As we looked at our 2024 calendar, we realized that even though we no longer owned a motor home, we had still been on the move. We were away from our new-to-us house the entire month of January. We were gone ten days in February, and left to go cruising for ten days in March. We were away a couple weeks in late April/early May when we visited relatives and went to watch our youngest son run the Oklahoma City Memorial half-marathon. We don't mean to brag, but he finished in the top 1% of the runners that were in the race. He finished the 13.1 miles in one hour and 27 minutes, and finished #46 among the 7,380 runners in his race. We're proud of you, Blake!
Also this spring we made a trip to see more of our neighboring state of Missouri--famous for its caves.
Because we were traveling with a 3- and 6-year-old, we opted for the drive-thru tour at Fantastic Caverns.
After reading some books about caves, Carter was excited to be inside this fantastic cavern. She enjoyed wandering through another of God's wonders with us!
We spent the next day in Springfield, Missouri's "Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium." Situated adjacent to the Bass Pro Shops national headquarters, it is a nationally acclaimed museum with an impressive display of live animals. Their web site says that it showcases 35,000 live fish, mammals, reptiles, and birds . . .
as well as some impressive dead animals like skeletons that included scary shark jaws.
We ate at Lambert's Cafe, where this side of the booth was all smiles after catching some of those throwed rolls. Eli loved eating at a restaurant that throws warm yeast rolls the size of a softball to customers across the room!
We love our time in the Kansas City area because we get to spend so much time with our oldest son's family. We celebrated Carter's sixth birthday party at a riding stable with eleven kindergarten girls. We purchased Carter (and Gram and Granddude) season passes to Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun for a unique birthday present. So we made lots of trips to ride the rides and splash in the water at the local amusement park.
We also celebrated Mark's birthday this spring, and he got a fire pit for our back porch for his birthday present.
We love the almost-daily visits by our three-year-old grandson, who has a wide open schedule since he hasn't yet started school.
We are solid fans of the spring soccer season games at the Garmin complex where are granddaughter plays . . .
and we are quickly becoming Kansas City Royals fans as well. We bought family tickets so that all six of us attended a game together this spring.
Even when we're not traveling, we keep very busy thanks to this sweet little family that lives just two miles from us now. When we found that a local farm planted millions of tulip bulbs, the girls went to the Tulip Festival in the spring.
In case you would think that we are no longer hiking, we can report that we are happy with the local trails. We are especially happy with the local hikers that sometimes accompany us. Even though he's not quite ready for rugged trails, Eli's t-shirt says "Hiking Buddy."
Carter is training to go on longer hikes, so we took her to the nature center and made the 3-mile loop more than once.
Spring 2024 has provided many highlights--and way too many pictures of our sweet family!
❤️❤️❤️
ReplyDelete