Scarecrow: “I don’t know why you’d want to live in a gray, flat place far away from people…” Dorothy: “It doesn’t matter how dreary or flat a place is, there is no place like home.”

So, here we are… After an emotional concert at Kansas University’s Newman Center the boys are going home with Matthew. Denny will catch a flight to LA and take a few days off before he meets back with us on Thursday.

And the girls… (Larissa, Tajci and Carol) are driving west - all the way to Seattle, WA. An idea came to mind: how many shoe outlets are between Kansas City and Seattle?

They even have a bowling alley in the basement. Evan suggested that if every church had their basements tricked out like this more people would hang out at church!

Dante and a special friend shooting a little pool.

In the basement of the Church we were surprised to find (1) A BAR!! Here is Blais kicking it with a young lady in the “men’s club”.

The boys were excited about going to Kansas. Especially Blais who half expected to see Dorothy and Toto waving at the State line crossing. (They were all in Wizard of Oz performance workshop at our theatre on Cincinnati.)

This was our first time performing in Kansas so we were excited too.

And so it’s fair to say that none of us expected to see Stef and his Bajs (see picture below) at the very first church we came to.

St. John Church on Strawberry Hill overlooks the downtown and was built by Croatian people in early 1900s. They built a museum in the building next to the church that used to be an old-fashioned orphanage run by the nuns

Tajci CliftonPerformanceTheatre.com IdoBelieve.com MyPerfectlyBeautifulLife.com

After eating BBQ ribs at Jack’s on Broadway, we took the boys (and the whole crew) to Robert’s to hear some great blue grass music. We all had a great time. Blais especially loved the song “Bubbles in my Beer”

We took the boys to Nashville’s FRIST Center for the Visual Arts. They enjoyed a guided tour of European masters and “HEROES” - Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece Exibit. Dante has read all five of Rich Riodan’s “The Lightning Thief” books. We all took a test “Who Are You Most Like” and here are the results: Blais is most like Helen, Matthew was like Achiles, Evan was most like Athena and Dante and Tajci like Odysseus.

We spent a few hours at their interactive center painting and exploring different techniques of visual arts.

Franklin, KY is a small town of 6000 just north of the Tennessee border. The surroundings are so quiet on a Saturday afternoon that you soon forget you live in the fast, cyber-n-cellular 2010!

We stayed in the beautiful home of Sharon and Steve who raised eight children and lived in Italy for a few years. In the morning they served us the most amazing homemade bisquits and gravy, sweet cinnamon rolls and jam from homegrown strawberries.

That night the church was full. There were people of many different backgrounds - from the neighborhood and from places as far as an hour and a half away. Terry did a great job organizing the event and inviting the community.

The biggest surprise came after the concert - there is a restaurant in Franklin called “Brickyard” owned by three guys from Rijeka, Croatia. They came to the concert and invited us to come over for some old fashioned smoked meat n cheese (and amazing pizzas). It was cute to see the boys fallng asleep next to their Shirley Temples