Our garden part duex

Traci and I spent a few nights over the past couple of weeks getting our garden started. We planted some of the same things that we did last year plus a few new ones. We started the following from seeds and clumps of "stuff"- Watermelon, strawberries, onions, cucumbers, snow peas, and corn. Tomatoes, bell peppers, peppers and some watermelon were started a few weeks ago in the house.

The garden is in the back corner of the yard

Where all the magic happens

Last year the cute little bunnies ate up all of our snow peas before they had the chance to grow so this year we put up a small fence to protect the small plants and just to be sure that the rabbit doesn't nibble on anything else, we are setting up a live trap tomorrow night to try and catch it. I will keep you posted on our efforts. We planted two rows of corn just to see it grow and we hope to get a couple of ears from the stalks. :-)

Corn

WatermelonTomato and Peppers

Onions

Asparagus

Snow Peas

We will keep you updated as everything grows and hope your garden brings you lots of veggies this year.

Bill and Traci

Memorial Day 2009

This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend and we enjoyed every minute of it! The time that wasn't spent sleeping was dedicated to floating lazily around Smithville Lake, staring at the camp fire or listening to the Kansas City Symphony play American classics.

After work on Friday, we headed to Smithville lake for a couple of nights of relaxation and sitting around the campfire. Jeff and Jamie have been our camping partners for the past two years and this year was no exception. The weather was hot and muggy and our camping spot about 500 meters from the lake. The camp grounds were completely sold out so we had plenty of company for the weekend.

Our home away from home is the one on the left

Jamie and Traci getting settled in

Now that's a fire

Saturday was spent sleeping, reading, listening to the Royals get beat on by the Cardinals and more staring at the camp fire that night. Traci and I busted out our floating rafts and enjoyed the cool water for about an hour. We got up bright and early Sunday morning and headed for home.

Sunday evening we went to Union Station to watch the Kansas City Symphony play for a couple of hours followed up by a firework show at Liberty Memorial. This was our second time attending this event in the past 3 years. If a touching event for a few reasons: 1.) The purpose behind the event is made known throughout the entire show. It was a tribute to everyone who help make our country free. 2.) The audience was said to be over 40,000 people and of that many veterans were in attendance. 3.) There was a tribute to each branch of the service by playing each of their songs/hymn, having each color guard take center stage and as each song/hymn was played and all service members were asked to stand. The crowd would applaud and cheer as the service members took to their feet.

Union Station

Liberty Memorial

The Kansas City Symphony

The Marine Color Guard

Patriotic colors

Closing number

Fireworks over Liberty Memorial

We spent Monday mowing and catching a few more Zs. :-)

We hope you were able to take some time to reflect about those who have fought and died for our great country!

Bill and Traci

Only in California

As most of you know, I spent 14 years of my life in Southern California and a majority of that time was spent near the sunny beaches and a small fraction in the Mojave Desert. The time near the beach was awesome because of....THE BEACH and the time spent in the desert were some of the most peaceful years I can remember.

Nothing can compare to waking up at 5am and hearing nothing but the wind blowing and a pack coyotes howling to confuse its prey. From my house in Yucca Valley, I could see the snow capped mountains of San Jacento and Big Bear, the rock formations in the Joshua Tree National Monument and thousands of Joshua Trees stretching their branches to the sky.

A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to have my company send me and small contingent of consultants to California to meet one of our clients. The client was located smack dab in the middle of both places I mentioned above. I was fortunate that the people who travelled with me were tolerant and ok with me taking them on a trip down memory lane. :-) We spent one evening watching the sunset from the pier in San Clemente, enjoying the lights of the boats in Dana Point Harbor and driving up the coast to Laguna Beach. We spent another evening driving to the Mojave Desert and stopping at all the "interesting" spots along the way. The goal of this trip was to stop at a restaurant I used to frequent in 29 Palms (If it was still there).

The first stop on our trip took us to a landmark that was made famous by Pee Wee Herman from his first movie "Pee Wee's Big Adventure". There are two life size dinosaurs at a truck stop that one can stop and take pictures with and for $10 take a trip into the body of the T-Rex. None of us were that into it, so we settled for a few pictures and were on our way. Our next stop was the windmill farm.

It was very windy

Relaxing on the feet of T-Rex

Michael and T-Rex

There is an area by Palm Springs were a couple of mountains come together and wind is forced through a small area between the mountains. The wind constantly blows in this area and over the years, people has put up wind mills to the wind and turn it into energy. It is pretty cool to see the miles and miles of wind mills on the desert floor spinning in circles. Once we had our fill of watching the spinny objects, we headed for the high desert.

Miles and miles of windmills

For the next 40 minutes we drove up hill to the place where the Joshua Tree grows. We entered the Joshua Tree National Monument and drove for the next hour or stopping and taking pictures when the mood struck us.

