Kansas
Why an entrepreneur has no regrets about moving from Hawaii back to her Kansas hometown
- Audra Dinell doesn’t regret moving from Hawaii to her home state of Kansas in 2020.
- While being closer to family was one draw, another was affordable living in the Midwest.
- Kansas has a lower cost of living than Colorado and Hawaii, the states Dinell lived in previously.
Audra Dinell, 38, said her move back to Kansas from Hawaii felt like she was starting over.
“We miss a lot of things about the places we left — the people, culture, mountains, and ocean — but no, we do not have any regrets about moving back to Kansas,” Dinell, who moved from Kansas to Colorado before living in Hawaii, said.
Amid the pandemic in 2020, she had an idea for a career shift and wanted to become a homeowner again after leasing a place in Hawaii.
She also moved back to be closer to family and for the “ease of living” in the Midwest where she said “things were easily accessible, affordable.”
Dinell and her husband moved from Wichita, Kansas, to Colorado in 2012 for her marketing career. They had their first child before they left Colorado for Hawaii in 2017 because of a job opportunity for Dinell.
Dinell said, “Hawaii was magical.” The high cost of Honolulu life wasn’t as pleasant.
“The cost of living moving from Honolulu to Wichita was shocking,” Dinell said.
Indeed, the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that Kansas is much cheaper than the states she left behind. As of 2022, Colorado and Hawaii were 2% and around 11% more expensive than the national average, respectively. Meanwhile, Kansas’ cost of living was 10% lower than the national average.
Dinell said Wichita, which has a population of almost 400,000, is lively. She also likes the Midwest’s community feeling.
“When I left in 2012 versus coming back in 2020, I have personally felt this energy, this collective energy, of just people lifting up our city and bringing cool things and sharing ideas and helping each other out,” Dinell said. “I just think it’s such a vibrant, cool place to be right now.”
Dinell said moving back to Kansas during the pandemic felt risky but was the right choice. After having the chance to live elsewhere, she’s happy she, her husband, and their two kids took the one-way trip to the Midwest and that she gets to live in her dream neighborhood.
Dinell and her husband also sold many of their belongings because they didn’t want to deal with the shipping delays, adding to the feeling of starting over.
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Work and life in Kansas
Work was one of the things that drew Dinell back. Before the family moved to Kansas in 2020, Dinell considered starting a women’s leadership collective.
“My husband and I were talking about potentially moving home already, and I thought about this experience that I had while working in Honolulu with a professional women’s organization, and I thought, ‘I wonder if Wichita has anything like that?’” she told BI.
She said she found a “hole in the market” for this type of community and founded The Thread.
“We help women become more confident and build up their professional communities by working on their power skills,” Dinell said.
Dinell finds people in the Midwest are helpful, including for professional opportunities.
“One of the things I noticed is in the Midwest, there are less gatekeepers than in some of the other cities I’ve lived and worked in,” she said. “I’m able to get a coffee meeting with the president of a large nonprofit and really get to know different people in the community who I can help and who want to help me grow my career and business.”
While Dinell and her family are enjoying Kansas, she said she’s still able to afford visits to Colorado and Hawaii, given the Midwest’s cost of living.
Meanwhile, she finds there are a lot of fun activities for her kids in Kansas, such as going to the science center. She also likes the local parks for her children. Dinell also enjoys the restaurant options.
She loves where she’s at now, but Dinell said she misses some aspects of living in Hawaii and Colorado. Dinell liked biking to breweries and hiking in Colorado. In Hawaii, she would hang out at the beach multiple times a week. She said she thinks the people in Hawaii are great, and the state has ideal weather.
Dinell suggested people who are thinking about moving to the Midwest to book a trip to see what it’s like.
“I have friends who have visited us from Hawaii, Colorado, many different cities, South Carolina, and they’re always so surprised,” she said. “They’re like, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know this was here.’”
What was your moving situation like? Reach out to this reporter at mhoff@businessinsider.com to share.
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Another round of storms is forecasted to hit Kansas Sunday night.
Right now, severe thunderstorm watches are in place for several counties.
Some parts of our viewing area have already seen the effects of these storms. Reports that have come in are listed below, as well as a live blog that will be updated as more storm reports are released.
- 2.5″ hail – 7 miles southwest of Wauneta, Nebraska
- 3″ hail – 12 miles north-northwest of Max, Dundy County, Nebraska
- 2.25″ hail – 10 miles north of Max, Dundy County, Nebraska
- 3.2″ hail – 12 miles north of Max, Dundy County, Nebraska
- 3″ hail – 12 miles north-northwest of Max, Dundy County, Nebraska
- 1″ hail – Stratton, Hitchcock County, Nebraska
- 1.5″ hail – 3 miles west of Stratton, Hitchcock County, Nebraska
- Tornado – A potential weak Tornadic Debris Signature may have been observed – 13 miles north of Brewster, Thomas County, Kansas
Kansas
Kansas City Symphony and Michelle Cann Perform Uplifting Concert Featuring a Variety of American Styles and Voices. – KC STUDIO
A rich variety of American musical composers and works graced the stage of Helzberg Hall Sat., June 20, as the Kansas City Symphony performed its season ending program. It was no surprise that an American-themed concert was planned a mere two weeks before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. What was more surprising, yet very welcome, was the nature and diversity of the musical voices included on the program.
Guest conductor Peter Oundjian opened the evening with the music of Joan Tower, a Grammy Award winning contemporary composer whose music we don’t hear often enough in Kansas City. Her Suite from Concerto for Orchestra is a distillation of music from the larger Concerto for Orchestra and was commissioned by Oundjian and his Yale Philharmonia in 2025. It is a dramatic and technically challenging work with a complex harmonic language, at times tonal but with free use of dissonance.
The music was also intense and unrelenting in its pace and excitement. Oundjian had total control over the score, effectively cueing and expressively anticipating the powerful rhythmic content. Just when you thought the music couldn’t get any faster, louder and more intense, it did, driving to its exciting conclusion. The ensemble delivered a very convincing performance.
Florence Price is a 20th-century African American composer who earned significant regional attention during her lifetime but was not universally known. Her music is receiving much more attention in the 21st century since many unknown scores were discovered in the attic of her summer house in 2009. Scholars and performers are just now coming to grips with her work: the first scholarly biography was published in 2020 and a collection of scholarly essays on all aspects of her music was just released in March of this year.
Soloist Michelle Cann has been an active proponent of Price’s music for the past ten years. In a conversation a few days before the concert, I asked her what attracted her to the composer. She answered “Her musical language has such an amazing mix of styles that fit so well together. Also, there is something visceral and powerful in her music.”
Cann, in her Kansas City debut, compellingly demonstrated the power of Price’s music in a performance of the Concerto in One Movement for Piano and Orchestra. While the title says it is in a single movement, there were three sections that seemed like independent movements. From the outset Cann employed a warm legato tone. Technically adroit, she exhibited the chordal and dreamy passages, travelling up and down the keyboard. Oundjian maintained a good balance between orchestra and soloist. There were a few intonation problems in the upper strings near the end of the first section.
The second section was slow and lyrical. Cann played the music, which sounded like a spiritual, with a heartfelt sensuous tone. She was joined by oboist Kristina Fulton in a lovely duet throughout the movement. The exciting finale was based on an African American Juba dance, featuring strong syncopations and a rollicking sound. It is clear that Price’s music represents an important part of America’s musical legacy and deserves much more attention, and, of course, many more performances and recordings.
As a performer, Cann has it all: passion, expression, technique, sensitivity and extraordinary musicality. She demonstrated it next in George Gershwin’s audience favorite, the Rhapsody in Blue. Cann and the orchestra played with alternating bluesy fervor with free rhythm and technical precision, and the audience responded with an excited ovation. As an encore, she wowed the audience with a set of high-powered jazzy improvisations on Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor by African American pianist Hazel Scott.
The concert ended with Dvořák’s classic Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World.” At the beginning of the concert, Oundjian assured the audience that this, too, is an American work, “since it was written on East 17th Street in Manhattan.” Conducting without a score, Oundjian elicited a dramatic reading of the composition in response to his impassioned direction. The opening movement featured a rich romantic sound, although occasional attention to detail seemed lacking, with some issues in synchronization, balance and transitions in tempo. The occasional slips were forgiven in the exquisite second movement. Matthew Lengas played the famous soulful English horn theme with supple grace and beauty.
This work is quite a showcase for an orchestra. All sections are featured throughout the composition; many soloists are highlighted and there are regular contrasts in mood and tempo. The performers responded persuasively, especially in the explosive finale.
There is one more performance of this program on Sun., June 21at 2 p.m. at the Kauffman Center. The Kansas City Symphony will also present a European Tour Send-Off Concert on Friday, August 21 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets and more information about these events and the 2026-27 season can be found at www.kcsymphony.org.
This concert was reviewed on Saturday, June 20, 2026.
Kansas
Salvador Perez attended the Ecaudor-Curaçao match at Arrowhead. So did other royals — from the Netherlands
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City Royals captain Salvador Perez, along with teammates Starling Marte and Carter Jensen, attended Saturday evening’s World Cup match at Arrowhead Stadium.
So did some other royals!
King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands began Saturday by cheering the Dutch past Sweden in Houston.
The monarchs ended the day by watching Curacao make some history against Ecuador in Kansas City.
The small island nation of Curacao is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and that makes King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima the heads of state. So, after a quick flight north Saturday, the royal couple dutifully swapped out their bright orange scarves of Het Oranje Legioen they wore to their earlier match with bright blue ones for The Blue Wave.
Curacao, the smallest World Cup team in population and size, made its tournament debut last Sunday in a 7-1 loss to Germany. But it bounced back from that defeat to earn a 0-0 draw with La Tri and earn its first-ever point in the tournament.
“It is an extra-special World Cup because we have both the Netherlands and Curacao,” Willem-Alexander told RTL-TV. “So we have twice as many teams to cheer for. A great opportunity to cheer on both the Blues and the Oranges. All in all, it will be a special World Cup for me with two teams, and I naturally hope they go extremely far.”
The Netherlands moved one step closer to the World Cup knockout round after a 5-1 win over Sweden.
Brian Brobbey and Cody Gakpo scored two goals apiece to help coach Ronald Koeman’s team bounce back from a disappointing draw in its opener and move atop Group F. The Netherlands concludes group play against Tunisia on Thursday in Kansas City.
Curacao is still alive, too, after Eloy Room made 15 saves — one off the World Cup record — to earn a draw with Ecuador. It concludes Group E play on Thursday against the Ivory Coast in Philadelphia at the same time Ecuador is playing Germany in New York.
It is quite rare for sitting monarchs to come through the area. Queen Ann of Romania attended the dedication of the Liberty Memorial, which is where Kansas City is holding its World Cup FanFest, in the 1920s, while King Gustav XVI of Sweden made a stop in the small Kansas town of Lindsborg when he was passing through the Midwest in the 1970s.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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