Travels to Kansas

As many of you already know, last week Doug had a Music Library conference at K-State in Manhattan Kansas (conveniently the same location where we are going to grad school this August) and I was lucky enough to be able to tag along with the gang and visit the Little Apple to look over apartments and such before the big move. No, I did not secure an apartment (it's still a little early to sign a year-long lease) but I did visit a lot of places and got some really useful information about the area. My dad was also gracious enough to make the trip up from Carl Junction and provide the service of chauffeur/legal adviser/adult male clout as I made these visits. It was very comforting to walk into an apartment and know that the people I met with didn't just see a vulnerable pregnant lady who needed a place to live. I was all that with a dignified lawyer in tow. :) Anyway, we saw a lot of subsidized housing for low income families (which we will very much become in August) and I was surprised how nice it was. In Kansas I guess there is this nice set of laws that make nice housing for poor people to take advantage of. Score. I have my heart set on getting into a townhouse cooperative (it's a group of town homes where you buy into the group and then get a house all for yourself for greatly reduced rent and they do maintenance and upkeep. It's a sweet deal.) but there is a waiting list. I'm on it now, so pray we get an opening by August! If not, I have back-up plans but it'd be awesome to get where we want to go the first time around, know what I mean? You may be wondering where my children were during this time, as well you should, but I can gratefully tell you that they were NOT with me. They were with Grandma Sue, who was awesome enough to fly down from Seattle to babysit for five days while we were gone. Thank goodness for cheap Southwest tickets, and a wonderful mother-in-law. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! The girls had way to much fun with grandma, even though Eloise got a fever right in the middle of it all. They visited the "legendary" Pirate Island, sampled the Creamery ice cream, watched movies, played at the park, and went on outings with Grandma Jacobson. Sounds like more fun than I had driving 16 1/2 hours out to Kansas and then 16 1/2 hours back in five days time.

My dad also had a wonderful time on this trip, at least from what he told me. He claimed that he kept being worried that he had to be somewhere for a conference of his own, since this was technically a business trip for him (ie he brought work with him and did it in his hotel room when not with me). But then he would remember that his real job this trip was to drive his attractive daughter around town in his red Mercedes convertible, with the top down, and enjoy himself. We had lots of fun. I can now almost confidently navigate most of Manhattan (I bought a nifty little map which saved our bacon on numerous occasions) and I can find the Doctors office, the campus, Wal-Mart, Dillons, Target, and the mall. That's all there is to know in a college town, right?

Dad and I started Friday and Saturday with a run around/through K-State campus. (Side note: this was lots of fun for me since I got the most hilarious looks from people seeing a pregnant lady run. One guy did a whole double take/gawk at me, and I chuckled to myself. I guess I'm a slightly more common sight in Provo than I am in Kansas.) I must say, K-State is a pretty cool looking campus. One thing I really like is that is it set up campus style instead of being spread out among the city like come colleges are. This one models BYU in that sense, and the architecture is similar. Everything is built in a Gothic style and has the same rough cut yellow limestone that is native of the Flint Hills area (Manhattan in built right on top of the Flint Hills). There are also a surprising number of trees in the city. I don't know how many of you have driven through Kansas, but there isn't a lot of anything there until you get to around Topeka or even Kansas City, and then the trees really get going. Manhattan was like an oasis of trees in the middle of massive grasslands. It had neighborhoods where the trees were frequently so big and thick that it was like driving through a green tunnel. And the homes are a lot like Provo in that they have lots of impressive old Victorian style homes, but families actually live in them and take care of them, and they are spectacular. My dad especially liked K-State because it is an agricultural school, like Utah State. He kept saying that K-State reminded him a lot of his alma-mater, right down to the Aggiesville references they gave themselves. I think he's already decided to like K-State more than BYU for this reason alone. I guess that's fine with me, though I find it funny that the Aggiesville thing means so much to him since he graduated as a mechanical engineer... but who am I to judge?

Other highlights of the trip were when Dad an I accidentally stumbled upon the route to get to the huge white MANHATTAN letters on the side of the hill. For those of you who are confused, think of the Y on the mountain in Provo, then decrease the size to about a tenth of the Y, and then spell out Manhattan on the side of the tallest hill in Manhattan KS. That's what we randomly found. Here's the pictures to prove it along with scenery shots and one of the first pregnancy shots of me taken this time around. I did not bring my camera on this trip (an unfortunate oversight) so these pictures were taken on my dad's phone and the only ones we have. Please enlarge the photos for yourself to see details.

Looking east towards campus.

Me on the big MANHATTAN

There's the belly shot... get a good look peoples, it might not happen again. :)

This is the attempt to show you the MANHATTAN that's on the hill while riding in a moving vehicle. You get the general idea.

Other highlights, we rode everywhere with the top down, which resulted in dad getting some appreciative looks from women of all ages (thrown in with some strange ones when they saw the young pregnant girl riding beside him) and me getting a sunburn. We also introduced my dad to buffalo wings for the first time in his life, if you can believe that, and he ate like a man half his age and paid for it like the age he really is the next day. :) That'll teach him to try and eat like his son-in-law. But they were soooooo gooood.... All in all it was a very nice and informative trip, though not really relaxing at all. I was in a room with the three other women who went to the Library conference, and my bed was not exactly comfortable (alright, it was downright miserable the first night because I was on a roll-away with crappy springs, so I put the mattress on the floor the second night which made a huge difference and was still uncomfortable, but we managed). Manhattan had a surprising amount of very good restaurants, which were also very affordable, which is going to be so nice. Doug tried a gourmet pizza at one restaurant and liked it, which I think ought to be put in the history books as the first and only time that will happen. I ordered a different one, and his was way better even than mine. Nice picking Doug. :)

On the way home we stopped in Denver and got to spend the night with our good friends the Phipps and visit them for a few hours. The best part of that was seeing their kids' shocked faces in the morning since they didn't know we were coming as it was very late when we got in.

So that's the summary of our trip. It was the longest amount of time that I had been away from both kids and I admit, I missed them... once. Yes, just once. It was actually on the way out on our first day. We were somewhere in Nebraska and it was their bed time, so I called home, thinking that I felt lonely and I wanted to say goodnight to them. After a few minutes of hearing them bicker over the phone and ignoring me completely, I decided I didn't really miss them much after all, and although I called every night, I never felt like I needed to miss them again. It was nice. I'll keep you all posted on any updates regarding housing in the future, but for now I feel a million times better about seeing prospective places rather than going in blind, and that's all I can do right now. Thanks again to all those who helped us out on this trip, letting me mooch off BYU funds and sacrificing their time to be with me and my family. It was greatly appreciated!!