December 20, 2008

Hey All- Merry Xmas!
I guess I'm finally going to cave in and admit it's time for Xmas! (My scrooge element is still hanging in there strong however!) It's at times like this that I am so happy that we completed our Xmas shopping in the fall, had our Xmas cards out & our house decorated the day after Thanksgiving, etc. Ok, so what if that world only exists in my mind.... In reality we do have the tree and lights up, most of the shopping somewhat done (nothing wrapped) and yes, we haven't even started on the cards yet. (Do we have a photo we can use?) But then there's always this weekend! Aughhh! It's kind of the calm before the storm, right? There remains a few more to-do's than time to do them but when is that really that different than everyday?

The kids wrapped up school on Thu for S&M and Fri for Max. Hard to believe fall semester is done. Sam has one semester of high school left- yikes! Last week was pretty stressful with finals & a few late nights (projects). I personally had a pretty challenging medical week with dentist appmts and surgery 3 days this week and a colonoscopy prep and procedure the other 2. Let's just say that we are all glad this week is over!

Thank goodness also that most of the holiday parties/receptions/events are over too. Not that we had that many to go to this year. We had the PEO party and Old Trooper holiday dinner with about 50 of our military friends, a few house parties and some business receptions. Decided to skip the big black tie foundation party (& am still glad we did). We had a couple of FR friends return from Iraq after 15 mo deployments that week so there were welcome home ceremonies and parties. We went to one arrival ceremony at 1:15AM Sunday morning for the sustainment brigade commander. Molly had a bunch of kids at the house that night and here we are leaving at 12:30AM to "go out" to a party. Molly said that "something is wrong with this picture". She says we were suppose to be the ones staying home worrying about them coming home.

Went last night to the JC/Manhattan basketball team. JC won both varsity girls and boys games. JC just seems to have Manhattan High's number this year. Sam complained afterwards that the JCHS administration had such tight muzzles on the students that they couldn't have any fun. Probably a good thing because we all know how wound up they can get but it did result in a never-ending censorship rant all the way home. Ha.

Looks like we'll be doing Xmas with the Wheats & Lehoczkys. Mom is flying to Gails for Xmas, which I think is nice for both of them. She returns on the 28th just in time to see Kent & Lynn who are making a stop here before heading home. Sam and Molly leave on the 30th with the JCHS band to go to perform in the Cotton Bowl parade and game on January 2nd in Dallas. Alice is still toying with the idea of going out skiing over New Years but no final decision has been made on that yet. (It's unlike us to plan ahead too much...ha)

2008 has been a great year and while I haven't really looked back at the calendar and journal yet, it's been lots of fun. Hopefully 09 will continue the trend. Now is just the time to give Thanks for all that we have, and all we have done! Life is Good!

Merry Xmas
SS

The blog is not dead- just thought doing an email is just as easy. Have it posted on both. Anybody else doing twitter?

December 5, 2008

Sorry, time has kind of escaped from me and it's already Dec 5. Where did time & the warm temperatures go?


We had a great Thanksgiving and appreciate everyone coming over for a great meal. There were the Wheats, the Lehoczkys, mom & us. We ate & groaned about how full we were but did manage to get the kids eventually off the games long enough to take a late afternoon walk at the new Bluffs walking trails. The Bluffs is a brand new housing complex built on the southwest part of town off St. Mary's Road. Currently there are about 600+ brand new apartments and if built-out as planned will eventually have 1440 units- the largest apartment complex betwee KC & Denver. Anyway, the trail was ok and it was about the right length considering the cold! The kids also had to climb on their playground rope sculpture, which was pretty cool. Friday we all went to the movies in the afternoon with most seeing 4 Christmas's and a couple of us going to Bolt instead.

Saturday was the 3:30PM State 6A Playoff game at Washburn University stadium vs Lawrence Free State Firebirds. The big news is that JC won 19-14 capping a perfect 13-0 season. The last time JC won state was in 1969 with the Hart Brothers. Saturday was cold, rainy and miserable out but the JC side had standing room only. The game had some tense moments, like when we were down 14-13 in the late 3Q but they pulled it out. It was great fun being down on the field with the players after the game congratulating them. We went out with another family to celebrate afterwards & it's amazing how quickly a margharita can warm up nearly frozen feet.

