Missing MAN!!!

Hello Everyone,
I just had to share the latest buzz around Olpe and my house. There is a missing man in Lyon County and he disappeared from the road right east of our house! I called the sherriff Thursday morning 10-22-09 to report a person that was apparently stuck. He was roaring around for about 15-20 minutes. The next thing we know we have two girls at our house looking for thier uncle. (That was Friday night.) On Saturday a helicopter was looking for him. It is now on the tv and radio that he is missing. When the sherriff reported to the road for the stuck vehicle there was no one around and the truck was still running. Supposedly there weren't any footprints anywhere!! PLEASE pray that they find him soon, so I can go to my house without being completely WIGGED OUT! Travis thinks I am ridiculous, but I just can't help it! The whole thing is completely weird. Anyway, I hope they find him and everything is okay. Talk to you all soon, Stacy

Good Morning! I am home from school for the second day in a row feeling like death warmed over! Allie was out of school all last week with a high fever and rash. Then on Saturday I got a fever and coughed like crazy. I went to the doctor yesterday because my chest hurt so bad and he said it was viral and gave me 2 cough medicines. I feel a little better today, but stayed home because I barely have a voice and once I start coughing it's hard to stop. Just let me state for the record I HATE winter! The 70th anniversary was so special for me also. I enjoyed how low key it was. I also love finally having a house big enough to hold my family. I think mom and dad really enjoyed it also. Thanks to everyone for making it run so smoothly. I also found out many interesting tidbits about some members of my family at the bar while playing games. So if any of you who didn't get to come want to know the scoop just let me know!! I sometimes feel like Lindsey might think to herself that she should run like the wind!!! Allie is going to be a fairy for Halloween and Jeff is too "mature" for such things. Their conferences went really well. We heard from both kid's teachers that they are extremely social. I'm pretty sure they got that gene from the Bonitatibus side! Jeff's football team went undefeated-yea! He has now started basketball practice which is his least favorite sport. This week they are reroofing the house, putting on new gutters, and replacing the skylights from all the hail damage. It will be nice to have it over with. Lisa- welcome to the blog, Believe me I know what it is like to be bullied into into doing things you don't want to. Welcome to what it's like being the baby of the family!!!!!! Welcome to our family Keegan Wayne. Love to all of you.

Greetings from the Mautz family

Hello to you all!
I am finally getting everything set up and learning how to do this. I am not a technical person at all so this is a big deal for me!! Donna finally applied enough pressure. LOL. The boys are both doing great. Alex is ready for Halloween or should I say candy. He doesn't understand the concept of "trick or treat". He walks around the house with his pumpkin and says, "put candy in there". I guess it is about the same thing??? Shawn is really growing and might be bigger than Alex soon! He has a great disposition and is so much fun. He is going to be a spider for Halloween and Alex is going to be a tiger (thanks to Eric and Trish). Kevin is anxiously awaiting the rain to stop so he can start combining. The weather plays a vital role in the mood around the farm! We went to the Chanute game on Friday night to cheer on Brentie's team. It was fun, but a little chilly. Thanks Donna and Gary for all of the hospitality and most of all for taking care of Shawn. It was good to see some of you at the 70th anniversary celebration on Sunday. I was upset that we had to miss Friday and Saturday activities, but we had prior plans that couldn't be broken. Well, I hope this goes through. Have a safe & fun Halloween!!

What a wonderful weekend we had celebrating mom and dads 70th anniversary. It started off Friday night with a gathering in Olpe. It was great catching up with everyone and their news, and watching the Yankees win. Saturday we took it easy. We all went to church Saturday night. Father gave mom and dad a blessing. After that we headed to the Chicken House to eat. Henry and Marsha hired 2 brothers to play entertain us before supper. Dad sang along with some of the songs. Thanks Henry and Marsha! We had a delicious meal followed by cake. Then the stories started to roll. It was alot of fun reminiscing. Before we knew it it was 10:00 pm, and the restaurant was closed and the help was ready to go home. We left, and met for lunch at mom and dads on Sunday for lunch. Daryl and Neal cooked sloppy joes, brats, and hot dogs. Everyone else brought side dishes. It was so nice getting to see all the babies in the family. Thanks to everybody for your part in making this a memorable celebration. Gary and I feel so lucky to be a part of this family. We have a mom and dad who are 90 plus years and are still able to live on the farm, and got to celebrate 70 years together. WOW! Amazing! DONNA

Congratulations Nub and Mary!! 70 years is so amazing. You are an inspiration to all of us. I wish we could have been there to celebrate with you! Hope everyone is well.

