We're ready to hit the Road

In our last week in the Kansas City area, we explored the urban areas with our son and daughter-in-law, and of course--our granddaughter, Carter. They took us for a round of golf, that even duffers like us can play. Jordan is teeing up at TopGolf, situated among the trees on the edge of Kansas City.

Denisa had never played TopGolf before. But she learned that being high above the targets will allow for even her poorly hit golf balls to sometimes dribble into the targets far below to score points. Luke, on the other hand, was more likely to make well hit shots into the center of the targets for more points.

In between shots, we took turns holding Carter. She was enjoying some fresh air while being amazed at the prowess of the golfers around her.

Or maybe she was just amazed at the ability of non-golfers to have fun playing this game.

Jordan remembered that the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum hosts a Third-Thursday Festival every month, so we strolled the 1.6 miles from their house to see what was going on. We checked out the food trucks that were lined up beside the museum, sampling Poppy's ice cream.

Mark got in line for a free t-shirt, given away to the first 50 people to arrive. He got to watch as they screen printed the t-shirts while he was in line.

Jordan now has a new "Summer Solstice" t-shirt, compliments of our Third-Thursday Festival.

Jordan's parents are in Italy now, and Florence was one of the stops in their itinerary. So they were pretty surprised when we sent them a picture of the five of us eating our gelato in front of the gold Baptistery doors of Florence. They suspected photo-shop, but it's actually a life-size replica of the doors from a display at the art museum.

We also checked out the free photo booth, where it was appropriate that Jordan had a pacifier-on-a-stick to match Carter's. It's a picture of a picture, but we had to include it.

We've had some storms since we've been visiting Kansas City, including some lightning that sounded like it hit very close to their house. When we went to play pickleball at a nearby park, we found where the lightning bolt had hit. It took off a strip of bark from the top of the tree clear down to the base.

We're going to miss this fun family, but after two months it's time for us to hit the road. We've spent a lot of time with Carter Lynn, watching as she turned from a newborn to a smiling 8-week-old. We're going to miss them when we're gone!