Weekend Vacation Recap

We decided to do a quick weekend getaway this past weekend, kind of a last blast of the summer before school starts in two weeks (wow this summer has flown by).

We didn't go far, just 3 hours north to Kansas City. But we had an awesome time, and the weather was perfect.

We started it out by going to Oceans of Fun, a waterpark. As the name implies, it was "oceans of fun." My kids absolutely loved this place.


Oceans of Fun was awesome.

One quick story of something that happened while there. My wife was standing there and a guy runs by carrying what looked like a two year old child, he runs over and tosses it in the shallow water near the kids area. She looked a little closer and finally realized it was a baby doll, and he was testing the lifeguard in the area. So the guy is looking at his watch and the lifeguard never sees the baby doll. (can you imagine if that would have been a real child??) The guy then goes over to the lifeguard and tells her to look around a little bit, and she sees the doll. He gave her a talking to and wrote some things down about the test. Maybe they are doing end of summer reviews to see who they hire back for next summer. Hopefully, this lifeguard doesn't make the cut.

The next day we went to the Hallmark Visitors Center and learned all about Hallmark cards, and then to their Kaleidescope childrens creativity center, which was very cool and the kids got to make and create all kinds of things. It was pretty fun. Here are a few pics from Kaleidescope:

We had lunch at a pretty unique place called Fritz's. It's basically a train-themed burger restaurant, but what makes it cool and fun for the kids is that you sit in a booth and pick up a phone at the booth to place your order, and the your food is delivered by a train. The restaurant has above ground tracks that run throughout the restaurant and the train has a little basket that carries your food to your table and then it is lowered down to you. It's pretty cool really, and the kids had a blast with it.

The train at Fritz's carrying our food.

The tray lowering our food to our table from the train.

We also walked through a Lego art exhibit that was pretty neat. Some of the creations that were made with Legos were incredible.

A Lego man reaching for the sky.

A Lego sunflower.

My son recreating the Lego torso man opening up his chest behind him (all the legos were spilling out of his chest, kind of weird).

After swimming at the hotel, we went out to the Legends shopping area of Kansas City for a little shopping (Nike Factory Store!) and dinner/games at Dave and Busters. Again, the kids had an awesome time. Apparently the KC Wizards were playing the LA Galaxy in MLS soccer, and the stadium was about a mile from where we were, so we saw people wearing Beckham jerseys everywhere. While at dinner, I was watching the soccer game on TV, as well as the Royals game, which was also played in Kansas City. Strange watching two live events on TV that are within minutes of where you are. Some Legends night pics:

Hanging out with the boys.

One of the few pics of my wife and I together (those with kids understand that one).

We also went to a really cool childrens hands on museum called Wonderscape. They had taken an old school building and converted it into a fun playhouse for kids. Each room had a different theme with fun activities. One room was set up like a grocery store, another was a doctor's office, another was a diving room, etc. It was really fun.

Getting ready to go for a dive.

Checking up on his patient. He may need to operate.

Running Update

Thanks for all the responses/advice to my question about training through the pain. I have googled high and low as well, and the consensus seems to be split as to whether to run with plantars fasciitis or not. So, I decided to keep running, but knock it back a few notches in terms of pace and distance. And, I am stretching/massaging througout my runs, and really trying to be cautious. With that said, I ran both days over the weekend, a nice, slow pace with lots of walking and stretching every 3/4 mile or so. 4 miles each day. The hotel we stayed in was close to some very nice running paths. The sidewalks were two or three times the width of a normal sidewalk. It was really nice. I could have ran forever (if not for the continued foot pain). Oh yeah, and I ran past a dead bat near the underpass to the highway one day. Creepy.