Thanksgiving Week - Friday: Family

I started this week of Thanksgiving with family memories of mini-golf in Kansas City, Gateway Arch and City Museum in St Louis but now turn to other items of gratitude. The move last August to Kansas City was tough, as we left behind wonderful friends in Winona and moved further away from extended family. Family is very important to us and we make the one-way 9+ hour drive quite often.

We were in central Minnesota two weeks ago and were able to spend time with my sister and her family.  Below are three photos from the weekend.

I believe the toy plane crashed into the photographers head here, getting a reaction from all but Danielle and grandparents. 

Z man may have his work cut out for him as the only grandson.

Too often we forget to take family portraits, but luckily we had everything set up and a few willing volunteers.

As we talked to our parents today, I was reminded there are positives with being in Kansas City that offset the negative of missing family at the great distance.

Today's high was 67, and might have been one of a few in which you could not fly a kite.  We tried anyways.

We spent over an hour playing at the Wyandotte County Lake Park.  The item in the video below was vicious, and disorientated everyone quickly.  We perhaps played too long, as Danielle (Seen here on another VIDEO) was still feeling the effects an hour later.  The Lake has also hosted some amazing birds, but a quick scan tonight only revealed expected species.

 

My best digi-scoping picture to date, it doesn't really compare to my best photo from today however with the DSLR.

Childhood Memories

So this seems to be the summer for re-creating my childhood memories, a few weekends ago it was Itasca State Park and this past weekend it was going to the horse races! Saturday we headed north to the cities to stay at a hotel and the girls had a blast swimming and we were fortunate enough to have all of my family there as well. I even had a chance to snuggle with Randy & Ashley's little baby, Claire! Fun was had by all as we swam, had pizza and cookies and just had a generally great time.

Sunday morning we woke to have a somewhat hectic breakfast, then headed to a park to blow some energy before we headed off to the races. When I was a kid, we used to always have the choice between Valleyfair and the horse races, for many summers we all chose to go to the races. I remember watching the horses in the saddling paddock and trying to decide which horse looked like he was going to win. I even had specific things that the winning horse could or couldn't have in order to bet on them. Back in those days, my parents would give us so much money (maybe $20-$30) and we had that money to spend on meals, souveniers, candy and betting. It was the only money we had and we couldn't get more so we had to make sure not to spend too much and always watch what we were spending. My girls are obviously too young for the betting and money handling but they did have fun picking out the prettiest horses or rather their favorite number (in Danielle's case) and waiting to see whether their horse won or not.

However much fun that was for me and the girls, the highlight of the races were the pony rides, face painting and the playground. Both girls picked out the pony with the pretty ribbons in its hair and got to ride together. I had such a fun time seeing their faces as they got to ride. Both girls also picked out matching unicorns to have on their faces. Michaela was terribly worried Sunday night that her unicorn might rub off in the night, but it did happen to stay on enough that it was acceptable.

Danielle is in the videos below and was enjoying her two favorite things at the playground...the tire swing (notice her singing in the background) and the tire horse swing. I think she spend at least half of her time on it :)