Vacation #3 - Kansas City - Brett & Laura

Our original plan was to stay at Brett and Laura's on Friday and Saturday, but Greg got sick Thursday night and we ended up staying one extra night at the hotel.  When we got up Saturday morning, we all felt fine, so we drove out of Kansas City to the their house.  It was the perfect ending to our vacation!  The kids all played so great together and loved having room to run around and plenty of toys to choose from.

Playing with the hose and buckets.

Greg took a few pics of Bryce and Joni...I love this Bryce face!

That Joni...she has such an adorable ornery smile!

On Saturday evening we drove to a mall about five minutes away from their house.  The Great Midwest Balloon Fest was going on, and we had the kids hyped up to see all of the hot air balloons!  Once inside the festival, they had several big inflated bouncy rides that were free...and unfortunately, not very supervised.  Max is the only one that went on this one.  You had to climb through some things, up and over a wall, through a little maze, climb a ladder, and finally go down a slide.

Max was the only one crazy enough to do it!

It was very hot and breezy that evening, and the people in charge weren't even sure they were going to be able to get any balloons set up, much less fly or glow!  They kept saying they were waiting for dusk and for the wind to die down.  The kids were a little antsy, but did pretty good.

Joni, Nora, and Max playing Ring Around the Rosy

In the end, about fifteen balloons were set up, and three actually took off.  The poor pilots were battling wind the whole time.  It was so worth it, though, as they looked gorgeous all lit up!  That poor daisy on the right of the photo was so enormous that they could never get it fully inflated....it had way too much surface area for the wind to catch.

I loved the 'twinkle burn!'  Sorry about Tirzah's crying...she was ready to eat and did NOT like being kept waiting!

Kansas City church doesn't start until 11:00 and Brett and Laura only live 25ish minutes away, so on Sunday morning Brett and Greg took Max, Bryce, and Joni to the park.  (Nora, me, and Tirzah were all still sound asleep!)

And, of course, we had to try to get a picture of the kids.  What a sweet looking bunch!

Bryce was so cute...he kept asking if he could hold Tirzah, and he finally got to...twice!  Here are all five of the kids, the best we could get.

Thanks so much, Brett and Laura, for keeping us!  We wish we could have stayed longer, and Max is still talking about Bryce and Joni.  We love you!

And so ends the vacation story...we had a super week and a half, but our house looked mighty fine when we got home. :)