Bernie Williams managed the World team.

Yordano Ventura, a minor league pitcher for the Royals.

George Brett managed Team USA.

Wil Myers, a stud minor leaguer for the Royals.

Jake Odorizzi, a minor league pitcher for the Royals, started the game for Team USA.