RUTHERFORD

Ready, set, GO! The Rutherfords are back with a quick update after a lovely weekend away. (Sorry for the slight delay, but figured on a few pictures for you.)
Understanding is something that we do a lot of in this house. As we each go separate ways for the Christmas season, we have to have a lot of understanding for each others time and schedules. Sometimes that can be a bit tricky, but we like to think that we have it down most of the time.
Travelling around the country and the world is what Kurtis is up to these days as he has been out touring since mid-September. Every now and then, I get to sneak in a little trip with him too. We just returned from a visit in Chicago where we stayed with Kurtis' brother Karl and saw lots of friends, including Andrew and Katie. That was so much fun! The best tour that we took was at a place called 'The Plant' which will be the site of Karl and Marilee's brewery. It is an entirely environmentally friendly space that will run off of power from the waste that is produced by it's tenants, including gardens that will range from the basement to the rooftop. This will be the first vertical space like this in the USA!!!
Hellos are always welcome, whether in the form of visits, email, calls or cards. We'll always do our best to make time for our family!
Extra activities at our house are limited by a busy schedule. However, Kurtis is back to brewing beer with the weather calming down. Mary is packing up the garden for the winter and working on a few sewing and artistic projects. And we both have a few TV shows that we record and make some time for together.
Rockettes will be in Mary's future just shortly as Christmas time approaches!!! I will beat the Givan household Christmas start-up by a day as we swing in to Radio City on October 30 to begin tech and run straight through the end of December this year.
Food is still on the tops of our NYC things to do as we discover new places all the time and revisit old favorites too.

Outdoors are important to us, so we can often be found on the back porch at home. When Janice, from Australia, was around, we took long walks through the park. By which I mean, we got a little lost and eventually found our way out.
Remembering all of you back in KS as the holidays get up and running.

Delight in the day! Wishing you all well. 

Kurtis and Karl, checking out some of The Plant's produce.

The Plant is in an old meat factory that would have been torn down and left an empty lot. Instead, it is becoming a super self-sufficient green space that will be able to use most waste in an environmentally friendly way. Impressive!

What's Happening at 408?

Hello Family:

Here’s our update.  It involves the sad, the bad, the fad, a lad, a pad and the glad.

First the sad- On Thursday Kate came home and found Noel aka. Pretty Girl in the back yard critically injured.  We took her to the vet but it was too late.  She will be missed.

The bad- Mandalay and Shona have developed adventuresome spirits.  3 times in the last week we have found ourselves out looking for them in the neighborhood in the dark after they escaped from our “secure” backyard.  I would like to say it is all Mandalay’s fault but feel Shona has a part in it also.  Tim has added a higher fence over the last place they were getting out and locked up the east gate tightly.  Mandalay was opening it with her nose.  As one family member suggested, maybe we needed a prison type fence around the place.

The fad-my duct tape fad was here and then it was gone and now I think it is back.  I found a very cool duct tape Christmas ornament.  If it works you might be on the receiving end of it.

A lad-Chris continues working on his grad apps.  He mentioned he might post a couple of things on the Kinast blog so we could see what has been occupying his time. Actually, he did post while I was posting, so be sure and look below this one.

A pad-Kate’s lease expired this month and since she is not attending WSU she has decided to move to Hutch.  We are currently looking for a nice one bedroom pad for her and Ben to share.  It will be nice to have her in town.  She is planning on going through the Vo-Tech Rehab program for volunteer opportunities and in the future a part time job.

The glad- The glad does outweigh the rest.  There’s jobs (although mine has been a bit boring lately and Tim’s too hectic), fall weather with carmel apples and pumpkins, our new family member Ben, pets that make us laugh and family to love.

Wishing everyone a wonderful fall.

Hello family! My apologies for being in contact so poorly the past few months...as mentoring stuff wound down, grad school stuff and my stress levels wound up. That's all (hopefully) coming to an end soon though. First, I have stepped down as President of the philosophy club, giving that over to a very capable sophomore. He'll do a good job. Then I planned a trip to Madison, Wisconsin for 7 people to a Meta-ethics Workshop--starting about 5 days before we left. It snuck up on me, but the trip was well worth it, and Madison is a beautiful place. Great for cycling, pedestrians, and, listening to Dr. Geenen's own stories, students. Returning from that we had fall break this weekend, for which I elected to stay here and complete another one of my outstanding stressors: Westminster College's BikeSharing Program. As of this afternoon, the program is usable, and by Christmas break we should have it operating at 100%. After that it's just to find replacements for myself and the other officers!

