12 in 2014

My friend Christine (more about her later) participates in an annual blog hop hosted by Dwija from House Unseen which invites bloggers to post their 12 favorite photos from the year. I don't take GOOD pictures, but I take a lot of them. Here are the 12 I chose:

It was Silly Sock or Slipper Day in my Pre-K class at preschool. I don't even want to tell you how long it took to position 16 pairs of four and five year old legs like this, but they thought it was silly fun and mostly held still long enough for me to get the picture.

In March, my daughter's travel volleyball team played in a tournament in an itty bitty town southeast of Kansas City. I found out my mother's family had a history in that town (that involved Jesse James, no less), and I wrote about it here. But the other fascinating thing about Holden, Missouri, was its itty bitty St. Patrick's Day parade that was held a block away from the volleyball venue, and I caught a picture of these festive parade-goers before the ten entries in the parade went by.

My son caught our kitten Ruby apparently going through my daughter's dresser drawers in the night. Truly a cat burglar.

1. This picture creeps out my friend Christine.
2. If you look carefully in the background,
you can see one of the other cats lurking there.

My primary class went on a safari on the last day of school, complete with binoculars. I think they found an alligator....

My daughter's image was included in this mural on the side of a building on Main Street that was unveiled in May. She used to dance (and you can read about that here). Although it is not an exact depiction, she is the one seated on the bench.  

Is there anything much cooler than meeting a blog friend in real life? I got to do this when the above-mentioned Christine, hater of cat burglar photos, had to travel to Kansas City when her daughter's soccer team made regional play-offs. I drove up there to spend the day with her, and we had a fabulous time! Christine has always said we were the same person, and we proved it by wearing the very same shirts. 

We participated in a video chat with some of our other
blog buddies but only had one pair of earbuds.
Same shirt, same earbuds, same person.

I plan all the family vacations, and I like to throw in some interesting stops along the way. This year, we traveled to Galveston, and along the way, we stopped to see the World's Largest Peanut and visited the Texas State Prison Museum. 

Doing my best Orange Is The New Black impression.

Silly, silly me thought it would be FUN to foster puppies for the Joplin Humane Society. I've never owned a dog in my life and knew nothing about house training them or that they don't instinctively know how to walk on a leash or that they chew EVERYTHING. Of course, we fell in love with them, but while they WERE fun, they were a LOT of work. Even though we (meaning my daughter and I) cried buckets when we had to take them back to go to a rescue group that was going to see to their adoptions, we were also kind of glad to see them go. (And yes, we'll probably do it again.)

Audrey and Olivia, our little sweeties.

I moved our son back to college in August for his sophomore year. It went much better than moving him there as a freshman! That was one tough day. And it wasn't that I was foster-puppy-glad to see him go, but he was ready and we were ready, and while that means he's growing up and away from us, it's being done in little steps.

When I was getting my preschool room ready for school to start, I had a wee little accident with one of the crappy plastic-legged chairs that refused to scoot on the carpet with me on it. Hello, Goldilocks!

After the May 22, 2011, EF-5 tornado destroyed the old high school (along with over one-third of the town), the new, state-of-the-art high school was finally opened in time for school to start, with a ribbon cutting ceremony in October, with special guest Vice President Joe Biden in attendance and delivering a speech. I joked that I was going to get my picture taken with him, and by golly, I really did it! 

We have watched the Mizzou volleyball team play every year at Thanksgiving for the past few years. My daughter has especially enjoyed getting to meet Mizzou's libero, Sarah Meister. We got one last picture of them together at Sarah's last career game with Mizzou.

Goodbye, 2014! You've been pretty nice, all in all. Hello, 2015! Be kind with me!