A reflection on living in Kansas

As our house becomes increasingly empty and the date of departure gets closer, I have been thinking of all the things I will and won't miss about living here.

Things I will miss:
1. Our wonderful friends! I know I'm not posting a picture of all the wonderful friends that we have, but I don't have that many pictures and frankly I kind of suck at taking pictures at parties. :}



2. Beautiful sunsets
3. An easy way of life.
4. Teaching. (would post a picture, but I don't want to hear the flack for posting a picture of my students on my blog.)
5. Getting from one end of town to the next in less then 10 minutes.
6. Lack of traffic.
7. Hobby Lobby.
8. Lovely scenery.



9. School spirit, even though I don't completely understand it.
10. Harry's restaurant.
11. Buffalo.


12. Snow.


13. Purple People. You can't really see all of them, but every football game day we would have massive groups of people wearing purple.


Things I won't miss:
1. Bugs!
2. Stupid drivers. For example: Idiots stopping on freeway on ramps. How do you expect to "merge" on a freeway going 70 mph when you've stopped! Morons.
Today I saw TWO cars driving down the WRONG side of the road. There's some construction and they were driving on the newly paved road. Don't think that there wasn't lines painted in yet, because there was. These people just were too dumb to remember that the yellow line going on your left. After all, we're not British!
3. Giant blood sucking mosquitoes!

4. Stupid college students who litter on my lawn.
5. Bugs.
6. Stupid college students who hit my truck!
7. Bugs.

8. Stupid college students who are too cheap to pay the 150 bucks for a parking ticket, and then crowd our street with their cars and make it easy for the stupid college student to hit my truck!
9. Bugs
10. The humidity! No man/woman should have to sweat this much! Especially when all you do is step outside. Not fair.
11. Bugs.
12. Getting woken up by college students practically fornicating on the side of your house and lots of drunken mayhem.
13. Bugs.
14. Lack of good restaurants. (Sad when so many people get very excited when the Olive Garden came to town.) (sorry if you're one of those people who got excited.)
15. Snow/Ice Storm













16. Tornadoes.




I'm sure I'm missing many wonderful things to list and many not so wonderful things, but every place has it's good and it's bad. I'm by no means saying that California is the best place to live. Sometimes I worry that it's the right choice because there are many things that I don't like about California. For example, the keeping up with the Joanses aspect of living in Orange County. I like driving my 10 year old pick up truck around town and feeling like I fit in, not that I drive a heap of rusting car parts. (I like my truck and it does a great job at it's job.) (Probably just cursed it! It's going to break now...)

I'm sure I'll have ample opportunities to complain about the sunshine and the beach and the perfect weather. :)

All in all, we've really enjoyed living here and our friends made it so special. Thank you to everyone that we've become friends with and that we will continue to make friends with.

It's been a long time coming...

When Clint and I first met, school wasn't exactly the most important thing for Clint. He disliked it and his grades proved it. He'd received many F's his freshman year, and spent the remaining years of high school struggling to get it done with. This had nothing to do with his ability, but more with desire. Clint hated high school, as did I.

Many people who knew him back then never would have thought he would go to college, let alone go to college for 10 years and get a doctor's degree! Due to a low GPA Clint went to community college after taking a year off after high school, waiting for me to get done. In fact, many people told him that he wasn't going to go back to school if he took a year off.

If anything it was the best decision he could have made! While working at a construction company, being treated like scum, he got fed up and wanted to do something that was as far away from a construction work as possible. So he thought, "Hey how about a doctor?" Only problem was that Clint didn't like sick people. So he decided on Veterinary Medicine. He excelled at community college then at UCSD and finally at Kansas State!

When we moved her in 2006 I remember thinking that graduation was going to be so far away and that our time in Kansas was going to be a really long time. There have been times, that living in the mid-west has had it's challenges but we have also had many wonderful blessing from this experience. One of the high-lights has been Clint graduating and officially making a dream come true to become a doctor!










Dr. Wayland leaving the stage.


When I sat down in my chair, I had a sense of relief, thinking, It's finally here! What a great feeling.

He might be a doctor now, but the daddy duty is never done.

Dr. Wayland and his family!



Dr. Wayland, me, Clark and my brother Jack. What you don't see is Diane is flailing her arms around and acting like a goof ball all so she could get Clark to smile. I think she did a great job because she got all of us to laugh!

Dr. Wayland, Jack, Diane, and Clark covering my face, but that's o.k. He's cute.


Dr. Wayland, Jack and Diane


Dr. Wayland and his mommy.



Clark and his Doctor daddy!

Clint with Grandma and Dick our family friend. It was very nice he could make it out and we were so happy he was able to join us!





The gang walking back after taking pictures together.

To celebrate Clint's achievements, we all enjoyed a DELICIOUS meal at Harry's. Harry's is the best restaurant in town and we all loved our food.

During the entire meal, every time our waitress would come by, Clark would follow her around the table with his eyes. She was standing behind him at this point.

Clark enjoying eating at the table.

Clark saying he's done with his bottle.

I couldn't decide which of the group pictures were better, so I picked the one that Clark looks the best in!


One of my biggest fears for the day was that Clark would have a massive spitting up episode and ruin my outfit. I held him facing out pretty much the entire day. When I went to take my seat for the ceremony I had him facing away from me as I scooted down in front of others to get to my seat. The entire time he was facing out and toward the people sitting in their chairs. I prayed that he wouldn't spit up on anyone and I was lucky he didn't.

Clark did FABULOUS! Graduation ceremonies was during his afternoon nap, but he sat in my lap and happily played with toys and hardly made a sound. He did have some spit up episodes, but I made sure to cover my dress and his pants with burp clothes so that if he did it would just hit that instead of our clothes. It worked rather well. I actually made it through the whole night without spit up on my dress, but a little got on Clark's sweater. He was amazing and I am so lucky to have two wonderful guys that I am so proud of!