Kansas City vacation

Here's a slide show of pictures from our vacation to Kansas City two weeks ago. I'll try to keep the post short, but I do want to put in some details for posterity!

We left Wednesday morning, and the kids were good in the car. They watched Mary Poppins, and it took most of the way there to get through it. We only had to stop once, too! We got to our hotel, and we think that it was the kids' favorite part of the trip. We had a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom loft suite. It had a living room, full kitchen, and the best part was, a bedroom with a door. So, when Brian and I put them in bed, we could shut the door and not have to be quiet in the dark, too. We tried to get them to take a nap when we arrived, but that took a while (see 1st picture). Once they finally did sleep for about 45 minutes, we donned our swimming suits and went to a water park in Lee's Summit, MO. It was a small waterpark, similar to Star City Shores, run by the city. It was more feasible for 3 little kids, rather than going someplace huge like Oceans of Fun where they couldn't do half the things there. They really had fun, even though the water was cold. That evening, we ate dinner at one of our favorites, California Pizza Kitchen. We tried to get the kids to go to bed early, but that didn't work so well. It was 10:00 before they finally fell asleep, and we paid for that the next day!

Thursday, Grace was up by 6:15. That was a huge mistake! With so little sleep, she was a bear that day. Overall, this wasn't such a great day. They were pretty naughty, presumably from too little sleep. But, we soldiered on. This day we went to the Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead in Overland Park, I think it was the best part of the trip. It was full of kid-friendly activities, it had free admission and wasn't that busy. We did pay for the kids to ride a pony, which they loved. We walked around and played, and left by noon. We ate a quick lunch at our hotel and again, tried to have them nap. We put Will in the loft in our bed and separated the other two in their room, and that worked much better. Everone did nap for a while. That afternoon we went to a children's museum in Shawnee, KS. We were underwhelmed by it. We ate a quick dinner at a little deli recommended by my friend Jessica, then met Jess and her three girls at a place called Zonkers (think Amazing Pizza Machine or Chuck-E-Cheese). It was in a mall, so when the dads were in charge of the kids, Jess and I did a little shopping. The kids rode all the rides they had and played on a big climbing structure. They had a great time and it was so great to catch up with Jess. She's a friend from college and she has twin girls that are 7. Fun! The kids got to bed late that night, and were so tired! They slept much better this night, though.

No one woke up quite to early on Friday, but we did wake up to rain. Our plan was to go to the zoo, so we just went, deciding to walk around in the rain if we had to. It did sprinkle on us when we first got to the zoo, but later on it cleared off and go hot. If you've never been to the KC zoo, it's huge. Really spread out. Over 2 miles of walking trails. Unfortunately, with kids that are too big for strollers, but not big enough for walking 2 miles, it was too much. We saw about half the zoo, and took lots of breaks, but they still complained. We did ride the train and tram and they enjoyed that. I think we prefer the Omaha zoo, but it was still neat to experience a different zoo. That afternoon, we took a nice long, quiet, cool nap. Then we had dinner at McDonald's, where they got Shrek character watches that they still wear and talk about. Then we went to the movie Shrek in 3-D (which Will calls 3DR, we don't know why). I think they enjoyed the movie and loved their glasses. The brought them home, and still play with them. The only bad thing, is that a Friday night, 3-D movie for 2 adults and 3 kids cost $60! It was insane. Good thing we don't do that very often.

Saturday morning was check out morning. We got up and going to the sound of pouring rain. We were glad we had indoor activities that day. We went to Crown Center/Union Station in downtown KC. We went to Science City, a hands-on science museum for kids. We were a little underwhelmed by that, too. It was OK, the kids liked it. We were able to walk through the sky-walk to stay indoors to get back to Crown Center, where we ate lunch at Fritz's. OK food, but very neat ambience. Small toy trains on the ceiling bring your food on a tray and drop it to you. The kids loved this. After lunch, we hopped in the car and headed for Superior. The kids watched a movie for part of the time and slept for part of the time (it was a 4 1/2 hr drive!). We spent the evening at the lake with my family, stayed the night with Papa and Betty. We would have loved to play in the water and take a boat ride the next morning, but it rained all Sunday morning!! We ate lunch with my mom's family in Hardy, then drove home. Luckily with a movie on, the kids don't fall asleep in the car, so we were able to have them nap at home Sunday afternoon. Brian and I just collapsed and tried not to think about what we had to do on Monday, which is for another post........