Katie and Rachel come to Kansas City-updated

Katie and Rachel are two of my very good friends from high school. Katie still lives up in Minnesota and Rachel lives in Colorado. They packed up husbands and kids.  One family came down, the other came over. They spent a long weekend in KC. It was brutally hot, but we had blast! These are a little out of order, I apologize.

Matt playing catch with Luke, Rachel's oldest

Jaxson

Matt and I conspired several times to put this one in our pocket and keep her, but alas, we let her parents take her home.  One of the sweetest, most adorable chickadees ever

We bought a party box, but realizing it didn't look very comfortable and the kids would have a hard time seeing, I called the box office, dropped that I'm a group ticket holder and they upgraded us to the home run deck! We got free beer, hot dogs, brats, popcorn, bottled water, I'm so glad I called.  I put Wayzata class of '96 down as our group name as a joke, they announce it over the loudspeaker during the game and I thought the girls would get a kick out of it, and the OWNER OF THE T-BONES came down to introduce himself.  He went to school in Wayzata!  What a small world.  I guess the T-Bones were moved down form Duluth, how did I not know that??  He was a pretty socially awkward guy, but very nice.  Then we had a home run land in on the party deck!  It about scared us girls to death because we weren't paying attention.  I looked at Matt and his eyes were as big as plates ''I've been yelling for 5 minutes that it was coming right for us!!' We were in our own girl chat world.

We were out at the game the night before and I went to the promotions desk and asked what was entailed in the 'Verizon Fun Run'.  This is where one kid gets to run from 1st to 3rd with the mascot and the 'have to do it in under 8 seconds' but the announcer stretches out the count until the kid crosses.  It's usually about the 5th inning and the crowd gets totally into it rooting on this little kid.  They said they could go ahead and sign up my kid for the next night.  Katie's son Joey was the oldest of all the kids so put him down and signed the waiver if I were his mom! Shhhh..... I called Katie to make sure he would do it and she said he would love it.  It was SO FUN to watch him!! 

Joey getting ready to run!

There was all this berm area around the deck that the kids were able to run aroun on which was  big help.

Our Deck

Running on the field after the game.  Big no-no, but no one said anything

The girls.  Katie is in the middle and Rachel is on the left.  Between the great deck, free food and beer, the home run ball, the owner, Joey getting to run the bases, it was the greatest T Bones game ever! And we won!

Saturday night we had everyone over to the house.  It was hot, hot, hot, so I set up the baby pool, a slip and slide, a sprinkler, bought a bubble machine, sidewalk chalk, anything and everything I could think of to keep the kids occupied while Moms and Dads had some beers.  I think Joey said it best when he opened the door to our back yard, 'this is awesome!' A few other friends came by and we had a good time.  A front moved in and it cooled down and turned out to be a beautiful night!  It was one of those nights where there were just kids everywhere, reminded me of my parent's growing up.  It was fun to be around other parents of little ones, I don't get that to often,

Every time Anna got on the trike, Charlie sat on the back and toted along. I don't know how he knew to do that, but it was hilarious and Anna was a good sport about it.

Charlie's future wife, he loves those older girls, such a flirt....

Joey- Katie's oldest

Luke- Rachel's oldest

Jaxson, Anna & Joey



Sunday we went to the aquarium (seperate post) and after we went to Crown Center for this little free dino exhibit.  Joey is obsessed with dinosaurs and it was free, so we were all about it! I always forget hoew much cool, free stuff Crown Center has for kids



This is us trying to get the kids in one picture.  I love Charlie's face in this one, he looks so dejected

Jaxson, Joey and Charlie

After, we went to find BBQ.  All the out-of-towners wanted to have some KC BBQ.  I forgot that the All Stars game was in town so most of the BBQ restaurants were crazy packed.  We tired to hit Oklahoma Joes but it was closed (Sunday), then we went down to Arthur Bryants but there was a line out the door.  Finally, we went down to Gates in the total ghetto of KC.  Gates is my favorite BBQ sauce, but it's sad to say, I've never even eaten there.  I'm not a huge BBQ fan.  It's really good about twice a year.  That's the yankee in me.  But it was delicious!  This is like the only shot I took from lunch....weird

That would be Luke, taken on my camera by Charlie.  I have so few pics, I'm keeping it.  They were out of room in the main restaurant so they put us in the adjoining bar next door.  It was awesome because we had all this nook all to ourselves and the kids couldn't bother anyone. It was this old bar that was decorated in about 1979 and hasn't been redecorated since, very dark and very brown on orange.  But it was clean and we were pretty much the only ones on that side.  They had this hilariously loud slow-jam music playing the whole time we ate.  Think Barry White/R Kelly type music and it was SO loud.  It made us laugh.

Way past his nap time....