Heart Walk

Here's Annabelle and her friend Aimee on either side of their band director during the jazz band's performance at this morning's Heart Walk:



This was their first public performance this year, but the band sounded great!

At Ft. Leavenworth's Oktoberfest celebration

The view . . .

. . . across my bowl of Cap'n Crunch:

Kansas Honors Scholars

Tonight the University of Kansas honored the top 10% of each local high school's graduating class with a special ceremony downtown. Each student was presented with a dictionary and certificate. Our school's awesome PR person got an individual photo of Annabelle:



And also a shot of Leavenworth High School's group:



I took this photo of Annabelle and her dictionary after the ceremony:



Senior year is such a fun time!

Rochester visit

Annabelle, Fred, and I spent the past couple days in New York visiting the University of Rochester. There have been a bunch of little coincidences over the past few months where it felt like the universe was saying, "Don't forget to check out Rochester!" We figured we would like it, but none of us expected to be quite as impressed as we were. It's got great academics, wonderful musical opportunities (both on the River Campus as well as at the Eastman School of Music), and that quirky vibe that we can't really describe but that we recognize when we see it. Oh, and did I mention it's also a beautiful campus?

















Annabelle sat in on a math class yesterday morning, and then the afternoon was taken up with our campus tour and information session and her admissions interview. In the evening we got together with a friend of hers from middle school who is a freshman there now and loving it:



We went out to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que for some great food and to get the inside scoop about life at Rochester.

This morning, Annabelle worked on her calculus homework in the airport while we waited for our flight home:

Night of music

Fred and I had a special treat last night: Our friends down the street invited us to go to Jason Mraz's Kansas City concert with them! I don't think I've been to a concert since Air Supply played at Stetson back in the 80s, but I do love me some Mr. Mraz!

It's hard to get good photos at a concert, but I thought these came out kind of cool:





That last one was during the song "Lucky," which has always felt kind of special to me. This isn't my video, but here's the song:



Another really pretty number was at the end of the evening when he and Christina Perri, who had been the opening act, did a lovely duet of "The Distance":



What a great night!

Marching season

The Leavenworth High School marching band put the first third of their competition show on the field at last night's football game. They're working hard to get ready for the contests in October!

It's not a leg lamp but . . .

. . . it IS a prestigious award! Fred's Claims Office is in the post newspaper today. This the fifteenth time in 16 years that they have won the Judge Advocate General's Award for Excellence in Claims Support: