Battle of the Christmas Cards

We had two Christmas card designs we (I) was torn between. We used one, not the other. Which do YOU prefer? Vote! (See poll in the upper right hand corner.)

If you didn't get a Christmas card, sorry. Uhm, we only printed, like... two. My folks got one, and one other reader (you know who you are) got one.

Merry Christmas (a little late)

The Christmas tree is up!

And it looks gorgeous, too. I'll have to get a photo of it up here soon. Adrianne's Grandma gave us a tree that's really nice, and we've got it set up in our office now.

Evey's first sentence, her first book mention

Hi everyone. Hope you had a good weekend.

A quick post tonight to tell you about a few more "firsts" for Evey.

This morning we were having brunch at the Eldridge. Evey was eating her breakfast like a good girl, and then she started to fuss.

Grandma Judy asked her, "Evelyn, are you all done?"

And Evey looked at Adrianne, and in an exasperated voice she gasped, "I'm done, Mama!"

The whole table gasped right back (Lupe, Brent and Rosalina were also with us). Everyone was like, "Did you hear that?" We were all quickly laughing and smiling -- something Evey is able to get us to do quite often. Previously, Evey's only two words have been variations of "Mom" (mama, mom, momma) and "Dad" (dad, dada, dadadadada). So her first sentence was quite a surprise.

At the same breakfast, someone was playing peek-a-boo with Evey, and she said, "Boo!" which cracked us up. Our daughter was very loquacious this morning, obviously. Hopefully she keeps it up.

And the other first has to do with the above photos.

Terry Clothier Thompson, a friend of the family, is an author who writes book on quilting. In her newest book, "Quilt's Through the Camera's Eye," Terry has named a quilt after Evelyn!

It's very cool. The quilt is called "Baby Evelyn's Crazy String Quilt," and it's very beautiful. There's an old photo (1900-1930) that accompanies the quilt, and Terry said the baby in the photo reminded her of Evey. The caption with the photo says, "Unnamed baby in picture -- Terry named this quilt after her little friend Evelyn Melosa Jones."

We were ecstatic, of course, to see the book. Terry signed a copy and gave it to Evey as a gift. If you'd like a copy of the book yourself (great Christmas present!) click here.

Maybe she won't hate me for this one?

And check out those teeth!

Evey's first trip to the park

This was a few weeks ago, naturally... yeah, we didn't take her during the ice storm.

The park is a few blocks behind our place. After the slide, we also went on the swing together.

I was having a blast. Evey? "She looks... concerned," Mom said.

Cheers, Sean

13 shopping days

Are you ready?

More from Texas

Here we have a photo of Evey patiently waiting to board the flight back to Kansas City, and another photo of Adrianne and her friend Lexi. Adro and Lexi used to be roommates back in the day. Now Lexi owns (along with her husband and father-in-law) the finest bar in Mission, Texas: The Palms. It was at The Palms where I watched the KU/Mizzou game. Good thing I was in good with the owners, because as you can imagine, I was not on my best behavior for most of that game. (And at the end of the night, Lexi even wrote off our bar tab for us... so you know she's my favorite friend of Adrianne's EVER!)

Ice storm!

We dealt with round one last night... round two may be here tonight... stay tuned!

Another weekend down the toilet

Great news -- Evey (I think) has finally shaken that virus. At about 2 p.m. on Sunday, she suddenly perked out of it.

Hopefully, it'll be life back to normal now. We'll see. I'd love to get more than an hour of interrupted sleep tonight.

Back to the factory tomorrow... we have to get the January issue out by Friday. It's a giant, and I'll have as many as four stories I'm responsible for appearing in this issue. Plus, we've got VIPs in the office tomorrow, so I have to wear a SUIT. Should be a nice start to what will surely be a loooong week.

Rough first birthday

Well, not how we had planned Evey's first birthday, for sure.

In the emergency room.

Yeah. We made it 364 days and 22 hours before we made our first emergency room run. Not a bad streak.

Evelyn's temp was pushing 105, and then she threw up what looked like a week's worth of milk. Throw in some trembling and a loss of her normal skin color, and we loaded up the Tucson and hauled ass to the ER at about 11 p.m. Thursday evening.

