Kansas City with Family

We spent a fun family weekend in Kansas City with my brother's family at the beginning of October.

We brought the kids to Kansas City several years ago for a family vacation and stumbled upon a fun museum with an awesome kids' area. Since we were headed back to Kansas City, we thought it'd be fun to spend a few hours there. We arrived Saturday afternoon, and the kids took off playing. 

There was a grocery store, farmhouse, diner, hospital, school, jail, post office, theater, and some other fun themed areas. 

Is anyone surprised that the construction area was the first place Samuel visited???

The kids also spent some time exploring the rest of the Johnson County Museum. The highlight was a full-size house from the 1950's showing off all the modern conveniences of the times. 

The cousins arrived later that afternoon, and the kids kept playing. They were so excited to spend time with their cousins. 

We rented an Airbnb for the weekend. While some of the adults ran to pick up dinner, the girls played in the backyard. 

Elisabeth had recently learned the game Statues from her PE class, and she taught everyone how to play it. 

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was playing games with Jeremy and Anna. We stayed up late both nights playing games. They brought a fun one called Cosmic Encounter, and we brought Dice Forge, Dominion and Tokaido. We all have similar tastes in board games, and we took advantage of the time together and spent hours and hours playing games while the cousins played. 

The kids stayed up late playing together. They so enjoyed the quality time to be together. 

After lunch on Sunday, we drove over to a homestead/farm place that a friend had recommended and spent a couple of hours exploring. We saw lots of farm animals, played on some playgrounds, petted baby goats, and even saw a blacksmith demonstration. The weather was gorgeous. It was a fun way to let the kids burn off some energy. 

The kids spent their last evening together playing Switch, and the girls played spies, and random other things while the adults played more board games and stayed up way past all of our bedtimes. 

After breakfast on Monday, we said our goodbyes with plans to see each other again in the Spring and also plans to make our KC weekend an annual tradition. 

This Little Girl slept almost the whole way home. All that cousin fun wore her out. 

We all missed Grammy over the weekend but were thankful to be together as a family starting new traditions. 

September Fun

The day after we returned from our beach vacation, Katherine started Pre-K at our church. She's our fourth child to attend Community Preschool Pre-K. She's been so excited about starting school. It was our last fourth day of Pre-K and was bittersweet. We're all so excited for the memories she'll make, the things she'll learn, the friendships she'll make, and the adventures she'll have. 

Our co op hosted Spirit Month during the month of September, and the first week was Crazy Hair Day. Elisabeth was eager to participated in all the fun. 

I got to be Mom Helper in her favorite class- Fun and Cooking. This week they painted apple trees. The following week they got to make apple pies in a cup. Yum! She consistently tells me that Fun and Cooking is her favorite class. 

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Matt's work hosted a night at a Tulsa Driller's Game. The kids were thrilled to get to meet Hornsby during the game, and to get to play on the playground and eat free hamburgers and hot dogs. They didn't last through the entire game, but we had fun while they were there. 

We were missing Nathan that evening, but he certainly wasn't missing us. He was celebrating Wyatt's birthday with Hibachi, Roblox, a sleepover, and donuts. Wyatt is one of Nathan's very best friends, and he's always happy to celebrate anything with him. 

We picked him up the next night and spent the evening watching OSU's football game and hanging out with one of our favorite families. The night went wild from there. I had casually mentioned that we had planned to get rid of our upstairs couch and replace it with some beanbags for the kids. Brooke found a listing for bean bags for sale in her neighborhood, so instead of having a leisurely night watching a football game, the men stuffed two giant beanbags in our van, and Brooke and I drove them to Broken Arrow and then back to Bixby to pick up the rest of my family. 

It was a wild Saturday night, ha!

One of the best parts about Pre K for Katherine is that her best friend Laura is in her class and most days they carpool together to school. The girls made an intricate plan to dress alike for school one day down to their shoes and hair styles. They're adorabel. 

Thursdays are our co op days, and they are the best. The kids are learning so much. I'm so thankful for the effort and passion their teachers put forth each class period. Samuel and Elisabeth made salt dough maps of Africa. 

In their science class, the also did an experiment to show how whale blubber keeps the animals warm in the frigid waters. 

Samuel, Elisabeth, and Katherine are all participating in Trail Life and American Heritage Girls this year, and their troops hosted a fishing derby. Matt and I are not fishermen, so Papa Joe kindly agreed to take them to the fishing night. They all loved it and had a great time. 

As the weather cooled off throughout September, we enjoyed a night of bike riding in our neighborhood. 

We also attending a field trip at the zoo with our co-op friends. 

The kids enjoyed fishing so much, that Papa Joe took them fishing at his neighborhood pond one Friday night. They caught dozens of fish. 

This beautiful girl asked me to curl her hair for church, and we had to document it with a picture.