My housemate and fellow bike club officer Andrew
takes a photo of some of the detail on one of the bikes

In the foreground is one of the three bikes that we had donated,
fixed up, and then painted all by ourselves. There's about 10 more
in our garage,  plus 6 new ones that were donated.

We got the program done finally by really committing to it--that is, we stayed up to 4AM last night ironing out some of the details. (Which, by the way, Grandma, thank you so, so much for that coffee. I made some of the strongest I'd ever had last night). Finally, the last big stressor, besides actually applying to grad school, has been a one-two combination of my writing sample and paper for a local conference, a paper for Asian philosophy, and a conference I want to go to in Memphis. I thought I would link them below so anyone who was interested could get a taste of what kind of things I do for fun/keep me here in Fulton. Just a few more weeks and I'll be done applying though and mostly free! Hope to see you all at Thanksgiving.

My writing sample (to be) and paper for the Columbia Undergraduate Philosophy Conference in two weeks. It's 90% done.

Genetic Free-Markets and the Diffusion of Modifications: An Unfair Process

The paper I'll submit to the Ida B. Wells Philosophy Conference in a few days. Then I'll have to wait to see if I've been accepted. It's 60% done.

Resolving Conflicts in Liberal Societies: No Panacea but a Pallative

And, obviously related to the paper above it, my Asian philosophy paper. I didn't want to write anything new, so worked pretty hard to connect Asian philosophy and what I was already working on for the Ida B. Wells Conference. It's complete now.

Using Mencius' Five Relations to Make Changes in Liberal Society

Also, one final note for those of you who hadn't heard: my lovely little cat Noel died recently. I'll miss having her there when I come home!

The beginning of Fall

Here are some highlights:

Things have been so crazy for us. We worked at the Fair, attended the Fair, recovered from the Fair, I worked on getting my Iron levels balanced out – which resulted in several good days and several not so good, and life still continued on around us.

Adelynn and I attended a flower shopping afternoon with some friends.
(This picture is worth posting again)

We have started our Small Group up again, we meet every Friday now. We are doing a marriage study, which has been enjoyable. This Friday, everyone brought appetizers to our house and Dave made his fabulous Cheese Dip. It was nice to have one less thing to think about preparing for.

Adelynn and I went to the Kohl’s opening on Monday, we went again on Friday and we are going a third time –and taking Dave- after nap today. The sales were 20% off on Monday and were 40%-50% off on Friday. I think we’ve done enough pre-shopping that we might just buy something today!

I am now 16 weeks pregnant… it is amazing that time has gone so fast! The baby is now the size of an avocado. I feel movement sometimes, and we have heard the heartbeat twice now. Baby is always on the left it seems. We called Adelynn “Pat” (SNL reference) We don’t have a name for this baby yet.

Adelynn is just a bundle of joy. We laugh with her all the time. If you don’t read my blog, you should check out the “Oh, Adelynn” posts. http://laughterandlattes.wordpress.com/ Unfortunately, we have had many flies in our house recently. Fortunately, Adelynn has become an excellent little fly swatter. She has successfully killed 4 flies in the last couple of weeks - all on her own, with a fly swatter, without help! Dave was stunning some this morning and she would walk around and stomp them like spiders (those are not included in her fly-death count). She's a great helper :)

We had our 8th grade reunion at our house last night. I know this sounds like a crazy concept, but when you have such a small class, spending most of your classes together, you get to know each other very well. We have all stayed in touch since that time, 10 years ago.

We had 8/19 of our original class there. (Adelynn hopped into this picture.) 3 drove from Wichita, 1 came from Newton, 3 of us were in Hutch, and one came from Virginia, just for this event!! We ate, hung out, reminisced, watched old movies, met significant others, looked at old photos, and played games. 


(Spouses/Significant Others/Children included – other classmates have kids, but none of those classmates were there)


This was my favorite part… you know that saying “No matter who you are, when a toddler hands you a pretend phone, you answer it.”? We had to hold off pictures so Adelynn could make them supper. These guys pretended right along with her. She was up until 11:30, and she had a blast. She kept talking about “my friends”.  She said the same thing about our Small Group on Friday. She loves company!

That’s about all I know. Have a great week!