The ER doctor (Brian something, who was an awesome, awesome doctor and treated Evey like his own child) said that she has a virus and there's nothing we can do other than go back from Tylenol to Ibuprofen to keep her temperature down. We've had a few sleepless nights. She's still sick as I write this, Saturday at lunch. Pobre sita.

Anyway, I made my return to work on Friday (after being out for two days with a stomach virus) and I stopped by Hy-Vee after work to pick up some medicine, etc., for home. I also grabbed a mini-cake for my little girl. We had other plans for a cake, but we've cancelled all birthday plans we had made for the weekend, so Adro's plans for the cake have been shelved for now. Instead, a little $3.99 cake from Hy-Vee. How sad!

As you can see, she's not feeling well in the photo. But we still sang happy birthday. We got a few smiles out of her. Then it was back to bed. And back to taking her temperature every 30, 40 minutes...

(It went from 99 to 104, up and down, all night... I'm getting to the point where I can come pretty close to guessing how hot she is by touching her. Not a skill I wanted to learn.)

Happy birthday Evey... the birthdays will only get better, I'm sure.

Happy Birthday Evelyn!

Happy birthday Evey! Check out these photos of you from one year ago today, Pearl Harbor Day 2006, when you were born! Wow! You've really grown!

So far, we're celebrating Evey's birthday by being SICK. I've been sick since Wednesday morning, Evey since Wednesday night. She's had a bad fever, I've had the collywobbles. Hopefully we both bounce back tomorrow.

More on Evey's big day to come... Dec. 7th, 2006, 3:19 a.m., our lives were changed forever with the arrival of our beautiful Evelyn Melosa Jones!

What does Evelyn want for her first birthday?

Well, I asked her... and you know what she told me?

"Steve Ditko art. Anything Ditko -- I love the guy!" I was really surprised to hear this. I knew she liked Ditko, but figured she liked John Romita and Jack Kirby just as much. "No," she said. "Any Ditko art would top my list. Preferably early Amazing Spider-Man, but hey -- I'm not picky. It could be Speedball, for all I care!"

OK, there you have it. Ditko art. By Friday.

Evey meets Andrew

Here we are at Luby's in McAllen, Texas, where Evey met Adrianne's brother Andrew for the first time.

Come on, internet...

WORK!

Back from Guadalajara!

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I was in Guadalajara, Mexico last week, on business. I had a 45 minute 1-on-1 with Lorena Ochoa while I was there. She's the No. 1 woman golfer in the world, so it was a pretty nice score for ol Jonesy.

Photos from the Guad included...

Back from Texas!

Hi everyone.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. We had a great one down in McAllen, Texas, 8 miles from the Mexico border. We visted Adrianne's dad, Alan, and his wife Diane, and their son Alex. It was the first time Evey met her dear ol' grandpa Alan, or "Poppy," as Adro calls him.

Here we are at a bar on the Rio Grande called The Riverside.

More later... cheers!

Road trip to Garnett, Kan.

Since I'm getting ready for a road trip right now, might as well post about an old road trip before I go...

About three, maybe four weekends ago, I drove straight south to Garnett, Kan., to meet my boy Lervy. Lerv is in Chanute, and right smack in-between us is Garnett, Kan. It's an hour drive for both of us, and wouldn't you know it? They have a golf course.

Our friend Will Baxter -- who lives in Thailand -- actually suggested the trip. he said he ran cross country at the golf course, and it seemed like a nice course, and also it was right between the two of us. Lerv and I started talking about it, and we decided, "you know what? Willy has a good idea there!"

I'm glad WB suggested it, because it WAS a nice course, a nice town, with a nice little bar, and I had great company.

I got there about 45 minutes late -- the previous evening was the day we lost seven people at work, and I spent much of the evening helping Bart tie one on... plus, I got lost south of Lawrence, trying to take a shortcut. But once I got there, it was on. I played like ass, honestly, and Lerv played pretty well. (I'd play three times in less than a week, and that outing with Lervy was by far my worst.) The course was a nice little 9-hole, with some crazy undulating greens. But a solid course, for sure. After our nine holes, we headed to town to watch the now legendary KU/Nebraska game. We found this quaint little towny bar replete with a private room and pool table in the back, so we saddled up back there and let it be known that we were KU fans. As the game progressed, all the patrons came back to say hello and talk KU football with us.

