Before I start, I have a confession to make.. I’ve had too much mead to write coherently.. .. I know the expression ‘too much mead’ hasn’t been uttered much in the last millennium , but I’m at my brother in law Steve’s in Leavenworth, Kansas.. Steve is, among many other things, a very accomplished  mead brewer. He raises honey..

and basically useses a fair portion of it to make the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage.. yum. After two bottles of this it’s likely to add a little grog to the blog ..

    We’re here  in Kansas to celebrate the graduation of our niece Elizabeth from nursing school. Elizabeth graduated with honors for her nursing program in Topeka and will soon start working in Framingham Mass.. only a few miles from where my folks live.

      After a last late night walk around San Diego Bay we wet to bed early last night.

We had to leave very early this morning. We had to get up at 4:00 AM ..(ugh) to make our flight

The plane to Denver was full, I had a middle seat.. and was sitting next to a baby…

even so, I was on the plane for about 5 minutes before I fell asleep. It was an uneventful flight..  When we were pulling our stuff together to get off the plane, I looked around for Sam.. It’s always like that..

    We had a three hour layover in Denver then got to Kansas about 3:00 PM. Then drove about an hour to Steve and Denise’s . It’s great being here.. The last time we were here was about 9 years ago.  We had about an hour’s drive to get to Elizabeth‘s graduation ceremony. Before we left, we had a quick dinner of pizza with  Steve’s home grown hot peppers..   Just after I ate I walked around the house looking at all of the pictures they had of Diane, Max, Sam, Gabe and I.. some of the pictures were new to me., and they hit me hard.

As I reached o rub the tears out of my eyes I realized too late that my hands  were all covered with hot peppers.. Yow !. My eyes were on fire.. but it turned my tears into laughter.. Sam never lets us take ourselves too seriously… 

   We got in the car and drove about an hour more to get to Topeka to see Elizabeth‘s ceremony which was in an Episcopal Church associate with  the  hospital in which she trained.  We’re so proud of her..  I have so much respect for folks like nurses and doctors who devote their lives to helping other people. Could I do that ?

   We watched  the graduation ceremony. Then drove back to Leavenworth and started to hit the mead…

   Its now almost midnight and I need to sleep.. more tomorrow..(he says afte fallign alseep typing for 30 mintues) waitng for picture sot upload over mey clelphone)  Looks like I don’t have the bandwith i need to upload all my pictures.. I may need to do that tomorow.. G’nite Sam..

-jc