KC Girls Weekend: pond floating

8-14-09 reminiscing brain
Continuing from yesterday’s post….
After lunch we did some quick window shopping in a few boutiques next to the restaurant- no BIG purchases. Then we were all off to Molly and Jeff’s place, just south of KC, at their animal-hobby farm they call Aggie Acres.



We headed almost straight to the swimming pond, as soon as we changed our clothes and mixed up some drinks- Something fancy that Molly just whipped up…. It had lemonade in it I believe. My memory is a bit fussy about this detail. I wonder why? Then my college friend Teresa who also lives in KC joined us at just the right time and also another neighbor girlfriend of Molly’s.

Below: Teresa, Molly, Me, Ann


I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.





Picture from Annette's camera!




We finally realized that it was getting close to 7:00 PM and we needed to start preparing the dinner that Molly had planned for us.... But before I get to that... tomorrow- just a few more of my favorite silly pictures from the afternoon at the pond, which I can't really explain. As Ann says "What happens in KC, stays in KC".

KC Girls Weekend: Saturday lunch

8-13-09 reminiscing brain
When I left off by post yesterday, Ann and I were dressed for lunch with our hair extensions in, taking "Farah" pictures, and waiting for another friend, Kelley, to arrive from Des Moines. Kelley was not able to travel with us Friday night, so she was arriving by herself on Saturday morning.

That was fine with me, I slept in until 9:00AM, since Ann and I were up past midnight. However, I do find it necessary to report on what Ann was up to Saturday morning while I was still in bed. Ann accomplishes more in one morning than I do in one day!

It's the weekend, but Ann is still up at her usual time, must of been around 5:00AM. I woke up with her alarm, but fell back to sleep.

Ann took her shower, baked Zucchini bread for us, drove to the Brookside Farmers Market, and then stopped by McDonalds for her coffee (she loves McDonalds coffee!)... and as I was just getting out of bed, she came home with a McDonals biscuit for my breakfast.

On the way back to the house, Ann had spotted some rummage/garage sales in the area, thus when I finished breakfast and went to take my shower, Ann headed out again, shopping at four rummage sales by the time I was dressed. (Ann loves rummage sales!)

Since Kelley called and told us she was running late, Ann and I hopped in the car and went to shop at the other TJ Maxx, which is close to our KC house. We had about 45 minutes to kill.

Finally we met up with Kelley and headed to the restaurant where we were meeting up with Molly and her good childhood/high school friend, Annette. I know Annette somewhat, since she would visit Molly when Molly lived and Des Moines and we hung out there as singles back in the mid-1980's.

Here is Annette, ME, and Kelley.



Here is Ann and Molly


Here is all of us, thanks to a cute male waiter, which made lunch even more fun! The food was good I guess... I wasn't paying much attention.... we were conversing and laughing.... and that's what I remember about lunch.

Girls Weekend: Fun with $7.00

8-12-09 silly brain
Ann spotted it first as we walked into the TJ Maxx…. the bargain table which held Jessica Simpson hair extensions reduced from $40.00 to only $7.00. I didn’t know such a thing existed, and never would I believe that I needed to own one. BUT for only $7.00, how could I go wrong?

Ann, having black hair, was easy to match. Me, with my naturally blond hair, I was doubtful there would be one that would even come close…. But Ann insisted that the one called “honey blond” was very close. Like I said- for $7.00, how could I pass up at least trying it out?

We arrived to KC house about 9:30PM and decided to try out our new hair. I believe we laughed more in that one night than most people laugh in a week’s time. Just for that reason, the $7.00 was money well spent!

We decided we HAD to wear our hair extensions to lunch on Saturday when we were meeting up with the other gals who were joining in on the KC girls’ weekend.

With my hair extension on, I felt like I was channeling Farah Fawcett. I had the idea to try to recreate a similar pose to the famous Farah poster from the 70’s. Ann and I had plenty of giggles with this activity!


When I later showed Greg the photos of my Farah look-a-like attempt, his only reply was….. “You have too many clothes on”.

I guess he wasn’t even looking at the hair? I realized later, after looking up the original Farah poster that I had my arms positioned incorrectly. Oh well... that was 30 years ago. To Farah...... Rest In Peace.

Girls Weekend: traveling to KC

8-11-09 reminiscing brain
I’m spending time in KC this week, so a perfect time to reminisce about my July Girls Weekend in KC, which happened about 3 weekends ago.

The weekend started with the drive down from Des Moines on Friday evening with Ann and her “new” car (new to her). She was dealing with the previous owner for several weeks before they came to an agreement on the car price. Ann enjoys negotiating. Ann has named the car her “sweet ride”. I call it the “sweet mobile” in contrast to her van which is the “shopping mobile”.



Her car is very luxurious with leather seats and a wonderful smooth ride on the highway. We met Greg in between KC and Des Moines as he was coming to Des Moines for a retirement party that weekend. He snapped our picture in Bethany were the three of us ate dinner.


