The Kohlmans

Since it's been over a month since we painted the bedroom and almost two weeks since the carpet was installed, it's time for some "after" pictures. Here's the van full of the nasty old carpet and pad. Good bye and good riddance! The gray-blue walls and new carpet. We really wanted just plain gray, but it turned out to be really difficult to find, at least with our lighting... eventually we gave in to the closest sample we had. (It was spring break, and we knew we had limited time to paint.) It's not a great picture of the carpet, but we love it! It's a light tan with darker browns in it. Of course, considering that the old carpet didn't feel much softer than our hardwood, it didn't take much for an improvement. It's just nice to finally not have stains everywhere . The room right now. We haven't put much back up on the walls. Part of the reason we repainted was to have a color that would work with different bedding, if we ever w...

Librarians are there: To help, aid, assist. To teach, collate, enthuse. To catalogue, index, arrange, organise. To find, discover, promote, display. To interest, intrigue, amuse and amaze. To instill wonder. To help children, adults, old people, the underprivileged, the rich, the poor, those with voices and those without. To protect resources, to archive them, to store them, to save them for the future. To provide differing viewpoints, to engender thought, conversation, research, fun. To provide the best answer possible, to match the answer to the enquirer, to provide just enough information without overwhelming the user, but enough to always help. To better a local community, a company, a school, a college, an organisation, a country, the world. Google is there: To make money. -Phil Bradley

Sometimes I struggle (internally) with what to post on this blog. I don't want to whine or complain. I don't want to sound ungrateful for my blessings (as corny as that sounds). I don't want people to stop reading my blog because it's depressing. But sometimes real life isn't great. And that's okay. "The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel." - Steven Furtick A few weeks ago, I ran across the quotation above on Pinterest. I really, really like it. I printed it out and hung it in my craft room. I also started to think about it. I don't know if this blog is just a highlight reel, but I don't really intend for it to be. I am very hard on myself. Seriously, unreasonably so some days. (I think part of the reason I don't post much about my shortcomings is because some secret part of me realizes that my self-image is distorted.) There have been ...

I'm here, but once again I'm pictureless for the mid-week update. The carpet is in and amazing. I'll take pictures soon. But I kind of want to actually make the bed that day, get all the clothes put away, pick up, maybe put some things back up on the walls... Soon. Last night we had a track meet in Hutchinson. It takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to get there from my school. The four-team meet that started at 3:30 wrapped up about 9:00 p.m. When I was at the track meet, Brad took apart our clogged dishwasher and declared it not worth fixing. Upon my arrival home, I seconded the motion. I knew that as soon as we splurged on carpet, something else would need to be fixed or replaced! Oh well - that's what my leftover sick days will be for this year, I guess. I just "splurged" on an e-textbook for one of this summer's classes. It was a little more expensive than the paper edition, but it's less physical clutter in my life. And, I love to rea...

This is what my house looks like right now. We started moving things out of the bedrooms on Friday night, to the basement and the dining room.  ...added a few more things today.  Then we ran out of room and had to move things into the living room. We've emptied three rooms of our house, because, tomorrow this:  is going away! We're so excited to get rid of the stained carpet! Stay tuned for some "afters!"

Yes, it's been a while. 10 days, if you're counting. But who has time to count? I've been busy - which I'm sure you assumed was the case, since that's my excuse every time my posting drops off a bit... Here's the random, picture-less update. I've been sick for seven days. It's getting old. Thankfully, my kids were awesome yesterday when I couldn't talk, and my fellow track coaches forced me to leave the home meet last night at 7:30. I was in bed by 8:30 (and the meet wasn't over until after 9). I think I'm on the tail end of things. The Warrior Dash is three weeks from Saturday. I'm getting a little worried, since I usually only run 2.5 miles before school and I haven't run since Monday and, even then, I turned around early since my lungs were on fire (see paragraph 2). I'm sure I'll be fine. The spring semester is starting to wind down. I have about five more books to read and annotate (need to find some multicultural a...

In case you spent the weekend under a rock.... the Jayhawks are headed to the national championship tomorrow night! Things can get pretty intense when we watch the Hawks play... We usually start out optimistic and excited yet nervous. Then we start to get a little anxious. Sometimes we worry. But, eventually, excitement takes over. And we end up celebrating! (At least, so far!) Rock... Chalk... Jayhawk... KU! * note: none of these pictures are staged. They are all from KU's Elite Eight game last Sunday.