Love,
Ashley

weekend in KC

We just got back from a weekend in Kansas City. We stayed with Chris and Liz on Friday night, and hung out with Lydia on Saturday. Sunday Sara and Greg had Briggs 1st birthday party. He had a great time digging into his cake. He was one tired little guy afterward. Seems crazy he is already a year old. We are watching the Yankees in game three against Minnesota. There have been some great games. Chris is enjoying his job at Home Depot. Kelli is still nannying for a 7 month old little boy. We are so excited to see everyone at the 70th anniversary. Donna

The Heins Family

Hello Everyone!
Poor Kinley is not liking winter...or maybe it is her mom that doesn't like bundling everyone up! Ashley I loved the pictures and your update! So glad you joined us...now you need to get Gwen on! If she wasn't so busy texting my husband about Texas Tech beating K-State maybe she would find the time to blog! :-) Travis loves hearing from you all! Kellen I loved your blog too! You could add pictures of the "Ranchero Burrito" and then we would all be waiting for your blogs! We are gearing up for Halloween. Kinley is going to be a flower, Darren is going to be a horse named "Brody", and Marley wants to be a scary VAMPIRE! What happened to girls wanting to be a princess or something frilly? I guess my girls skipped that gene! Travis and I were playing baseball in the yard with the kids the other night. We were trying to get Darren to hold the bat right. We told him to choke up on the bat and he coughed twice. I guess he thought we really wanted him to choke! I can't wait to see you all again next weekend. I have told several people we will be celebrating my Grandparents 70th anniversary and they are amazed. Love, Stacy and Family

Guess it is my time to blog. The kids were all here tonight and we ate soup and watched the game. Not much of a game. We keep busy with the grandkids and working. I am having my stairway and hall painted. Also the toy room or extra bedroom.. We were going to have the trim around the windows painted but the weather hasn't allowed that so I guess we will have to wait until spring along with getting new shingles. Darn hail!!!! We are looking forward to the 70th anniversary. See you all then. Marsha

Brrr Winter cannot be far away as cold as it is today. BUT Kellen had 5" of snow on the ground this morning so it is extra cold there. Michael was in Omaha all week for training and commented on how nice it was to return to Fort Worth.
Dick will finish his career with UPS this week. He will drive his regular route to Burlington, CO all week and park his truck for good on Friday. He has some vacation time to count off so he is not officially off the books until Nov. It will be different with no brown shirts in the laundry any more. We are very thankful for the benefits from UPS that we have enjoyed through the years. He will spend his first 2 weeks in Hamilton helping with Fall harvest, a job he has really missed for so many years. The true joy of retirement won't set in until an ice storm hits this winter and he does not have to battle the semi on Interstate 70.
Karis works in shipping and receiving at the Alco-Duckwall distribution center in Abilene. She enjoys being busy-makes the days fly by. Speaking of flying by, we ended our first quarter on Fri. Wow, did the first part of the year fly by!! Now conference time is here.

Ethan's throat

Well, I had one of my scariest moments as a parent on Tuesday night. Ethan had an hourglass type thing in his mouth and fell on it. It really tore up the back of his throat and caused a cut under his tongue. There was a lot of blood, Ethan could not calm down, and Justin was not home! After what was a few seconds of me trying to decide what to do, I called 9-1-1, which is TOTALLY out of character for me!

Long story short, the ambulance came and the paramedic didn't really see much and Ethan would not let us look so we monitored him over night (at home) and the next day I stayed home from work with him because we were up all night basically. He allowed me to look back there with a flashlight and I nearly died! It looked horrible! But I will say he was in good spirits and we had an awesome day at home just mother and son.

