Fun in Kansas City

Hi all -

No quilting or knitting to share this week because I decided to take an impromptu trip to Kansas City to visit my family. I was needing a family fix, had finished my taxes and it was my sister's birthday, so I decided to head on out. So, Lance and I drove out last Thursday and returned home yesterday. It was great fun, as usual!

On this trip we got to meet a new member of the family. Introducing Charli:

She's an adorable 10-week-old Golden Doodle that belongs to my niece. She is such a sweetheart! And very smart:

She's still working on potty training, but already knows not to bite at all (but she does give lots and lots of kisses!) and will sit or lay down for treats. My sisters and I got to take her to the dog park for her first visit. This is a huge dog park with trails through the trees and a beach area on the lake. We started with her on leash, but once we got to the lake we let her free and she loved playing with all the dogs and getting attention from all the people. She was really good about sticking around and we were able to leave her off leash until we got back to the entrance. And she was a real trooper, not getting carried for any part of the long walk. But she did have a good snooze with her mom later:

It's going to be fun watching her grow up!

This visit was also filled with activities. I love movies but don't get to the theater much at home, so when I visit we always go to the decadent theater by my sister's house. It's a regular theater, AMC I think, but they have some theaters that also serve food. There are a couple of levels of these, but we go to the most decadent one with leather seats that have a little motor to recline the seat and raise the foot rest. Extremely comfortable!! And they have waiters to take your order and bring your food. My sisters and I saw The Boss with Melissa McCarthy. It was amusing and we had a good time.

Another tradition we just started at Christmas is getting a Chinese foot massage at Long Life Foot Massage in Olathe, KS. Their foot massage includes the entire body and is incredible! We opted for the 90-minute massage. It was so relaxing that I kept dozing off!

We also started a new tradition on this trip. This one included the whole family. My sister heard about this place in Kansas City that is a real-life version of those adventure games they have on the computer. It's called Break-Out KC and what you do is go into a room where you are locked in and have to find clues and solve puzzles until you finally figure out the combination for the lock on the door and get out. You have an hour to try to solve everything. I won't go into detail about the puzzles because this is a public forum and I don't want to give anything away. But I will tell you that it was a really fun thing to do and I loved doing it with my family. We all had our different talents and skills, and it was fun seeing how everyone stepped up to the task. Unfortunately, we didn't solve the room (our room had a 19% success rate), but we're definitely going to try another room when I go back. And there's another place that does the same thing so we'll be trying that one out, too, to see how they compare. Here we are after the game:

For those who don't know us, from left to right we have: Trevor, Linda, Terra, me, Kelsey, Sue and Lindsey. As you probably guessed, Sue and Linda are my sisters. Trevor, Kelsey and Lindsey are Sue's kids, and Terra is Linda's. They are an incredible group of "kids!" Trevor is a software engineer, following in the analytical footsteps of myself and my sisters (Linda and I are software engineers; Sue is the CFO of an oncologist partnership). The girls went instead into the healthcare industry. Terra is a nurse; Kelsey is a Respiratory Therapist; Lindsey is a freshman in college, studying to be a doctor or a veterinarian. A very smart and talented group, and I am so proud of each of them that I burst at the seams!

And this is how Lance spent his time in Kansas City:

He LOVES sitting in the chair behind Linda. If he sees her walking towards the chair, he'll run around her and jump up. If she's already in the chair, he'll just hop up and snuggle in behind her. Very cute!

While I was in Kansas City, I was also able to avoid our biggest snow storm of the season so far. Our neighborhood got over 40" of snow the weekend after I left. We have a webcam in the neighborhood so I was able to keep an eye on how the snow was melting and I ended up waiting an extra day before driving back. I wanted to make sure I would be able to drive up the driveway since there's no place on the road to leave the car while I shovel. I was glad I waited! I made it up the driveway, but don't think I could have gotten over the pile of snow at the end of the driveway left by the plow if I had come back on Thursday, as planned. Here's what the driveway looked like:

The driveway itself had 8-10" of that heavy, wet, melting snow that you get in the spring, but the end of the driveway had about twice that. We had some more good melting today, so that helped a lot. We have another month or so of possible dumps, but will have more and more nice weather in between as summer finds its way up here.

Well, that's my week. I hope you're having a wonderful week, too!

Nancy