Can I just do something for 5 minutes...please....

Aleah just thought...well, honestly, I don't know what she was thinking, but here is the result.

(You can't tell too well, but it's allover her clothes too.)

Last of the Kansas update...

Reading books with Grandpa.

Grandpa breast feeding Kanani, just playing, but it kind of looks like it.

Learning to make sushi.

Snuggling Grandpa.

Time with Great Grandma

Playing with Uncle Larry

A beautiful girl

Another beautiful girl

Helping with the dishes.

Grandma and Great Grandma getting wild at the birthday party.

Grandpa with the little monkey that Aleah got him.

Cupcakes are good!!!!

Aleah painting Aunt Missy's nails.

A little birthday lunch/dinner!

Missy and I just getting in on the birthday photos.

Aleah loves her cousin Mikey and was thrilled when she finally got to see him.

Crazy kid

A little tired from the zoo.

Playing with Aunt Missy.

Dinner at the cracker barrel.

Cousin Elizabeth, looks like a Kanani face!

Family Temple Trip and the Zoo

WINTER QUARTERS TEMPLE

Another reason we made the trip to Kansas was for a family temple trip. Matthew was able to go to the temple with his Grandma, his mom and dad and his 2 siblings. Not only did they get to go as a family, but they got to do all, from baptism to sealings, the temple work for his both sets of Great grandparents on his Mom's side. This past year Matthew's grandma did the research to get these names temple ready and this temple trip sort of just came to gether. I know they had a good experience and hopefully it's something we can do often as a family.

While Matthew was at the temple, My sister-in-law, Elena, and I took the kids to the zoo. Unfortunately the trip was already planned before we realized the college world series was going on. We left to go to the zoo, which was only the next exit up the interstate from us, but it took us an hour and a half to get to the "zoo parking". The zoo is right next to the stadium where they play the college world series. Well, we got to the zoo, saw 2 exhibits and it was time to meet up with fam at the temple. The Omaha Zoo is pretty cool, well, at least the 2 exhibits we saw!!! Here are a couple pics.

My apologies...

I apologize for that tornado song I had on our blog. I didn't know that it has a curse word in it. And unfortunately it had been on our blog for 4 days before I realized it. Sorry, I'll try to be more thorough with the songs.

It sounded like a train....

When a tornado rips through, it sounds just like a train going right above your head! Luckily when it went over Matthew's grandma's house it wasn't actually on the ground! About 150 feet before her house the tornado went back up and then a few blocks from the house it touched down again near Kansas State University. Thanks to Missy, I have this little map to show you the path of the tornado. The brownish-red dot is Matthew's Grandma's house and the black dot is where Amherst Storage was. It was pretty much leveled, except about 2 small storage rows near the back and that's where Matthew's parents have a storage unit and it was okay.

So about 10:30 pm we heard the tornado siren sound. I wasn't sure if it was too serious because Matthew didn't really seem to mind too much, he just wanted to stay in bed because he had to get up early the next day. But his Grandma told us that we needed to go down stairs in the basement. So we got Kanani out of bed and took her downstairs as Matthew reluctantly followed. Aleah was already downstairs with Auntie Missy. This is just to illustrate the differences between the male and female species, all of us females, Me, Missy, Grandma, and Great-Grandma and, of course, Aleah and Kanani are all in the basement bathroom. While Matthew is sleeping in the hallway in front of the bathroom and his dad didn't even get out of bed. (At least he was in bed in the basement!) Anyway, we're in the basement, listening to the radio for news and updates, Grandma has the flashlight, which luckily we only needed for a short moment, and the siren is going on and off. I wasn't too worried because Matthew and his dad didn't seem to care too much, so I'm thinking, well hey it's probably nothing, but I'll do the drill. However, while were down there, there are things here and there that keep you wide eyed, like the guys on the radio who keep extended the tornado warning and telling us the areas it hit and how those areas are getting closer and closer to us, and the radio is cutting in and out, the loss of power, and all the thunder and lightening. I think about 20 minutes or so pass by when all of a sudden it seemed kind of quiet and calm, according to Matthew's dad, the wind died down for a moment, yes he was looking out the window like a crazy curious person. A few moments pass and then it starts to get loud, and then louder and then louder and then it sounds just like a TRAIN PASSING RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS!! Holy cow, what was that. I tell you it was less than a minute while it passed, but phew, it was INTENSE! We could see the emotion in each others eyes. We didn't know how scared we should've been. After that it pretty much died down. Then everyone started inspecting the house for breaks or leaks. Aleah took her little flashlight and followed Great-Grandma around the house to help with the inspection. Then we took a few glances outside and saw some of the mess.

