This is Zhen Zhen’s first Christmas, and Harper’s 3rd Christmas. Of course, its Tucker’s 9th one. They were all excited of course and up at the crack of dawn to see what Santa Claus brought them. Oddly enough, Zhen Zhen think’s Santa Claus comes to China too, she is just wondering who [...]
The kids wanted to cut a Christmas Tree this year instead of just buying one at Lowes. KC Wildlands, a local conservation organization, hosts a christmas tree harvest every year out at Lake Jacomo. It helps to restore native glades by thinning out invasive Red Cedars. The problem is that a cedar [...]
We went down to Arkansas for Thanksgiving week. Tucker has been wanting to climb Arkansas’ tallest mountain for a while now so I decided it would be a good opportunity for Zhen Zhen’s first backpacking trip. Since it was Zhen Zhen’s first backpacking trip, and for that matter her first camping trip, we [...]
Today we got Tucker a bull snake at the KC Reptile Show. Tucker has been wanting a new snake ever since his corn snake escaped a year ago, so he chose to get one in exchange for his good test grades. We did not know when we purchased a bull snake that they [...]
Tucker was a fisherman (of course), Harper was a cheerleader, and Zhen Zhen was a princess for Halloween this year. This was Zhen Zhen’s first Halloween so it took her a little while to get the whole ask for candy and get it thing down. Just the same, they all came home with [...]
We have lived here in Kansas City for almost 10 years now and this is the prettiest fall color we have had yet. We had a wet spring, mild and wet summer (for here), and a cold fall. This made for New England like color this October. I took Tucker and Zhen Zhen [...]
Ran the annual Fall Fell trail race out at Kill Creek Park. It’s a 7 mile race with lots of hills, rocks, woods, and a water crossing. Running across the creek was fun in 30 degree weather. There were enough rocks and gnarly sections on the trails to keep the race from [...]
We took the kids out to the Burr Oak Woods conservation area out in Blue Springs today. Tucker loves going because there is a large area of huge limestone outcrops and boulders to climb on. Harper is cool with it because it only involves about a mile and a half of hiking. Once [...]
Ran the 9.5 Mile (15k) annual Sand Rat race in Lawrence this morning. It was very chilly out, in the upper 30s at the start of the race. Nevertheless I ended up with a time of 69 minutes, 46 seconds. That is a pace of 7:10 a mile in which is pretty good for [...]
Tucker had been wanting to fish the Wakarusa River for a while now so we went out this evening on it in the canoe. This was Zhen Zhen’s first time in the canoe and she seemed to really like it. The Wakarusa is not a very pretty river, its basically a typical muddy [...]