Saturday night – Middle america

We had a very peaceful day. We woke late at Diane’s brother Steve and his wife Denise’s house. .Our nephew Michael had showed up sometime in the night.. so it was food catching up with him. After a breakfast of cold pizza, Steve and I went out for a 5 mile run on the back country roads Whoever told me that Kansas was flat was lying.. It was great talking with Steve. it helped slow him down so I could keep up and it was fun getting his views on stuff. Steve retired from the army after 28 years. It was fun doing the compare and contrast between our employers. On our run we had the ‘kids today’ talk… and the ‘George Bush’ and ‘Iraq‘ talks.. Our views are surprisingly similar given how different our backgrounds are..

Steve is also an avid history buff.. World History, US History .. and even his family history. He showed us the most amazing family history he’s been working on. . He’s done a tremendous amount of research on old ship’s manifests, pension records and travel documents to trace both of his and Diane’s parents lines back in time.

Here are Diane’s granparents passports from Italy. Her grandfather had already been living in the US when his first wife died. He went back to italy to pick up Diane’s grandmother Piearina

Here they are as they boarded the boat to America

Here’s Constantine as an older man

Diane’s Grandmother , Pierina is in the center of this picture.. I’ always thought she looks very much like Diane ..

These family histories are even more important to me since Sam’s passing. Itss”s so important for us to capture these memories. My dad has also put together a family history . It’s a great read. I think I’ll try to link all of these documents from Sam’s website.

Steve managed to pull a Mark Twain and convinced Gabe to cut the back 40 with his tractor… Gabe loved it.

While he played farmer, Elizabeth took Diane and me on an explore of nearby Leavenworth knasas. Leavenworth is best known as the site of a large federal and military penitentiary… In the mid 1800’s it was an important way point on the way west. Lewis and Clark came through here on their trip through. We walked down to the River Shore of the Kansas river where large riverboats used to land… There was serious flooding here a few weeks back and the site has been pretty messed up. Here’s a swimming pier that was ripped up

And here I am ankle deep in the residual mud

Around 3:30 we all piled into cars and drove to a nice Italian restaurant to celebrate Elizabeth‘s graduation. Very nice…

Once we got home, our niece Stephainie showed up with her Italian greyhound Zoey.. that made 6 dogs– 3 Italian greyhounds (Ziggy , Calvin and Hobbes,) and two German shorthairs : (Bones and Zena )