THE LOWE FAMILY NEWSLETTER:VOLUME 161                                                   JULY 2025

Dear Readers,  

Earlier this year I sadly revealed that Kay and Richard’s attempt at an in vitro pregnancy to produce an embryo without the brca gene had not been successful but I am happy to report that going back to basics has resulted in a pregnancy!

                                     CONGRATULATIONS TO KAY AND RICHARD!

Alex holding a sonogram picture of his baby brother in his T-shirt announcing the

event

They saw a window of opportunity to conceive naturally before Kay was due to restart  her tamoxifen regime. They are optimistic that a treatment will be available soon to negate the brca  cancer causing gene should either boy be a carrier.. Alex will be a big brother in late November!! I am looking forward to having another great grandson to spoil and to creating a new nursery! 

I was recently diagnosed with an interesting medical condition that can also be hereditary. In 2020 I was diagnosed with leukopenia but it has now progressed to neutropenia.This is an abnormality of my white blood cell count which has been running low for many years without any apparent ill effects on my health. In the last six months it has dropped down to 2.2 to 2.6 which would indicate serious illness as these numbers are usually only seen in patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy or those with severely compromised immune systems. I have been examined by a hematologist at KUMed and he says this condition is more commonly seen in certain black and asian ethnic groups rather than caucasians!  Since I survived Covid earlier this year without any issues, and am constantly caring for germ-ridden grandchildren they have decided to  keep a watchful eye on me but it seems that my immune system is working well despite my low white blood cell count! I feel confident that my large family will result in at least one genetic match for a bone marrow transplant if it ever becomes necessary!

 At one point last month we had a Lowe family member on three different continents, Lori and Claudia were in Thailand, Bryn was in  Saint Tropez, France and Josh was in Guatemala. So many members of our family love traveling but not me. I am very content at home! Josh posted some harrowing photos of his adventures on our family text thread and seems to be every bit as adventurous in his forties as he was in his twenties. I am happy to report that everyone is now safely home from their travels.

Josh climbing a waterfall with just a rope

Josh camping out in Guatemala near a volcano

That errupted that night! He made it out just in time!

Trump looked as if he was about to implode recently,  struggling to maintain his composure   during his post Nato press conference when reporters questioned  his claim that the Iranians nuclear capabilities had been bombed into oblivion by our airforce in recent days. Apparently the claims that Operation Midnight Hammer had dealt a deadly blow to the Iranians nuclear capabilities may be an overstatement with some reports suggesting that the Iranians had moved their nuclear program to other sites and others surmising that the bombs may have had little impact on their facilities so far underground.Unfortunately his first few months in office have rocked my equilibrium to the core and I wake every day wondering what awful news awaits me.  

Marc happened to be in downtown LA at the Civic Center during the riots in early June as he was trying a case in the courts. As always he stayed in a nearby hotel for the duration of the trail. He said it was difficult to sleep at night due to the drone of National Guard helicopters circling overhead.Fortunately his team won their case and survived the war zone created by Trump’s heavy handed meddling in state affairs.

In early April my garden was commandeered by two network cable companies and our electric power company.  I was alerted to this invasion by the appearance of a utility worker bearing an arm load of colorful flags and cans of spray paint. 

As you all know I love my garden and find it very stressful when utility workers in their big boots trample through my flower beds and start digging up my plants! One of the cable companies brought a huge ditch witch into my yard- thank goodness I was here at the time and made them use sheets of plywood to protect my plants - that thankfully were still mostly just inching through the ground at this point in early spring!t A section of my front lawn was dug up to a depth of about three feet, the cable laid, and then the trench was back filled and topped with grass seed and straw! I removed the unsightly straw almost immediately and fortunately our over abundance of rain in the following days caused the grass seed to grow very nicely. They also dug into my flowerbeds that border my side yard into the four neighboring  yards that back to this fence, Despite being filled with roses, blooming daffodils and green stalks the workers threw more grass seed and straw over these four trenches too so I had to rake up the straw and suck up as much grass seed as I could with my shop vacuum! This nightmare over with, the electric company invaded  for over six weeks, with an empty promise to replace any plants I lost. I lucked out this time: no  heavy equipment was  brought into my yard as they used the neighboring yard of a vacant house and made such a mess of that backyard that they had to re sod  it!  

