New Apartment

It took a week or two, but we eventually got everything moved out of storage, into our apartment, and set up in way we liked it. Christie made sure we got some new decorations so it actually looks nice and doesn't have bare walls. I'm glad she's good at decorating because I certainly am not!

Here is a video and pictures of each of the rooms.

The front room, looking insideThe front room, looking outside
Our bedroom
More of our bedroom
The guest room/office
The office part of the guest room
The kitchen, with the root beer racks. There are now 138 root beers in the collection.

Santa's New Space

After moving into our new apartment, Santa made it clear that he likes the patio area we have. This picture shows about half of our patio, which is fenced in.

Far West, MO

As we drove out of Kansas City on our trip back to Michigan, we took a short detour and stopped by Far West, MO. Back in 1838, this town had about 5,000 people. An ambitious city plan was put together and is posted there today:

The plan included a temple and lots for many families. The roads were laid out in nice square patterns. Brigham Young must have loved the layout since Utah is laid out in a very similar manner.

The up and coming town was abandoned in 1839 after it was sieged and church leaders were arrested. The siege was not long after the October 30, 1838 massacre at Haun's Mill only 25 miles away (on today's indirect roads). Most of the church members left Missouri and moved north to Illinois.

Today, most of the area is farmland. The LDS temple plot and a Church of Christ (formerly Reorganized LDS) building are still there.

LDS Temple plot

Community of Christ (formerly RLDS) building - still used!

RLDS Temple in Independence, MO

After a bit of a hiatus, it's time to start trying to catch back up with the blog. Just before we left Kansas City, MO this summer, we made a short trip over to Independence, MO to see the (formerly RLDS) Community of Christ temple. It certainly looks different than LDS temples. I tried to go inside, but the doors were locked and nobody was there. When it is open, anybody can enter.

"Huffin' for Healthy Hooters"

That was the name of an all-male team of runners at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Kansas City. hehe

I was a bit inspired by all my athletic friends, like Natalie, and decided to give running a go. Now my family isn't really a "running"/"cardio" type family so all published race times are to be viewed with that in mind. That said, I was really proud that I ran in my first race on Sunday August 9th. The Race for the Cure 5k was the perfect opportunity to test the waters for my new hobby because the cause means a lot to my family. There is a whole legacy of breast cancer survivors on my maternal side so there's no time like the present to start fighting it.

Here is how it all started:

A couple weeks ago I decided that I'd attempt to start running as my main form of exercise. I bought the book "The Complete Book of Running for Women" and a new pair of running shoes and started hitting the park paths about 3 or so days a week.

After I discovered that I could run at least 3 or 4 miles without stopping it was time to try a race. Boy was I nervous that I would end up finishing with all the grandmas...not that there aren't some grandmas who could still kick my rear!! I saw some amazing people out there.

I joined 28,500 people in downtown Kansas City at 7:30am for the big race. I was amazing to see that many people out supporting the cause. There were people running with tags to mourn and celebrate friends and family who had fought breast cancer. It was hard not to both smile and get choked up at the beginning of the race.

(I know it looks like I'm speed walking in the picture...trust me...i runnin'!)

After the gun shot it was a struggle to get started at a decent pace with this many people but i somehow managed to run the entire hilly/windy 5k without stopping. And.....I was only 3 seconds from breaking 30minutes. The pic above is just before the finish line. All in all I would consider it a successful first race and I will be much less nervous for the next one!

Christie Goes Hair Trendy

Well, I gave into to the trend and got bangs....that's right...bangs. Like when i was 10 yrs old, lol.

Since growing out your hair is a painfully slow process (esp. when it was hardly longer then a boy cut) I decided I needed some sort of change that would keep me interested in my hair so that I wouldn't cut it again.

This is the fun result of my hair boredom.

I think my dog is a cat?!

Exhibit A: Dog sleeps on window sills just like a kitty. He has also been known to stand on them on all fours (does he think he has nine lives or something?!).

Exhibit B: Cat-dog has been known to lay on his back and swat at your hand if you move it toward his face....however this may be because your hand so too high for proper belly scratches and he is trying to reposition it...silly doggy. Or even more likely, he is trying to use his paws to catch your hand or toy so he can try and gnaw on it.

