Well, here (at last!) are some pics from our trip to Kansas City. I'll give you all the highlights, misadventures, and general chaos from our remarkably enjoyable weekend. We started out with a visit to the Underground Salt Museum. Before the tour, you start by watching a brief film, putting on your hard hat and self-rescuer (a device that turns deadly carbon monoxide into breathable carbon dioxide - just in case...), and um, oh yes, USING THE BATHROOM!! You see, no facilities are available for the first hour of the tour. So, we all dutifully took our turn in the restrooms before our descent. TWENTY MINUTES into the tour, what does A say? "I need to potty!" Yes, we got to sit through 40 minutes of that and "It's dark!!" (yes it was dark, but it was brighter than the nightlight in her room). However, after getting to select a few salt rocks to keep, she was a completely different child. It's amazing how "getting stuff" can placate a grumpy child (or a grumpy adult, for that matter...)
Then it was off to Kansas City! Our plan was to check into our hotel, then head to the Royals game. A couple weeks before we left, I looked for hotel rooms close to the arena, and found that most of them were booked. We found a couple of hotels that had available rooms, and (of course!) I prefered the, um, let's just say "less expensive" places. No need to spend over $100 for 1 night, right? I checked out the hotel on an independent web site, and it rated 3.7 stars out of 5. Not too bad. Well, we get there and the exterior of the building isn't in the best condition, and D isn't too happy with my wanting to take the more "economical" hotel, and now it's N's turn to have an urgent need to go. D says, "Take him in to go in the lobby." I said, "There's no bathroom in the lobby!" D said, "Yes there is!" so I took the boy in. You guessed it - there was no bathroom in the lobby! There were a couple of people in line ahead of me and the poor guy working was TAKING FOREVER!!!!! And I had a whimpering 6-year-old constantly reminding me THAT HE HAD TO PEE!!!!! (and I wasn't the least BIT STRESSED OUT AT THIS POINT!!!!!!!) Then it's finally my turn. The man checking us in (teller? clerk? I'm not sure what to call him...) asks us if our reservation was through hotels.com and I said yes, and he said he couldn't honor it. WHAT????? It seems that as of Wednesday (it was now Friday), they were no longer a Red Roof Inn and therefore couldn't honor the reservation. They could, however, give me a room at the same price I was expecting, I would just have to call hotels.com to cancel, or else I'd be double charged. I said, "Fine" and then filled out the paperwork to check-in. Then he tries to swipe my credit card. Waiting, waiting, N whimpering, waiting, please try again. So we swipe the card again. We did that 3 times, and finally I just gave them another card. So we get to our room, N goes potty, I call hotels.com (and they were great to deal with - just a few minutes and no charges at all - yea!), my blood pressure starts to come down, we get ready to go to the game, N goes potty again and clogs the toilet, which then overflows ALL OVER THE BATHROOM FLOOR (and, sorry, no housekeeping until Saturday afternoon). *sigh* Well, throw all the towels over it and head to the game!
I had never been to a professional baseball game before and it was neat. It was $1 hot dog night, so D and the kids got their food and then I went to find mine. You see, I personally think that hot dogs are one of the more vile "foods" (and I use that term loosely...) on the planet. So, I go in search of something more palatable than hot dogs and more substantial than nachos. I search, and search, and search. Only hot dogs. I finally have to walk down this giant concrete spiral to the bowels of the arena to wait in line (and wait, and wait) to get a grossly overpriced, somewhat palatable basket of chicken fingers and fries. I get back to the nosebleed section and eat. About the bottom of the 1st or top of the 2nd inning, A says "Is it over yet?" At this point, I'm figuring it's going to be a looong game! Things went well for a while (with the requisite "Can we go yet?" and "Is it over?" coming a couple of times an inning). They blow up beach balls and pass them around the arena during the game, and N actually got to hit one! Of course, when he jumped to get it, he landed in the pile of food/trash under our seats and got ketchup everywhere. The kids really perked up when we got each of them the world's largest snow cones. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful (except for A's leg getting stuck in the seat), and the game ended with a really good fireworks display.
The next morning, we were off to Great Wolf Lodge! D even admitted that our previous hotel was fine just to spend the night (yea!). We stopped in at Cabela's during the rain, where we ran into a family from our church (how weird was that!). Then we went to Legends mall and waited for Dwayne's parents and sister to join us. We ate at the T-Rex Cafe, where the kids built their own stuffed dinosaurs, then checked in and went swimming!! Great Wolf was great! I don't think N's feet touched the floor the whole first day! You've never seen such excitement! We slid down slides, floated on the lazy river, slid some more, walked across the "lily pads", and A surprised us all by being really good at it! (See picture below) After a few days, we sadly said our goodbyes to family and drove home. All in all, an extremely awesome weekend. After all, I figure you need a little "mis-adventure" to really appreciate the adventure, right?
y photo editing, I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 6. I had version 3 for years, and just started getting onto the more artistic side of it (as opposed to just fixing red eye and cropping) when I upgraded this summer. I have found lots of related info, tutorials, and products online. I can share if anyone's interested.