This week has been a fairly routine one of school, tennis, gym, tkd, work, Ft. Riley mtgs, etc. Our bank did have our employee Xmas party Wednesday night, which was nice. We had to leave it a little early to pick up Molly and then we had to attend a redeployment ceremony at Ft. Riley for the returning commander of the Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB). Alice is the commander wife's local sponsor and we've got to know her better over his 15 month deployment. It's nice to finally get to meet him! Various Christmas parties/functions have already started but most seem to kick in next week.

More later

November 19,2008

Everything has been pretty routine here since my last entry so nothing too momentus to mention.

Molly played in the annual Filly Football (girls on girls) game last Wednesday night. Unfortunately the "mighty" sophomores played the "mightier" senior girls and lost. Molly played running back until she was hard tackled by a senior (it is suppose to be flag football) and hurt her thigh. She has this nice bruise now to show everyone. Other than that, the whole event was pretty funny- especially with the student commentators on the PA system. They were sending shout-outs to anyone and everyone and had absolutely no idea what to say. At one point one accurately stated "you know this is harder to say anything meaningful than I thought it would be". So true, but that didn't stop them from babbling on! It was a little scary also how some of the boys-in-drag cheerleaders were really starting to get into their temporary jobs. Their between-games dance routines were seriously challenged.

JC Football survived yet another tough playoff game vs 9-1 Wichita Heights last Friday. They remain the only undefeated 6A team in Kansas at 11-0. Although Alice and I ended up working the Booster club grille and concession stand most of the game (the other volunteers didn't show up for their shifts), we did manage to catch the 4Q when most of the key action occurred. JC was leading 21-0 at the beginning of 4Q but then kind of fell apart (or more accurately wore out). WH scored two quick touchdowns to make it 21-14 & had all the momentum in the world. Luckily JC was able to muster a couple of first downs (one by inches) to run out the clock and win the game. This Friday we'll drive down to Derby (south of Wichita) for sub-state & hopefully will get to play for state the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Last Saturday we went to the sad KSU/NU game, which K-State lost 56-28. Needless to say, we're ready for a new coach and a new team. We are not bowl bound. We play Iowa State Saturday and hopefully we can at least win that for the seniors.

Sunday night the cross country team had their annual awards ceremony and meal. It went well and we'll miss the xc family that has developed over the season. Doesn't look like either Molly nor Max will be running XC in future (?) so we might be done with it. Sam is happy to have XC over but is working more often now as a result. He's ready to move on from his current dipping at Baskin Robbins but hasn't applied anywhere else at this point. Because of the extended football season, Molly & his band committment has lasted longer than either expected. Once football is over, the band work will continue as they prepare to march in the Cotton Bowl parade and compete in the band competition the last week in December.

Sam has applied to Purdue, Illinois and K-State, which I think is his preference order. Purdue requires the essay part of the ACT test, which he didn't take with his initial exam because he didn't think he needed to. So he'll have to take that Dec 2, I think.

Molly back into the gym w/first meet coming in January. The gym made significant improvements after the June tornado, which she says makes it nicer. We're thrilled to be commuting less (20 vs 40 miles) and lower gas prices ($1.79 today vs $4.00 at peak) Molly also wanting to work on her pole vaulting skills w/K-State vaulters who work out at her gym every Tuesday night.

Max got his Red Belt in TKD last week. He added memory to his phone last week so now has a working MP3 & his texting #'s are starting to get up there with S&Ms. Yikes! Thank goodness for unlimited texting option!

Guess we'll be here for Thanksgiving.
Later
Scott

November 8, 2008

Well it's sure feels like winter has set in on us this week. Wednesday a storm rolled through and brought north winds with it...and they have stuck around.

