I hereby recognize you

We had a busy few days last week. Oma visited from Texas to get away from unpacking boxes, watch Natasja's performance in the American Girl fashion show fundraiser for Special Olympics and to take part in Sebastian's leaf-pile-jumping birthday party. The big man also had his last soccer game for the season, which was followed up by a pizza party.

Earlier, Cindy drove all the way up to Clarksville to see Brittany receive an award from Workforce Essentials for her work in the Jobs for Tennessee Graduates program over the past year. Rock on.

More Mizzou pics

Here's Geert with Kim at the game. And no, she was not wearing a veil. Not this time.

So the big if debate has started inside Geert's head: If Mizzou (8-1, No. 6 in the BCS) wins out — bludgeoning KU along the way — and if it beats OU in the Big XII championship and if both LSU and Oregon lose one more game along the way...

Yeah, that's right: The world is only a small handful of ifs — six favorable results, in fact — away from seeing the University of Missouri Fighting Tigers play for the freakin' national championship. Chew on that for a while.

And while you're chewin', imagine this monster flying a few hundred feet over your head before kickoff. Sah-wheat. Double sah-wheat.

Rudolf burger, anyone?

At Natasja's request, we're posting her recent snappy report on the Old Continent. It covers a lot of ground in a short span and makes trusty Laplanders out of a lot of people who we're sure had no clue they lived in reindeer country. Hey, I'm hungry. We'll have two Rudolf Rump specials with Prancer's Milk. Hold the fur, thanks.

Tiger time

Geert headed up to Mizzou last weekend to watch the Tigers' game against Iowa State. He met up with his friends Kim, Deana and Kevin Pape and hit the old haunts: Shakespeare's, the 'Berg and Flat Branch.

Saturday night, they stopped off at a Halloween party with supremely cool decorations that started 50 feet in front of the house, featured chainsaws and a fog machine and didn't stop until you were startled by the hairy bat over the sink in the bathroom.

The game was a good time, even though the Tigers didn't have their sharpest outing. (We realized soon afterward how thrilled we would have been five short years ago to win a game 42-28, so we didn't fuss for long.) The weather was freakin' awesome, the flyover rocked and we had plenty of opportunities to flinch as the ROTC boys fired the cannon.