Missouri Was Amazing

We just came back from Missouri this last Tuesday. It was a fabulous 6 days spending four with Sarah's dearest sweet grandparents, Jim and Jayne Creed and a day and a half with my oldest brother, Gary and his wife, Teri and their five great boys.

We loved the whole experience and came away with one big takeaway - Missouri is an Amazingly Beautiful Place with Great People. If we had more family permanently clustered there, we'd move in a heart beat.

Here were the highlights:

• First airplane ride for Levi and Ellie and first Caleb remembers.


• Caleb went fishing for his first time and caught 3 Blue Gill that we ate for supper.


• First time in a long time I've seen 2.3 inches of rain in a matter of hours - Reno had a healthy .5 inches in 5 days. Woohoo.


• First time I've seen so many natural ponds collecting run-off


• First time I've made the connection that all that green stuff is watered naturally and no one has lawn irrigation systems. Wow!


• I was reminded that I like humidity and we had lots of it.


• I was reminded how great it is to have a wife that doesn't get motion sick.


• I was reminded how much we love family.

Here is a long string of photos with a few headlines:



WINGS - Caleb was thrilled to sit in the cockpit of our plane.



MOVIE BUFF - Thank you to a Disney movie for entertaining Caleb - is that any surprise?


SHE CRASHED - Finally on the third and last flight, Ellie crashed and slept almost 2 hours like this. Cute girl



ARRIVAL - we finally got our rental car at 1:00 am and we were tired of lugging this big cart of luggage. Bless Sarah and the kids hearts - they were great troopers. We arrived in Columbia at 3:30 am and we were tired. ;-)


SUNSHINE STILL LIVES - Now, if you don't know Sarah's dear grandparents, let me tell you they espouse my theory of limiting consumption and Sunshine is one 40+ year-old example of that. Grandpa drives this most day to and from his errands and the University. Grandpa Creed even let us know it had ~184k miles on it. It was a lot of fun. We went from their house to the backwoods country store for candy. It was something else to see the warped floor boards and carefree patrons and employee behind the counter - it felt like I was in a different country.








ELLIE RELAXING - While Caleb was off somewhere, Ellie was quite content just lounging and smelling flowers and worrying where she left her purple lip gloss. I'm pretty sure she checked every inch of this grass she laid on to make sure there was NO Goose POOP!






FEEDING THE CATFISH - Grandma and Grandpa gave us food for the catfish and I couldn't believe how quickly they came to the water's edge and gobbled up these nibblets. They got so close Sarah petted the back of one and then she screeched when it instantly splashed away. Here Caleb is trying again to touch one of these ugly fish



GOD'S BEAUTY - I died watching the sunsets every evening we were there. This captures the beautiful lush growth, the calm waters and the peaceful evening. Most nights we were wandering in the yard, chasing Geese, watching birds or chatting on the deck.



NEW LIFE - This foal was less than 12-hours old and lived across the street from the Creeds.


POTATO BUG FITS - Caleb is a bug nut and he thought it was so funny to put the potato bug in his belly button and he laughed when it crawled out. Agghh we have a 150% boy in him.





Kansas City with 12 Kellers







SWIMMING - We were bummed when we arrived at our hotel to find the pool was broken so we whipped out the speedos and spent Memorial Day afternoon at the pool in chilly water.



COMMUNITY OF CHRIST TEMPLE - Strange place that only administers one prayer a day at 1 pm for World Peace. We went in but were not warmly welcomed and with 8 kids, headed right on out again.

FAREWELL PICS - Cousin pictures to capture the fun memories



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