Kansas Pictures

Anna and Mama (me) hanging out at Grandma Lu's House. Kansas, Summer 2009.

Jonathan and Anna, giving each other hugs on the back porch.

They are REALLY cute!

My Mom, me, Anna and Jonathan.

Anna and Grandma Lu. Lu is short for Ludella. Her last name is Spurlock, but I always called her Grandma Avon growing up because she sold Avon for many years.

Grandma Lu and her Jon Boy, as she calls him. I think he will be taller than her soon...

Anna and her new friend Emma!

Jonathan holding a cool bug shell that Uncle Wayne found for him.

Just hanging out on the porch. The weather was perfect while we were there. Best weather possible.

Jonathan hanging out with his great-Uncle Wayne.

My Mom on the way to the rodeo. She had put some super duper gel in her and then she wore her brush curlers all the way there. When she took them out, her hair looked awesome. I teased it some and made it look extra special.

Anna and me, in Aunt Debby's SUV

Not the most flattering picture of my Mom and I, but for some reason I really like it... I guess because we are happy.

Jonathan and my Mom sat together on the flights. This was on our way from Orlando to Memphis.

Anna spent the entire flight from Memphis to Kansas City studying the emergency procedures brochure very, very carefully.

My cousin Brandi and I! Love her!

Anna with Emma, my cousin Justin's daughter. 3, 4, and 5 yrs old. In Grandma Lu's basement, which I adore so much because it has remained virtually unchanged since my own childhood.

Jonathan at a Wal-Mart we stopped at on the way in from Kansas City to Wichita. He had spotted his first of many interesting "Kansas bugs."

Anna, graceful and sweet. 3 years old.

Anna and Emma were instant friends. When it was time for them to leave the big 4th of July gettogether, Anna, said, Wait! I have to say goodbye to Emma. And she went running down the gravel road, and they hugged by Emma's car and kissed each other on the cheeks like two little old ladies! So funny.

Anna does her own hair. She rocks it.

Jonathan found the hiding place in Grandma Lu's basement. What a happy home Grandma Lu and Grandpa Jerry have made for us all.

Anna loved this guitar. I love the striped carpet in their basement. It's the same carpet that has always been there, and it's stripes make the basement bedroom seem really looooooong.

Anna and her great-grandma Lu playing Barbies. We went to Thursday morning garage sales, and I spent about 12 bucks on Anna, and got a huge assortment of treasures. She even got a cool blue Barbie scooter, which she just loves. She wants to be like aunt Meredith.

My red, white and blue pedicure. I went with my Aunt Rowena, and the guy there gave me the best pedicure I have ever had. He used oil instead of lotion and gave me a massage that did not leave me feeling like I had stress fractures in my feet. Usually I just tell them, no massage, please! Also, I've never had little flowers or rhinestones. What do you all think? Cute or a little trashy?

While I did not enjoy the rodeo, (or as Anna calls it, the radio) I have to say this hat made for some fun pictures. Why did I not enjoy the rodeo? Horses stomping up dust right in my face that made me choke, huge red wasps buzzing around everywhere, cigarette smokers everywhere, bbq smoke blowing on us, dangerous bleachers that made me a nervous wreck because of the kids (and Anna did fall and hurt herself, and it was during the prayer, and I had to carry her out screaming), tiny little children going mutton busting (I had signed Anna up, until I saw what it actually was. They let the sheep out of the chute and the kids come out, holding on for dear life to the bare backs of the sheep, as the sheep charge forward, knocking them off and to the ground in the first few seconds. As Anna said later, "Those were RUDE sheep. And they were all nasty and brown. I wanted white sheep, like in a BARN."

Me and Anna and Jon on my Aunt Rowena's front porch.

Anna at the rodeo. She was pouting. She said, But I want to ride a sheep! and she stomped her little foot, and then she went and sat off by herself. She was really bummed for a while, until she saw how rough the sheep were with the kids.

After the very first horse came stomping by and blew dust in our lungs and faces, (don't sit on the front row!) Jonathan said, "I'm going up high, Mama." He went up to the top bleacher and sat all by himself, until Aunt Ro and Wesley and Nick joined him up there. Jonathan loved the rodeo and he did not want to leave. I wanted to leave because of the terrible way they were treating the calves. I thought it was awful the way they roped them and threw them to the ground. Then my Mom started saying very loudly that I belonged to PETA, and then a lot of people were looking at me like they wanted to shoot me. I was probably just feeling a little paranoid, being so far out of my element as I was. We had to stop at Wal-Mart on the way home for some emergency Benedryl since I was coughing and wheezing like crazy. But I think, the rodeo was entirely worth the trip, to watch my cousin Julie's little boy Wesley, out there mutton busting with the rest of the kids. He wore shorts and tennis shoes, and most of the kids had full on cowboy gear, spurs and everything. He was number 15, and we kept thinking he would back out. His older brother Nick even got scared for him and went over to try and talk him out of it, but Wesley went ahead and did it. He did pretty well, also!

