Kansas City

Scott had to attend a training session in Kansas City this past week, and since it would have been the third week in a row that I was home alone with the baby, we decided to make it a mini-vacation and Laurel and I came as well.  I worked from the hotel room part of the time, Scott went to his training, and we stayed an extra night after he was done.

Laurel so far has been a great traveler!  She slept most of the time in the car all the way there and all the way home! This does mean that we have to kinda plan our driving for during times when she should be napping.  It also meant that she git extra sleep during the day, and thus woke up more often at night (every 2 hours the first night!), but overall she was great.

The first two nights we stayed in the Marriott downtown.  Many of the historic hotels downtown have been bought up and renovated by hotel chains, and ours was one of them...it was the Hotel Muehlebach.  The lobby was beautiful.

 We got there Tuesday evening, and drove around for a bit just checking things out.  We had supper at a place called Pizza 51.  It is right across the street from the UMKC campus, and is in what appeared to be a converted gas station/garage.  It is also home of a 26" pizza!  We limited ourselves to the 14 incher...

Wednesday morning Scott went to training and I pushed Laurel around in the stroller for a couple hours. 

This is the new performing arts center

It is definitely more difficult to take a self-portrait with the new camera.  Huge arms!

Kansas City has a lot of fountains!

 In the evening Scott and I walked to the Power & Light district for supper, then walked around again for a bit so that Scott could see the downtown area as well.  

It was very windy!

 Thursday Scott only had a half-day, so I worked also in the morning.  We switched hotels that day (Scott's official "work" was done, and we didn't want to pay the cost of a downtown hotel!), then went to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum.  The inside art was nice...although their impressionist collection was pretty small, and what other reason is there to go to an art museum?  However, the sculpture park outside was nice, and the building itself was also beautiful.

one of three giant shuttlecocks

Do I really need to appreciate art?

You gonna mess with me?

 For supper we walked the 4 blocks to the Country Club Plaza area, and stopped for pictures by one of the famous KC fountains.

Great shot of the fountain with the water droplets frozen in place.

 We had supper at the Cheesecake Factory, and opted to sit outside.

 Friday morning we ate breakfast at McDonald's, and almost witnessed someone getting thrown out of the restaurant!  I was waiting for our food, and an older man came in and started yelling at the manager because he wanted his food in 2 bags instead of one (at least that's what it sounded like to me).  She politely moved part of his food into another bag, and he continued to yell at her and wag his finger in his face.  She asked him if there was anything else wrong with his order, and he continued to yell.  Finally she politely asked him to leave, and when he still kept yelling at him she threatened to call the police.  At that point another male customer told the man that he needed to treat the employees with more respect, and that he should just leave instead of being rude.  How exciting!

We then went to the National World War I Museum.  It wasn't a huge museum, but it was interesting.

The entry into the museum from the ticket window is a glass bridge over a field of poppies.  After the war was over, about the only plant that would grow in many of the war zones were poppies.  In this field, each poppy represents 1,000 people that died during WWI.

 After going through the museum, we went outside to check out the Liberty Memorial, which was built in 1921.

Laurel didn't really like being totally enclosed in her stroller to protect her from the sun, and Scott was comforting her.

The Liberty Memorial is the tower.  Two Sphinx (sphinxes?  sphinxi?) are in front of it with their eyes covered.  One is hiding it's eyes from the carnage of the war, and the other is looking to the future and what is unseen.

 There is an elevator that goes almost to the top of the tower, and then there are 45 steps to the observation deck.  The museum employee running the elevator was kind enough let us put the stroller in a corner where he was standing so we could carry Laurel up to the top of the tower.