Mardi Gras is upon us.

I work at a church, so around these parts, the oncoming Spring season means we're getting ready for the season of Lent. Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, the day people go to noon services during their lunch hour and return to the office with a greasy, ashy cross drawn on their forehead and attempt to spend the rest of their afternoon in meetings pretending people aren't staring at them.

But the party girl in me can't help but also be thinking that this is the time of Mardi Gras, leading up to Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent begins. The day before we begin to withhold pleasure for 40 days on the road to being a more studious, prayerful Christian, we party like rock stars for one more day. And we eat cake.

image links to the Carnival New Orleans blog, where it lives. Click it! It's fun.

Because I am all about cake, and I am all about celebrating before depravation. It's the same as partying on New Year's Even and making New Year's resolutions when you think about it, only there are more rituals and rules that going along with the whole thing. But let's get back to the cake, shall we?

Because I grew up in a Methodist household and not a Catholic one, (and a fair-weather one at that, at the time,) I didn't know anything about King cakes and Fat Tuesday and ash crosses on foreheads until I was out of college and in the workforce. I went to lunch one day and returned to find almost all my officemates had this crazy, nasty looking black soot spread above their eyebrows. But it was at that same time I first learned about King cakes, and the babies and the coins and wow, this celebrating your religion thing is kind of fun, huh? Who knew.

So now I teach my kids about Mardi Gras, and King cakes, and the meaning of Ash Wednesday, and the meaning of the season of Lent. And it dovetails nicely with our plans to visit New Orleans on a mission trip this summer, to participate in rebuilding from Katrina. Yes, there is still so much to be done.

How do you celebrate the Spring season?

Wordless Wednesday: Spring begins to show.

my little Saucer Magnolia, sometimes called a Tulip Tree, is getting ready to bloom in a couple more weeks. I'm hoping it doesn't get snapped by one more bad freeze.

What's the matter with Kansas?

Hey folks, I'm Jenny, and I'm new here at Midwest Parents. Well, I'm not new to being a parent in the midwest, of course, I've been doing that for the better part of ten years.
Ten years.
OMG you guys I'm about to have a ten year old. Hold Me.

Ahem, sorry. Anyway, Glad to be on board. A little about me:

• I have two sons - age seven and almost TEN. (breathe.)

• I live in Kansas, in suburban Kansas City. Yes, most people do in fact think that Kansas City is in Missouri, and this is true, however we are one of those weird places where the "Greater Kansas City Area" actually spans two states, like 6 counties and umpteen cities. When I was a little girl growing up here, you could call across the state line, from one area code in Kansas to an area code on the Missouri side, without having to dial the area code first. And we had party lines! Remember party lines? You could call into some random number and get on the line with some random kid from some other random part of town and have a chat, a conversation, a talk. It was kind of like, oh I don't know, Twitter: The Analog Version.

• I drive a minivan. It is full of soccer balls, smelly cleats, and half empty water bottles that probably have bacteria growing under the lid. There may be a stray french fry or two under a seat, along with a missing arm to a Iron Man 2 Happy Meal toy. It does not, however, have one of those 3-D stickers on the back that looks like a small soccer ball broke the glass and got lodged there. Those are so five minutes ago. Now everyone seems to have those white outlined people stickers that used to be reserved for Calvin (as in, Calvin & Hobbes) peeing on Jeff Gordon's Nascar number. But I don't have one of those either.

• I do, however, have a license plate that says MAYHEM. I think that's fairly self-explanatory.

• I have a husband. He is busy. Right now, he's in Australia, for work.
  

• I don't mind him going to Australia for work, because every mile he flies across the ocean gets me closer to a free ticket to Maui. Fly Baby, Fly.

• I have a dog, he's a black standard poodle, named Max. He is younger than both my kids, and much more rotten. I'm not sure how that happened, I used to be good at training dogs. Then I had kids, and three years ago instead of having another baby, I got myself a dog.
  

• I do work outside the home, which you can totally tell if you were to ever actually visit my home, except every other Tuesday when a really nice man comes and cleans it for me. Then its nice for about five minutes, or until the school bus comes around the block. If you'd like to come by on one of these Tuesdays, between 3:30pm when the house cleaner is done and 3:45 when the monsters exit the bus, I'd be glad to show you around. Otherwise, just know that its gross, and that I really don't care much. No, you can't eat off my floors. But I don't really think anyone wants to do that anyway, so why keep them clean?

• Anyway, back to my working? I work at our church, I'm in charge of children's and youth ministries. I spent many years on the corporate track, albeit in a flexible environment, and trust me, this is much better.

So that's me, in a nutshell. My regular blog, which I've had for five and a half years, is called We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto. Yes, I know, I am actually in Kansas, but I started the blog because we were moving to San Diego, California, as a way to keep my family and friends up on what we were doing out there. Getting a lot of sand in every orifice of our bodies, turns out, is what we were doing out there. And we loved it. But we came home.