Last night we attended the now 10-0 JCHS football team in their second district playoff game with Wichita North. No one was too concerned about this game as WN was 2-7; winning only one game in regular season and had upset a higher ranked team last week in the playoff game. The final score was 53-20, with very few varsity players even playing in the 2nd half. (I think it was 46-3 at half time?) Anyway Alice and I helped with the Booster club concession, which involved serving food in windy 20 degree temperatures for just about the entire first half. They finally wised up and took what food we had left over to the regular concession stand & sold it from there. It was 38 degrees but there was a brutal north wind gusting to 30mph blowing into our faces. Thanks goodness we were dressed pretty well for it & had brought a sleeping bag for our spectator time. We had a pact with our seating group (our wind break) that we would stick through half-time (we HAVE to watch the band preform, of course) then we could all leave after the first score in the 3Q. That was about 3 minutes into the 3Q when that happened (ok so maybe not all the varsity was out) & we gleefully cheered and headed home to heat, radio and comfort. We were still pretty chilled-to-the-bone when we went to bed. With the victory JC gets another home game next Friday vs Wichita Heights who are 9-1 & will definitely present a challenge.

Thursday night the JCHS band had their annual Band Blast in the gymnasium. Basically this is just their normal Thursday night rehearsal except they do use this event to pass out their annual awards, etc. They are so much louder in an enclosed gym! There has been a lot of prep work lately regarding their Cotton Bowl trip in late December. Since K-State most likely won't make a bowl, this may be our bowl trip this year although Dallas doesn't quite measure up, in our books, to a Scottsdale, Miami, Pasadena, etc. bowl experience!

Also Thursday night Max tested for his next TKD belt. If he passes, which he said he did, he will be a red belt - only two belts away from his first black belt. Alice looks forward to the red belt indicating that it's much nicer looking than his current brown-yellow belt. "That color match didn't go well with anything well", she stated. Max can't do anything but tolerate comments like that.

No startling surprises with the election. Think everyone kind of knew that Obama would win but it would have been nice to prove the "we're-always-right" media wrong. I think he will do just fine. Obama himself never bothered me but the team he brings in with him does. I'm concerned that they will be very bad for business in general, bigger government, higher taxes & am concerned that all of these military lives, lost and wounded will all be for nothing if we just pack up and leave the mid-east. Granted I think the repubs were just as disappointed in Bush as the demos but I am hopeful that a rational solution with adequate military leadership input will be made vs just pulling the plug.

As I mentioned to some at Kevin's wedding, the Extreme Makeover Team arrives here this week to build a house for a fortunate family in the area. While I'm not really personally involved in it, I am on the board of one of the organzations that is. So at our last board meeting, we had to sign a confidentiality agreement not to disclose who that family is or when this will all happen but EM has agreed to have a fund raiser for our org during the event in their VIP tent. So we may get to attend the event with all the EM personalities. More on this later when I can say more. The episode will most likely air in January.

This week JC & Milford Lake hosted the national ESPN Bassmaster fishing tourney so we have had 65 of the top nationwide bass fisherman in town. The weather has literally ruined the tournament. They were suppose to have their practice day Wednesday but that weather front blew in and they called it off. The temps have stayed in the 40's as high, winds 30+ and morning temps in the high 20's- making fishing & boating conditions just awful. Thursday was their first competitive day and 18 of these professional fishermen caught nothing! The leader of the day caught two fish & the largest caught so far is 4lbs- nothing in bass circles. It's been a total bust! They cancelled Friday's event and have extended the tourney over to today (& it's not any better today). Can't imagine what ESPN will put on the airwaves and can't also imagine that they'll ever come back. So much for $100K the local CVB and others have put out to have it here. Imagine we won't be sponsoring anything like this again for a while.

There has naturally been a lot of buzz this last week about Ron Prince's firing at K-State. I think this is the right decision for K-State. I think everyone here likes Ron Prince personally; he is from JC and is a nice, ambitious guy but he was just in over his head for Big XII/Div 1 football. Frankly anyone following Snyder would have a tough go & even Snyder was having a hard time winning when he decided to retire. Prince will complete the season and you might see some crazy football for the last 3 games with a "nothing-to-lose" attitude. There was a temporary buzz yesterday that a new coach had been selected but the story was withdrawn as wrong so am not sure who it will be. Alice has some pretty strong opinions about who it shouldn't be.

