The Life And Times Of James M. Wisler

Archive for the ‘family’ Category

My Girls

These are my girls! This is a picture of Melissa and Ada before they were going out shopping one day. This was a few weeks ago and I would guess that it was probably on a Saturday morning before the Lawrence Farmers Market that Melissa usually takes Ada to, but I think the date stamp on the image might prove otherwise.

Melissa has been working very hard recently, but not for very much longer. She is finishing up her transition contract from the Aquila sale which took place last year. At that time, She declined their job offer that would require us to move to Rapid City, South Dakota. They have been working her pretty hard up to her very last day so she will enjoy some down time. Of course I’m sure she will get bored very quickly, feel free to start sending the java programmer job offers her way.

It has been a fun and busy summer so far. We’ve enjoyed a little bit of a break on our calendar the last couple of weeks, but things will very quickly start to pick up again. August should be especially busy with my cousins wedding and Melissa’s Grandmothers birthday party. We had also discussed maybe having some impromptu road trips. St. Louis Zoo and Cheyenne Mountain Zoo were on our minds, will be interesting to see which one might win out.

I will also be having a birthday at the end of this week, along with my sister Charity who was also born on July 17th. Throwing together a little summertime tiki party to celebrate being together with my wonderful family for another year.

Amongst the other things we did for Mother’s Day, Ada talked the family into going to the zoo. We received a FOZ (Friends Of The Zoo) flyer in the mail last week and Ada picked it up off the kitchen table and said “Let’s go to the zoo”. So, FOZ should know that their advertising is working.

We decided to go to the Topeka Zoo this year as our trip to the Kansas City Zoo on Ada’s birthday last year left a little to be desired. The grounds at the KC Zoo were so large, but so many of the exhibits were closed that it seemed almost deserted. Melissa tried hyping it up by advocating the benefits of walking, of course then I would think she would like my favorite zoo which is the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, since the whole zoo is on the side of a mountain and so a lot of the walking is uphill.

The zoo trip was a success though, lots of animals seen with much less walking time and its closer and cheaper ticket cost as well. So, win-win-win.

This is a picture of Mac Jr. and Ada riding the wooden bear outside the black bear exhibit. The zoo has a black bear cam that allows you to see the bears live on the web.

The holidays were very fun and very busy for the Wisler household, which is why I haven’t written any notes here for a while.  We spent Thanksgiving at a family gathering in Fort Scott, KS, then a small at-home celebration for Melissa’s birthday (a.k.a. Stu Day), followed by a trip to Hutchinson for Christmas and then hosting a small family-friendly event with a few other parents and kids at our home for New Years Eve.  Glancing over at the http://mac.wisler.org/ I see that I didn’t make a post regarding Melissa and mine 4th wedding anniversary either, which we celebrated in early Nov.  As I said, its been a fun and busy couple of months.

This first pic of the kids that was taken on picture day at Googols Of Learning.  We usually get pictures taken of the kids every year to send out with holiday cards, but since these pictures were taken so close to the holidays, we just decided to use them instead.  I had been planning on getting a full family photo taken, but Melissa  is a little camera shy and since we were able to use this picture instead of going to a portrait studio again then she was able to weasel her way out of getting her picture taken.  Foiled again!

The other two pictures are of Ada and James decorating the Christmas tree.  They were very well behaved with the ornaments during the tree trimming, but we later had to move all of the glass bulbs up out of reach or else James would be pulling them off the tree.

We made a trip to the Schaake’s Pumpkin Patch this past weekend.  The kids had a great time walking through the patch, although it seemed like a lot of the pumpkins had already been picked over.  Ada also got her face painted with a kitty cat nose and whiskers, she was “meowing” until we got home and by that time she had smeared the makeup around her face and she said “kitty cat all done”.

This was taken a few weeks ago. Melissa was out of town on her business trip to South Dakota and the kids were not very willing to take a bath. So, I improvised a little bit and they thought it was a lot of fun.