Here's a little footage if your interested, Video 1, Video 2 and some photos

It was a little while before we were calm enough to go to bed, but we did fall asleep, just to wake up bright and early the next day to do a little cleaning up.

Well, here are a couple photos of our tornado survival, and many more to come if we move to good ol' Kansas.

The neighbor's tree

This is the neighbor's too, I just wanted to show you that it's uprooted.

Matthew's dad surveying the damage.

This is kind of hard to see, but there's a 2x4 sticking out or the neighbors roof.

Debris on the street.

Debris on the roof.

Debris in the trees.

Cleaning off Grandma's roof.

It's spiderwoman............. okay just kidding, it's me on the roof pretending to shoot a web, but I know you had to do a double take to make sure.

That's that.

We know that we were very blessed and we thanked the Lord for that, many times!

First day in Kansas

After travel and all, Wednesday was our first day in Kansas. We had an appointment to met at Dr. Julian's office at 8:30 am. We had to drive an hour and half from Manhattan, KS and we had just one minor bump in the road...Matthew might not appreciate that I share this, but one of Kansas' finest thought he'd pull us over and communicate to us that we were moving a little too fast through that part of Kansas, "Sir, this is a citation...." Lets just say it was a construction zone and we'll leave it at that. Matthew said it was hard to not put the petal to the metal when you're driving on straight highway with no one in your way. He's says he was just enjoying the open road, which he can't do in Philly. I laughed at the irony of it all and made him promise that it wouldn't ruin our day. I told him I'd take the blame because, yes, once again his wife was not ready on time.

Well, about 8:30 we're driving through McPherson, KS and yes, it is small. We pull up to the office and it's beautiful from the outside, pictures don't do it justice. We go inside and we are very impressed. We waited about 10 minutes until Dr. Julian was ready. While we were waiting I started scoping out some of the toys in the little kiddie corner because I thought that I should find some like that for Aleah, I mean they were pretty cool. But Matthew very nicely expressed that he didn't want me playing with the toys when the dentist walked out, so I had to come sit down by him and fold my hands in my lap and be very quiet. Okay, I can't blame him, but they were cool toys.
Anyway, we got to met Dr. Julian and his partner Brian, I don't remember how to say his last name, then they showed us their office. And let me tell you, it was awesome!!! They gutted it 5 years ago and put all new equipment in and added on to the office. They have 5 operatories and 3 hygienists. They have computers in every operatory, they use lasers and scanners. We observed Dr. Julian doing a crown. It took 10-15 minutes to give the anesthetic, prep the tooth, take the pictures, and put a temporary crown on. Instead of doing an impression, like Matthew would do at school to make the crown, the dentist just used this scanner/camera, put it in the patients mouth and took pictures of the tooth at every possible angle and a couple minutes later a 3D picture of the crown prep and surrounding teeth pop up on the computer screen. They send that to the lab and get the crown in 2 weeks. There could be some minor adjusting to the crown to make it fit just right. It was very impressive. Everything about this office was impressive, the dentists, his staff, his office, the interaction with the patients, the interaction with his staff. The atmosphere was perfect. Okay, really I didn't mean to get into it so much, but we really loved it!

