Par-Due.com

Today is practically the beginning of all my vacationing trips! I have bunches of stuff going on this month which is just the way I like it. Ashlee and I are going to the prayer cycle before worship wednesday which will totally be the best! Praise just before camp! I guess Shane and Diana are having a party friday which I will most likely be at and the Rookstools have their annual 4th of july party saturday!

Monday I get the results back for the big IB Psychology test I took towards the end of the year, and I have to run to the school to pick up a book I have to read for Theory of Knowledge for the rest of the summer ugh…

Camp starts Tuesday! I’m so stoked…as always it will be the best!

I’m leaving for texas on the 14th and will be there for the rest of July! I’ll be going to a church camp down there also so overall I’ll be totally packed for July! Exciting

I never knew how many smileys i use…sheesh!

Wowsers! It sure has been a long time since once of us have updated so I’ll break the silence! It really is a shame I don’t use this blog more often since it is so effective at documenting our lives and is fun to write in.

Anyway, I’ve been busy with work, aldermanic duties, and having fun. I much prefer the fun over the work.

I just finished bottling an Old Ale that will be around 11% abv by the time it is poured into a glass. I’m very excited about this beer and will age age a few of them for a bit as well. I am about to start a Bavarian Hefe Weizen, then a Dunkelweizen. Those will be excellent summer beers if I do say so myself.

Speaking of summertime beers, Boulevard released a Pilsner today that I am very anxious to try this evening! They’ve been on a roll lately and I’m sure this won’t disappoint.

All beer aside, the Par-Due’s are still doing awesome and maybe I can talk Diana into updating everyone on her many gardening projects. She’s a busy body these days as well!

For over a year now I have indulged in an alternative lifestyle as a result of health issues.  I have been successful in dealing with them and therefore am happy and healthy.  Many people have supported me and many have made fun of me or criticized how I live but I know what works and am going to stick to it.  I have had the pleasure of helping several people overcome their health challenges by joining me and because of Raw foodism I have discovered many other things that have enriched my life and found different approaches when learning new things.

I garden in my front yard,  I am now training to run a 5K barefoot after feeling the pain of my last 5K and now am embarking on a journey to help heal Shane’s asthma through natural and dietary medicine.

Throughout my journey I have met many people and though often I am met with rather harsh criticizm there is the occasional person who is curious enough to ask me questions about what they see…..a green smoothie for example, or me sitting at my desk during lunch hour eating a mango like an apple.  The reception of the information I provide is generally the same.  Something like this,

“huh, weird.” but it never fails that next time I see them they say, “You make me….” followed by one of these options

1.”wonder if my stomach issues could be fixed with that.”

2.”think about how I move totally differently.”

3. ” want to add more fruit to my diet.”

4. “want to try that.”

5. “think about food alot.”

6. “wonder why people normally garden in their backyard.”

7. “buy weird stuff at the grocery store I never would have bought before.”

etc.

I find this to be really awesome.  Mostly because it means that I can make a difference in someones life just by simply doing what I do.  I tend to avoid making a scene(I learned a long time ago not to say anything unless someone asks) and only make my green smoothies when I think the coast is clear in the break room but it never fails that someone walks in and looks at me like I’m a crazy person and hours later they show up at my desk with questions.  Sometimes they know I’m raw from a previous incident(lunch parties, etc) and just come up and say, “So you don’t eat chips?” or “you really like fruit don’t you?” and proceed to ask me what I eat on a typical day and how I feel.  They’ve all seen me lose my weight and get more energetic so that’s a testament in and of itself.

No one here has gone raw for life but several have tried it out for a couple weeks and many have traded their granola bar snack with an apple or grapefruit.  Two people got off their blood pressure medicine by trading tea for their typical diet coke!    I’m just grateful that I’ve helped people raise their awareness of what their body does in relation to what they put in it.

I decided to move this blog over to a new server me and my friend Josh share. It’s a more beefy machine and I wanted to consolidate.

The only tricky part was remembering Apache’s virtual host configuration. Once I figured that out again, I copied the files over and reimported the mysql database to bring over all the posts.

I’m posting this from my phone so my fingers are tired. Thanks for visiting par-due.com

The seniors here are leaving tomorrow, so that is when I officially become a senior. That’s the tradition we have at our school to move up a class as soon as the seniors leave.

Overall, this year was way too fast. I only have one more year to go after this! One year from now, I will be goofing off like all the seniors are running around saying bye to everyone. I’ll be getting ready for college?! Too weird! Actually I will have to come back to school after I leave to take the IB exams that are scheduled after we leave too. (Don’t expect to see me out of my room for those couple of weeks, haha.)

Other than the school mumbo jumbo…I’ve got back into playing videogames! I’ve been playing Zelda like crazy! Just finished a DS Zelda game and now I’m going back to the ones I’ve already beaten. It’s all so nostalgic!

Diana…I’m so proud of your running!

I always knew I had a good life, that I was really blessed, but as it goes on it just gets better and better. I look at what I have right now and I’m slightly overwhelmed.

Summer is on the way and my garden is looking wonderful.  I’ve worked really really hard on it and it’s paying off right now.  Then there’s the Raytown Community Garden, granted I worked ALL day on it yesterday without too terribly much progress and ended up with blisters and sore muscles but I have to say that I really really enjoyed it.  Maybe because Rachel Fracassa and I had such a lovely time chatting and the weather was beautiful.  I don’t know, but it was fun.

I’ve been running alot lately to prepare for a 5K that I’m doing on Sunday.  It’s been great and I’ve connected with some really fun people.  Training with the girls that I’m running it with has been awesome.  I can’t wait to start training for my next one at the end of the summer because I’m going to be doing it barefoot.  I’ll get into that on another post.  Probably next week when I’ve started actually doing it.

