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At the end of the ward Halloween party on Friday, there was a scream of pain and sadness. This was our three-year old son, Everett. He had been playing with some other kids, most of whom were bigger than him, and had tripped and fallen in the parking lot, hurting his knee. This is NOT an uncommon occurrence. In fact, his knee was fine on Friday because we already had a Band-Aid covering another scrape that also came from a similar experience earlier that week. One of my weaknesses is when things go bad, I tend to want to blame someone for it. Which isn’t a great response when your child has fallen and skinned his knee, because most of the time it’s his own fault. If he would just slow down and not run, none of this would be an issue! So, this frequently leads to a situation where I’m holding a crying three-year old, trying to help clean him up and comfort him, all while fuming and angry/ irritated because of the entire situation. It’s definitely a parenting fail. There are two majo...

 Hello, I have felt often that I should write some feelings about things in my life that are important to me.  I was thinking the other day about how many good experiences I have had with running in my life.  Currently my knees both have meniscal tears and while I hope to be able to run a marathon again, I am not sure I will be able to.  I had a blessing by Ethan and Mark about 3 weeks ago and since then I have been able to run every other day without incapacitating pain so I am very thankful and I am trying to keep running but I don't know if my recovery will be permanent or allow me to run a marathon again.  So I though while I am contemplating my running future, I would talk about my running past. When I was in Ypsilanti High School I always though I should do a sport.  I though about the big 3 - football, basketball and baseball.  My baseball career ended in little league between my playing outfield always and missing the occasional ball hit to me ...

A few days ago, a friend of mine from Chelsea Ward, Stephne Hilgendorf, sent me a Marco Polo, asking me if I would go to the temple with her sometime in the next week.  Her father is having double bypass surgery next week and wanted to go to the temple before he entered the hospital, but he ended up needing to stay for five days before his surgery.  So, all of his children decided to go to the temple  for  him.  Stephne was hoping to go to Detroit, but seeing as the temple is closed for one more month for renovations, she looked up Columbus which is also closed.  Indianapolis and Chicago were both available options, and were approximately the same driving distance, but I could only go on Friday, and Chicago had appointments open on that day.   So I told her we could go on Friday.  I tried to talk her into making it an overnight affair for the simple reason that driving to and from Chicago in a day  with Chicago traffic  was going to leav...

October 2, 202... Too bad Glo isn't turning 22 on 10/2/22!  Hmmm, guess I should've thought that through 23 years ago ;-). Yep, the Kennedy baby turned 22.  I ask you, HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!? As it so happened, Glo needed a second root canal (the first was the big one and was right before she left for fall semester), and Dr. Rodriguez didn't want to wait until Christmas, so we scheduled it for the week of her birthday because I figured I would be flying her home anyways :-) (As a side note here, for posterity's sake, and to save Glo future teasing, Glo takes AMAZING care of her teeth.  She does far more than any of her siblings, especially more than her cavity-free older brother who will come here for a week, forgetting to pack a toothbrush AND WON'T ASK FOR ONE NOR BUY ONE....) She arrived at DTW Thursday night/Friday morning, and like every time Glo comes home, she just falls back into a rhythm.  She woke up the next day and went running with Cherry. And then ...

I'm never quite sure how Meg's mind works.  One day, she'll just decide that she is coming to visit me, and within the hour, I need to approve the dates and she'll buy the tickets.  For some reason, she wanted to come visit me in the fall to which I repeatedly told her that it's my busiest season and not the greatest time.  But in true Enneagram 8 fashion, she pushed me until we had three days set aside for it. Normally, this kind of thing would push me close to the edge in stress leading up to it, but finding my new mantra of "I am enough" is resetting how I see and react to so many things.  Plus, I absolutely love Enneagram 8s (I believe Katrina is one as well)--they set most people off the wrong way, but I appreciate their honesty and authenticity.  Meg is who she is, she loves me, and there's no hidden agenda. She doesn't expect anything from me, she doesn't criticize me, and she doesn't undermine me. No joke, I can relax and be myself ...

 Last night we had the best night ever at a Tiger's Game. I brought a group of residents to a Tiger's baseball game this past summer and because of that I got on the list of "group leaders", people who brought a group to a Tigers Game.  So recently, I was contacted by the Tigers to come on Fan Appreciation weekend to a special Group Leaders Appreciation activity.  We got two free tickets and I had to go to a presentation beforehand but it included a drink and some snacks and during the presentation, they had drawings.  The amazing thing was that  out of 4 prizes, Larisa won a signed picture of Al Kaline and I won a signed picture of Ron Gardenhire, the Tiger's old manager.  We got to come in to the park through the club entrance and we got our promotional blankets from some friendly ticket takers without anyone else lining up with us.  After we leisurely heard the presentation and had our pop and snacks, we went down to our seats on the first base line...

We are so lucky! We live just 20 minutes from a FABULOUS apple orchard that offers U-Pick apples (and raspberries!).  I first found out about it from one of John's residents who planned the 2020 Resident Retreat here.  I've been wanting to go for several weeks now (I'm looking at you, early ripening McIntosh apples), and we finally made it happen.  Thankfully, Mark was home too, so he got to partake in the goodness.  Erwin's makes it super easy to do: Pay for your empty plastic bag and hop on the wagon (pulled unceremoniously through the mud by a tractor): Hop off.  Pick apples.  Eat as many as you can before you fill your bag.  John wants Macs, Hannah opted for a variety of Golden Delicious, Macs and Empires.        (You'll notice that I am NOT eating any apples in any pictures.  Yeah, I don't really want to repeat the "hillbilly" look that I got the one time I bit into an apple and snapped my front tooth out....) Ten minutes ...

Yesterday, I asked Ethan who was/were the animals of his childhood?  Who were the pets who are inextricably linked with growing up? For me, it was my three cats, Rabbit, Zeb and Noah.  I can't think of my childhood without thinking of them--they were literally there for me around every turn.  Ethan replied that it's Jake and Roxy. Today, we said goodbye to Jake.  It's been an 18-year-long life with him, and Ethan might be the only Kennedy child who doesn't remember a time before Jake was with us.  We only got him because one of his siblings, Ruby, who we had adopted a few weeks before was found poisoned under our car.  John trooped back up the street to get a different cat, and Jake it was.  The German woman who gave Jake to John told John that the cat liked to jump up on the counter to get food. Today, I gave Jake his last can of tuna on the kitchen counter where he has been eating for the last couple of years. Jake personified Germans down to his ver...

FanX 2021, Saturday (Mark, using Glo's Blogger account) It’s hard to talk about a comic con and convey exactly how cool and fun it is, except to just bring people along to the next one and let them experience it for themselves. I think I felt that the first time I went to SLC, and I think Allison felt that before she went to the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo the March before COVID, but as soon as you go, you see just how cool it can be. Especially for someone like me who generally hides their nerdiness in favor of professionalism and to keep my business face on, it’s always crazy gratifying to just let that go for a weekend and realize that I’m actually probably on the more chill side of things(: This one felt special though. I don’t like throwing that phrase around lightly, and that’s not to say that past comic cons haven’t been really awesome, but this one felt especially fun. We were staying with the Mechams, who are AWESOME hosts in every sense of the word, Hannah and ...