Week in Review

With Robert in Costa Rica for two weeks, we took a trip, the second week he was gone, to visit friends in Little Rock and then family in Missouri.

Although our friends had moved just a couple of weeks before, we used the excuse of needing a stop for the night during our drive to Missouri to visit them.
Avery made sure that Logan had survived the drive in good condition and checked him out.His head looked good, but then she couldn't hear a heartbeat and had to use the defibrillator - he was ok!

Logan couldn't wait to see Avery again, but Joey quickly became the favorite.The next day we finished our drive to Missouri.
We had a week that was filled with cousins,
and swimming every day.
Jake found out that Jenga blocks are great for building with - do people even play Jenga anymore?
All the girls got to take a horse riding lesson (with Alyssa and Natalie, there were 6 girl cousins) - everyone had a blast. I wasn't able to go so I'll have to get pictures from my sister-in-law and put them in later.
We made our traditional trip to Cabela's with Thomas. We really need one closer.Natalie caught Logan - that's a big net!I was cracking up at Logan for being so scared. What was he afraid of, you ask?

The shooting gallery - scary!!
(check Logan out in the background of the picture below)
I guess the talking lion and rhino at the entrance didn't help any, or the water that squirts you when you shoot different targets.
He did much better looking at the "Indiana Jones" plane.
It's a plane, there is a plane on Indiana Jones, so it's an Indiana Jones plane.
He also loved looking at the fish and animals. And fudge and pretzels make the trip perfect.The first part of the week was overcast with rain, but with clear skies enough that we did get to the pool every day.
There was a cool full rainbow after one storm.
My brother and his family came in the beginning of the week from Kansas and my sister came up from Arkansas with some of her kids towards the end of the week.
We took the kids to an awesome art museum - the Nelson-Atkins Museum - in Kansas City, and it's free!
They have all kinds of art: modern, photography, sculpture, African, Egyptian, American, Impressionists, Dutch, Spanish, furniture, porcelain, clocks, silver, you name it! For all the horse loving cousins, this mud and stick horse was an immediate draw.
Above is Logan's favorite piece, because it looks like something from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
Here are the kids resting - about the only thing they could touch at the museum.
They have a great sculpture garden all over a large grass area.
Since you can't touch, the cousins played limbo under this one.

We found a cool spot where we had a snack and rested (the beginning of the week was cloudy and coolish, the end of the week was sunny and hot and humid - hello Missouri!).
We loved reading about all the art - the sculpture below represents a mother embracing her child.

They found out some of the sculptures had cameras when they heard a voice come out of a loud speaker and say "don't touch or climb on the sculpture" if you got too close.
The rest of the time in the sculpture garden they looked for cameras - even if there wasn't one there, we (the adults) reminded them to only look! So tempting though - the sculptures were cool!

After we had been there a while and hadn't even seen half of the museum, some of the cousins were ready to head back and swim, the rest of us stayed.
Below is one of Alyssa's favorites. The lady's painting has an etching on it. Everything was so detailed.

We loved looking at all the paintings. We will definitely go there again!
Logan loved riding on his cousin, Z's, little car. Z would crouch and wait until Logan got close,

and then turn and run away. It was really funny.

(Yes, Logan's shirt is on backwards. He decided he doesn't like to see the graphic on the front. I think I need to get him some solid color shirts.)
Four of my brothers (two married, two single) live in the same town, we stayed with my brother Mark and his family (just some background there).
My other sister-in-law had all the girls over one night for a girl cousins sleep over.
It started with some dancing in the street, well sidewalk, as we listened to music in the car and Alyssa taught them some chorus dance moves!

They had a great night together and morning the next day. I'm sure that will become a tradition as well!
While we were in MO, it was Jake's birthday.
He wanted to go swimming (surprise) and have pizza and cake and ice cream.

Here he is having fun with his cousin, Jay.

The cake is not my best, but it tasted good and Jake thought it was great.
I made a lego cake - meaning there were Lego Star Wars people on the cake.

Logan donated his Boba Fett for the decorations and Jake opened one of his gifts up so the Star Wars figures could be included as well.
He made a wish and blew out the candles quickly because he didn't want the Lego people to melt (we put the candles away from the people, but still a concern).
It's always fun opening up gifts and he was thrilled when he got some from cousins as well.
We loved all our fun filled days and late nights, below is Jake having a 10pm popsicle.
Alyssa became fast friends with Grace, they did everything together.

There were lots of cool toys - at both cousin houses!
It was hard to say good-bye.The drive? all legs? (we took two days each way) were great. Ok, the first half of the last morning on the way home was a bit rough with tired and cranky people, me included, but after some napping in the car (not by me, I was driving) everyone was a bit happier.
Going home we were delayed leaving a couple of hours by a big storm. We stayed toward the bottom of the storm but only had a bit of rain. We did see some cool clouds to the north.
And heavy rain far away.
It made for an awesome sunset.
(photo by Alyssa)
We had our share of rest stop bathrooms, including one that I wish I could erase from my memory. But we did also see a super cool rest stop.
We took turns being super heros! Logan didn't want to be Superman.
(Jake and Alyssa above, Natalie and then me below)
Even the bathrooms made you extra special.It's great seeing places like this along the way.
We also passed our time playing the license plate game. On the way out we looked for and tallied license plates from states that were not from the state we were in at the time. On the way back we just looked for the states we hadn't seen yet.
Without going west of Missouri or further north than St. Louis (we turned south after that), we saw license plates from 42 different states and 3 Canadian provinces. We thought that was pretty cool.
Now we're back home and Robert is home and we have the rest of the summer to continue having fun!

Oh, and thanks to Wendy's karaoke CDs they're giving out in kids meals . . . the new favorite song is "Somebody's Watching Me."
Even Logan starts singing the chorus.