This weekend is Mother’s day which gets me thinking about how lucky I am on that front….or the family front in general.  Not only is my own mother incredible and one of my most inspirational figures in my life but somehow I got wonderfully lucky in my mother-in-law.  She’s also become a best friend and someone I enjoy spending time with.  My sisters are unbelievable as well.  Angela helped me recently with a large project that consumed alot of her precious time set aside for homework.  Even though I kept her up until two in the morning I can’t even tell you how cheerfully she worked along side of me.   Kristin is off in Columbus, OH and even though we talk alot I totally miss her.  Every time I have a phone conversation with her I feel a longing to attend one of her lovely parties and get tons of hugs.  I can’t gush about everyone but just so they all know, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

Now, I’m sure this totally bores everyone but I just have to keep going…..Shane.  Alright, this is how pathetic I am.  I spent the whole day yesterday doing intense manual labor so I didn’t get to communicate with my husband all that much…usually we email during the day, and he worked all night so I didn’t get to see him in the evening at all either.  I can’t tell you how much I missed him!  It made me think about how lucky I am to have an incredible husband who keeps me company, takes care of me and spends nearly all his time hanging out with me.  I love every minute we get together and I definitely feel it when we miss out on it.

I just think I might be the happiest girl around.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with any operating systems outside of Windows and Apple’s OS X, I wanted to inform you of an alternative to those monsters. Ubuntu Linux is a free operating system that can either install alongside your current operating system or be the only os on your machine.

It has been known to run faster than both of these and offers technologies no other operating system has offered.

If you are interested in trying it out and/or are tired of the one you have, leave a comment and I can give you a cd and walk you through the easy steps of trying it out.

The newest version of Ubuntu was released today and is called Jaunty Jackalope, version 9.04. http://ubuntu.com

Why hello there! A lot has gone lately, but I’m not going to catch you up completely. For that kind of thing, you’ll have to take me out to dinner or something.

I was recently elected as alderman in Raytown which is a very exciting event. For those of you who may not know, an alderman is an old-fashioned word for city councilman. I’m excited to bring ideas to the board and help Raytown continue the progress we’ve seen over the last few years.

Since I got elected and I only had a work phone paid by the church, I decided to get a personal phone since my minutes had been going over before. I didn’t think paying the church a bill for extra minutes would be a good situation, so I got my own T-Mobile account and purchased a G1 (which is awesome). I could go all day about how cool the phone is, but I’ll spare you.

I’m working on a new website where I’ll write about news and projects the board of alderman are working with. It’ll be bloggish in nature and will inform people of the ins and outs of what are going on from my new seat. I don’t feel comfortable leaving it open for comments and the posts won’t be very opinionated in nature. More just information for people who want to know what’s going on in their hometown. I’ll link it from here whenever I am happy with a finished product, if ever!

That’s all I got for right now, thanks for reading!

Click here to view election results in other races

After many weeks of very hard work, isolation from family(and many of our friends too, basically anyone NOT in Raytown), and some good times we have officially won the race for Alderman in Ward 1 and Shane is now a part of our City Council in Raytown.

We stood for a solid 13 hours at the polls working our butts off with the help of our wonderful wonderful friends in the freezing and dark cold to the sunny afternoon convincing our residents(and an occasional opposition worker) to vote for us and for progress in Raytown.   Without giving up or giving in we withstood it all and came out on top.

Anyway, everyone who reads this blog probably knows how we’ve been campaigning hard for a while and I’d like to make an official thanks to the people who helped us so much.

Joe Creamer-for pushing us to keep going and do more, for helping us get in contact with so many business owners, and for being so supportive.  Your help was seriously priceless.  Thank you so much.

Mike Downing-for getting us all the materials we needed, for working wonderfully at the polls all day, and helping us find the people we needed to talk to.  Thank you so much.

Terry Tuggle-for being so encouraging, and helping us pursue our goals.  Your name alone brought us alot of support because you’re known and loved by everyone!  Thank you for your help handing out fliers, calling residents and supporting us as a treasurer.

Sheryl-for so faithfully and cheerfully showing up EVERY Saturday to walk tirelessly the streets of Raytown come rain or shine or other things like my terrible clumsiness…..hehe to get our fliers out to every door.  We love you so much and you really stepped up through this whole process and blessed us.

The Irish Pub-Thank you soo much for your support and allowing us to use your building and helping us so much with raffle and providing chili.  Our fundraisers were a huge success because of you and all of your staff and wonderful customers.  Thank you!

Bickering Tree-for your support and also for cheering up Shane.  You were really a bright spot in our campaign.

Elise, Amy, Ashley, Ashlee, Josh, Richie, Nathan, Jonathon, Katherine, Richard, Dan and Char, and anyone else I’m forgetting-thank you so much for helping us with fliers.  Every little bit that you guys did helped us out sooo much.

Joe and Lauren-thank you for working the polls and getting our signs out there!

Ben Felder-for keeping us in the print!

Benetti’s- for your support and great coffee.  We couldn’t have done it without that!

Ben Helt-for helping organize the watch party. It was awesome!

Peggy and Kendra-for keeping the scary people away and staying with me through hot and cold at the polls!

And all our friends, family and supporters who helped us get through all the craziness and somehow come out on top.  Thank you so much and we love you all!

Now, the next thing…….RAYTOWN COMMUNITY GARDEN!

Par-Due For Ward 1

Check out the election article published by The Raytown Post. This will be in print on Thursday and the election is on Tuesday!