Between vacations

We're back from our trip to Kansas City. (I wrote about it previously here.) My father in law's bar mitzvah was great, we saw all of DW's brothers and cousins and at the dinner on Saturday night everyone sat around the table and told stories about how they all escaped the Nazis to get to the US. I heard more details about this than I ever had and I have to tell you, if you have any "greatest generation" types in your family, get a camcorder and a mic from radio shack, put them in front of a black background and make them answer all the questions you can think of!

The whole grandparents/Branson thing went off reasonably well (we don't ask too many questions) and as for us, the hotel in Westport was great, we were able to see the bands we wanted and it was fun to be urban again and walk out the door for lunch or whatever. It wasn't a very frugal week because we ate out all the time (Indian food, mideast food, some overpriced fish'n'chips at a new place down by the new arena). About the most frugal thing we did was go to the KC City Hall and go to the 28th floor overview to see a really beautiful 360-degree panorama view of the city. We made a bet between ourselves that no one we know would have ever been up there before, and we have yet to be proven wrong.

Oh, we also went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum, that's the main art museum in town, it's free to get in although we slipped them a couple of bucks. We looked at the contemporary art in the new Block building and then we got a couple of the free electronic guide thingies and took an architectural tour of the space. It was DW's mom's suggestion and it was well worth it. Neither of us knows a whole lot about architecture so we saw a lot that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Now we're planning our next trip, the staycation. I gave DK1 two tour books and asked her to find a couple of places of interest in each of Lawrence, Topeka and Hutchinson. I think we'll have an outing in Wichita on Monday, Lawrence Tuesday and Wednesday (hotel), Topeka Thursday then Hutchinson Friday and home. We may add various stops along the way. We'll try to limit eating out to dinner only by bringing cereal, bread, pb'n'j, cheese, fruit.

Well, I have something else to write about but it's time to put the kids to bed so it'll have to wait.