60 Feet 6 Inches To Home

Royals Spring Training 2009 Yesterday was the official start of our spring break, and like so many other things this too will be different for us this year. Waiting for the game to start 2009 The calendars did not align for us, the breaks from school landed a week apart. Kellan was out of school last week, but it's baseball season and commitments to the team kept him on campus. They continued to practice and play games throughout the week. We went up to watch a home game, but the time we were able to spend with him was limited. He was able to come home this past Saturday for the night. He got here late, so we waited dinner on him. Having all four of us around the table is one of my favorite things in life. Something that once was commonplace and ordinary,has now taken on more meaning. As a friend of mine said this week, "I will never take for granted being able to put all our place mats on the table at the same time". Me either. He stayed the night, we went to c...

Last week our house was focused, for the most part, on just one thing...high school baseball tryouts. We are familiar with the process, having been through it the past four years with our older son, Kellan. Those prior experiences however did not eliminate the anxiety associated with it. The week was exhausting both mentally and physically. Practices were long and intense. A snow storm pushed them indoors which meant practice times changed on a daily basis. Keeping up on the schedule was a challenge in itself. Being a Freshman catcher, Owen was required to participate in additional tryouts for pitchers and catchers which took place at 5:45 AM on both Tuesday and Thursday. We were all tired by the time the final roster was posted on Thursday evening. Going into the week I knew Owen was prepared baseball wise.  He's had great coaching and studies technique on his own. He has been around baseball most of his life and has a pure love for playing the game. He can hit...

I have always loved pictures. To me there is something special about capturing a single moment in time.  My husband shares this affection and has taken up photography has a hobby.  Over the past 25 years we (mostly he) have collected literally thousands of snapshots ranging from every day silliness, to life experiences both big and small, wild life in our back yard and the people that we love. While we've stored them in boxes and files on computers and clouds for safe keeping, we still find ways to incorporate them into our daily lives. This one of Kellan is framed in our house.  Each month Tim pulls several pictures from that same month in 2004 or 2005 and puts them on our computer as our screen saver. We all look forward to seeing what the next set of pictures will be. We do not print a lot of our pictures unless we plan to frame them. Our house is full of candid shots in frames. I...

It's crunch time.  Christmas is less than a week away and for some people the thought of that evokes a battery of emotions, not all of them Jolly. Let's face it, the holidays can create a lot of stress and anxiety. There is a lot to get done. Decorating, shopping, wrapping, baking, Christmas cards, mailing packages, parties and so on. Our lists can rival those of Santa himself. This Christmas my list was no different than most, it was long and time consuming, not to mention expensive. When I started thinking about completing all the tasks listed there, I'll be honest, I felt more like the Grinch than Cindy Lou Who.  I did not like feeling that way, something had to change. My priorities, my perspective, my expectations, my attitude or maybe a little bit of all of those things. I decided to evaluate all of the things that threatened to interfere with how I wanted to celebrate Christmas this year. For each entry on my list I asked myself the same questions: Why am...

Photo by Owen Richards Holidays are usually full of traditions. Growing up, Christmas was especially this way for my family. Decorating the tree was an event. We all helped. We had a live tree and most years we went out to a tree farm, picked out the one we wanted, cut it down and brought it home. We decorated it with the same ornaments from year to year. We covered it in multi-colored blinking lights, garland and silver icicles. The lights stayed off until the decorating was completely done. Then we shut off all the lights in the room and plugged the tree in. It made it seem very magical as a young girl. We usually took a trip to The Country Club Plaza and drove down Falmouth Street took look at lights. On Christmas Eve we each opened one gift. It was always the same thing, new pajamas. We didn't care that is was the same thing, we were still excited to get them. Christmas morning everyone had to be awake and come into the living room at the same time. Santa never wrapped ...

I passed this sign in early August at a small church in Bonner Springs, Kansas. We were on our way to pick up my son's car from our mechanic after a pre-college tune up. On the way back I stopped to take this picture. I had forgotten about it until I was scrolling through my gallery and came across it. With tomorrow being Thanksgiving I thought the timing was perfect. In a culture that thrives on upgrades, trade-ins, promotions and excess, it can sometimes be easy to to lose sight of what matters most and how great our lives truly are. I love these words and I wonder if we were to stop and think about them, would we realize that for the large majority of us they're true. I did just that, and this is what I found... I live in a great country, not perfect, but great none the less. I am thankful to live here. I am also extremely grateful for the men and women who have and continue to defend and serve "The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave". I also li...

A week or so ago I read an article on line and later found it in video form. It was titled " What Students Really Need to Hear". The article was written more like a letter from a teacher to their students and focuses on the need to teach our children lessons not written in text books. Things like resilience, problem solving, hard work, persistence, how to except challenges and manage fear. The author C. Mielke writes; "You see the main event of school is not academic learning. It never has been.  Yes, algebra, essay writing, Spanish, the judicial process-all are important and worth knowing, but not the main event.  The main event is learning how to deal with the harshness of life when it gets difficult." I am not an educator, but I see the need for these skills everyday working as an elementary school secretary and a mother of two boys. A forgotten lunch for example can be enough to bring some children to tears, while others deal with it in stride. A not so fav...