Flat Stanley PenPals

Have you ever heard of FLAT STANLEY?

FLAT STANLEY is a 3D grade book by Jeff Brown. The story is that Stanley was in bed and his bulletin board fell on him and made him flat. His friend had moved to Ca. and wanted him to come visit with them. Stanley’s parents couldn’t afford to send him, but then realized since he was flat they could send him via the mail.

This summer I attended a “MY STORY” program put on by the Library & our building’s Resident coordinator. The object of the program is to get people to write their stories before they die & those stories can be written many ways, one of which was to make large pictures of ourselves and send us on a Flat Stanley trip this summer. Last summer we had done our Biography.

I got all excited about the project and decided I wanted to goto Calif. , Wash., & Colo. I was telling my great grandsonsabout the project and Matthew- 7 years old, said “That is so cool. I wonder where I could send me??”

Well, I was planning a trip to McPherson, Ks. To see my son & his family & decided it would be fun to take Flat Matthew & Flat Jacob with me. So I made pictures of them. We started out with them riding in the back seat of my car. We stopped at the “DoleCenter” here in Lawrence, where I took their pictures by the Steel Beams from the World Trade Center. We then drove on to McPherson & to my son’s home. There I took pictures of the boys at his home & they got to visit another of my great grandsons- Joel. We watched Joel play baseball one evening. Another daywe went to their camping place, where they fished & enjoyed a summer afternoon. Then we went to the Hutchinson, Ks. Cosmosphere to watch Joel graduate from space camp. Then it was time to head home, but we stopped to put new flowers on their great grandpa’s grave.

Next stop was in Abilene, Ks. To visit their othergreat grandma on her front porch, then we had to checkout her tomato patch & then went out for lunch and tosee the new Eisenhower Mural on the side of a buildingin Abilene. That was neat.

Finally we arrived home about 4 PM, safely, but such a fun trip. When I got the pictures developed, I made the boys each a scrapbook, so they could see what they had done and alsobought the Book of Flat Stanley, so they could read allabout the book. They loved it as they had pictures oftheir relatives and pictures of history that I had included.

Finally Flat Thelma arrived home from Cal, where I had visited my sister & husband. We sat on the porch & watched the beautiful humming birds and watched a baseball game on TV. Went to her beauty shop and to his barber shop, where the barber said he had done this for his grandson years ago & thought it was fun.Played Bingo and went for Pizza with their friends. My sis said I was a very inexpensive guest, since I didn’t eat anything. HA.Then I got home from Wash. Where I helped my younger sister & husband remodel their home. I helped measure for the siding and even fell off the ladder one day & spent the next day recovering, then helped sis do some electrical work. Their dog even gave me a sloppy kiss goodbye when I left.

Lastly I arrived home from Colo. Where I had visited a 2"d cousin & enjoyed meeting some of her High School classmates at a luncheon & met her granddaughters & family and her husband & daughter I got all these pictures made into scrapbook form and had so much fun writing the story.

Those who helped in my project said they had also had lots of fun participating in this. So if you have children or grandchildren that live a distance, you could do this with their picture.

TRY IT, I bet you will have lots of fun. I know I sure did & I had some great stories to share with “MY STORY” classmates. The teacher said I got an A for approval.

Check out another Flat Stanley story here!