Since We Last Spoke ~

Kayla has been a perfect big sister ...

Stephen got straight A's on his midterm report card ...

"Old Katie" and Kelsey came by for a visit ...

Cameron has been enjoying nature ...

and Bradley solved all of our military problems ...

It's been a good couple of weeks :)

xoxo

In Remembrance

sunset fades to black

another year passes by

ending, beginning

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Ross Abdallah Alameddine

Christopher James Bishop

Brian Bluhm

Ryan Clark

Austin Cloyd

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak

Daniel Perez Cueva

Kevin Granata

Matthew Gwaltney

Caitlin Hammaren

Jeremy Herbstritt

Rachael Hill

Emily Jane Hilscher

Jarrett Lane

Matthew La Porte

Henry Lee

Liviu Librescu

G.V. Loganathan

Partahi Lombantoruan

Lauren McCain

Daniel O'Neil

Juan Ortiz

Minal Panchal

Erin Peterson

Michael Pohle

Julia Pryde

Mary Read

Reema Samaha

Reema Samaha

Leslie Sherman

Maxine Turner

Nicole White

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Soccer Saturday !!!

We were all excited to get back into our soccer routine this weekend. On Saturday, Stephen had his first game and Kayla played a scrimmage against a Joplin team. We lost both, but it was beautiful out (as opposed to today ~ super rainy and cold) so Brad, Cameron, & Drew had a blast running around in the sunshine.

Chicks Dig Scars ~ Stephen Grows Up

Last week Stephen achieved two coming of age milestones ~ he lost his first tooth and held his first firearm. His first tooth finally fell out, just short of his 8th birthday. If you look closely, you can see the permanant tooth already in place behind the new gap. As for new weapons experience, he went for his first round of paintball. As you can tell from the picture below, he took quite a few hits to the lower right hip area. We just reminded him that, "chicks dig scars"!

From Paint Ball

Stephen Makes The Paper

This week's Joplin Globe article by our neighbor Jane Drummond is all about our wonderful friend and fabulous librarian Janet Hackney. Stephen is her biggest fan and somehow made his way into the article. Read it here!

Janet has been one of my best buds for years and as the beloved librarian at the K-1 building in C.J., she has a huge fan base. We go out together, and I hear kids from a distance yell at their parents, “OH MY GOODNESS, there she is!! There is Miss Hackney!”

When my little neighbor boy, Stephen Landsberger, started kindergarten a few years back, you would have thought it was the Rolling Stones coming to my house to do a live concert, the excitement was so great that “she” was just next door. He would go home, get cleaned up and come over and look at her like she was the one who put the coolness in cool. You see, Janet is one of those educators who are in it for all the right reasons. She is 100 percent caring, nice and super fun. She has been at C.J. (following teaching several years at Joplin) for almost 10 years now, making kids excited about books.