And so here we are.

From Baby to Toddler

John's first haircut at 17 months - he went from a rocking baby (Yes, that's a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt) to a toddler in a matter of minutes!

Show Us Your World #3

It’s my turn to show you my world.

It will be hard enough, following these sweet, evocative posts – but what makes it harder is that I’ve always felt pretty rootless. Where is “my” world? I grew up on and around a variety of Army bases, then settled into a little backwoods country town in Georgia for high school. I moved up to north Georgia for college, then to south Florida for my husband’s years in medical school, then to Tennessee for his internship, and now I’m here. In the Midwest.

We live on the south side of the Ohio River – we’re basically in a suburb of Cincinnati, but we have a Kentucky ZIP code.




This is a place where we get four beautiful seasons. It’s a place where the weather and the light and the earth itself speak to me of patience, work, rest, the cycle of life. It’s such a contrast from our years in Fort Lauderdale, where the pace was frenetic and I longed for a space with trees nearby.




This is a place where the highways are cut through hills, where roads bend and curve. A place where bridges span little creeks and mighty rivers.




This is a place where families are important. You can see it in the many parks, attractions, cultural opportunities, clubs, sports, groups, and classes available for kids here. You can see it in the eyes of your servers at restaurants – no condemnation here for bringing your little one out to eat. You can see it in the well-planned, well-prepared spaces for children at our churches. Families play together in the cul-de-sac at the end of our driveway, shouting greetings at others out for an evening stroll.




This is a place where I have the best of both worlds – small town life, with a big city just minutes away. My house has a lovely yard, our neighborhood is quiet and safe. I can walk down the hill to the little market to pick up a few groceries, or drive a few miles to the big, well-stocked, Anything You Need And Usually More Store. The little town newspaper covers local “best friends,” features pictures of schoolkids’ projects like they are hot news items, and sponsors a weekly “where around town did we take this tiny bit of a picture?” contest. Just up the road, Cincinnati offers all the luxuries of city life: theatre, restaurants, museums, major sports teams, concerts, a symphony orchestra.


This place where I live is fascinating. It’s pleasant and happy. But is this place my world? I learned a long time ago that the places I live usually don’t last forever. As much I love this house, this neighborhood, this city, this river and the states that hug its banks, I know I probably won’t live here forever. When Heather first mentioned this project, this is what I thought of:

This is my world.

Show Us Your World! #2

The insightful Heather chose this month's Midwest Parent's theme as Show Us Your World, for many of our premiere blog post.

When we chose our current house, the ability to walk to school, library and parks was critical. We found a neighborhood that delivered, along with an awesome school, within a two-block walking distance to our house.

Our chosen suburb consists of older homes, where my Father rightly says "the houses are just too close together." But let me say that again... my kids walk to school; there are no buses for anyone in our neighborhood that attends this school. The Middle School is in the next block, still within walking distance, and is also the location of our city outdoor pool.

This is our backyard, complete with "boy" activities, which I can see plainly from my kitchen windows.
Admittedly, there are times when I would just rather not know what they're doing.

Down the street a bit is a beautiful water fountain, which is great for the kids, yet awful for the city, whenever someone fills this fountain with soap.
This setting is gorgeous in the Spring. The street is lined with Bradford Pears that bloom in white, all at the same time. Doing this post has prompted me to take a picture of the spectacle this year.

Driving a little further away from home, you can see that, like all Midwestern Towns, we also have our share of corn sculptures.
In the summer, when school is done, we'll load the car for the second year and head to our lakehouse, just 3 hours away. There, we have the big yard that's missing in the suburbs.

Now, I invite you to jump in the car with us, as we make out trip to the lake.

Show Us Your World! #1

We're starting a new feature here at Midwest Parents! We're going to show you ours, then we'd like to see yours too. Er, your world that is. Post pictures on your blog of your world. Interpret the theme however you want to. Focus on your city, your state, your home, your favorite things...whatever you want. Then come back here and leave us a comment with the link to your post. We'll publish a list and link to every post that we know about on the second friday after our post here. (So the first linky list will be published here on Friday, March 28.) You'll have plenty of time to get out and get those photos!

So here's my (Heather's) first look at my world. I went with the city route for my first installment.

Anyone who has been to Rochester knows this:



If you haven't been here, those are two of the building that comprise the Mayo Medical Center. (Or, the Mayo Clinic.)

And this:

What? You don't have a giant ear of corn in your city? That's a water tower located at the Libby's plant in downtown Rochester.

This is a mural that I saw every day at lunch when I worked downtown. In fact, I was able to watch them paint it. It's on the back of one of the radio stations. Hence, the radio. Makes sense, n'est-ce pas?
And...the local convent. I'm not sure how many nuns are still around, but we still have a rather large convent on a hill in the middle of the city.
And last, Silver Lake. Or, goose poop central. Home of many, many wintering Canada Geese.

So, that's my city. I showed you mine...now let's see yours.