Since I know Ann likes music from the 70’s I had searched through my CD collect and choose about 6 albums to bring along to create a fun play list for our 3 hour drive to KC. I started off with one of my favorites, Meat Loaf, Bat out of Hell CD and played “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights”- A great summer song from around 1978.

I enjoy spending time with Ann. We laugh a lot together. The more I learn about her, I realize that the first part of her life was very tough living, in contrast to my idyllic childhood.

Ann’s family came to the U.S. from Trinidad when she was around 8 years old, I believe. Her mother forced the kids to study and work hard and Ann graduated high school by age 16; left home to escape her mother; joined the military at age 17; met and married an Iowa farm boy at age 20, who also was in the military; went to nursing school; became a mother.

It seems that Ann is only now beginning to be able to really enjoy life since her son is now out of college. Ann told me that when her son went off the college, she realized she needed to create a new life for herself apart from being just a mother and wife and she needed to make some friends. Now Ann has many friends.

So I see my role, as Ann’s new friend since 2005, is to help Ann relive some of the silly teenage years she missed out on. AND I’m just the person to do that. I believe we accomplished that on our fun girls weekend.

As we drove into north KC, Ann insisted we stop at the TJ Max store in that part of town. Now there is a TJ Max within a mile of our KC house, but Ann especially likes this store. Ann will stop at every TJ Max store which her path crosses. We did find a few FUN bargains…..
To be continued tomorrow-

PS: Ann is getting up at 3:00AM this morning to attend the send off of the Honor Flight from Des Moines today at 7:00AM. The public was invited out to the airport to show support for the Veterans. The fact that Ann wants to do this, tells you a lot about Ann.

Back and 4th: garden beauty

8-10-09 flower power brain
One last post about my hometown 4th of July visit. Another usual vacation tradition over the 4th of July is the 20 mile drive over to Rockford, Iowa to visit the Fitz Reading Garden. This is a wonderful, large backyard garden at the home of master gardener, Stan and Corlyss Fitz.

This garden is not only full of wonderful plants and flowers, but full of whimsy and charm. There is an outdoor “reading room” of sorts and the public is welcomed to come and relax, read, or often just sit and visit with Stan and his wife. He has had buses come by to tour the place, and it is fun to read the Guest Book to see who has visited and where they came from. I believe Steve and Vanni win the prize for farthest travel, since they live in Barrow, Alaska.





This year we were in luck and found Stan in the garden. When he discovered us, he happily showed us some of his new favorites for the year. I took many pictures as inspiration for future flower paintings.



We all ended up in the outdoor room, and as usual, Steve shared some of his Alaskan stories with us. Steve is a great story teller.






If you are ever in north central area of Iowa, make a trip to Rockford and ask to be directed to the Fitz Garden. There is also a awesome fossil and prairie park in Rockford. It's a wonderful place to take kids to explore!
http://www.fossilcenter.com/

Waiting for Little B

8-8-09 weekend brain

I’m in Kansas City this weekend. I drove down this morning, arriving about noon. Greg and I grabbed a quick lunch at one of our favorite breakfast restaurants, First Watch, which serves until 2:00.

Then Greg talked me into going over to a car show in Blue Springs (home of American Idol star David Cook). It’s about 30 minutes east of our part of town. When we arrived, the show was winding down, so only a handful of cars were left to look at. This sweet green one was our favorite.

Then since it was 100 degrees, according to the car thermometer, we decided the best place to go for the afternoon was to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum. We had not been back there since moving from the Plaza in March. That was a great way to stay cool and we saw some new exhibits and viewed some of our old favorites too.

We decided on an early dinner at the Salty Iguana, Mexican as you might surmise and we splurged by sharing a margarita. Being the light weight drinkers that we both are, we headed home a bit tipsy.

Now we are hanging out at the house, watching the neighbor kids discover a cicada on a tree out front and getting all excited. I’m now sitting on the back deck, since it has cooled off to 85 degrees in the shade with a breeze that helps make it tolerable to be outside.

What I’m really doing out here, besides blogging on my laptop, is waiting for Little B. He is the latest cat in the neighborhood, who might be a possible stray. He has a collar, but seems hungry to eat the cat food Greg has been putting out in the evening. We are calling him "Little B", since Greg said he has some "Buster" qualities in him.

I have not yet met Little B. He is new since my last visit in July…. So I sit here eagerly looking for him to show up. He looks pretty cute by the pictures Greg emailed me last week.

I'm not ready to let myself fall in love with a new cat yet after the passing of Buster and Missy.... but I do enjoy spending time with any cat who comes my way!

Obama-ized

8-7-09 TGIF brain

Last weekend the package arrived! Surprisingly it took less than a week to come through the mail.

At the end of July I had noticed on Facebook that my neighbor boy, Will, who mows my lawn, had a posting of himself being "obama-ized".... I decided that this looked interesting, so I clicked on the link and tried it myself. I liked it so much that I clicked again and it took me to the zazzle.com website AND I had myself put on a T-shirt.

This will be my new collector's item T-shirt I'll keep in my closet for years to come...... we will see how long that is.... another 30 years I hope!