A Visit with Grandma

My Mom came out from California for a week long visit. It was the last week of summer vacation for James, and a nice way to end the summer for him! I wanted to keep her visit pretty low key and only planned a couple of "major" things while she was here.

I had kept our backyard project a surprise for her. When she visited last summer, the backyard was a mess and totally unusable, so I was eager for her to see what we had accomplished! She was amazed to see what we had done and quite pleased. Her first evening here, the four of us enjoyed a campfire. Being a "big city" girl all her life, she had never experienced a campfire, so this was very new for her!!

Here are Nana Nancy (or Grandma....we tend to go back and forth between "Grandma" and "Nana"!!) and James enjoyong Grandma's very first campfire!!


The following day, we planned a BBQ with family and a few friends! It was a perfect way to celebrate our new backyard and have Mom see people here all at once!! We are so excited about being to entertain!! Our house is so small and entertaining has been very difficult the last 13 years. The yard gives us extra "living space" as well as a place to have people over.

A few pictures from the BBQ......

This is Dusty's sister, Vonnie and her husband, John! I think that it's one of the best pictures taken of them!


Our friend, Angela, made and presented my Mom with her very first smore!!! She loved it!!


All of the kids roasting marshmellow around the campfire. We had a smore-making frenzy going on for a few minutes and the kids kept going around to all of the adults to see if they could make smores for anyone! It was fun!!


Then on Tuesday, we took Mom for a ride. We went up on the Grand Mesa for the afternoon and took a picnic. Grand Mesa is "the world's largest flat-top mountain" and is only a 45 minute drive for us. One of the most visible landmark in the valley, we see it daily, but rarely get up there. It was a nice day.....the weather was pretty. We stopped at the visitor's center, so that Mom could learn about the area, and then headed over to Ward Lake for our picnic.

What a perfect place to hang out and have a picnic!!


My Mom said she wanted to eat our Olathe Sweet sweet corn EVERY day she was here, and so we obliged her request! She loved it and didn't seem to get tired of eating it, even every day!! Having corn in the house at this time of year isn't hard! It often shows up at our door, without our knowing really where it came from!! Plus we're growing a couple of short rows in our own garden!

This is the "Corn King" of Riverside Drive!!


One of the evening, we had Dusty's Mom come over for dinner with us. Here is James with his two Grandma's....Stella and Nancy! The three of them get together so rarely and I cherish this picture!


And one picture of my Mom with James!!


We were glad to have Grandma here with us for the week! As soon as we put her on the plane, James started to get excited about starting 4th grade. Today is day 4 of the first week and he seems to be settling in well. He really likes his teacher and I get to meet her tonight at "Back to School" night! The old routine will soon again become familiar!!

Year 13 and Counting.....

This past weekend was our annual "Olathe Sweet" Sweet Corn Festival. The first Saturday of August always heralds in our very own festival. Of the many festivals that are held in our high mountain valley each summer, ours is the only one that celebrates a vegetable! Being a purely agricultural area, there are festivals that celebrate peaches, cherries, apples and wine.

The corn that is grown in this area is like no other.....mostly, they say, because of the weather and soil. Our hot days and cool nights helps this corn to a sweetness, beyond any other. We LOVE our corn and gorge ourselves on it while it's in season and "put up" (freeze) at least a case (48 ear) a summer, to pull out all winter and enjoy. There's nothing better than eating Olathe Sweet as part of our Christmas dinner, while it's snowing!!

And so, the first Saturday of August, sees our little town of about 1000 grow to upwards of 20,000!! People come from far and wide to enjoy our corn and that's something that makes us mighty proud!! The festival is planned and worked all year long, culminating in the one day! There are only 3 paid employees who plan and run the festival. The rest is done by volunteers.

This being OUR 13th corn festival (It was actually the 19th annual, but they had done 6 of them before Dusty and I moved here!) and I was wanting "more" this year. In the past, I'd tried to get Dusty to volunteer with me, but he was never interested. He always said he wanted to enjoy the festival and not work, so we never did it. This year I asked James if he'd volunteer with me and he said "yes"!! So we signed up, went to the mandatory volunteer meeting and then showed up at our appointed time to work.

Knowing that Joe and his family were coming down to enjoy the weekend with us, we signed up to work on the set up of the festival that Friday afternoon. That way we'd be able to hang out with the family at the festival on Saturday, our work being done. We went up to the park at 4:30 on Friday afternoon. We had just had a 40 minute downpour, complete with hail, but that didn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits. The field was soggy wet, but we went about our assigned task of setting up tables and chairs under the many tents that had already been assembled. Some 300+ chairs later that was done and we moved on to taking all of the butter, salt and pepper from under the stage to the corn serving area! They had so many voluteers that our 4 hour shift was done in 2 hours, as there was nothing left to do!! It was nice to participate in something that is so community oriented. It gave both James and me a sense of being part of the team and it was fun!

When we got home Joe, Jen and the kids had arrived and we soon left for the festivities that were going on "downtown" on Friday night. They always do a "burn out" and a street dance on that evening. It's so nice to live in a small town.....being just three block from the downtown area we walk everywhere this weekend!

Here are pictures from our weekend.......

James walking to the streetdance with his neice, Juliana and nephew, JT.


The concept of the "burn-out has always escaped me. It's the most "red neck" thing that is done around here....LOL! To cause smoke, noise and smell with ones tires, with the goal to blow those tires......the whole thing eludes me, but it's big entertainment around here!!?!!


Papa and Juliana at the street dance


The kids enjoying "junk food heaven"! All nutritional eating goes out the window festival weekend!!


A rare picture of Dusty and me together. I'm usually behind the camera!


Juliana is quite the dancer. By the end of the evening, she had successfully dragged everyone off their hay bail to dance with her!! Here she is with her Dad! Such a sweet picture!


And Juliana dancing with Papa Dusty.


And then Juliana dancing with her brother!


And I even got in a couple of dancing with my youngest grandson! Jack is now 18 months old and is soooo much fun!!


I pulled everyone together to get this picture of Joe with his wonderful family...Joes' terrific wife, Jen, Juliana (8), JT (5) and Jack (18 months). We had a lot of fun!!


For volunteering with the festival, James and I got tshirts that got us into the festival for free!! At $19 for adults and $4 for kids, it's not an outragously expense deal, but the money we saved on our tickets, just gave us more to spend at the festival. There are so many boothes, and so much to spend on if you want. We usually keep our spending to a minimum, buying a few trinkets, the annual Tshirt and some food treats! Here are James and I wearing our volunteer shirts as we headed up to the festival.


Jen took this great picture on the shuttle, on the way up to the festival. Dusty, JT, James and me enjoying the ride!! They run school bus shuttles all day and evening, from the downtown area up to the park. It really helps, saving many steps on a day that is FULL of walking!!


And the eating begins! As my friend, Wendy, said James could be the next "poster child for Olathe!" :)


Corn intoxication!!!


This was the 2nd annual corn eating contest between James and Jen!! This year they tied at 5
ears each!


Here's James working the climbing wall. This was the second year in a row that he made it up to the top!! WTG James!!!


We returned home around 1pm, for the afternoon, and let the kids run through the sprinklers. It helped beat the heat and let them "go crazy" for awhile! They had a lot of fun!


And then around 6:30 we headed back up to the park, for the concert and fireworks. Wynonna was the headliner at 9pm. The best laid plans went awry. This was the first year that the weather turned on us! Just as we arrived at the park, it started to rain and it continued to do so for about 40 minutes. We weren't prepared for it (don't ask why, as there really isn't a good answer for that!!) and after almost an hour we were soaking wet and quite miserable. With the four kids, we knew that they weren't going to be able to sit through the concert and fireworks, being as wet and uncomfortable as they were. So we made the decision to head home, and ended up missing out on the festival evening.

Here's James using his camping chair as an umbrella, before we decided to leave.


We were disappointed to miss the concert and fireworks, but made the best of it. Nana (that's me!!) did a few loads of laundry to rid ourselves of all the wet clothing. Papa (that's Dusty!) and Joe went into town and came back with a few containers of ice cream as our evening treat! We heard the fireworks, starting at 10:30, but where already comfy in our PJ's, so we didn't venture out to see them.

And so, it's over for another year! We always look forward to this weekend, and are always glad to have it over.....to have our little town go back to it's quiet state. We are already wondering who the headliner will be next year! This time we'll be prepared for any kind of weather!!!!