Kansas

When we left South Dakota we moved to Kansas. The prairie is beautiful. Kansas is beautiful. I wish I saw more of the prairie and less traffic, buildings, people, and houses. I was not meant to live in a highly populated area. Now the people in my "small" town would probably disagree with me saying highly populated, but to a woman that spent almost her entire adult life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this is too much. I long to walk outside and see no one. To have my children play outside without 20 kids in my backyard......I sometimes just want peace and quiet and privacy. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.
The one thing I LOVE about Kansas is the thunderstorms. Lots of them and they are magnificent here. I can't imagine what those poor people in he covered wagons thought when they came to settle this land. Now, we love thunderstorms in this family. A few of my children are a bit concerned that we'll be in a tornado when it storms, but they aren't in a panic or anything, yet. There have been a few stormy nights that everyone has slept on mom and dads floor. :)
The weirdest thing is that we don't have a basement, I mean how can you live in tornado alley and not have a basement??!!

Here, there, everywhere

I was born and raised in Michigan. Beautiful hills, water, and trees. Especially in the Upper Peninsula. We lived there for 12 years.
Then we moved to South Dakota for 15 months. It was so very different than what we were used to. The best thing about South Dakota is the sun shines all the time there. So nice. Michigan gets a lot of cloud cover. With the exception of the Western part of the state (Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands) Which by the way are phenomenal, the state is pretty flat, not a lot of trees.....Such wide open spaces. You can see forever. My favorite thing about Aberdeen (this is where we lived) besides our church family there ;) was this park. Wylie Park. It's awesome.
My kids talk about it all the time. It was only a few miles from our house. With the exception of the rides, it was free. It has a picnic area, a dozen or so large play structures throughout the several hundred acre park. A campground, Storybook land, The Land of Oz, mini golf, bumper boats, a small lake. We went out at least once a week.