Yes, we are in Kansas, Dorothy!

June 1-8, 2011

There has been no time for rest. It seems we haven't stopped having guests or traveling ourselves for the last few weeks. After my dad's 14 day visit, I had three days to prepare for my road trip west to Kansas City, where I will meet my mom who is flying from California. I packed up the car and drove west for 8 hours to collect mom from the Kansas City Airport. Once I had collected the mother ship, we continued west to the town of Atchison, Kansas. My mom was born and raised in a tiny town just outside of Atchison called Farmington. I am bringing her here to attend her 60 year high school reunion. It is crazy how I am related to almost everyone in this small farming community. Good thing my mom came west when she was young and met my dad in California as the gene pool in this tiny community had to be getting a little too close for comfort. :o)

Here is my little photo essay on our trip....

Beautiful downtown Lancaster, Kansas. The town has a population of roughly 250. Farming is what people here do. Town consists of a cafe, a bank and a bar. You can see the large grain elevators in the background.

One of our first stops was to see mom's old friend Lucille. She was the center on their high school basketball team. A real gem. Now runs a black angus beef ranch with the help of her sons. Here is her house:

......some of the yummy black angus :o)

Lucille and mom

It didn't take me long to go poking around the barnyard. I have always loved exploring farms. You can take the girl out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the girl.

It took me no time at all to find the litter of black kittens out by one of the barns. Could have brought them all home with me.

And then there was that cute, adorable Annie, the angus twin calf. The mother only accepted one of the twins, so Lucille is bottle feeding Annie and she will be raised by people. I had a great time playing with her in the barn. Could have brought her home with me too!

We stopped to get gas in another tiny town called Effingham, population about 500. This is where my mom went to high school and where her class reunion will take place. I just had to take a photo of the gas pump as I was filling the car. I haven't seen one like this in years. Hearing the click, click, click of the numbers was so retro.

It was really great to see many of my cousins around the area. Here are Mike & Penny and their daughter Gentry. I have spent many visits on their farm since I was just a kid and have many fond memories of their place.

Here is their farm

This is Mike's dad Bud, who raised his family on the farm before Mike took it over.

More cousins, Dutch and Tommy with mom and I. We stopped to visit them at a 19th century house they are restoring.

We also stopped and had lunch with Roy and Selma. Here is Dutch, Mom, Selma and me. I obviously got the giant genes from my dad's side of the family.

My mom and her brother, my uncle Bill

Here is my mom, Shirley, with her friend Laverne. Yes, it WAS the Laverne and Shirley show. The three of us stayed in a hotel in Atchison. Something I will never forget :o)

The little baptist church in Farmington where my great-great grandparents were charter members.

I had a chance to drive around Atchison while my mom was out partying with her old classmates. The town sits right on the west bank of the Missouri River. The Kansas/Missouri state line runs up the middle of the Missouri River, pictured here.

The big old victorian houses in Atchison are just fantastic. A great place for someone like me who really appreciates what it takes to build and maintain one of these beauties. The history of the town includes being the birthplace of Amelia Earhart and being a major stop along the Louis & Clark Trail.

I thought these gargoyles were just fantastic!

We spent four days in the Atchison/Farmington area. We had a wonderful time despite the 100 degree temperatures. One really does have to appreciate what it takes to be a farmer in this rural part of the country, especially when it is so hot outside and the planting and tending to cattle still has to be done. I brought mom back to B-town with me for a couple of days so she could have a look at our home improvements before she went back to California. We had a great week!

Next stop, Washington DC..........

Construction Continues with Dad's Helping Hands

We have now been working on our house since July of 2010. With any luck, and the helping hands of our family and friends, we may almost finish this project by July 2011! Rowan and I keep chipping away at finish work around the house. Here are the photos with some commentary of our work and also what has been accomplished during my dad's 2 week visit.

We have been plugging away at getting the trim in the house finished. It seems like a never ending job as all of the wood must be primed first and then painted again with the finish coat. This task will be perfect as the weather here gets warmer (into the 90's) as summer comes. Working inside is where we will want to be.

We are having a hard time getting the outside of the house painted. We had almost 12 inches of rain in May so it was nearly impossible to paint anything outside. It was raining almost every day. We decided to start priming the cedar trim inside the front porch so we can at least start the finish painting inside that space soon.

I finished staining the two 4x8 ft maple bookshelves for the living room and worked on building them in and attaching them to the wall.

We will add on to the shelf unit ourselves by building in more shelves to the right and over the doorway. This will end up being our library wall in the living room.

Our last bit of outside construction was to get the steps to the side door built so we could stop leaping from the door to take the garbage out. We kept having to remind ourselves to watch that last step, it's a looloo! Our builder built this out of cedar for us between rainstorms.

My daddy came to visit us the last 2 weeks of May. Just in time for all of the exciting weather you have seen in my last post. We did have a couple of sunny days in a row, so he got to work putting the sealer on the new cedar steps to the side door.

Our daddy wish list was long, so we got right to work on assorted projects. Here we are adding some extra shelving to the service porch/wash room.

Rowan assisting dad on the table saw.

We also had dad help us do some improvements on one of our rental properties. He helped us install an exhaust hood over the stove. Being the expert sheet metal man he is, the job was done with exceptional quality. We definitely had the man in his element.

This next project was really cool. We decided to save some of the original framing timbers from the house as the demolition was under way. I saved back a bunch of 1953 douglas fir 2x6 boards from the original roof structure. They were in such perfect condition, we couldn't just throw them in the dumpster. We thought we might build a piece of furniture out of them down the road. Well, when dad got here we pulled all of the nails out of them and took them out to the lumber mill where we had our wood floors and trim made. They planed them down for us and they came out just down right beautiful. We brought them back home and decided to make a dining table for our new front porch out of them. Here are the photos:

Dad, Rowan and I with a nearly finished table. He worked right up to the last minute before we needed to head for the airport to send him back to California. Rowan and I will have to trim the board ends on the table and route the edges and legs and do the finishing.

Rowan doing the sealing and weather proofing

It took only 24 hours after we finished the table for us to try it out for a memorial day cook out with our neighbor Alex as our first guest at the table. It is going to be a perfect addition to our new porch and a nice piece of history from the house to eat off of.

I will end this post with a picture of a very happy cat. This is Fergus showing you how content he is in his new and improved house. :o)

More food and travel coming next..............