Kansas City: Our mini-vacation

Since Scott and I are going on an adults-only cruise later this summer with Chad & Leslie, we thought we'd plan a trip not too far from home to get away with the girls for a little bit. We heard about this fantastic resort in Kansas City called Great Wolf Lodge. The rooms are all designed for kids with either a cabin, a tent, or a cave in the corner of the room just for them. We got one with a tent, and it had bunk-beds and their own TV. They thought it was super cool! But, the best part of the whole place is the massive indoor water park. It has 5 water slides, a lazy river, and several play areas. We all had a fabulous time!
They also had an outdoor pool and play area. We stayed outside most of the day on Wednesday because the weather was just perfect!
You can barely see the girls in this picture, but they're behind the waterfall. There's a bucket way up close to the ceiling that fills up with 1,000 gallons of water and dumps it every 5 minutes.

Weeeeeeee!! The blue slide was our favorite....
But, yellow was pretty cool, too, because most of the time you're in total darkness.
Before we left, I searched the internet to try and find a fun place to eat on Wednesday night since it was Payton's birthday. I found a place called T-Rex that was supposed to be close to our resort, and boy was it ever! It was in this huge shopping center right next door. It's the only restaurant of it's kind in the U.S., and it had robotic dinosaurs, several fish tanks, and meteor showers every 30 minutes (it got dark and loud, but nothing ever fell from the ceiling...). I had read that people go there more for the atmosphere than for the food, but I had to say - we chowed down that night! At one point, Holland even said, "Goodness mom". You know I ate a lot if she made that comment about me! Then we secretly told them it was Payton's birthday, and they brought out an ice cream sundae and sang Happy Birthday to her. I think it's one she'll remember....

We had to be checked out of our room by 11 on Thursday, so I went to the fitness center and ran for a while, then came back to the room and took a shower and got ready. Scott and Holland wanted to hang out by the pool for a while, so Payton and I thought we'd drive over to the awesome shopping center and do some shopping. Sidebar: Running works completely different muscles than any other type of exercise known to man. And since I had also ran the day before, I had sore muscles in places I'd only heard about once upon a time in one of my Anatomy classes. Needless to say, we didn't shop. We found a movie theater and sat and watched Kung Fu Panda. I had already gotten tickets for an exhibit called Bodies Revealed for later that afternoon, so I somehow mustered the strength and we went to that. It was totally worth it! All kinds of real human bodies and body parts on display. But, of course not everyone appreciated it as much as I did. At one point, Payton made the comment: "I'm gonna have trouble sleeping tonight". It really wasn't that bad. It was a great learning experience for them (even though it was more for me than anyone else). Then we asked one of the locals where we should go for the best BBQ in KC, and she said, "Have I got a place for you!". She sent us to Jack Stack's, and it was out of this world! We were so glad we had asked!

We found our way back to the awesome shopping center on Friday and found some great deals (not really, but we like to tell ourselves that...), then ate at Cheeseburger Paradise. Yummy!! On Friday night, we went to see the Royals play the Cardinals. It was fun, mostly because we really didn't care who won the game (The Royals did, if you care. Sorry Brandi!). We were worried about the weather because they kept saying on the news that the storms were supposed to hit around 7 - the same time the game was scheduled to start, but they held off until we got in the car after the game was over.
Payton & Scott sharing popcorn. Look at how dark the sky is! Then we left the game and got lost in KC at 10:30 at night, but that's all I'm gonna say about that. We are safe at home now, and that's all that matters, right?? All in all, it was a fun family trip, and we've all come away with great memories!