Denisa, her mother, and her two sisters have been going on girl trips for the last thirty years. While we have driven or flown all over the country in those thirty years, our annual trips have gotten simpler in recent years. Denisa's 93-year-old mother requested a trip to Kansas City this year. Her priorities were to see our new house, and to visit with our son's family. One of Denisa's sisters also requested a stop at Baskin Robbins, because they no longer have these yummy stores in Oklahoma.
Sunday, December 31, 2023
Girl Trip 2023 - Kansas City Style
Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Autumn Invitations
While we have kept busy with projects to get our new house in order, we won't turn down an invitation for fun. Autumn was full of good family invitations. For example, our son's family invited us to the Apple festival in Weston, Missouri.
The first stop was the Red Barn Farm, where we enjoyed riding the pony and feeding the animals.
We tried the apple cider donuts and bought ornamental gourds on this beautiful-weather October weekend.
While the boys headed home for college football games and nap time, the girls went to the orchard to pick fresh apples.
There are few things sweeter than a juicy tree-ripened apple that was just picked. The orchard owners encouraged us to try one right off the tree.
We also got an October invitation to fly to Houston for the Texas fall band competition. Kansas City has a brand new airport that opened in 2023, and we looked forward to experiencing it for ourselves. The art inside the airport is big and beautiful.
Our nephew and niece picked us up at the Houston airport and treated us to five days of fun. We got to play some pickleball in their warm October weather down south.
But the timing of our trip was determined by the band competition that their two oldest children were competing in that weekend. The band first performed at the local high school game. This is Texas--where everything is bigger and high school football is big league. The stadium had a jumbotron, and the players entered the stadium through a three-story inflatable entry and smoke. Welcome to Texas high school football! The football team was pretty good, but we have to say that the band's half-time show was even better!
The big event was the Saturday band competition. We watched as these 6A schools put on flashy shows. The Woodlands high school marched 300 students on the field. Besides all the buses to transport that many band students, it takes three more eighteen-wheel trucks to transport the huge props that are part of this elaborate show. They have five minutes to get everything on the field, eight minutes for the high-energy show, and then two minutes to get off the field. The Woodlands band made the finals, so we were back in the evening to see the top ten bands perform again. It was a great treat!
While the judges tabulated the results, all ten of the bands lined up on the football field. We were excited to see that The Woodlands band got first place and will continue on to state finals in a week. (Spoiler alert--at state they qualified for nationals in Indianapolis. There they came home with an impressive fifth place finish at the grand national competition.)
We flew back to Kansas City just in time to see some of the best fall color of the year.
The trees on our street were at peak color.
The view from our back deck included a kaleidoscope of autumn reds, oranges, and yellows.
Just a few days later we got to celebrate another autumn activity. We started the morning of October 31 at Carter's school. That cold snap caused us to bring out our big wool coats that haven't been out of the closet for many years. But Carter didn't even need a jacket when she walked by during the school costume parade. She's Isabelle from the movie Encanto. This character has long dark hair and turns everything she touches into flowers.
Eli loves dinosaurs, so he was a blue T Rex.
Our son Luke was also in the dinosaur theme, but his costume was riding a dinosaur. He was also carrying a shy blue T Rex that didn't exactly understand what halloween was all about.
But when he figured out that all the neighbors were giving out candy, he suddenly was no longer shy. This little blue dinosaur took Grand-dude's hand and walked all over their little neighborhood.
Yes, it's been an autumn full of great family activities. It feels like we're in a good place enjoying some great invitations!
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
We bought a house--now the real work begins!
After a week of pondering if this was the right house for us, we signed a contract. Now the real work begins! We had really gotten to know the owners' daughter that was selling the house, and she trusted us. So even though the closing date was still a couple weeks away, we started tackling some of the projects around the house. One of those was the gutter system. Instead of funneling the rain water away from the house, it was disconnected and the water was flowing under the driveway and sidewalk. That will have to be repaired, so Mark started working on the gutters to make sure that this drainage problem wouldn't happen again.
In the middle of this busy time, we also got to spend good time with our children and grandchildren. We vowed that we wouldn't pass up any invitations from them. So when they called to ask if Gram wanted to go with the girls to a pumpkin festival, she was all in.