Missouri Vacation- Part Two

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July! I'm back to post more of our Missouri vacation pictures.


While we were visiting Kansas City, I decided to drive the boys up to Smithville where I grew up. I haven't been up there in a long time. 


I drove them to our old house and neighborhood, which is pretty much the same except all of the trees are now huge. This is the house I grew up in. The picture isn't the best because I was taking it out the car window. I was afraid if I got out of the car to take pictures, the people might have thought I was some crazy stalker or something.  :)

I wish I could have taken a better picture but this is it. We lived out in the country in a little neighborhood of about 20 houses. The neighborhood is still the same. I thought it might have added houses over the years, but it hasn't.

I then took the boys over to the High School I graduated from. We walked around to take some pictures, but it was undergoing some construction so this was the best picture I could get. 

And here is our football field. A little different than the gigantic footballs stadiums here in TX! 

Next up was a trip back to St. Louis! 

We stayed with our friends Patty and Matt and their kids John and Jana. The first full day we were there it rained buckets. And I mean buckets!! So we took all of the kids to Skyzone. It is a trampoline place where the kids jump around and play dodgeball. Spencer had his birthday party there last year. 

Chris and I planned a little surprise for everyone. The weekend we were in St. Louis was Father's Day weekend, so we bought Chris a plane ticket to join us, but didn't tell anyone. So on Friday night I told them I was going to meet an old friend for dinner, but really I went to pick Chris up at the airport. 

It was a nice surprise for everyone and we had a great weekend visiting and catching up with old friends. 

They got in a quick game of basketball before I had to take Chris back to the airport. 

While we were in St. Louis, we also went to our old neighborhood and had lunch with friends. The boys had fun playing with their friends, but I forgot to take my camera! So I don't have any pictures to show that part of our trip, but it was awesome to see everyone!

On our last day, we went back to an old favorite: Fitz's in the Delmar Loop. 

Nothing like a frosty mug of Fitz's Root Beer on a hot day. 

On our way back to St. Louis, I decided we should stop in Columbia and walk around my old college. We have driven through Columbia so many times in the last 12 years, but never stopped.


Some things on campus looked exactly the same and others had changed a ton! I had worked in the University Bookstore for a semester and I remember it as kind of small. They redid it and now it is in this huge beautiful building with about 5 different restaurants to choose from. All I had to eat at on campus was a McDonalds, and now that is gone! Well at least at the location it was at while I was in school. 

It was a fun, quick trip down memory lane. 

I have a few more pictures to post and will do that in a few days. I hope these posts are not becoming like those slide shows everyone bores you with after their vacation. ;-)

Thanks for visiting me! 

Our Missouri Vacation

The week after school was out Spencer, Connor and I went on a long vacation visiting family and friends in Kansas City and St. Louis. We were gone for about 2 1/2 weeks. 


We left on a Wednesday morning and 9 long hours later we arrived at my mom's house.


She just had a new fence installed and on Thursday we picked up a badminton set to play with in her new backyard.

On Saturday, my mom and I went to the Princess Diana Exhibit that was going on at Union Station in KC. There were only two cities this exhibit went to in the US and one of them was KC. This was the last weekend it was here and then it was all flown back to England. 

I was bummed to learn that they didn't allow any photographs in the exhibit. I did snap the next two pics with my Iphone outside of the actual exhibit. We got to see her wedding dress, a crown, childhood memorabilia, and a large collection of her gowns from over the years. She was super tiny! I'm so glad that I got to see the exhibit. 

Kansas City is known as the City of Fountains. It is said that only Rome has more. I don't know if that is actually true or not, but KC does have lots and lots and lots of fountains! 

This frog fountain is in a shopping area known as Zona Rosa. It was right in front of a yogurt shop we had just had a little snack in. 


This next area that we visited was the Country Club Plaza. Lots and lots of really nice shopping and restaurants. We also went to see the movie Super 8 here. We went to the afternoon show and when the lady told me that the amount I owed was $12 I had to make sure she charged me for all 3 of us. It was only $4 a ticket! I can't remember the last time I only paid $4 for a movie ticket, even in the afternoon. 

There are lots and lots of fountains on the Plaza. 

And of course we had to stop at the Cupcake store. 

This is the cupcake I got. It is called Marshmallow Fondue and was so decadent! And delicious! The boys both had a Red Velvet cupcake which looked really good too. Heck, they all looked really good! 

This is just part of our trip. We were gone for 2 1/2 weeks and I took lots of pictures! I won't bore you with all of them, but I will post some more in a few days. 


Thanks for visiting me!

Spring Break Road Trip-Part One

Last week was Spring Break here and we decided to take a short road trip to San Antonio. Warning: Photo Heavy Post Below. 


We stayed right on the Riverwalk. The weather was just perfect! 

Here are the boys on the Riverwalk right after we arrived. It was so busy! I'm not used to everyone having Spring break at the same time. I think the whole state of Texas was off that week. 

This was the view from our hotel room. We actually had a little balcony. The boys loved the hotel because they offered free soda and popcorn every day from 3-10pm.  I think in the first picture Connor is carrying a bag of popcorn he got at the hotel when we checked in. 

The next day we went walking on the Riverwalk and went to the Alamo. Unfortunately the boys were not very thrilled with this historical tour. 

However, right across the street from the Alamo was a Guinness Book Of World Records Museum. And this was very exciting for the boys, especially Spencer. Spencer has been buying every edition of Guinness for the last 4 or 5 years. 

Right down the street from the Guinness museum is a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. This is seriously the street for boys. All kinds of weird and kind of gross things to entertain them. :)

Here we are at the entrance to the Ripley museum. These animated figures were singing Top 40 tunes and Chris thought they were very funny. I have to admit that it is kind of funny to see the "bearded lady" singing Ke$ha. 

That guy isn't real, but doesn't it look like he is? Creepy! 

These test tube things were funny! The boys crawled underneath and then popped up inside of them. I have a ton of pictures of them making goofy faces in them. 

Since we were there the weekend before Saint Patrick's Day, we got to see the river dyed green. 

Hey look, there is actual photographic proof I was on this trip too. ;) I don't know why it looks like a major storm is brewing behind us. I think that is a building or something, because the weather was nice. Sometimes it got a little cloudy, but never looked like this. 

Those are just some of the pictures from our first two days. We went to Seaworld the next day and I will post pictures from there in a day or so. 

Thanks for visiting me!