Either way I'm most certain he is a male...DEFINITELY nothing ladylike about the above!!

The Edwards and Hoopers head to Branson!

So the best description we heard about Branson, MO is that it is the old people, non-gambling, christian version of Vegas. hehe kinda true. We had a good time though. While we were there we saw a ventriloquist/magician act (of which Bruce got to be the magician's assistant for intermission, lol). Probably more exciting though was the Chinese acrobats. Check out how tall Bruce looks compared to the acrobats!

They were fantastic; spinning 5 plates at once while doing balancing tricks, sending themselves flying rear end first through tiny rings that are 5' in the air and holding eachother up in contortionist poses while balancing on one arm...incredible things like that.

While we were there we saw a great fireworks show, Hayden got to see the inside of a fire truck and a lot of trucks (even a helicopter and a dinosaur!!), we caught up on our Hand and Foot, and we ate tons of frozen custard mmm!

Now we're just waitin' for the Hoopers to come visit KC so we can have a card game rematch!

St Louis Zoo

For Memorial Day weekend, we went to St Louis to see our friends Tyler and Andrea Hooper. Since we love the zoo and St Louis has (arguably) the best zoo in the US, we decided to go visit. With 3 blogs about zoos in the past 6 months, it seems a theme is emerging.

The complete collection of St Louis zoo photos is here.

Tyler, Andrea, Christie, Bruce

Hayden in front

us, in front of the elephants

Andrea with Hayden

Have you ever seen a tiger in the water before?

We were literally six inches from this hippopottamus, or hippo-thomas as Hayden calls it. There was a large glass wall that allowed us to look into the water where the hippos were swimming/running. This guy kept turing around right in front of us and he usually knocked his nose into the glass!

Here are some elephants playing in the water to cool down. They even used the water fall to bathe themselves. In the picture, the baby elephant is squirting water from his trunk. He had a hard time staying up in the deep water. In fact, he sometimes stood at the bottom of the pool and just raised his trunk out of the water to breathe.

Kansas City Zoo

Our first outing (other than Target and Walmart) was to the Kansas City Zoo. In fact, we became members of the zoo (read: season pass holders). Some of our favorite photos are below. The complete collection is here.

Meerkat

Serval

I had never even heard of this before!

Elephant

Our Apartment in Kansas City

Since everyone is dying to find out what our apartment looks like, here it is! (What? You weren't dying to find out?)

The outside of our building.

A simple video tour

Santa Chewing on a Rawhide Stick

The *what* LDS Church?

I have heard of the RLDS (Reorganized LDS) Church, but they became the Community of Christ about ten years ago.  It turns out there is a "Remnant" LDS Church.  We drove past this building while looking at model homes.  I doubt there are many outside of the Kansas City/Independence, MO area.

 

Welcome to Kansas City

On May 4, this was our view as we pulled into Kansas City, Missouri about a week before Bruce's internship at Hallmark began.  It turns out that the city borders Kansas City, Kansas and we only live two blocks from the state border.

Cute Picture of Santa

He looks so cute and innocent....what you don't know is that this is his hiding place when he's been naughty (i.e. eating trash, run around with shoes in his mouth, chewing pens...or rolaids)

Winter in Ann Arbor

This is what winter in Ann Arbor looks like.  It seemed like we saw this for 6 months, but it was really only 4 months....which is still a bit too much.  The first picture is looking at our apartment building.   

The second picture is on the street behind us where we like to walk the dog. 

 Fortunately, it hasn't looked like this for a month.  However, we are getting snow as I write.

New Interior Design

With Christie's knack for interior design, we repainted our wall and moved the furniture around. It is now much brighter and feels more open. Here is the new look:







The old paint was a deep red that looked great, but felt darker.

More Pictures of Santa

Santa can be very ornery and fussy, but there are times when he's very cute. This picture of him poking his head our from under the bed is a prime example...



...or take a look at him sleeping next to Christie.


We also got him a rope that he figured out how to put around his head. He soon took if off and eventually chewed it to shreds.