Even worse than enduring the damage to my flower beds was the constant removing  and replacing of my new fence boards to access the four neighboring yards. So much for building a privacy fence! Since the utility company completed this work it has been pointed out to me that my fence boards are not as uniformly in place as they were before this assault on my property! But do I have the time or inclination to call and ask that the utility company rectify this situation? No - because I know full well that I will be on hold for hours on the phone, transferred numerous times, , finally assured that someone will look into the matter but of course that someone will never visit my yard!  l lost about fifty lily bulbs but frankly the rabbits break the stalks to eat the flower heads as soon as they bloom so I guess this gives me the chance to plant something else in their place that is not fancied by the numerous rabbits in my yard!

Last year during our family reunion there were a lot of complaints about the lack of shade on my deck and with numerous family visits looming I decided action needed to be taken. In December I had several trees in my yard pruned and this resulted in even less shade on my deck so  i purchased a huge umbrella canopy to help out with the two existing patio umbrellas.My thanks to Josh for unboxing it, putting it together and filling the base with a couple of seventy five pound sand bags. He also spent quite some time, on a very hot and humid day, moving the  umbrellas  around the deck to find the spot to provide the most shade! This will be a much more enjoyable environment for my grandchildren to play with their water tables and deck toys. 

Calie and Emmy Lou both performed in recent dance recitals and I am sure Callie’s performance was every bit as good as Emmy Lou’s who fearlessly took the stage at the Lieds Center in Lawrence, Kansas and did a stellar job of performing her routine with a huge, confident smile and  never skipped a beat despite being the only dancer who knew the routine in her group seemingly! Coryn and Ava Claire attended too along with their handmade sign to cheer Emmy Lou on and a bouquet of flowers to reward her performance!  Sarah was backstage for the whole show after being pressed into service as a dance mom for her daughter's class! Sean, Coryn, Ava Claire and I sat with Liam, Lochlan and Cillian who were very well behaved for the entire two hours of the recital.Cillian was very taken with the red sequinned cowboy boots that one group performed in and declared many times that he needed red boots too!

 

Callie in her beautiful dance costume!

Emmy Lou posing in her cute costume!

 

I

n mid-June I had the great pleasure of welcoming three of my oldest friends back into my home after  being apart for too many years! Becky Clay flew in from Savannah, Georgia and Evelyn Wenke and Sherry Aschbrenner drove down from my old hometown, FortMadison.Unfortunately Becky’s first flight from Savannah to Atlanta was delayed so she missed her connecting flight to Kansas City and thus arrived at dinner time instead of lunchtime! But it all worked out, Evelyn and Sherry arrived earlier in the afternoon and I was able to visit with them and settle them in my home before I headed to the airport to pick up Becky.. 

I pulled into the cell phone parking lot once I arrived at the airport and awaited Becky’s call to let me know that she was curbside for pickup with bags in hand. Unfortunately due to her delayed flight out of Savannah her bag had arrived before her on a different connecting flight so it took her some time to track it down. This parking lot was full of lyft drivers  - who even asked if I was one of them!  Finally the call came and I headed off to pick up Becky so we could head home for supper and endless cups of tea!

