Our K-State Photo Stroll Down Memory Lane

Travis and I got to take a trip down memory lane revisiting places of significance in our lives at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, this summer.

We met, became parents, and lived our first married months together with Madalynn at K-State. K-State holds a special place in our hearts, for sure. We, of course, also left with college degrees!

We had a blast on our photo field trip. I've attached photos with captions explaining what the picture is of and why it is of significance to us. To our fellow Wildcats and the Manhattan Christian College grads we know, enjoy a look at K-State 2008!

(The above picture was taken in the old football stadium in front of the new alumni center and AstroTurf field.)

This is the Pizza Hut in Aggieville where Travis and I first met during a weekly Thursday night Navigators Campus Ministry meeting. My friend Gi introduced me to Aaron, whom introduced me to Travis, his roommate. Our first conversation was about baby names?! He already had the name Madalynn Eileen Davis picked for his first girl before we even met!

This is the ADPi (Alpha Delta Pi) sorority house. I lived here with about 100 other girls my sophomore and junior years of college. This is also where Travis picked me up in his shiny red '77 Ford Bronco (with the top off) for our 1st date!

This is Rock-A-Belly Deli in Aggieville, the restaurant Travis took me to for our first date. We double dated with Travis's roommate, Aaron and his girlfriend (and now wife) Kristy. We are all good friends to this day.

Seaton Hall is the building on campus where Travis and I logged many academic hours. The Ag Technology Management and Architecture departments were both housed in Seaton Hall. Travis enjoyed looking at the PowerCat Pullers tractor team pictures. He was a part of the National Champion team for two years while at K-State. I enjoyed perusing the many floors and hallways full of architecture projects. I peeked into my old landscape architecture studio. I miss the joy of designing, but not the burden of many, many sleepless, stressful hours!

This is the K-State All-Faiths Chapel. Travis and Aaron always went to the campus-wide weekly praise and worship evening held there. I remember Aaron being torn between missing the first few minutes of praise and worship or watching the last few minutes of the TV sitcom "Friends." He would usually finish up friends then RUN to the chapel so as not to miss out there, too!

This is Travis and Aaron's apartment, which was located right on the edge of campus. Definitely a bachelor pad, the boys slept on bunk-beds in the one bedroom in the apartment, ate ramen noodles as a staple and kept the thermostat so low in the winter you could see your breath! I was living alone in this apartment (which I was sub-leasing from Travis and Aaron) , taking summer classes and working when I found out I was expecting Madalynn.

Pregnant me lived in the rented basement apartment of this house the fall semester of 2000. I was poor and ate a lot of mac and cheese and crackers, since I had morning sickness most of the semester and had no microwave in which to cook! I was six months pregnant the last month I lived in the apartment and barely fit in the shower. :)


This was Madalynn's first home. My best friend and sorority sister Gi moved out of the sorority house to live with me in this apartment for the spring semester Madalynn was born. Gi sacrificed so much to move in with me and help me out during a very difficult time. She swears she never heard Madalynn cry for her 3:00 a.m. feeding from her room across the hall, but I still don't think she would ever admit if she really heard. She's that kind of friend. I love you, Gi!

An empty little apartment in K-States Jardine Apartments (low-income family housing) was our first home we shared as a married couple and little family. We certainly lived on love, as we had nothing but one another, little Madalynn and all of our wonderful friends who supported us by sitting with Madalynn during the times in the week Travis and I had class at the same time. I'll never forget the night I was cooking Hamburger Helper on the range and a cockroach fell from the cabinet above the range right into the Cheesy Hashbrowns I was making. I shook my head, thanked God for food, a husband, a daughter and a place to live, fished the roach out with a spoon and went on cooking. Travis and I kind of looked at each other and shrugged. We ate the food gratefully and still have cheesy hashbrowns (minus the roaches, THANK GOD), to this day! I also found out I was pregnant with Justis in our little apartment when Maddie was seven months old, and I remember craving red and yellow sweet peppers.

We went to look at the specific apartment we lived in at Jardine and it was gone! This beautiful new Jardine apartment building was standing in its place. I bet there are no roaches in that apartment! Looks like they're slowly tearing down the old apartments and building the MUCH NICER ones to take their place. WOW! I wonder if it's still for low income families? Pretty fancy.

Madalynn took her first swing on this playground behind our apartment at Jardine, and the little building you see is the laundry building, where I washed and folded many-a-bib and onsie! You can see all of the new, fancy Jardine housing going up all around the old apartments in this picture.