Can you hear it? NO NOISE :-)
Sal, Bill, Erin and Michael under a Joshua Tree

Rock formation in Joshua Tree Park

Sal conquers the formation
A dam in the middle of the desertYou can see the water mark on the rocks A view from the top of the dam. There is a little water

In case you were thinking about taking a dip

Desert cactus in bloom
Incredible landscape

As the sun set, we made our way to 29 Palms and to find an old restaurant where I used to eat BBQ. Even though the BBQ was nothing like Kansas City BBQ, I enjoyed sitting in this familiar place. We finished up our meals and started on our trek home. We crammed a week of Southern California site seeing into two 3 hour day trips. :-)

May all your trips be as memorable as mine.

Bill

A visit to the most haunted city in Kansas

This past weekend Traci and I skipped our annual trek to the Brew Fest in Parkville, KS for the adventure of a lifetime. Our friends Jamie and Jeff invited us to go to Atchison, Kansas and take the "Haunted Tour" and then check out a house that was supposed to be inhabited by a ghost or two.

We drove about an hour North of Kansas City to the small town of Atchison and pulled into the Chamber of Commerce about 2pm. The haunted tour started at 6pm so we had some time to kill. We all decided to take the "Historical City Tour" and then go and grab something to eat. The city tour consisted of a ride on a pseudo trolley train through the streets of Atchison. We saw all three birthplaces of Amelia Earheart, the bluff that Lewis and Clark rested on for two days, lots of huge houses, and a half dozen haunted houses.

Our city tour chariot

Traci and Bill getting ready to board

The only way to ride.. back seat

This was a party house back in the day. The 3rd floor is a ball roomA view from the porch of the party house
Amelia Earhart's birth place

A picture of Amelia Earhart made of flowers

The tour lasted an hour and we were dropped off at the Chamber of Commerce with 3 hours to kill. We decided to drive back to some of the sites we saw on the tour and explored them on foot. We grabbed a bite of Mexican food and headed back for our 6pm scary tour.

Our haunted house tour chariot

The Gargoyle house

The gargoyles

The haunted house tour took place on the same trolley and went up and down some of the same roads we had been on earlier. The main difference between the tours was that the haunted one played ghost stories with scary music from an MP3 player. One other interesting thing that we noted on the tour was that there was LOTS of houses that had people gathered on the front porches. Not just one or two people, but 10-15 and they were grilling and drinking beers. Each group would stop what they were doing when the trolley rolled by and waved to us. I felt like a celebrity waving every couple of minutes to all the town folk. :-)

About an hour later, we completed our tour and wound up back where we started. One of the houses we saw on the tour was the Sallie house. This was a house that was allegedly haunted by a small girl that died from a ruptured appendix while she was being operated on before the anesthesia took affect. This place is usually closed to the public; however, it has been opened in the past for ghost hunters and some TV shows looking for ghosts. We were in for the treat of a lifetime as the house was being opened to the public for the first time ever and for a mere $10 a piece we were on our way.

We pulled up to the house and were greeted with a brief history of the house and asked to put on a pair of booties. The house was empty with the exception of an operating table, a bed, and some children's toys. People were milling about in every room taking pictures, laying on the floor and sharing ghost stories. The basement had been blocked off and no one was allowed to venture downstairs... more later... We took pictures all over the house and then ventured back on the porch to chat with the tour hosts. While on the porch, we were looking at the pictures we took and noticed that some of them had these white orbs in them. One of the hosts, Cindy, explained that these images were ghosts and we were lucky to have captured them.

The front of the Sallie house

The scary basement

In the living room... we have matching booties

Orb in one of the rooms

After dark orb

This got Traci, Jeff and Jamie all pumped up and they headed back in for more pictures. I spent the next hour getting to know the town people and hearing lots and lots of ghost stories. I learned that people thought that there were a couple of ghosts in the house. 1 was the small girl and the other was a not so friendly ghost who lived in the basement. Cindy explained that a while back a TV crew had been in the basement taping and ended up running out of the house as the ghost in the basement completely freaked them out. The crew said that they thought there was a vortex in the basement and they felt a lot of evil down there. Cindy believes that this is the reason the owner was keeping people from going down below. The house finally closed down at 9pm and Traci and company were kicked out. :-)

Two freaky things happened while I was perched on the porch. A lady came running out of the house completely freaked out. She was looking down into the basement and said she felt all the hair on the back of her neck stand on end and heard something coming from the basement directed at her. The second freaky thing came from a girl scout who was visiting from a nearby city. She took a picture out of one of the upstairs windows and in the reflection of the window was the image of a person in a dress. A real ghost hunter had been roaming around the house and was very interested in the picture. I saw the picture a couple of times and can confirm what was on the camera view finder. Weird stuff!!!

After the closing of the house, we went on a drive to find a place called Molly's Hollow. It was a place that was haunted by a girl who died after she professed her love to a boy and he told her to get lost. The Hollow was in the middle of a very dark park and we drove around for 15-20 before giving up on finding it. I asked everyone if they wanted to get out and walk in the park but no one stepped up to the challenge. :-)

We started our journey home and arrived about 11pm. We were all exhausted from our ghost hunting adventures in North Eastern Kansas.

I hope all your adventures are as exciting as ours.

Bill and Traci