On Monday morning my friends expressed interest in checking out the Steamboat Arabia exhibit in the River Market district of downtown  Kansas City so I bravely volunteered to drive them there. Almost as soon as we started driving my navigation system decided that it did not like my chosen route and refused to recalculate, trying to steer me onto a section of interstate that is currently undergoing major renovations and needs to be avoided at all costs. Fortunately Becky was able to get directions on her phone which thankfully chose my route whilst we both tried to shut my system down - it kept insisting that we take the next exit for miles!  Driving in the downtown area was a nightmare with all the road construction but we eventually pulled into a parking spot right in front of our destination. What a relief but soon came another issue: how to pay for our parking space. There were no parking meters, no ticket machines as you entered the lot and no parking attendant to be seen. Fortunately Becky spotted a kiosk that turned out to be the payment system - you had to enter your license plate number and then pay for the time you thought you would need or risk being towed. I whipped out my credit card and paid for a couple of hours and then we were into the building and off on our tour. This was my second visit to this exhibit and it is very interesting learning about the loss and recovery of this steam boat full of cargo on the Missouri river and it’s being found over a century later buried in a Farmer’s field. The course of the river shifted considerably over the years. The whole time we were examining the clothes, shoes, dishes, and other artifacts I was checking my watch in dire fear of going over our allotted parking time as there have been several news stories recently about tow companies that swoop in to tow any car that is a nano second past their paid parking time. This is a ruthless practice for them to make money of course About twenty minutes before our parking time expired I gathered my friends from various areas of the exhibit and suggested it was time to use the restrooms and head for the car - my bowels were challenged when a couple of the girls decided to browse in the gift shop and made a few purchases while I tried my deep breathing exercises and visualized my car still sitting in it’s spot waiting for me. Thankfully we made it to the car in time and enjoyed a much easier drive home!

That evening we headed up to Sarah and Sean’s house to enjoy dinner with them and their children. We had a fun evening making our  own pizza’s from scratch, loading on our chosen toppings after shaping our dough into circles! Emmy Lou insisted on making my pizza and I have to say it was remarkably good! Sean has a new outdoor pizza stone for this purpose. My.friends all commented on how friendly and outgoing my grandchildren are - and it’s true that these kids are all extroverts

Becky and Evelyn watching  the pizza crew!

Sherry checking out the action

On Tuesday, despite the threat of rain, we decided to check out the Overland Park Arboretum - we are all keen gardeners! The kind lady manning the entrance kiosk advised us that the mosquito population was swarming the paths on her walk earlier that morning and strongly recommended that we spray ourselves with bug repellant - thankfully she had a few cans for sale. Becky immediately purchased one and as soon as we hit the first leg of the walk around the Monet garden we were covered in mosquitos! They usually find my English blood distasteful and leave me alone but not that day! We sprayed ourselves liberally! They even landed on our hair! This was not the tranquil experience I had hoped my friends would enjoy! I was disappointed to see that all the flower beds were full of weeds and that day we only saw one small group of volunteers working at this task. In previous visits the flower beds have been very well maintained but perhaps the mosquito infestation has deterred the volunteer weeders.

Friends for over 40 years!

We checked out the brand new building that offers a cafe, meeting rooms, a gift shop and a wedding venue and found it rather disappointing! I would have expected a central hall filled with tropical plants,  maybe an indoor butterfly garden or even walls of drought tolerant plantings but there was  nothing that suggested this was the centerpiece of an arboretum! We decided to have lunch at the cafe which had a very limited menu - probably because there was only one person taking care of all the patrons, taking orders, preparing the food, serving the food and taking payments!

After lunch we headed to the restrooms and thank goddess my purse is packed for every disaster that I can imagine befalling  me because once I used the toilet I discovered there was no toilet paper! I rummaged in my purse and pulled out a wad of tissues - which I offered to my friends too as I returned to the cafe and explained the lack of tissue issue to the overworked guy behind the counter. He directed me to guest services down the hall where I eventually found a young man who seemed to have no idea who kept the rest rooms supplied with toilet paper.

I think the Overland Park Arboretum should put any further expansion plans on hold until they can properly staff their gardens, grounds and new venue. And they definitely need to address the mosquito issue!

My next newsletter will be full of the details of Lori, Blake and Cladis’s visit! Thanks to Lori I will have a lot of great family pictures to post too!I am also looking forward to seeing more of the family in early August when the Remsburgs,Marc, Bryn and Gabby will be in KC!

Love from your mother who fizzled like a dud firework when she attempted to jump on a trampoline this past July 4th! I am sure you have all enjoyed the video that Lori made of me failing to catch any air as I attempted to jump - only to bounce on my butt airing out my knickers! They were color-coordinated to my dress thank goodness!