This reduced blogging schedule already has me forgetting what we've done in the past few days! We had an interesting weekend - Mom, Alan, and Papa joined Sean and Matt's families at Sean's lakehouse to celebrate Connor's birthday and the 4th of July. Ashley couldn't go because of work and Eric & I couldn't go because of his work and church. So Ashley watched M&A's and Sean's pets, while Eric and I watched Papa & Matt's dogs.
Saturday - Eric went to work and I took the dogs for a walk to practice for our upcoming 5k in August. After he got off of work, we watched Date Night at Mom & Alan's house with Ashley.
Sunday - We truly couldn't tell if today was good or bad, haha. We both woke up in grumpy moods, which was only intensified when we had to clean up the messes made by the dogs at Papa's house, and were running late for church. The service was nice and we felt much better afterward. We enjoyed a picnic at St. Thomas with Ashley and a new family that we met at the St. Thomas "New Members Dinner" last week. We stopped back at Papa's house again before proceeding with our afternoon plans.
Fox 4 was sponsoring free entry into the KC Riverfest between 1-3pm, so we planned to take advantage of that to save $10 each on a great fireworks show. We got down again because it looked like Steven and Leslie were dropping out of joining us...boo... To pass some time because it would just be us all day, we used my season pass to the zoo. We were happy to be walking around and seeing the animals, and we rode the new sky ride to the far side of Africa. Then there was lightning in the sky, a downpour of rain, and the ride back to the front of the zoo was closed - this soaked our clothes and shoes all the way through and almost made us late to the Riverfest's free admission time frame. Between driving, parking, and busing, we made it in the gate at 2:50 - just in the nick of time!
Happy to be there, and interested in the record high Missouri river, we were quickly bummed out again because there was truly nothing to be seen (without paying out the wazoo!). But, spirits were high again because Steven and Leslie changed their minds and were going to spend the rest of the afternoon with us. I hatched a scheming plan to get them in for free too - you just ask for a readmission bracelet when you exit the park...so I removed our bracelets after we left and came back in, then we got another set of bracelets when we left the second time. BAM! Four bracelets!
We were once again pissed off and disappointed when we planned to meet Steven and Leslie at a Waffle House on I-35 & Antioch...apparently this same intersection exists in Kansas and Missouri. We had driven about 15 minutes south to find that they were in Missouri and we were in Kansas...so we wasted over 30 minutes trying to meet up with them.
The rest of Sunday went great - Eric, Steven, and Leslie shot off fireworks while I napped, and then we all got into the Riverfest and found THE best seats on the river - directly across from where they were being fired. Eric and I shared a carnival burger and fries for dinner, and the fireworks show was coordinated to some really fantastic patriotic music. A very good end to a very back and forth day!
Monday - Eric worked (time and a half, yea!) and I slept most of the day. But I did get some chores done! After he got off of work, we rode the motorcycle over to the local fireworks stand and then out to Smithville. Eric is a great rider, and I'm totally comfortable riding with him. We shot off a ton of daytime fireworks, and then Edie served an excellent dinner of BBQ chicken, corn, salad, bread, watermelon, potato salad, baked beans, and excellent brownie sundaes for dessert! Once it got dark, everyone (Me, Eric, occasions, Leslie, Grant, Phil, Edie, Pete, Paul, Deb, Shannon, and Taylor) went to the golf course to shoot off nighttime fireworks! We had neighbors on either side with much more impressive stashes, so there was a good show! We had a few mishaps with a firework called "That's Your Problem", it tipped over (on 4 separate occassions) and shot mortars toward neighbor houses and at our crowd.
Happy Independence Day!
The lioness's were cuddling! And celebrating their 6th birthday!
Completely soaked, in front of the Wacky Worm roller coaster at Riverfest!
The 4 of us on the shuttle bus.
Red, white, and blue!
A very cool finale with an obscene amount of sonic booms!
Us at the KC Riverfest!
Leslie and I pet the ponies! This one sniffed my foot and scared me when he exhaled hot air on me.
Eric's awesome parking job - it was the last "spot" in the parking lot - this is just the driving lane, not actual spots, but we didn't get a ticket!
I'm still on the line drying bandwagon! It definitely made an impact on our electric bill last month, and it makes me feel happy when I'm hanging it, double whammy!
Steven and Leslie's firework stash!
I caught a parachute!
Discussing strategy at the golf course!