More later
Scott

Kevin & Sandy

Kevin & Sandy

November 3, 2008

Last week saw the wrap-up of Molly's tennis season with the season ending tennis banquet. We'll lose 4 seniors- 2 of which played jr varsity & there are no juniors so the 4 sophomores you see> will be the core group for girl's tennis for a couple of years. Molly's season was what one would call a learning experience. She played well but her opponents played better. Molly thought is she had played more often she might have done better. At least that is the excuse we're using.

Friday night we had the highly anticipated football game between the JCHS (8-0) and Manhattan High (7-1). In addition the schools foundation had a chili feed before the game so Stuckey bodies were flying between band, chili feed, & packing for the Texarkana trip, which left right after the final gun. Anyway, JC came to play and won handily 30-6. Sam, along with the other band and fall season athletes were honored at half time so we walked out on the field with him once with the band then dashed over to cross country to walk out once again. whoopee!

After the game we jumped in the car and drove south for nephew Kevin & Sandy's wedding in Texarkana TX. We planned on driving to Norman OK- about 4 hours and spend the night. We did not do any research however and found out, at 2AM, that it was Parents Weekend at OU and that our little LaQuinta normally-$60 room was $189. Sorry! I tried to negotiate the rate down explaning and half the night was already gone so it should be half price but they weren't biting. We checked another couple of places, which were full or not willing to discount ridiculous rate and headed further south to Pauls Valley. We lowered our standards some- since we were only going to be a room for a few hours and found a place there. At 7AM we were out and back on the road arriving in Texarkana at noonish. We got cleaned up and went to the 2PM wedding and reception & all went well. Was great to see everyone, even if it was for a very short time. After a little late afternoon field football for the kids and visiting by the adults we all went to dinner together at a BBQ place before turning in. We, needless to say, didn't need a lot of help getting to sleep.

Sunday we had breakfast and hit the road returning home. We arrived at 7:30ish and everyone was pretty bushed!

Oct 26

Cross Country is over!

This is actually a photo from an earlier XX meet in Topeka where Sam was actually competing against his cousin- Jay.

Saturday the varsity boys competed in the regional cross country meet at Milford Lake (of all places). They competed against 9 schools (I think) and the top 3 qualified for state. Unfortunately our guys came in 4th- falling 28 points short of the third place team. 2 of our boys and 1 of our girls qualified individually for state but this means Sam's season is done. Sam is disappointed, of course. He finished 6th on the team (top 5 count) and I think with some time everyone has realized that it would have required every team member to do much better than they did to make up those 28 points. Anyway, it was a good season!

Max and I ran over to the KSU/OU game, which started at 11:30 due to TV. I felt that it would be a blowout which it eventually was but for a moment when K-State scored two touchdown's to tie the score at 28-28, I thought something special could happen. Then reality set back in....hard. Half time score was 55-28 and final score was 58-35. Of course our coaches were stressing the 500+ yds, special teams play and the 35 points scored not the 4 major turnovers, the catholic defense- (Holy), OU's 600 yrds and 58 points scored on them. Guess we kind of knew it would be a long year. Next weekend K-State plays KU in Manhattan, which after KU got blown out this weekend by Texas Tech might be a good game. ? Back to being cellar-dwellers.

JCHS football remained undefeated (8-0) Friday night with a win over Topeka High. It was 29-3 at half time I think so that took a lot of pressure off. Manhattan (7-1) had another win also so this Friday night's meeting will probably be something special esp. with it being Halloween and all.

Molly went out to a bday party last night. Kind of scary now that all of her gang is turning 16 & driving & all. For some reason I worry a lot more about her than Sam. May be a father/daughter thing. Her more frequent use of the car is starting to cause some probs.

Later

The peep peep girls from Music Man

Oct 23

Hey all!
I think the last time I sent an email was 10/5 so I'll try and update you on what's been going on since then.

