where I talk with my inside voice
We visited Noah for Parent’s Weekend and had lunch in Columbia at a nice BBQ place called COMO Smoke and Fire. Then we took a little trip to Boonville to take a tour of Warm Springs Ranch. It was pretty hot all day, but we still enjoyed seeing the horses and petting the yearlings. If you grew up in St....
Noah came home this weekend and so we had our traditional Labor Day cookout on Saturday night. I forgot to take any pictures, but we did have an exciting visit from a juvenile hawk of some kind that I caught on the surveillance camera. He thought Selena looked tasty, and if Dixie hadn’t scared him off by screaming, it might...
With Noah away at school, the three of us attended our first performance at Stages St. Louis at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. This was a pre-Broadway musical that imagines Jane Austen’s creative process while writing Pride and Prejudice. It was a really good show, and well-performed, although Josie and I agreed that none of the songs is particularly memorable....
Jane turned 80 this month, so we couldn’t let that milestone pass without a celebration. Laura organized lunch at The Boathouse in Forest Park, and she also paid Josie to digitize all of the Zyk family 8mm film. Lunch was yummy, and we all had a good time.
Josie was among 30 high school students in Missouri selected to attend a week-long career camp called Life Science Quest at Mizzou. Each day was spent touring different facilities and labs, along with a couple of visits to off-campus locations, all with the purpose of exposing the students to many different career paths that are available within the College of...
My wonderful family indulges me every year with a day trip somewhere that they might not otherwise have gone. Whether it’s to visit an alpaca farm or to climb around on the trains, they always seem to enjoy themselves. Or they do a good job of faking it. This year it was the AB brewery tour downtown, followed by lunch...
Alas, poor Yorick, even though the Shakespeare Festival is celebrating its 25th anniversary year, we have never been to a performance – until today. I was offered seats through ECF, so we saw a modern reimagination of Hamlet and it was really good. I was getting a little tired by the end – it’s hell getting old – but I...
Just a couple of years after Noah took it, we signed Josie up for the BRAKES defensive driving school. This is a really cool professional driving course that is designed for kids to learn some valuable techniques behind the wheel and, as the name says, Be Responsible and Keep Everyone Safe. She got to learn how to recover from a...
Last week we took Josie to SEMO, and this week was Mizzou. We recently learned that she got a 36 on her ACT, which is amazing (though not surprising), but that means she has some great options. I don’t think she has made a final decision yet, but the Environmental Science program at Mizzou is going to be hard to...
Seventeen years ago the Lord blessed us with a baby girl, and we planned it so that her birthday would coincide with her older brother’s spring break from college. Now that’s planning ahead! Noah is home this week for a visit and it was nice having the whole family together for the birthday celebration, which included presents and cheesecake! In...
When we heard that Alan Walker was coming to St. Louis, we decided to get tickets and give them to Josie for Christmas. This was her first concert, and my first time at The Factory. It was a really good show – although we were both glad we brought our earplugs. There’s a short video below.
Josie has taken an interest in musical theater recently, and one of her favorites is Six – a fun romp through the history of the wives of Henry VIII. It seems unlikely subject for a Broadway musical, but no more outlandish than Hamilton I suppose. The music is really good, and the show, albeit short, is very entertaining. As a...
We got back last night from a 10-day vacation that included a 7-day cruise aboard the Norwegian Getaway. We stayed a couple of extra nights in New Orleans to explore the French Quarter. Honestly, the trip was exhausting, and I need a vacation to recover from my vacation, but we had fun and made lots of memories. Photos from the...
This is the time of year when I normally start looking ahead at a potential family vacation in the spring or the summer. The scheduling has been complicated by the fact that Noah is off at college now, but this is the new reality, so we just have to roll with it. He is applying to be a summer welcome...
Josie took the test and got her driver’s license today! Way to go, bitty! This is almost a year earlier than Noah got his license, so she’ll have plenty of time to build up her skills behind the wheel. And because she’s decided she wants to drive the Element, I thought it was time for an update. So I got...
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