Monday evening

Today is my mother's birthday. Love you mom!

 I gave her some big sunflowers. When we were kids we lived in Kansas several years and huge fields of huge sunflowers were commonplace. Hundreds..thousands of acres of them!

Several times Dad took me dove hunting around the huge sunflowers and I was the bird dog. That's right: I'd flush the birds and retrieve them. In canyons of sunflowers that seemed ten feet tall. Big scratchy stalks with dinner plate sized sunflowers seemed like giant redwoods once I was among them.

Our first Christmas in Kansas left money for a Christmas tree scarce. Mom's creative streak took over and she converted another common Kansas item into our Christmas tree. She caught a tumbleweed blowing down the way, spray painted it, put colored balls on it, and voila: a Christmas tumbleweed! Bet you never had one!

When we first got there, Dad rented a house and waited for our moving van to come: it took weeks to get there. Our stuff was lost!  Mom had a 1 burner hotplate on which she cooked for us. We sat on old paint cans around a big box laid on the floor as our table. We kids thought it was great.

Thanks Mom for all you've done for us! We love you!
Vern