I am extremely embarrassed about the fact that its been a month since my last post. In fact, A LOT has occurred since my last post. We went to Colorado for the USA Pro Cycling Challenge (a bike race in the Rockies involving the same cyclists from the Tour de France). I also finished up five years at Saint Johns Hospital and am now working at Overland Park Regional Medical Center (which is significantly closer).

I plan to share information about all of these things and more. Plus, I plan to post much more regularly. Im a lot better at reading other blogs than keeping mine up to date.

Heres to doing a better job in the near future.

My 5-year old Jeep passed the milestone 100,000-mile mark today. Appropriately, it did so as I pulled into the parking lot at work. My commute has put a lot of miles on the vehicle.

Fortunately, the commute comes to an end in about 3 weeks. My commute will then be by bicycle. Wonder how long before I hit another 100,000 miles on my car!

Linda and Heather have been best friends since high school.  Unfortunately, she moved to the east coast several years ago and we don’t get to see her and her children near enough.  However, lucky for us, she decided to load the car with her 3 kids and road-trip back to Kansas a couple weeks ago.

There were quite a few visits back and forth between Kansas City and Lawrence.  Of the many visits, I was only able to attend one (thanks to the many days I got to work in the ER this month).  We met up at the Deanna Rose Farmstead before the heat could claim any victims.

We walked around and saw the many animals available to view and feed.  We fed just about every baby goat available, using up a third of the quarters in Johnson County.  There is an American-Indian settlement replica built with educational artifacts; tee-pees are erected also.

There is a replica of an old-town bank on the site, providing us with a bit of respite from the heat with some air-conditioning.  What a relief that was!

My absolute favorite picture of the day is all of the kids at the water pump.  This was where Anna and Emily would love to play when they were younger.

You may remember this old post that was a Blast From the Past.

My mother-in-law is one of 5 children (including being the twin of one of her siblings).  Every two years, one of the siblings hosts a reunion for all of the cousins to come see how much older everyone is.

This year, we met at Lake Shawnee in Topeka.  Fried chicken, beans, potato salad, and lots of other side dishes and desserts kept us quite full.  Unfortunately, Grace couldn’t be with us during the reunion.

Considering we only see most of the younger cousins ever 2 years, it is amazing how much older all of the kids get…

Four of the five siblings.

Annie Haverkamp and family:

Dorothy Klamm and family:

Carlene Maag and family:

Carl Wilhelm and family:

To view more of the photos, you can visit my Flickr page here: