happy birthday

happy 149th kansas!  yep, today is kansas day.  i'm not sure what's happening for kansas day in our small town of of 10,000.  crazy to think that san diego has a population of 1.28 million and tampa, 341,000  seriously? san diego...almost 1.3 million? okay, back to kansas...

it's been fun living in a small city.  it's been a great change and experience for my kids.  change of seasons.  snow.  farms, horses, cows.  new friends.

don't get me wrong...i have missed a couple things, especially lately.  like warm weather and a variety of nearby restaurants.  i dream about spring and warm weather.  it doesn't even have to be that warm.  a consistent 50 degrees would be awesome.  the cold and snow were fun at first, but i'm officially over it now.  over it, with months still to go.  and restaurants.  we have a few but in all honesty, we really only enjoy one--tampico (mexican restaurant).  i know, i know...perfect opportunity to work on my cooking skills.  yea.  ummm.  i'm working on that.

in celebration of kansas day, i'm going to search for sunflowers (state flower) to brighten my kitchen.  i'm sure whole foods has them.  too bad whole foods is a 45 minute drive.

here's some of my favorite photos taken here in kansas.

oh...

i do have one request from our city of lansing.  please invest in garbage cans and those automatic trash trucks.  breaks my heart to see guys walking from house to house, picking up trash bags one by one and throwing them into the back of the truck.  seriously...i thought all cities would have had the automatic thing going on by now.  maybe two requests.  i really wish you had free recycling so that more people would recycle.  i mean it's not really that expensive, but expensive enough that i don't see that many people doing it.