The second week of October was the finale of Molly's tennis season. On Monday they played the league tourney with the regional tourney on Thursday. Molly did ok in both events- winning some but unfortunately losing more. The JCHS team only had two senior girls playing #1 doubles qualify for state. Overall a good experience with good improvement in play quality. She hopes to play #1 doubles next year as the #1 singles competition is pretty brutal! While she had some success, I think she's glad to have tennis overwith. Back to gym.

I was in KC for the state insurance convention also that week. It was fun as usual with golf at Deer Creek on Wed followed by meetings on Thu & Fri. I finally broke down and bought an used (new to me) driver- a Taylormade F5 with a club head the size of a soccer ball (or so it feels) & I was really happy with the way I hit it. Now if I could only drive, chip and putt, I would be a pretty good golfer. Alice came up Thursday night for the annual Past President's dinner, which was lots of fun plus she then got to do some shopping with Mary and Lucy on Friday.

Sam ran cross country on the 11th in El Dorado improving on his time from last year & I think finishing 68th (?) out of 200. The varsity boys got 3rd place overall.

We were closed on Columbus Day, which always feels to me like a fake holiday. Think the government wanted a holiday per month and Columbus was the only excuse they could find. Our agency goal is to be closed as often as the banks are. Unfortunately I celebrated CD by having two teeth pulled. Each one was conveniently on it's own side of my mouth so no matter what I ate, it hurt.

Last week I had 2 more days of insurance meetings; this time with the Ks Assoc of Ins Co's mtg that I had to attend as part of my board of director's responsibilities. I found it ironic that they met at the Prairie Band Casino north of Topeka- the risk managers at a risky place. It was ok.

Sam made his official K-State visit on the 14th. He is already pretty familiar with the campus and the Engineering school as he attended one of their summer camps last year. He did get a chance to talk to a Chem Eng professor, current students & admissions said he's likely eligible for a full ride so that was helpful. Think he's still thinking Purdue, Illinois, then K-State but at this point he's just applying; we'll see what scholarships, if any, will be offered and then make a decision.

Last Friday we had 25 cross country members & coaches at the house for spagetti. This is team tradition before the league meet. Alice used every pot she had and borrowed a few more to make spagetti for that many. A week later (almost) I am getting sick of eating what was left over. Saturday we went to Emporia for xx then back to Manhattan for Sam & Molly to participate in K-State's band competition. Talk about a long day! Alice & I didn't have to go to the band competition (thank goodness) but we did go out and work another deployment canteen for 300 soldiers heading to Afghanstan as advisors. Was suprised that a good portion of these soldiers were in the Navy. I think the current cookies-distributed count is at 140,000 this year.

Saturday night Doug and Kathy rolled in so they could see Mom's performance in the Music Man in our newly renovated Opera House on Sunday. She & the cast did great but after 3 months of rehearsals and 6 performances, they all were ready to have it overwith. Mom's role as a "peep" lady was hilarious and she really hammed it up! It was well done and the Opera House is just fantastic.

This has been a pretty normal week, which I haven't seen in a while. Marysville Mutual had a board meeting Wed and I had a ins assoc committee mtg & golf. (Got it in before weather went bad) Junction City Football remains undefeated (7-0) by beating Washburn Rural last Friday 14-13 in double OT. They should get by Topeka High this Friday followed by the big showdown with Manhattan (6-1) on Halloween night. S

This Saturday we're still trying to figure out how to go to KSU/OU game at 11:30 and Sam's regional xx meet at 2. Seems like the schedulers have absolutely no concern for other than their own events. Of course, it's very realistic to assume that the KSU/OU game will be well determined by half time anyway.

That pretty much brings you up to date.
Later
Scott

Welcome All!

Hi All,
Thought I would experiment with a Blog to see if this might work better than the ocassional emails I have been sending out. Figure I can periodicly update this and then you can jump in at your convenience to see what's going on in our world. Of course the additional advantage is that you can respond directly to the blog and let everyone see your thoughts too. Whether any of this is good or not, we will determine together.

It's too late tonight to really do an entry but I'll pop back in here and give you all an update soon.
Scott