Merry Christmas in Kansas City

This is our first Christmas since we retired, and we decided we weren't ready to celebrate the holiday away from our family.  So can you believe we left this--beautiful sunny weather among the palm trees wearing short sleeves?

And we chose to drive 17 hours north to spend the holidays in weather that looked like this?

We must really love spending time with our families!  So we left the motor home in sunny south Texas, and headed north towards the cold.  A twelve-hour drive straight north along I-35 with all its holiday traffic jams and accidents, brought us to the Oklahoma City area where Denisa's Mother would stay with her other daughters.  

We picked up our youngest son, Blake, and drove another 5.5 hours to our other son and daughter-in-law's home in Kansas City, Missouri.  We don't often get to spend time with the three of our kids together, so this was a rare treat!

So we exchanged an 89-degree Christmas forecast in South Texas for a day in the 30's. We got our heaviest winter coats out of storage, and took this walk to see the sunset on Christmas eve.

The ducks didn't seem to mind the icy water, but they hadn't flown south for winter.  We are finding that enjoying temperatures in the 80's hasn't prepared us for these chilly temperatures, so they feel especially cold to us.  But the warmth of family fun kept us warm inside!

We were treated to a walk through a nearby neighborhood that lines all their streets with hundreds of candles on Christmas eve.  We couldn't stand to leave those few candles that had gone out; and we found that a long twig can be used to relight those wicks to keep the candle show glowing.

Our son Luke is a pediatrician, and sadly not all children are well on Christmas day.  So he is working 13-hour days during the five days surrounding Christmas.  Our daughter-in-law Jordan is also working as a PA during the holidays.  Since they couldn't leave Kansas City to be with family, we brought the family to them. 

Since our home on wheels isn't big enough to host many family gatherings, we appreciated meeting them in Kansas City for the holidays.  They were both working Christmas morning, so we went on a walking tour of some areas of Kansas City on this blustery day. We headed to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which we knew was closed for the day.  We sang the theme from Rocky as we climbed to the top of the steps and then posed for appropriate pictures at the summit.

Surrounding the museum is an outdoor sculpture park that is a great place for a Christmas morning hike.

In front of the museum is a temporary display of the faces of the four seasons, surrounding "The Thinker."

We really enjoyed the details of the faces, so we'll whisk some pictures through the year.  This would be old man Mark in front of old man winter . . .

Denisa posing with Miss Spring . . .

Blake basking in the heat of summer . . .

and Mark and Blake enjoying the harvest of the autumn.

We probably weren't outfitted properly for the weather this cold morning, so we walked briskly and climbed cheerfully.  We know that Mark can't pass too many trees without climbing one,

and it was nice to have two monkeys in the trees this morning.

It was entirely too cold to climb this aluminum tree that was part of the sculpture garden.  We almost froze just leaning against its cold trunk.

We had races through the glass labyrinth in the garden, and the last stop was the headless statues.  We found that a six-foot-tall Blake could get his head to their shoulder height if he jumped his highest and Mom clicked the camera at just the right time.  You can't even imagine how many jumps it took to get this picture, but it was good exercise to keep Blake warm.

We finished our walk down by the river that runs through Kansas City.  It had been a peaceful urban hike where it was easy to be silly since the normal crowds were at home.

After warming up a little, we drove towards the tallest section of buildings to walk through downtown Kansas City.

We prefer hikes in more natural areas, but it is still fun to do urban hiking as well.  We found this downtown covered meeting area, where Blake and Mark took center stage.  We learned that Luke and Jordan had celebrated the Royals' world series victory here at a watch party this fall.  We're guessing this great outdoor venue was a little more crowded that day.

It's appropriate that we found our own private Christmas tree nestled among the city's skyscrapers.  It had been a fun morning of urban hiking!

We would have another fun evening of games and food when Luke and Jordan got off work.  It was a cold Christmas day in Kansas City, but we made warm family memories with the ones we love!