Shannon visited us last weekend. It was great to see him. We visited some spots in KC, including the Nelson-Atkins art museum. Jonas enjoyed the art as it was his first trip to an art museum. Jonas loved meeting Shannon and can't wait to see him again.
Holden enjoyed reading to Shannon. He is quite the reader these days.
Halloween and Politics
I will explain these pictures of a creative and informative Halloween costume in just a moment, but first I have to congratulate all the non-republicans out there that voted yesterday. We finally see some change. Six years ago I went to sleep thinking that Gore was our new president only to wake up the next morning with Bush as the president. Last night I went to sleep thinking that Talent (republican) won the state senate race. While I slept, Kansas City and St. Louis voting results were tabulated and McCaskill(democrat) won the senate race. This was a nice surprise. In fact, there were quite a few nice surprises that came out of the Kansas City, MO election day.
The pleasant surprises included an iniative to bring light rail to Kansas City. This iniative had been on the ballot 7 times in previous elections. I am not sure if this will lead directly to light rail in KC, but at least we know the voting public wants something like this in Kansas City. This issue reminded me of Shannon and Matt's Halloween costume (in the pics above). From Shannon:
Matt and I decided to be a public service announcement for halloween--global warming. Matt made an accurate, 10 foot long reconstruction of the last 1,000 years of the global mean temperature. He also threw in a projection for the next few decades, which goes straight up his face. I stayed close at hand as a melting glacier and the rising sea level. At the gay bar we were met with stares that read: "that costume makes you look fat" and "I don't understand at all," but at some house parties we were looked at admiringly.
Creative. And thought-provoking. I still haven't seen the Al Gore movie, but I plan to as soon as it is out on DVD. Having a child does make me think about those future generations more. I need to make some changes to be more environmentally friendly. I just looked up from the computer screen and noticed that there are lights on in empty rooms.
Back to election news--the iniative to raise the minimum wage and the stem cell iniative passed in MO. The stem cell was close...like the senate raise.
In college I was active in lots of political stuff--campaigning for state races and stuff like that. I miss that involvement. Even though voting was a small act yesterday, I felt like my vote made a difference since MO can go either way and often goes republican. Here is to positive change. I hope November 2008 brings more positive change.
Halloween got off to a scary start for Jonas (get it, scary. Halloween. hilarious). His fingernails, which grow fast and are impossible to trim, drew their first blood Halloween night, which would have been no big deal and quite timely, as he was dressed as a vampire, but unfortunately, he spilled his own blood. 
Once we got that mess cleaned up, we ran into another tiny problem. His costume was too small (get it, tiny problem. i'm on a roll). He apparently outgrew the costume in just a few weeks, so I had to take the scissors and hack off the bottom of the outfit to give his growing legs some room to kick.
Next Halloween, we're stealing Whitey's longstanding costume idea: Jonas is going as the two-headed baby. 
Lights out for this toothless vampire (lights out -- you're killing me! wait, you're killing me -- enough!).
It is hard to believe, but Jonas is 5 months old now. Here are some pictures of Jonas eating leaves in our front yard yesterday. As you can see we have lots of leaves for Jonas to eat. Jason spends a big part of fall trying to figure out how to keep with all of these leaves. This is just the beginning. If you look up at the tree, it looks as though no leaves have fallen yet. It has been a beautiful fall in Kansas City. 
