23 years & 10 months

Hello Family! It has been a busy month for us since we last saw everyone at Christmas. We have had lots of company since we got home and it has been really nice. We have had friends here 3 different weekends and family here 4 weekends. This last weekend was Dave’s birthday, so we got to enjoy some fabulous company then too. We have really only had a few weekends to ourselves since the year began, but we have really enjoyed the company.

Dave has started his last semester at KSU. He was approved for graduation in May! YAY! His classes are all going smoothly so far. He has class on Tuesday and Thursday and only one class on Wednesday from 5:30-8:30pm. So he gets to work all day MWF and if he needed a long weekend, he wouldn’t miss any classes. It’s kind of a handy schedule. In our spare time together we are house hunting so we have somewhere to live in Hutch after graduation. :)

If you haven’t already heard, I quit my job at Stifel back in December. We couldn’t work out child care again for this semester, so this was our best decision. I still do a little work for Rachel when she needs me. I am really enjoying staying home with Adelynn though. She is making, what I thought would be the longest semester of my life, into one of the fastest.

During the day she and I try to get out as often as possible, although with all the snow the past couple of weeks, we have been inside most of the time. The library here has several baby reading or music times during the week. The Little Apple Mommies have a few things for us to do every now and then too. I try to go to the Parents as Teachers play group whenever possible, which is every day. But her nap is right in the middle of it, so that makes it a little hard. She really gets her social time at House Church though, with the 7 month old and the 15 month old girls there, now that Adelynn is more mobile, she really enjoys the 15 month old. The ladies in the group have started meeting for lunch on Thursdays so she gets to play with them twice a week now.

Since Christmas, Adelynn has really turned into Miss Personality. She has always been happy and had a mind of her own, but as she has gotten older, her personality has really started to show. She is always smiling and laughing about something. She has always been a content baby, but she is also becoming a little firecracker. She has become really good at entertaining herself, which is good when I need to do something but sad when we want to play with her and she has no interest in us. But - when she does want attention, she does not like being ignored. Her hardest time of day is when her Daddy leaves for work.

She is usually on the go. She crawls everywhere, pulls up on everything and then walks along with help. She is usually petting Bella or chasing Bruce down the hall or under the futon in hopes that he will give her the time of day. No such luck yet, but one day he will have to get creative because she will be walking!

We just took her 10 month pictures, it is impossible to believe that she is almost a year old. The next time it is our turn to blog, we will have celebrated her 1st birthday!

And now for some pictures...

Bella and Bruce enjoying the window open and the 60* weather.

Bella is fleeing the crime scene, but they are partners in crime.

Helping Daddy with his candles.

Playing with Olivia and Aunt Sarah

Swinging with Daddy

It is hard to believe our beautiful baby girl is already so big!

Missouri!

I thought this would be an appropriate place to share some photos of the recent "snowpocalypse" that has kept me out of class for the past three and a half days. It started with a drizzle of sleet and rain Monday morning, which was enough to cancel classes at noon that day, the snow didn't even start until late Monday night, but it came in a Kansas-like flurry, with impressive winds and what I heard was a rate of 3 inches per hour or so.

Here's what I woke up to...doesn't tell you much right? That's coming next!


This is a set of stairs that they blew away all the snow from near the freshman dorms. Yesterday when I walked to supper, they hadn't cleared it yet so I got the privilege of walking OVER it instead.


Still hard to tell how much we had though, so this is a shot of the snow from a week before (which had all melted when this fine powdering blew in). This is 10inches. Notice how much...less there is?


Finally, since the wind was blowing so hard, the snow is really uneven. The hill is probably 18" or so and then near my feet/foreground of the picture is about 2" of snow, and not because of the snowblower, that's just how it was distributed.


Annnnd there's the ticket! This is the cafeteria, showing about one foot to 18 inches. This all on top of the ice, incidentally, which ended up at about a quarter inch thick. And it's cold, very cold. My roommate said it was -7 with the windchill this morning when he went out. Anyways, that's what is happening in Missouri!

Waiting for Spring

Hello to everyone:

Not much news here at 2 Edgemoore. We have enjoyed these warm days. It has been so

nice to be outside without shivering! Today we went to Dillon Nature Center and there was a rather large crowd enjoying the spring day

We are enjoying the birds that come to the feeder here at home and took a couple pictures of our favorites- the ring necked dove and a brown wren. Kat spends time watching them too!

All I want to do is ride my bicycle

Bonjour famille! Life here soldiers on in a generally forward direction without too much change to speak of (although my roommate mysteriously disappeared while I was out, leaving the door unlocked). We'll work this post backwards from my arrival here almost two weeks ago...

We've had a blanket of snow since Wednesday when 10 inches fell overnight, which is especially unfortunate considering that the previous 6 inches had nearly melted since the day I got here. More on that in a bit. But most crushing of all is how often I've ridden my bike since I've been back (0 times), I'd be hesitant to ride in the snow at home and the addition of horrible, terrible, miserable Missouri drivers and the possibility of hurtling out of control down an iced up hill has kept me from wandering out. Instead I refocus that energy into lusting over bikes and bike gear.

That's while I'm not reading Heidegger's Being and Time a Christmas gift from Grandma and Grandpa (thanks again!) and one of the most influential texts in Western philosophy--I'm excited by the prospect of finishing it. Heideggeran philosophy, while obscure, really interests me for its novelty and how little it has been studied (again, because his writing is really dense and because he was doing something, possibly, completely new). If I were forced to choose a graduate school today, the few schools I know of with experts in Heidegger would be among my first choices. That project has been slowed down recently though, in exchange for developing a proposal for the Undergraduate Scholars Forum. The USF is an all day series of presentations by current Westminster students; at the moment I haven't come up with a proposal I would be interested in submitting, so I may ask a few of the people I'm friends with in my metaethics class. My hope is to present something both engaging and fertile enough to provide me future opportunities using the work.

Classes themselves are well enough, with metaethics being my favorite. I dropped one class since returning, which in turn dropped my hours to 14. Of those 14 hours, two are tier classes, one is metaethics, and the other is French II. The tier classes, being introductory, are relatively easy, so I have lots of free time. I will be tutoring in the writing lab 4 hours a week again, but other than that I'm trying participate in clubs a little more. But not the debate club, debate frustrates me...although I'm still in it.

I've been here nearly two weeks, but it feels much longer. Beginning a new semester is always frustrating because it never feels like the class has begun for at least the first sessions. I had to rush back a few days early to avoid that first snow storm, and, apparently, so did Justin, because I was just getting around the morning after I arrived when he suddenly appeared. He lives in St Louis, but his parents kicked him out early because of the snowstorm.

Really, I just want to ride my bike, I have a great route spotted and possibly even a riding partner, I just need the weather.

I don't have many plans looking forward, the school is having Ben Folds in concert on the 31st, which should be exciting. My friend Bismark and I have started a blog--I'll probably put a link on here when we feel it's (finally) ready. Anyways, until then, au revoir!