Grandbaby time!

After a week in the panhandle of Oklahoma with our mothers, we drove Denisa's mother to Oklahoma City for another doctor appointment. Then it was on to Kansas City, for some grandbaby time! For those that aren't familiar with our family, that would include our kindergartener named Carter, that loves making things. For the picture below, she fashioned a whole wardrobe of kingly accessories that Grand-dude was modeling.

Our other grandbaby is 2-year-old Eli, who loves playing cars, pretending that he's a Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur, and rolling around in the grass.

We arrived on Labor Day weekend, where we met the family for one last summer weekend at the lake. We were hosted by our daughter-in-law's parents, who have always been so gracious to include us.

When we went out on their boat for the last sunset cruise of the summer, Eli was more interested in reading books with Grand-dude than watching the clouds turn to shades of pink.

Then we headed to our son and daughter-in-law's home in the suburbs west of Kansas City to catch up on more grandbaby time.

This was a long-standing grandparenting time that we had planned our summer travels around. We were here to keep the two children while our son and daughter-in-law went on vacation. They had planned a trip to Switzerland in the spring of 2020, but Covid cancelled it. So three years later they were finally getting to go to that destination. While we were scheduled to keep one grandchild in 2020, now we get two grandchildren for the 2023 trip! 

Carter had a birthday party invitation while her parents were away. So Gram went to the party with her, and visited at the party with all the young mothers that were half her age. Denisa found that parties are much fancier than the ones that we hosted 30 years ago. They had a bouncy house, a pinata that opened up when all the children pulled their attached ribbons, and a professional face painter. Parents (and one old grandmother) were encouraged to get their faces painted too. So Denisa got her first-ever face paint job.

Our youngest son came to help on the weekend, and both children adore Uncle Blake. He was there to walk them to a soccer game on a beautiful Saturday.

Carter enjoyed spring soccer so much that she wanted to play again in the fall.

Carter had one day off of school, so we took advantage of that to take her to the Kansas City Zoo.

Now that we are out of the mountains, we will have to use zoo animals for our wildlife pictures of the day. This lioness was napping right by the viewing window.

We arrived just in time for the chimpanzee feeding time, so they were close as well.

But Carter's favorite interactive animal exhibit was the large sting ray pool. Visitors were encouraged to put hands into the water, and let the rays glide right by.

We also love the carousel ride at the zoo. You might notice that Denisa has new jewelry for her trip to the zoo. Carter made earrings and a matching necklace that spells out "Carter Love Gram." It's a prized addition to Denisa's limited jewelry stash.

It was a fun opportunity to spend all day just with Carter while Eli was at pre-school. Now that she's started all-day school, we recognize that time with her is getting more precious. We ended a successful day at the zoo with snow cones.

We had more time with Eli, and he also got a solo trip to the zoo on a day that Carter was in school. Yes, we rode the carousel three times in a row just because he wanted to ride the zebra, the tiger, and the ladybug.

With their season passes, the whole family has gone to the zoo many times. But today's trip was special because the new aquarium just opened this week.

This popular attraction requires a timed reservation to keep the indoor exhibits from getting too crowded. They did a first-rate job of making interesting and beautiful displays that you can see up close.

Eli loves reading books about sharks, so we knew that he would enjoy the aquarium. 

We also went to the Lenexa Fire Department open house. The twelve days that Mom and Dad were gone just flew by!

We took many more pictures, but we didn't want to completely overload a travel blog with all of them. After a successful summer of traveling through Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, it's nice to be back in Kansas for some grandbaby time!