Anyway, a nice way to spend a Saturday. the chicken fried steak was just OK, but that didn't matter -- this was one for the record books. And I'm not just talking KU scoring TDs, I'm talking a memorable day with one of my best friends in the world. Next time, I won't be so hungover, and I'll try to hang with him a little bit better on the golf course.

And since I'm here now, don't expect much action on Evey's blog these next few days... we're on vacation! But I'll try to post when possible.

In the meantime, have a great Thanksgiving! Cheers, everyone.

Get out your high school diploma

Because apparently, the reading level of this blog is at the high school level.

I thank words like "guru," "inundate" and "concoction."

What's funny is I got this from my friend Jason's blog, which is way, way, way more highbrow than my "hey, look, another cute photo of Evey!" And his rating? Junior high.

Heh!

I'm off to test the GCM blog now...

Halloween pic courtesy of the Heimans

Jeff, Kendall and Grey walked by as we were sitting in Jefferson's on Halloween. They were kind enough to snap a photo of all three of us together and email me the image... Evey probably won't share my excitement for this photo when she's older, though...

Happy Thanksgiving!

But, what? You say it's not Thanksgiving yet? Then why are there turkey leftovers in my fridge right now??

The Jones/Johnson family celebrated Thanksgiving Sunday afternoon, since me, Adro and Evey are going to be in Texas over the actual holiday. My Mom and sister made it happen and we had everything -- turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole... even 'orange concoction'!!! It was a true feast! And it was also Evey's first Thanksgiving!

We had a blast, as you'll see from the photos. Bring on the leftovers!!!

Thanks, Mom and Jess!!!

Evey has a purse. Seriously.

What does Evelyn keep in her purse? I don't know. I don't want to know. All I know is that it matches her diaper bag. Because that's important.

She's not even a YEAR OLD and she has a purse. A freakin' purse! I'm going to be so inundated with girly stuff for the next 18 or so years... I'm screwed.

A PURSE.

And a photo of Adro and Judy here, too, taken last weekend at Vermont Street BBQ. Yeah, it's a woman's world I'm living in. S'OK. Makes me feel macho.

Gotta go... Oprah's on.

Wedding photos

Our one-year anniversary passed without me putting any wedding photos up. I remedy that tonight. Look for more in the next few weeks.

Here we have me and Adro along with our friends the Sweeten's (Travis and Heather), who drove up from Enid, Okla. Trav is one of my comic book geek buddies.

Below is Dr. Clark Throssell, a good friend and co-worker. Doc is the turf research guru for GCSAA, a handy golfer, and an easy-going, mellow dude. He was in town from Billings, Mont., mostly for our wedding, and also for a little bit of work.

In other news: UNC almost dropped their season opener to Davidson tonight. My Dad got a couple phone calls on this one. Roy was sweating plenty. The season is off to a good start...

Baby Jayhawk

Stop prank calling me, Roy Williams. Haven't you caused me enough pain?

Evey and Dad, on stage, Neuteboom wedding

Setting: Neuteboom wedding. Situation: I've had a few (several) Free State beers, and now Judy is going to take Evey home, while Adro and I continue to celebrate Eric and Trish's nuptials.
Makes sense in my mind: The band is on break, so I take Evey up on stage at Liberty Hall. I mean, come on -- it's Liberty Hall! I've paid for many a show there, now it's finally my turn to stand up there and look out at the crowd. And I take Evey with me. I told her to "say bye-bye." She makes a noise, and hears it broadcast over the sound system. So now she has a new toy, and she gaaas and goos for the crowd. As you can see here, she enjoyed her time up on stage... she wanted to grab the mic herself.
Later that same night: I would play the maracas with the band. But this moment right here still trumps my debut as a maraca player.

New Evey video

Late July 2007

Something from my broken camera...