While Leah was marching in Florida, the rest of us decided to break up our spring break week with a mini trip and headed south for a few days in Kansas City. This was our first family vacation as a party of 5, on this side of our family history anyway. I guess we used to do parties of 5 before Noah was born, and before Emma was born it was parties of 4 and so on... This definitely felt monumental as it was our first trip of what will be likely be many future adventures without all six of us together.
We did a lot of Book of Mormon sprint listening on the way down. Emma is determined to finish the stake Book of Mormon challenge and has sacrificed a lot of fun time for dedicated scripture listening.
We've been to KC enough times that we have favorites there, but we wanted to check out a few new place this time too. Our first stop was the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It was very impressive!
It was a lovely day outside!
We had fun with the iconic pop art shuttlecocks on the front lawn.
It was really bright out!
Back inside we stopped in the cafe for some fancy pastries and lemonade.
Me and my girly!
Oop, plus a boy.
And all the boys!
We spent much less time on the modern art side of the museum, but all in all this was definitely a must do again experience.
We finally made it to a Bricks and Minifigs store! It was a magical exercise in what-if's for the boys, but ultimately they decided not to buy anything.
They did want to get some more LEGO organization supplies, so a stop at IKEA was in order. More meatballs, please!
Both evenings in our hotel looked exactly the same, and that was a very fun thing. The first night I took the kids down to the pool and they very carefully played near the other kids- it was possibly the smallest hotel pool we've ever experienced. Both nights Daddy worked on his computer while I read a book on one bed and the kids played the Switch from the other. It was a chill night in a small space and, keeping it real, while we all fit in the hotel room there was definitely some snoring that made the nights painfully long for some of us. I'm definitely enjoying the trips when we get two hotel rooms more and more, and I think the people I jab all night long to stop snoring are too!
I love visiting Kansas City in March- spring springs just a little sooner down there!
Our second day agenda included just one thing- Great Wolf Lodge! Or, as Noah teasingly calls it, "Great Woof Lodge!"
Great Wolf Lodge is a place we've heard about since moving to the Midwest, we've just never made the trip. There are a bunch of them around the country, and the price point has always been surprisingly high enough to deter us from making it a vacation. Now that the kids are old enough to not really care about sleeping in a cabin-themed hotel room or participating in the furry friends meet and greets or bubble dance parties in the lobby, it really didn't make sense to spend the night there. A day pass at the pools was perfect for us! And oh boy did we have fun watching the little kids run around and I had to explain more than once that Great Wolf Lodge has been around a lot longer than the furries that the kids thought the wolf ears represented.
We were first in line for the water park and got to ride the indoor slides with barely any lines. These kids just kept going again and again, and eventually Daddy and I gave up trying to keep up with them. Another perk to having big kids- they were perfectly happy to stick together while the parents worked and read books nearby. A few hours in and everyone was ready for lunch. Brazil has permanently sold us on poolside French fries. "Raise a fry to Leah, we miss her and she's sooo far away!" We talked and thought about and texted with Leah a lot while we were on our trip and she was on hers!
Our day passes also included unlimited laser tag and mini golf. Yikes we are an intimidating bunch!
Not really!
I assumed the mini golf course would be inside, and it was a bit windy and chilly out for our wet swimsuits! But we had some great laughs trying to get the dang balls in the holes.
Bingo and ice cream in the lobby! Yes, it was all geared toward younger kids, but it really was a fun day and it made me realize how not young even Noah is anymore. When we were first checking into the water park they asked me if my kids needed a height check- Noah was a full head taller than their tallest restriction. But it was still a super fun day because these kids know how to have fun anywhere!
After a few more hours of swimming, we had dinner at the Bucky Buffet. Just kidding, I don't know what it was really called, but the vibe was definitely Bass Pro Shops meets Rainforest Cafe.
A bit of corn love for Daddy.
And a few more hours of swimming- thank you Emma for introducing me to the hot tubs!- and we were finally waterlogged and ready to call it a night. Our first and possibly last trip to Great 'Woof' Lodge was a happy success!
Day 3- the temple! Noah took this lovely picture of the Kansas City temple in spring.
It was another beautiful and bright day.
While Daddy, Emma and Adam went inside the temple, Noah and I checked out a nearby park with giant animals. Spot the Noah!
Even big kids can have fun at the playground, and Noah was definitely a big kid here. My favorite part was when he went running over to the merry-go-round and said, "I'm going to push these kids".
And when we climbed to the top of this webbed tower together.
There were prompts all around the park for conversation... Noah wasn't really interested in talking about feelings, ha!
Next up was the money museum!
The Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City could have been a hit or miss, but it was definitely a hit!
We had fun trying to lift a real gold bar, checking out coins from the 1700s, posing on presidential flashcards, and watching the robots move millions of dollars around the money vault.
Next up- lunch at Fritzy's!
The nearby BBQ restaurant smelled so good, but ultimately we decided that this was a kids trip and that some day Daddy and I could come back and eat the food that KC is actually known for anytime we want. For this trip, hamburgers and fries delivered by mini train for the win!
And a quick pose with Taylor Swift- Emma was my very best girly on this trip- we shared a bed, we stuck together against the boys, and we missed our girls Leah and Laney!
We still had some time to explore the city afterward, so we popped into the LEGO store and laughed and laughed at this road sign.
Then we made our way over to another first for this trip- the Kansas City Union Station. It was beautiful! We've never been here before and it was a building, like the art museum, that clearly set DSM in the "junior city" category. We don't have anything quite like this in lil' ol' Iowa.
Another nod to Leah!
Our main reason for visiting Union Station was to see the Illusion Museum, and we were so glad we did! It was a small, relatively understated corner of the station, but we had so much fun there. We were pretty much the only people there and so we took all the time we wanted laughing and figuring out all of the tricky exhibits.
The last stop was the clear favorite. These mirrors mixed us together!
Confused Emma and Mommy-
Startled Emma and Noah-
Daddy and Mommy-
And my favorite- the shooketh Mommy and Noah!
Smoldering Adam meets Emma-
Studly Daddy and Emma-
This one kills me, especially because of Emma's teeth gap.
Daddy meets Mommy gone wrong-
Daddy and Noah, not smiling.
Man, we all laughed so hard we had to leave to find a bathroom. And eventually we had to climb into the car to get back home to our pup. I would say this is definitely top two or three ever trip to KC. Lots of happy memories were made! And just look at these cute babies on the way home!
