Whoa, this thing still exists!

Yeah, I just found this again. Let me tell you a little bit about myself since it's been a while.

My name is Lori Kuehl.
I am 31 years old.
I am married to Ryan Kuehl, been married for almost 8 months (as the ticker above will tell you.)
We have two cats, Dixie and Daisy.
I have been at my job for six months, I am the teacher in the infant room at Play Palz Day Care. (And, yes, you can teach babies lots of things! There are some that doubt me.)

Um, I think that's about it. I'm hoping to remember about this more and keep up with it. Hahahahahahaha! Who am I kidding? I will probably forget about it again.

~Lori

2010 Top Ten Memories

My friend Abbie did this for her blog, and I thought it was a good idea.

So in no particular order ...

10. Marriage Inc. presented Bill and Pam Farrell in a marriage seminar (January). They had some wonderful insights (i.e. their book "Men are like waffles, Women are like spaghetti", is a must read) and very funny. It made for a wonderful date night and great way to start of the year.

9. March presented some awesome memories with my special needs kids. First we went to Special Games, not to be confused with Special Olympics. My kids competed in ring toss, basketball drills, and races (and things of that nature). We came in second for most school spirit and were treated with a visit from Staley, of the Chicago Bears. That same weekend, one of my kids, Sean Rooney, held a book signing for his first published children's book. "Paddy's First Day at Hilltop School" is the first in a series of books that Sean plans to publish. The line for his signature was out the door and Barnes and Noble sold out of his book. It was awesome!

8. May 15th, my little brother Ian got married to a wonderful girl, Katie. I'm glad to call her my sister and it was a beautiful day. Not to mention, I got to go back to Kentucky. ;-)

7. Memorial Day weekend I had the opportunity to go to my first Indianapolis 500! It was Ryan's first Indy Car race, and what way start. One of my favorite racers, Dario Franchitti, won the race. Thanks to the Tolleys (a quizzing family that I adore) we got to go for FREE!

6. Jenny K. Moore, Room 204: happened at the end of June, beginning of July. Others would remember this as Q2010, but since I spent the whole week in one room, that's all that I remember. LOL! While in room 204, I witnessed some amazing quizzers from all over the U.S. and Canada. It's amazing to watch these kids study and memorizing Scripture. It makes my heart smile.

5. This year I turned 30! Eeeek! No, it's okay. I don't have a problem with that, since I still get stopped in the hallways at the high school and asked for my hall pass (even though I'm wearing my work badge on lanyard around my neck)! For my birthday, Ryan and I went to Grand Rapids/Holland, MI to spend the weekend with my parents and my dad's side of the family. I went shopping, and to the beach, and ate some fabulous ribs...a perfect weekend.

4. Kuehl Roadtrip 2010! 10 weeks of something every weekend, visiting with friends, family, and quizzers. 'Nuff said.

3. I became an aunt again this year. I have beautiful niece, Delaney Elizabeth. She's just precious, and I can't wait to get to know her better. :-)

2. Christmas break was very productive for me. I was able to get lots of crocheting done and other things around the house this past week and a half. Plus it was just nice to have a break from working two jobs and get some extra sleep. Oh, and have time to read, too!

Now I haven't really put these memories in order of importance, mostly they are listed in order of their occurrence. But the last one I'm going to list is one that is very special to me.

1. Parkview Christian Church's Easter service. Parkview is a church that has about 6-7,000 members and had to have three nights of Easter services to fit everybody in the church. Ryan and I went with our small group on Good Friday. Earlier in the day we went to our church's Good Friday service, which was very somber given that it was about the death of Jesus. But four hours later, we were able to celebrate a Resurrected Savior with much gusto. When we entered the sanctuary, we were given poppers and when Pastor Tim Harlow told us to (during a worship song) everyone popped their poppers. It was so awesome to see thousands of tiny streamers fill the air in the sanctuary in celebration of the fact that Jesus is in the grave no more! Now that's how I like to celebrate! AMEN!!!!!

~Lori

Christmas around the corner

Boy o, boy! It's December already. Where did 2010 go? I'll tell you, it went by like the miles we put on our car. In the month of November we traveled about 3500 alone. Started the month with an oil change. Need another one again.

