FUTURE PLANS

Today we arrived in Red Wing, MN and will stay north for about a week, and probably will be in Decorah in a few days. We want to see our friends that just returned from Alaska, if we can find them. Then it's back to Omaha for the dentist. Jenna was just chosen for the middle school volleyball team, so we'll return by the 9th to watch her. Being grandparents is great!

Two of these buses passed us yesterday on their way to Minneapolis-the coffee group will understand that Don wished he had a rock!

ANOTHER PASSAGE IN LIFE

We had a neat experience Friday night-another passage in life. Our oldest grandchild, Jake, a sophomore, played center in the 4th quarter of his first varsity football game for the Burke Bulldogs. Boy, time flies-seems like only yesterday we were watching his father play the same position for the Grinnell Tigers. Back then I remember thinking that the other teams were huge-bodily and in numbers of players. (When our boys started playing, we played teams like Ankeny, until they changed the districts.) When Jake's team entered the field, I finally felt like our team was part of the French Foreign Legion-70 strong and some guys were huge! Don noticed that #58 had a belly like his. Burke won 41-0-that's with three TD's called back and the coach sacrificed another, so he wouldn't run up the score. We're enjoying watching all three boys play, and Russ coach, but this one made us feel older!

See all those guys!

Jake, #60, practicing on the side lines before entering the game.

In action!

His proud parents, Russ and Carrie, and youngest brother, Joe.

LAKE MANAWA

We drove up to Omaha, actually Council Bluffs, on Sunday, and have spent time with Russ' family and had a "lovely" visit with the new dentist. On September 10th, he's going to do a procedure lasting 3-4 hours, which I'm sure will be" just delightful". I'm going to sleep through it-thank God! Every time I asked about complications (I'm good at those!), or misery afterwards, he kept saying he thought I'd be disappointed. At the top of my prayer list is a huge request to be disappointed! I could handle that just fine!

During the waiting time, we're going to 3 football games and then planning on heading north for about a week, and may even get to Decorah for a few days.

I did want to share with you a little of the current beauty here at the lake. The water lillies are in bloom, but the only way to get a picture is from the rear without a boat. We thought these were even pretty.

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CATHEDRAL

We went to Mass this afternoon at the Cathedral, which had beautiful windows and was in a lovely restored downtown neighborhood full of condos. Now we can leave earlier tomorrow for Omaha, for my dreaded dental appointment on Tuesday. We are looking forward to Jake, Dan and Brian's football games. It will be fun to see how their father (Russ), does as Brian's head coach. Jake just started his sophomore year, but has been moved up to first string varsity. It seems like only yesterday we were attending Russ and Scott's games. I guess that we're proof positive "that time flies when you're having fun"!!!

STEAMBOAT ARABIA

Kathy Fitzgerald told us about this museum which cost $11.50, but was worth every penny. The Steamboat Arabia sunk in the Missouri River in 1856, but years later the river changed course, and it ended up being buried in a cornfield. It was buried for 132 years, but its evacuation in 1988 uncovered a "time capsule" of remarkably preserved supplies of all types from clothes to dishes to hardware, and even food. Most of the passengers on the steamboat were women and children going to join their husbands, and they were all saved. The only casualty was a mule which has been named "Lawrence-of Arabia". Besides getting to see all the preserved contents of the boat, you learn the story of the recovery process, done by three men and their families, none of which had any experience. They've passed up great wealth by not selling any of the contents, and have set up a foundation to keep the museum in Kansas City. They still figure it will take ten more years to restore the rest of the contents. It's an amazing story!

CITY MARKET

This morning we went downtown to the City Market, which consists of 140 booths selling flowers, vegetables, fruits, baked goods, gifts, food and even birds. It's one of the best we've been to, even better than Minneapolis. (Sorry, Scott!)

MOON MARBLE COMPANY

In the afternoon, we took a drive over to Bonner Springs to visit the Moon Marble Company, and were surprised when we saw this "not so great building" right next to the railroad tracks. Inside was full of marbles and toys to buy, displayed rather erraticly. (You can tell this is the judgement of an anal person. I come by it naturally since my Dad kept the canned goods in alphabetical order. My parents once had an argument over where the mayonaisse should go -under m for mayo or s for salad dressing. Sorry, I digress.) Anyway, we got to go back into the workroom and watch a guy named Brian, make a marble from two rods of clear glass. He then used colored rods to put stripes on. All this was done using a torch that was really hot-a couple thousand degrees. When he was done he put it in a kiln at 950 degrees, which he would turn off when he went home, and it could slowly cool overnight. It was a neat experience-so neat, that we bought one of his marbles before we left.

NATIONAL FRONTIER TRAILS MUSEUM

We took one day off and did laundry and other chores. Don was running out of underwear which was about to cause a major crisis. We were then free to do more interesting things. The next morning we went down the street to the National Frontier Trails Museum, a place where there are still ruts in the ground from the wagon trains. The exhibits in the museum trace the Oregon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail and the Mormon Trail, and tell about the hardships they encountered along the way. We decided it's a lot easier traveling in the RV, than in a covered wagon!

FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF KANSAS CITY

Next we stopped at the new Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and took the self-guided, free tour. We got to see what 40 million dollars looks like when piled in rows. There was also a gold brick worth $380,000. I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the neatest part where the vault is, as it was against security-which was pretty tight. The vault has 9 ton doors and major security. Robotic forklifts follow electronic signal commands, and take the money back and forth into the vault. We watched the employees in other rooms put bills in machines to be counted and they checked them closely, then packaged them. They usually find 5 to 7 counterfeit bills a day, which are turned over to the Secret Service. We watched for a long time because it was very interesting.

NATIONAL WORLD WAR I MUSEUM

The National World War I Museum increased our respect for all our relatives and other men and women who served our country in that war. So much of it was fought from trenches and "they had to cope with lice, mud, rats, poorly maintained latrines, trench foot and other deplorable conditions". When you enter and leave, you walk across a glass bridge with poppies beneath it. These were in bloom at Flanders field in Belgium where they fought. Each of the 9000 poppies represents 1,000 combatent deaths, to equal over 9,000,000 deaths.

HALLMARK CARDS

Next we took the tour at Hallmark Cards which included a timeline of the history of the company. They'll be celebrating their 100th birthday in 2010. The exhibits included an Emmy and other awards they've won for their movies on the Hallmark Hall of Fame. There were displays of finished products and how they were made, along with their distribution throughout the world. We also got to push a button and watch a bow being made, and then keep it. It's amazing to see the wide variety of things they manufacture.

CROWN CENTER

Today we went down to the Crown Center and went through some of the shops. Kansas City is known for its fountains, and we saw several today.

HARRY S. TRUMAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

We enjoyed the museum, but found, as usual, that's it difficult taking pictures inside. You're not allowed to use a flash and the lighting makes good photography difficult. It makes for a fuzzy oval office, but thought you'd like to see what it looked like. I'm sure you'll all remember, "The buck stops here!" He made some tough decisions, as all presidents do. He and Bess are buried in the courtyard, right outside his "working office". He worked there until about six years before he died, and would often answer the museum phone or take groups on tour, usually children. His daughter, Margaret, and her husband's urns, were recently interred there also. There was also a traveling exhibit about Abraham Lincoln, which was interesting.