Kansas City

For Labor Day weekend, we chose Kansas City.  We'd passed through a few years ago, but now it was time to explore the city for real, and of course, see a ball game.  We were thrilled that our friends, the Andersons, were up for the adventure as well.  We started at the Country Club plaza.  It's the first shopping center in North America designed to accommodate automobiles.  Now it's just a really nice, Spanish-styled, shopping area.  It was a really nice area with lots of fountains and statues.  We rubbed the boar's snout for good luck, and visited the JC Nichols Memorial fountain.  We didn't know it was cancer awareness month, so we were surprised to walk up to bright yellow water.

Pouty Jane.

Jane we so excited to sit next to Paige for a picture.  Just look at the stars in her eyes.

Jane was not interested in hanging over the water, but Peter was totally up for it.

 Alice has gotten pretty good at standing, but I was impressed that Peter was willing to give it a try.

 We played around there for a while, throwing kids up in the air and holding races around the tree, and then headed to Potbelly's for lunch.

Just a couple blocks from there is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.  We some a few exhibits inside, but spent most of our time walking around the sculpture gardens.  Here you will find the world's largest shuttlecock and a triangular glass labyrinth.

The Glass Labyrinth was a lot of fun.  Jane insisted on leading the way and walked straight into a wall.  Peter had already walked into the museum's glass doors, so he was much more cautious, but even that was funny when he would think there was a wall there and there wasn't.  It was a little torture chamber for them, but very entertaining for the rest of us.  I think it would be really fun to have timed races through it.  

Does anyone else's vehicle look like a disaster after just one day of traveling?  Sheesh.
We ate dinner at the Joe's Kansas City BBQ (also knowns as Oklahoma Joe's).   It was great.  I guess Kansas City is supposed to be the BBQ capitol of America, so we had to try one of these great places.
We hurried over the the Royal's game after dinner (we still didn't have tickets).  As we drove passed the stadium, I was impressed and a little discouraged to see it filled to the top with dedicated fans.  We managed to get some "Standing Room Only" tickets and stood for a little while behind the seats on the main level.  We had our eye on an empty row, and when it appeared clear that no one was going to take them, we sat down and were able to fit both families together there.  There were MUCH better seats than we would have ever paid for.  We got so lucky.