The Herndon House: Fourth with Family

This 4th of July weekend, we traveled to Kansas City for a family reunion with Nathan's family. We went up on Friday with Joe's family and Nana and Aunt Martha and headed downtown to the Hallmark building to a kiddle place called Kalidescope. (Kids can do organized projects with leftover Hallmark cards materials.) Unfortunately, they were all full for their last session of the day when we arrived, so we missed out. But, there was a Lego display in the Crown Center that we went to see. There were lots of sculptures all done out of Legos. Very neat. We walked all around Crown Center--lots of great shops and eateries to see. There's a splash pad area that we'd talked about letting the kids play in, but we thought our car was too far away to go get the suits and didn't want them to be all wet walking around--b/c they would have gotten soaked. We heard about a Science Center next door in Union Station, so we headed over that way via "the Link"--a glass walkway. Turns out, they were only open for one more hour and it was $9 a person, so we thought "nah". :o) We had fun exploring Union Station....what neat atmosphere! We stumbled upon a great model train set-up that entertained all of us! After that, we decided to head over to our hotel and decide what to do for dinner. We ended up eating at On the Border, then back to the hotel for swimming. We got a good hotel through Priceline--we booked a 3-star hotel for $50 a night! It had an indoor/outdoor pool--which the kids thought was great. They went inside-outside-outside-inside! I enjoyed the hot tub as it was too chilly outside to be in the cool pool. We had very cool, unseasonable weather this weekend! But, very enjoyable weather!! Saturday, we had some Krispy Kremes and hung out, then headed over to the family reunion. Nathan's uncle Gary and aunt Cindy hosted the reunion and had rented an inflatable for all the kids coming. They also had a hot tub ready for the kids (it was turned low--but as the day went on the temp went up due to the kids pushing buttons!) There were 10 kids--8 of them ages 8-4. They had a blast!!! They went from the hot tub to the inflatable and the infatable to the hot tub ALL. DAY. LONG!!!!! We enjoyed great food and good visiting. In the evening, we set off some fireworks and were surprised to have one of Gary and Cindy's neighbors give us about 3 bags of more fireworks. Whew! With all the kids running around and wanting to set them all off, it was nice to be done with all the fireworks!! My nerves were shot! :O) Sunday, we ate lunch at the Cracker Barrell (with sleeping in and getting all packed to leave--we missed breakfast) and then headed to Cabela's to look around before heading home. We had such a great time this weekend, it's amazing how fast it went by!