The town was equally impressive, but some might not agree. I drove around with Dr. Julian's wife. She showed whatever I wanted to see and took me to met the other two dentists wives. It was pretty fun. Okay so there's no mall, but everything else they offer outweighs that fact. McPherson is a town of about 15,000. Yes, small, but if you've got everything you need, then what more can you ask for. I just have a few desires of a town: the hospital be in the town, it has programs where our children will be afforded every opportunity, and city-league sports. Everything else is a plus! They have 3 colleges in the town, one of which is endorsed by Jay Leno because it's one of the few schools that you can get a degree in auto restoration, that's cool right?! They have a nice YMCA, they have a water park that only costs a dollar for kids, they are a very family/religious oriented community--every Wednesday night is church night for everyone in the community, they don't even schedule high school events on that night. Oh, they do have a super Walmart, I can't even say that about where I live now. They have a few fast food places and this authentic Mexican restaurant where the food is delicious, that too isn't something I can say about where I live now. They have many dance/athletic programs through the Y and many private programs for music/dance. They also have this really nice softball complex, which is nicer than any fields we have played at here. The high school is the exact size that Matthew and I had talked about wanted our kids to go to........... so this opportunity, to us, sounds like once in a lifetime type of thing.
Matthew stayed at the office to observe and hang out with the 2 dentists there. They have another office about 2o minutes from there that the 3rd dentist was working at. They're also looking to open another about 3o min. from there.
We met up with the dentists and Matthew for lunch and then after driving around a little bit more, Karen, Dr. Julian's wife dropped me back off at the office so that she could take her granddaughter home to give her a nap. While I myself decided to take a nap in the car. I could have stayed in the office, but I was so tired from the travel and going to bed late the night before. I woke up to Matthew knocking on the window and saw that everyone was done and had gone home and it was only 4pm. Then I drove Matthew around the town, okay I couldn't remember where anything was except the water park, so I showed him that and ten we went to Dr. Julain's house, sat and talked a little and then went to dinner and met the other 2 dentists and their families. It was an exciting day. As we were saying bye in the parking lot, Emily, one of the dentists wife, says I just want to welcome you to Kansas, as she pointed to the dark bubbling clouds above us. And she continued to say, "When you see clouds like that, you know someone somewhere in Kansas is getting a tornado tonight." Huh, little did we know at the time, it would be us. Funny huh, not the kind of funny where you laugh out loud, more like interesting funny. Well, we said bye and Dr. Julian said that they would be in touch. And Matthew was supposed to go out to the other office the next day to check that one out and see Brian set some implants, but as I previously mentioned, there was a tornado and that changed plans a little bit.
Oh, I didn't tell you that in the office they don't refer anything out. He is a general dentist but he has done a lot of continuing education courses and he does everything is his office. And he has become the implant Guru, he goes all around the states doing seminars on implants. In his office he does sedation and implants, which were Matthew's 2 biggest reasons for wanting to do a GPR, he does ortho, he does sinus lifts, he does bone grafts, he pulls wisdom teeth, and he does everything else that you would have done at a regular office. They aren't interested necessarily in quantity so some of there best days, as in $$$$, are when they see few patients because of the procedures they do.
They are looking for someone to learn all the procedures the first year and then sign that person on as an associate and then in 3-5 years become a partner.
So, I never thought that I'd say this, but I really want to move to Kansas and for Matthew to get this job. This, like I said, sounds like a once in a life time opportunity to learn and be successful and to absolutely love where we live. Now, we just wait to hear back from Dr. Julian.
This post ended up being so long, sorry, but what can I say, this is our family journal. I'll have to do another post later about the ToRnAdO!!

This is before we left Manhattan that morning to go to McPherson.

This is the office from the outside.

This is the front desk.

One of the three hygienists stations.

One of the five operatories.

Dr. Jon Julian

His partner, Dr. Brian Kynaston

(and there's also Dr. Austin Babcock, but I couldn't find a picture of him.)

There's no place like home...

We're back in Philly, and it is true that there's no place like home, but I title this post that for another reason...I'm making reference to good ol' Dorthy and her home, Kansas. We took a trip out to Kansas a week ago and it was quite an experience. We went to meet up with Matthew's family for a temple trip, we also surprised Matthew's dad for his "29th" birthday and Matthew had an interview with a dentist, Dr. Jon Julian, out in McPherson, Kansas. So this is just a really quick recap, I'll fill you in later with more details....

Tuesday Night: arrived in Manhattan , Kansas at Matthew's grandma's home.

Wednesday: Drove to McPherson, to meet dentist and see practice...AWESOME!!!!

Wednesday night: Tornado hit...we were very very very blessed!!!

Thursday: Assess damage and clean up

Friday: Drove to Omaha, NE to meet up with Matthew's brother and family.

Saturday: Matthew's family went to the temple in Winter Quarters and did work for his great grand parents, while my sister-in-law and I took the kids to the zoo, not the college world series. Drove back to Manhattan, KS

Sunday: Took Matthew to the airport and visited with Matthew's Aunt and Uncle

Monday: More visiting and hanging out

Tuesday: prepare for trip home and visit with family

Wednesday: Went home.

Just a quick picture, more to come with detailed posts: