Everything's up to date in KC!

Last week we took a mini vacation to Kansas City. Nick has started leave, so we figured we should do something fun!

Our trip started out at the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City. For those of you who don't know, Great Wolf is a huge indoor waterpark and Wilderness themed hotel all in one. We reserved a room with a special kiddie corner complete with three bunks and it's own TV. Ben loved the bunk beds and enjoyed watching cartoons from the top bunk. Before we checked in we stopped at the Cabela's store (where that now infamous baseball hat came from), and Benny bought an old-fashioned wooden pop gun. He had many opportunities to 'hunt' in our room. He spent so much time shooting the deer, moose and raccoons that were featured in his bunk area. He was having so much fun that he wasn't sure he wanted to go to the waterpark!


Eventually, we got the kids in their suits and headed to the park. There were all kinds of slides, a lazy river, hot tubs, and a huge fort that is full of sprinklers, water guns, and has a bucket that dumps 1,000 gallons of water every five minutes. We all had so much fun! I didn't take the camera to the waterpark for obvious reasons, but trust me, it was great! We spent some time on the fort, but our favorite area was the kiddie pool. It had a zero depth entry, so Sophie could walk right in. She loved the water, and had a great time splashing. We had to put her in a little life vest when she got too daring. Ben is not very adventurous, but he did get really good at going down the mini water slide and landing on his feet in the pool. We even put Sophie down the slide once, but she looked terrified so we didn't do it again. Here is Sophie in her swimsuit cover-up ready for the pool.

We swam a little bit the next day, and after check-out we headed to downtown Kansas City. There we went to Union Station-the train station for KC. Union Station is full of museums and exhibits. We went to Science City, an interactive kids science museum. Again, we had so much fun! I think Benny's favorite part was digging for dinosaur bones. This exhibit was really neat, because the 'dirt' that covers the fossils is really pulverized rubber from old tires. We looked for bones for awhile then went on to explore the human body, a music room, a space ship and many other fun things. Ben also spent a lot of time at the water table with Nick trying to create dams and rivers and then float a boat through.

After we were exhausted by our trip to Science City, we left to find another hotel. Nick got us checked into a Holiday Inn while the kids were napping in the car, and then we headed on to find another adventure. This time we headed to a big mall in KC. When the kids woke up, we took them in and had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe'. Ben's favorite part was watching a man make balloon animals at the customer's tables. When it was his turn, he decided that he wanted a white monkey. After dinner we headed back to the hotel. Ben wanted to swim, but we discovered that the only pool was outdoors. Thankfully, we convinced him that it probably wasn't warm enough to swim outside. I think we were all too tired anyhow.

The next morning we were off again. We had tickets for a Kansas City Royals/Detroit Tigers baseball game. We met our friends Ben and Adrianne and their daughter Emily there. The kids were all really good at the game. We were all rooting for the Tigers, our favorite team, but they couldn't manage to pull out a win for us. We really felt like the outsiders in all of our Tiger's gear in Kansas City. We would have been rooting for KC had they been playing anyone else....

We had a fabulous time on our little mini vacation. We are getting ready to head home to Michigan soon. Nick is really excited to see our families after being gone from home for so long. We had thought of taking another mini vacation to Chicago from Michigan, but now we are rethinking-maybe we should just rest.....