Disney World!

Well if we weren't crazy enough, vacation time rolls around and we go on vacation to Disney World in Orlando. Of course, we don't do this half way. We go with my WHOLE family. Yes, 15 fly to Florida to spend ONE week together. Unfortunately, Ryan and Kathy could not join us, nor my brother-in-law Jeremy. We still had a crowd!

So after leaving my folks house at 3:30 am and driving to Kansas City International Airport, we hung out, ate breakfast and took up most of the passenger line. The trip down was pretty uneventful.

A van service came and picked us up to take us to the hotel. Of course, not everything can go smooth and my family waited till the second bus showed up. We stayed at Shades of Green, the military hotel. Very nice.

We spent the week going to the different parks. Monday was Hollywood, Tuesday Epcot, Thursday Magical Kingdom and Friday Animal Kingdom. Wednesday was Pool Day. My first cousin on my dads side came and joined us. I hadn't seen her in ..... 32 years!! I can't be that old! It was fun.

I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Unfortunately, my nephew Stephen got sick with an ear infection the last two days. We were dog tired by the time we left. Ready to come home and rest from the vacation. It was a blast though.

More Tornado Pictures

This first picture is really awesome. This is the Chapman tornado. I do not know who took it but WOW is all I can say. Then to my dismay I found out that it was a doctored photo. The buildings really do belong to the Coop in Chapman but someone added the tornado.

The other pictures were taken by a faculty member of campus. He reported for work on Thursday with the rest of the faculty, took pictures, helped with clean up and then went home to do his own clean up as he lost his whole house.

Good friends from El Paso now live in Chapman, and they were very lucky and the tornado missed their house. A co-worker's house was affected by the tornado only in an odd way. The house shifted on the foundation but because of the lack of structural integrity it's pretty much a total.

In Manhattan, 31 houses were destroyed and 50 houses had major damage. This last Tuesday we had a bad lightning storm and several houses were hit with major damage. One home was left standing amidst many tornado destroyed homes only to be hit by the lightning and destroyed. Weather is such a freaky thing.

Tornado in Manhattan follow up

After I posted I noticed that the link was missing!!! Copy and paste into your browser:

http://labrisaphoto.blogspot.com/

Tornado in Manhattan

I wasn't able to blog last week as we were on vacation in Florida. My plan is to catch up and post some pictures of our trip but of course I had to do some catch up at work first.

Before I start blogging about our trip. Last week, while we were gone a tornado hit a town just 30 miles west of Manhattan, which then continued through and hit here. Chapman is 80% destroyed. Many of our friends lost homes there. Even if a home hadn't taken a direct hit, some were moved on their foundation which now makes them structurally unsafe.

My photographer friend Chris, who took the girls' pictures, drove around and took some amazing pictures. This link will take you to a slide show that shows the devastation.

We are fine. Wamego did have a couple of funnel clouds go over but nothing touched down. We are blessed.

Our House

After 26 years of marriage and moving around, from Army post to Army post, living in rental apartments and houses or in government quarters we made the leap and bought a house!! OMG!! I have never been through such a scary process. The night we signed up our realtor I thought I was going to be sick.

We had looked all through Manhattan and couldn't find one in our price range. Let me rephrase that: we couldn't find any thing decent to live in within our means. So we expanded our area to include Wamego. A quant little town about 15 miles east of Manhattan where JR's grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins live.

So we took a Saturday and drove around with our realtor. What a riot. Many houses, many rejections. Then we stopped on Walnut in front of a small home with a for sale sign outside it. Our realtor told us the listed price and we thought it was a bit outrageous. So much so that we had to look at it.



We walked in and both fell in love with the house. After much negotiation we signed for the house on Feb 28. Wow, we are now home owners! After moving in 1 April, the house is as settled as possible. I am still hanging pictures, I figured that will take a while. Considering my hesitation at this home ownership I must say I love it.

As you can see we have a LARGE yard. The house sits on two lots and there is a detached 2 car garage in the back. A small patio comes off the back door. It's enough room for my lawn table and chairs and a water fountain JR got me for my birthday.

It is a 1 1/2 story, 4 bedroom, 2 bath, full unfinished basement. This is our till they take us out on a stretcer!!

Everyone is welcome anytime to come and visit us. Our door is open and we can find a space for you to crash on.

My girls

My friend Chris, from work, has really become an excellent photographer. He did a great picture of the family last year for our 25th Wedding Anniversary.

And just a couple of weeks ago I asked him to do pictures of the girls for me. I thought I would share a few.

New at this

Looks like I'll join the bandwagon and see how this works. Now that summer is here I think that I'll have a bit of time on my hands. My immediate supervisor quit before the end of the school year so I am unsupervised!!

JR is 2/3 of the way retired. April 30 was his retirement ceremony. Very emotional. Lots of family there!!! Here we have my mom, Great Aunt Lena and JR's mom.

Both JR's sisters, husbands, nieces and nephews were there.

Of course the girls were there, along with good friends. This is Alicia and our host daughter from Paraguay, Claudia. See who is hanging out with Bethany??

AW..... this is fun!

JR then signed out on "Transitional Leave" on May 22. He has been hanging around the house doing things on my honey do list, and Aunt Lena's honey do list, and Bethany's honey do list.... We are keeping him busy. He may get a job just to get away from the honey do's.

Let's see how well I do at this. It's been fun seeing others' blogs. See you all tomorrow maybe.