Our St. Louis Trip...

It's hard to believe 6 months have come and gone... but they have certainly come and the certainly have passed. Karie and I drove down to St. Louis in late February for a leadership conference. We had fun going and coming as you can see below... We had the opportunity to meet up with our friends and mentors from Onaway. The trip was a blast and the speakers and information was phenomenal.

Here is a picture of Karie driving down, I believe I94. If you look closely you can see the tail lights sailing by on the other side of the highway.

Okay... My turn... Here I am (Fear Not -this was set on a timer)... I don't have three thumbs one was the drivers.
Karie and I discovered new energy drinks thanks to our up line. Here we are promoting them. By the way we are drinking "Rip it" at 9:30 at night since this is when we decided to drive down to St. Louis. We arrived at 6 AM the following day. We were a bit tired, but our excitement outweighed any exhaustion that may have been incurred.
"Mindy to Moses, come in Moses..." We had a blast following our mentors to St. Louis. We had two-way radio's. Our call sign was Mindy and theirs was Moses.
God was with us on our travels. We hit some slick and snow covered roads. Believe it or not about an inch of snow in St. Louis had several planes grounded all over the country. We were happy to be driving down the highway looking for adventure... God was with us and we made it safely to our hotel.
We did have to make a few pit stops for fuel and potty breaks. Here is a nice rest stop serenity picture. Who knew this kind of beauty resided near a rest area!
Not only did we stop at the rest area, but we saw how it got it's name... check out these big rigs... resting.
Here is Team Stampede... (Melissa, Karie and Brenda)
Al, Trevor and Bob.
Rachel, Ruth, Lamont, Wayne, Kent and Brad.
Wayne, Ruth, Lamont and Rachel
Karie, Debbie, Stan, Trevor and Melissa.

John, Trevor, Stan, Debbie, Melissa, Mark and Bob.
Lisa and Al.
Brenda says... "Because I said so!"
Sleep... Who needs sleep when you have excitement, friendship and leadership to learn.
Glowing with excitement!

Here we were ... learning and having fun at the Edward Jones Dome.
Team Stampede hanging out at the arch...
Cross line strategy session... shh, don't tell Jon and Cari...
Karie and I at the Arch...
That ended another great leadership event. We learned a lot. Dr. Rohm had some great information on personality. We love the new DISC model. If you did not know I am of the Cautious type which means I need answers and lots of them... if you can give them to be in a graph or a data sheet that would be preferred. Just kidding. The fun part is that Karie is my opposite, she is of the inspiring type. She of course has to have lots of fun. We make quite the pair. We also learned about commitment and being a person of your word... Thanks to Robert Dickie III. We do not need to worry about obstacles... we now know we can just smash 'em to smithereens with a frying pan. I'll give it a hya and ya ya, karate chop! Mentoring... wow phenomenal insights and information... I could go on and on, but that could take days. Next, time you should just go with us... Columbus here we come!

Jonas turns 2!

Well, who can believe the J-man is two! It seems like I was just in Florida getting the call saying Sarah was in the hospital about to give birth to our little bundle of joy. Well, it's not too far from the truth... it does seem that January is a good month to escape to Florida.

Any who... it is true the little man is now two. I know I actually made it to this celebration this month. Let's not mention the little bit about me being in Florida for someone's 3oth.

Here is Jonas and his mom blowing out the candle on his cake. Yes, my friend is very clever... if you look closely you might see a teddy gram scuba-diving.

Here is the happy family... Sarah, Jonas and Doug.

They could be a catalog or picture frame family. They are just that cute!
Okay, so who doesn't love playing with balloons. Especially when you see someone having this much fun with one.
Jonas got a cool percussion set from Uncle Nick. We all had fun with this toy. For decorums sake I will only post the ones of Jonas playing his little instruments, but trust me the others are quite entertaining as well. Here are the cymbals

Maraca's... Everyone... Conga!
Hmmm. I wonder where the Tony Stewart Car came from... I wonder if it is a ploy to get someone to watch nascar with someone else. I think he likes it, maybe it is working.
Here is Jonas on the big exercise ball. Super Cute. You have to love him. He is so smiley and cute.
Here is Jonas and me being silly. Yeah Jonas!Well, I have to say that time sure is flying by. I cannot believe the little man is two. I can say however, that I am grateful for the moments I get to spend with him. He is a joy and a blessing. God's blessing's little J.