He is healing and is getting very spoiled with the pampering and all of the ice cream, jello, pudding, etc.

Even though we were not "letting" him run around with something in his mouth, it is really a lesson of what can happen. This was not a sharp object! Parents: do not let your kids put sharp things in their mouth or run with ANYTHING in their mouth! Hopefully Ethan has learned his lesson.

P.S. WHOOHOOO I can blog!!!!

Birthday Festivities

This has been a crazy week here at the Tomlinson household. We have two birthdays down and one to go. Sunday night we celebrated Greg's birthday with a gathering of friends at our house. It was a great time and Briggs loved seeing all his friends. Today Greg and I both took the day off work to celebrate Brigg's 1st birthday with him. We headed out to Deanna Rose Farmstead in Olathe, a really great farm for kids to fish, pet animals, and just play. It was a gorgeous day and we loved being able to spend some time with our not so little boy. Tomorrow evening Greg has planned a date for us to celebrate my birthday. If you can believe it we are also having a family birthday party for Briggs this Sunday. Whew I think that is it. I have loved every little minute of all of our celebrations. Crazy to think a year ago at this time we were holding our little boy for the very first time. Such sweet memories. Hope all is well with everyone. Jason Happy Birthday tomorrow.
Pictures of Briggs first K-State football game last weekend at arrowhead stadium

I agree Leona...winter is here. It has turned chilly and yuck! Everything is fine with us. We are excited for the baseball playoffs...GO YANKEES! The fall festival was great. It was a good crowd and good food. Allie was the top raffle ticket seller in her class so now I know she has Grandma's blood in her. We are gearing up for conferences for my students and Jeff and Allie. It is always fun to hear someone else's perspective on your kids. I am very excited for mom and dad's anniversary. They seem to be doing really well and love when people stop to visit! Stay warm everyone.

No condminium by Lake Michigan for me...

On Yom Kippur, September 28, Chicago had her first blast of artic air and wind out of the Northeast for this fall/winter season.That was also the day I had asked to look at a potential retirement conodominium closer to the LOOP.
When I got out of the car for my appointment, a blast of shockingly cold air came barrelling down the street in front of the place I was scheduled to see.
No matter how tightly I closed my jacket, it was no match for the bracing wind and cold air.
I decided the cold was a sign from God of what the weather will be like from November to May if I move there.
When I'm old, I would like something warmer.
Sunny and beautiful in Skokie today.
Ashley, your second picture is remarkable. Look at the little boy's face, I mean the one holding the baby. Gorgeous and so serious.
Kellan, what does Chad do?
Hope the Great Pumpkin is good to you.
Leona

Since my life has been threatened...

Yes that right Mary has officially bullied me into blogging! I'm sure none of you can imagine that!! It is not that I don't want to but I have be CRAZY busy with my new job. Not to mention I don't have cute baby pictures to post which are way more fun to look at and hear about! So anyway here is what is new in Omaha...

My new job has been EXTREMELY stressful. I am trying to literally build my team from the ground up and that is a work in progress. On top of being short staffed I have had to deal with some major scheduling conflicts such as army reserve weekends, swine flu, and having babies! So long story short I am putting in a lot of hours. On the brighter side now that I have lived in Omaha for almost 5 years I have managed a lot of great people and have been able to recruit 2 of them who recently graduated to work for me. It is very flattering that they like working for me as a manager and are willing to follow me to a new company. So things are looking up and hopefully things will slow down soon!

Chad's work is going really well-he's doing awesome at it. He has been the #1 recruiter in his entire company for the last several months. I think he has around 12 different travelers out working for him currently and is about to book 2 more.

Besides work we are trying to cheer for our huskers as much as possible. They celebrated their 300th consecutive home sell out last weekend so that was very exciting. We are also very excited that Michael is coming up to spend a week with us. Luckily for us Peter Kiewitt originated here in Omaha so he has to come up for training. So far we have planned a lot of drinking and eating throughout the week. Can't wait for him to get here!

Love and Miss you all!