We are almost to the end of the Kuehl Road Trip. This week though, Ryan is going solo. Another quizzing tournament, this time in St. Louis. I decided to stay home and decorate the house. I've been so excited about it, and planning it in my head, that I haven't been able to sleep. I woke up at 5:20 this morning and haven't been able to fall back asleep. (I don't get up this early on the weekdays, sometimes on Saturdays for quizzes, but this is CRAZY!!!). I'm trying to bide my time before getting into full out clean/decorating mode. I don't want to disturb my downstairs neighbors.

Yesterday was a nice day, so I put up the lights outside on the deck. I have garland lights around the railing and a spiral tree in the middle of the deck. And of course it has to snow as soon as I put them up. Woke up to about 2 1/2 inches, and it's still coming down. So I will be staying in today. Finishing up the Christmas tree (branches and lights were put up last night) and stuff around the house. Pictures will follow. :-)

I love this time of year. And I really only like snow for Christmas... then it can go away. I am definitely a summer/hot weather gal. For now I think I will eat some breakfast, put in a movie, and THEN get started.

~Lori

How do you fix a broken pumpkin?

Well, hello there to all my friends! It's been a very busy fall for us Kuehls. Ryan calls it our "10 week Kuehl road tour", but it's really longer than that.

This year at school, I'm in the special needs room, but I'm also job coaching a student. This is Sean, he works at Orthopedic Associates of Kankakee (or OAK). He works in the billing department, scanning papers. He is also a published author. He wrote a children's book, "Paddy's First Day at Hilltop School". It about a muskrat with cerebral palsy, which is what he has. He's a really great kid. This is us just before the Homecoming parade.

The next week was a District quiz, and the beginning of the road tour. Our first quiz, my team took 9th place, which wasn't so bad, but I felt they could have done better. The other teams took 2nd and 5th. (This was on Sept. 11th) So the District quiz on Oct 9th, my team took 4th place. And the other teams were 1st and 6th. Needless to say I'm very proud of our quizzers.

Our next stop, wasn't even a destination, but it sure took a lot of energy and stress from us. I'm talking about QUIZFEST! Oh, yeah! This is the quiz tournament that my own dear hubby directs. This year we had it at our church, instead of College Church. College Church has hosted Quizfest for 20 years, but they don't have a team anymore, and we are just more comfortable at our church. Plus we have more room and thus can have more teams. We had from 350-400 teens and adults at our church. It was amazing.

I finally got to quiz myself this year. Ryan has brought back "Old Timers" quizzing. It's for those quizzers who are too old to be in quizzing (or out of high school). My team (pictured below) was me, Sara (the other coach) and Daley (she was a quizzer last year, and is a freshman at Olivet, so not really "old"). We had one of our current quizzers be our coach. I concentrated on the memory verses. And I jumped and correctly answered three questions, two verse questions and one according to question. I'm not sure if I want to do this again. We'll see.


As for my team that I coached... we place 5th in the Novice division. Wahoo! Go K3 1st!


Our Experience team place 6th! Wahoo! Go Kankakee First!


In the midst of all this quizzing fun, my sister-in-law gave birth to my niece, Delaney Elizabeth. My nephew, August (and Delaney's older brother) turned 5 on Oct. 4th, And Delaney was born on Oct. 5th. But with all our quizzing engagements we weren't able to see her for a couple weeks. She was our third stop on the the road tour.

I'm a very proud auntie. I love her to pieces already. Damen (Ryan's older brother) and Stacey didn't find out what they were having, so I was able to make a blanket in advance. So when Ryan called me to tell me it was a girl, I immediately began planning what color I would use to make her blanket. I used a dark pink, a light pink, and a light gray. I think it turned out very pretty.


Isn't she such a cutie?!? I love this picture of her. Ryan's holding her and she's looking up at him like, "So, you're my Uncle Ryan?" Oh, I could just hug her all day.


And of course, we can't forget August!


This week's road trip stop is here in town. It's Olivet's Homecoming. We always have a blast watching the games and catching up with friends we haven't seen in a while. The basketball game was a great one against Point Loma Nazarene University. We won by 11, but it was really a closer game than that. After the game was the Taste of Olivet. The highlight of that was the Candy Bar. There were bags to fill up with all kinds of candy. Ryan was literally a kid in a candy store. Hahahahaha! This afternoon is the football game. I hope it's a good game and not a slaughter, meaning the other team slaughtering us.

