Hometown vacations are great!

I mentioned in my last post that we decided to take our vacation in Kansas City rather than in Branson as we had originally planned. We couldn't have made a better decision. We had a blast everyday and still got to sleep in our own beds at night.

Our friends, Barb and Keith (Nanna and Keith to the kids) came from California to spend some time with us. I'm pretty sure we dragged them to all of the hot family attractions in the greater Kansas City area. We visited, played cards, played and read books with the kids, and enjoyed spending time with each other. The kids loved all of the attention and affection they received from Barb and Keith. Barb and Keith were great sports and are great with the kids. We feel blessed to have spent the time with Barb and Keith. Here are some of the highlights of our week:

We had lunch one day at the Rainforest Cafe. Both kids loved looking around at all of the great decorations. Grant especially loved watching the fish in the giant aquarium and looking at the indoor waterfall. He did not so much love actually sitting down to eat lunch. Who can blame him?

We took Barb and Keith to Deanna Rose Farm, one of our favorite family places. Since it was vacation, we even did some of the activities that cost money! We went on a hay ride on the "horsie wagon" and Grant went fishing for the first time. As you can see in the picture, he's a natural, catching, not one, but two fish. If anyone remembers the old Sesame Street sketch where Bert and Ernie go fishing and Ernie catches fish by yelling, "Here fishie, fishie, fishie!", you have an idea of what it was like to see Grant catch his fish. The Deanna Rose Farm Fishin' Hole rents kids a bamboo pole with a piece of fishing line and a hook on it and gives them a bucket with a few worms. Travis loaded Grant's hook and handed the pole to Grant. Now, this was a busy day at the farm, so there were a lot of kids fishing, a lot of noise, and a lot of hooks in the water. This did not hinder our master fisherman. Grant took his bamboo pole and proceeded to beat the water with it. That's right, he smacked the water with that pole about ten times before Travis intervened both for fear of bodily harm to those around Grant and for fear of Grant scaring away any fish not already in hiding due to the masses of children. Just as Travis reached Grant, we all realized that Grant actually had a fish on the end of his line! Travis helped him pull it out and the rest is history. What can I say, he's a natural! I'm sure Grant has a number of relatives who are proud of his new found talent.

The last big event of our vacation was a stay at Great Wolf Lodge. I have to say, that place is pretty amazing. Both of our kids love water, so they took full advantage of the Lodge's water park. Even Sophia went down a couple of the children's waterslides. While I'm sure we would have had fun in Branson, I can't imagine having had a better time that we had right here in KC.