Can you say ‘busy?’

 

No…Terri and I aren’t getting married. In fact, we’ll be celebrating 36 years together on Nov. 11 (yep, we got married on Veterans Day so it’s easy to remember). But youngest daughter Jessica IS getting married this week and it’s going to be a busy, busy week.

Soooooooo…posts on ViewFromTheMidwest.com will be few and far between until the wedding festivities have ended and life returns to normal.

Until then, keep those cards and letters coming in, folks. We love hearin’ from ya!

 

Kurtz-Pokorny engagement

With Donald Duck officiating, Jessica Kurtz, formerly of Olathe, Kan., and Eric Pokorny, formerly of Burbank, Calif., become engaged. An Aug. 10 wedding is planned in Seattle.

Chuck and Terri Kurtz of Olathe, Kan., are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Olathe North 2001 graduate Jessica Kurtz, to Eric Pokorny, son of Oscar and Angela Pokorny, Burbank, Calif.

Eric and Jessica live in Seattle, Wash., where they met on a Santa Pub Crawl in 2009. They share a love of travel, food and wine and recently went to Walt Disney World where Eric enlisted the help of Donald Duck to ask Jessica to marry him.

Jessica, who graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a degree in theater management, currently works in fundraising for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and is a board member for Youth in Focus, a Seattle non-profit after-school program that uses intensive photography to help disadvantaged teens.

Eric is a media designer at Starbucks Coffee where he will be celebrating 19 years of service in 2013.

The wedding is planned for Aug. 10, 2013, in Seattle….on a boat!

 

2012: Year of the theme parks

Grandpa Chuck, Sherri and Carys repelling an attack while riding the River Blast.

Mention a theme park and, well, I’m ready to go. Roller coasters, bumper cars, rides that spin you around and upside down, the games and, yes back then, even the carnival-type food with its tantalizing aroma drifting throughout the park make up some of my most cherished childhood memories.

And theme parks were just as much fun for me when my kids became old enough to take them.

Needless-to-say, I’ve always enjoyed going to theme parks. But in the past few years, the visits to these wonderful places have been few and far between and I figured my attraction to getting on a roller coaster that drops you 60 feet in two seconds and travels through corkscrews at 70-plus miles an hour, had waned and given out to old age.

I was wrong!

Recycling linked to Ann Landers

With the start of the new year, Johnson County is beginning its new recycling and waste management program, which is good. Anything we can do to stop polluting the environment, which includes not filling up landfills, is a good thing.

For the most part, Johnson Countians, including businesses, have come along way in taking part in recycling programs the past few years.

At the Kurtz’ household, we have been conserving and recycling for a long time — long time. But, as I recall, it began not because we had a growing concern for improving the environment, but because of newspaper columnist Ann Landers not long after our two youngest, Justin and Jessica, were born in the late ’70s and early ’80s.