Our upcoming stops on the Kuehl Road Tour are as follows:

• Nov 5-7 Olathe, Kansas for the Olathe Quiz Tournament (and to see family)
  
• Nov 13th Manteno, Illinois for a District Quiz
• Nov 19-21 Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo, Michigan for the Michigan Tournament (and to see family)
• Nov 25-28 Tennesee for Thanksgiving.
• Dec 3-4 St. Louis for the St. Louis All-Stars Tournament
• Dec 11th Gilman, Illinois for a District Quiz
• Dec 18th Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

And that brings us right up to Christmas and New Year's. Whew!

~Lori

Oh, and how do you fix a broken pumpkin?............With a pumpkin patch! (Thanks August for the wonderful jokes!)

Q2010

Wow! It's been two months since I've posted on here (sorry) and a week ago today I was traveling back from the Wonderful Land of OH.

We went to Mount Vernon Nazarene University, in Mount Vernon, Ohio for the General Bible Quiz 2010. Or, Q2010 for short. Our church took 8 teens and there were 19 total from our district. Ryan and I signed up to be officials. Ryan was a quizmaster for the Local (individual church teams) Experienced. I was a content judge for Local Experienced and District Experienced. I worked with two different quizmasters: Charles Perabeau (from my district, he's the pastor of Chicago Northside) and John Shearer (from California). Tuesday was my first day officiating. I had two rounds in the morning and then TWELVE rounds in the afternoon. But that was nothing compared to Thursday. I officiated from 9am to 9 pm. With breaks for lunch and dinner, of course. But that was a looooooong day.

I met people from all over (there were teams not only from all over the US, but there was a Canadian team and a team from Antigua). I took my crocheting with my and worked on in between rounds. I had several quizzers say that they crochet/knit too. There was even one girl from Georgia who wants to start her own crocheting ministry at her church (similar to the one I'm involved with here at my church). The kids from Kentucky and I really hit it off (I had my UK tote with me). We chatted a lot about UK basketball and giving Ryan a hard time. He always came back with the fact that Duke is the current National Champion. Several coaches and quizzers asked me if they would see me at Quizfest. Since my husband is the director, I kinda have to be there. :-)

Our kids did great. We had three district teams in the experienced division and one in the novice. Our A team (all girls, by the way) placed 8th out of 45 teams! The Kankakee 1st team was 11th out of 45, just missing the tournament. But I am so proud of those kids. THEY ROCK MY SOCKS OFF!!! And I'm so proud of the kids on the other teams, too. These kids are amazing.

I didn't get many pictures of any actual quizzing. Most of the quizzing pictures are of Decades Quizzing (or Old Timers). Ryan was the director of that, so I was heavily involved in it, too. That took place at the end of the day, after the kids were done quizzing. The pictures of the kids quizzing are the ONU Regional teams. The local teams compete to make the district teams, which then compete to be on the regional team. The regions all correspond with the eight Nazarene Universities. They split them into the A pool and the B pool. The ONU B team beat Mount Vernon B in the Championship!!! And then it reversed in A pool, MVNU beating ONU.

Most of the pictures I have are during down time when we are playing silly games or just hanging out. If you click on the picture below, it will take you to my online photo album. This picture is of Ryan cheering on our ONU B team to victory! :-)


~Lori

Babies, babies, babies!

Let me just say that I'm simply gaga for these babies I'm about to introduce to you. The first one is D'Kari. He is my friend Natalie's foster baby. She got the call to pick him up on Tuesday and I've had the privilege of hanging out with her this weekend (while her husband is gone to L.A. for business). D'Kari is such a sweet baby, almost 3 months old. When she first handed him to me, he just "talked and talked" to me. And then he fell asleep in my arms. *sigh* Isn't he just the cutest?


I've also been busy trying to finish a blanket that I was making for him. I was up way, way late last night getting it done. There's a chance that he might be taken away from her (his mom is not that stable and is making some difficult choices), so I wanted him to have a blanket for him to keep. It's hard to tell because of the flash, but it's blue and light yellow.


The next baby is Elijah Scott. His mom is my friend Emily. His dad is the bee keeper. He was born on Friday, May 7th. He's such a cutie. He seems to like his blanket.