Anna and Jonathan at my Aunt Rowena's big 4th of July party. Jonathan has probably never had so much fun in his life! We had a great time. People in Kansas aren't kidding around when it comes to fireworks. My kids have never seen such big ones. I can't imagine the fortune my cousins spent collectively on all those firecrackers! It was a really nice night though, lots of family there, and the kids had a blast. Jonathan and Anna loved meeting and playing with all of my cousins' kids. There were so many kids there!

Ok, I know I am always saying Anna looks more like her Daddy than me, but this picture looks straight out of the summer of 1984. She looks just like me here. I think it is the wierd foggy quality of the photo also, that reminds me of pics from my own childhood.

This boy needs a dog! He has SO MUCH FUN with Tuffy (he renamed him Scruffy), the Cairn terrier at my Grandma's house, and also with this dog, Riley, my Aunt Debby's little Westie. We were out in Howard where she lives, and the kids had so much fun there.

This is the house my Aunt Debby just bought for 2700 dollars a few weeks ago. She has a real talent for buying houses cheap and then putting a ton of labor and effort into them, and turning them into beauties. She's been flipping houses since before it was really a thing people talked about. When I saw this place, I thought, Omigosh, what an enormous, overwhelming wreck! But she sees a lot of potential, and she's done it before, and I do believe she will make this house into a jewel. I can't wait to come back someday and see what she did with the place.

Jon in Aunt Debby's backyard in Howard.

Anna at the park in Howard. When I asked her what her favorite part of Kansas was, she answered, the turning chairs (referring to the barstools at my Grandma's that spin around) and the park in Howard with the big twisty slide.

My Mom. In her hands is a stolen object. Apparently, my Aunt Debby has been going into this yard and trying to wiggle it out of the ground for a while now, but she was not strong enough by herself. So my Mom and her were able to steal it together. They are so silly. My Aunt Rowena, Anna, and I were all in the getaway car.

There's that hat again.

Aunt Debby and my Mom (they are sisters) with their um, find. Or steal, however you want to look at it. If anyone lives in Howard and you or a relative are looking for a missing plant stand (or whatever this thing is), I can tell you where to find it...

Jonathan with his new best friends. He told me that he thinks we are actually supposed to live in Kansas. We were walking outside one day and he let out this big sigh, and said, I just love Kansas. He loved hanging out with Wesley and Nick, my cousin Julie's 2 boys. Here they are bowling. Jonathan gave up halfway and went and played at the pool table for a while. I had a goal: reach a 100. I had bumper lanes, and still couldn't do it!

Anna, Jonathan, and Wesley and Nick Detter.

Grandma Lu, Anna, Jonathan, and Grandpa Jerry. This was the day we left. They made a pound of bacon and nine eggs for breakfast that morning.

Nick and Wesley Detter, Jonathan, Grandpa Jerry.

How many of us gals can you fit on one couch? Grandma Lu, (mother to Rowena, and my Mom, Donna) on left. Then Ro, and her daughter Julie. Then my mom, and me! We should have squeezed Anna in there to keep the mother/daughter thing going. This couch is funny, because it is rather petite, and it has a tendency to make everyone who sits on it look bigger than life. As a teenager, I would have done almost anything to avoid being photographed on that couch! But now I'm just fat and happy. I may be a whole lot fatter than I was when I was 14 and came to KS, but I am also a whole lot less crazy than I was.

At a McD's on the turnpike. On the way back to Kansas City to catch our plane to DETROIT to get back to ORLANDO. It was the craziest flight itenerary ever! We did not get all the way home until after 2 in the morning. We left at 12 noon central time. The kids were super, super good! I was about to throw myself down in Detroit and have a fit. We almost missed our plane because my Mom refused to believe that I could read and understand English. We were supposed to get on an elevator and get on this little red train that ran above terminal A. She insisted that I was not a "real person" and therefore did not know what I was talking about, and that the directions I was referring to were actually in Chinese. Yes, they were in Chinese, but they were also in English. We had to run probably almost a mile to get to the other end of the terminal. When we finally got there, and got in line to board, Jonathan shook his head and said, We should have just taken that red train. This was almost our breaking point. I don't lose my temper very often but I was about to. We traveled more miles in the air on the way back between Detroit and Orlando than we did the entire distance between Orlando and Kansas City on the way there. Does anyone else understand just how far north Detroit is?

Grandma Lu, Mom, me and Anna.