I know his mom does. :-)

~Lori

My crochet projects

So I've recently gotten back into crocheting. I learned 3 years ago at a ladies retreat, made one scarf and was done. At Christmas, my cousin Tiffany was finishing a scarf that she knitted, and it reminded me of how much I loved crocheting. So I went out the next day to buy some yarn and hooks, got on You Tube and retaught myself how to do it. My first project that I did was a scarf for myself, since they are so fashionable right now. I'm pretty happy with it. :-)

But I didn't want to be selfish with my talent. So I made my mom a scarf. It was during this project that a new ministry was started at my church. It's a knitting/crocheting group, called Stitches of Love. They've helped me a lot during my projects.

My next projects were baby blankets for my friends. My friends Natalie and Jonathon are foster parents and have been waiting since September to get a placement. I made this blanket for her, it matches her awesome baby room. She asked me to make some blankets for her to give to the children to take home with them. A little memory of their time at their house. My current project is a blanket just for that purpose.


This blanket is for my friends Scott and Emily who are expecting a baby boy, ANY DAY NOW! Scott is a bee keeper, so I made them a bee blanket. I love this blanket! I worked overtime on this one, since I needed to get it done before the baby comes. I was done on time, he was not.


These bees were easy to make, but gave me hand cramps. But they are so cute and were worth it.
My next few projects are going to be Christmas presents, so I'm going to be hush hush on those. Another cool idea I had was to make a blanket for myself, using my left over yarn. It will be a remembrance blanket of all the projects I've done. So I gotta get these projects done, so I can work on my blanket. :-)

~Lori

Special Games 2010

Okay, so...Special Games were a while ago, but I'm finally uploading the pictures. Special Games are different from Special Olympics, but the same concept. Each year they give out a "Spirit Stick" to the school with the most school spirit. For a change this year, we decided to forgo wearing school colors, in favor of neon colors. We came in second. There's always next year!

Here are a few pictures (Click here for all pictures.)

Here is our "Spirit Wall". It was too heavy and fell down...Bummer :-(

This is Taylor, one of my students. I kept trying to get her to smile, no avail.
Here are my teacher friends, Aimee, Amy, Dana, and I.
Robin is one of our Best Buddies, and her buddy is another student of my students, Kelly.
Bruno, the Boilermaker
Chicago Bears mascot, Staley, came to hang with us.
Sean Rooney is an awesome writer. Click here for info on his book. That's right, I said HIS book!

~Lori

6 Loooooonnnnnggg Years

This last Saturday was our 6th Wedding Anniversary. Where did the time go? I told one of my coworkers that it was our anniversary...she asked how long. I told her. She then asked if it was how long we had been married or been together. When I told her that we have been together almost 8 years, she was in awe. Then she asked, "Still madly in love"? I told her yes.

But I got to thinking...are we still madly in love? I can still answer with a yes. But it's a love that has grown and matured. It's not the same as when we were first married, or dating. I wouldn't want it to be the same.

We celebrated by going to church. But not just any church. We went to Parkview Christian Church. It's a mega church. Just 45 minutes away. I loved it. The worship and the sermon were great. (Disclaimer: I am not looking for a new church, Ryan and I still love our Kankakee First Church of the Nazarene). We could have gone to a movie, but decided on something that we help us individually and our marriage. Afterwards, we went to Girodano's for some delish stuffed pizza. (I cried in pizza, because UK lost to West Virginia.)

~Lori

March Madness

It's that time of year again. Yes, basketball has taken over CBS and offices everywhere. But I'm talking about the crazy weather we have here in Illinois this month. We always get a little teaser. This week has been it.

It was gorgeous. No jacket required. Two words. LOVED. IT.

I was able to enjoy it for a while when we to the high school class out to walk the track. I only did three laps, but I was pushing a kid (120 pounds of dead weight) in a wheelchair.

But, alas, it's not to last. Tomorrow, 30 degree temps, rain/sleet...maybe a little of the "S" word. One word. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I know that this little blip in my perfect spring shall pass as well. But enough is enough. I think after this winter it wouldn't be too hard to convince Ryan that we need to move south. (Heehee)

As for the "other" March Madness, it's in full swing at Chez Kuehl. Ryan woke up early to watch the bracket announcements. And then we proceeded to wear our team shirts to small group with pride. It sparked a lot of conversation and laughs. We have both filled out two brackets each. One is our "Wish List" bracket and the other is the "Real" bracket. And we have wager between the two of us, winner takes all. Exactly what "All" is, we can never come up with anything to wager. We've still got a couple of weeks to decide, any ideas?

~Lori