Rob and I like to try and have a family "adventure" away from home at least once every other year. This year we planned our adventure for Kansas City. With the new aquarium and Legoland at Crown Center, we knew it would be a hit. We planned ahead as much as possible, I turned out like my dad in that area, I appreciate a well-planned trip, it is less stressful to me to know what and when we are going to do things, and what or where we are going to eat. Also, in an effort to save money, I found as many coupons and deals as possible too.
Even for me to eat some healthy salads for lunches. I took two of my favorite salads with me. I love these divided dishes from Ziploc for food to go, I paired this with a little container of dressing.
It worked perfectly!
I took, milk, yogurt, OJ, strawberries (prepared), cucumbers (sliced), baby carrots, apples (cleaned), grapes (cleaned), cheese sticks, Lunchables little subs and the cracker kind also (I wanted the plastic sealed containers for the cooler, plus they were at a great sale price!), pop for Rob, and lots of bottled water. And that was just in the cooler! In a big basket, I took, chips, cookies, sunflower seeds, donuts and cinnamon rolls (a treat for this trip), and granola bars, let's just say,
NO ONE went hungry!
We left Topeka as soon as Rob got off work on Friday and headed out, my mom had sent us a deal from the Westin at Crown Center, awhile back that was good for 1 night stay and 4 tickets to the aquarium and 4 tickets for Legoland, plus coupons and a $20 gift certificate for anywhere at Crown Center, all for $169! I went online and bought 2 extra tickets for each place, that we picked up at the door there.
This was a great savings for us!
Walking into the Westin, the kids FREAKED OUT! It is very grand, with its water falls in the lobby, they felt like royalty. Zach and Faith have not been to a hotel that they could remember, so this was pretty exciting stuff, even the windows in the elevator were extra exciting! I love experiencing places through their eyes.
The room was great, two to each of the beds, and two in sleeping bags, and there was plenty of room, the room was very large, and with awesome views of KC,
their favorite was the Western Auto sign all lit up.
Right after checking in we rushed over to The K for an amazing game, the Royals V. White Sox. It was Buck Night, and Friday Night Fireworks (this was very deliberate), it was Zach and Faith's first Royals game (that they can remember), so I wanted to do everything.
I got tickets on ScoreBig.com, I bid on tickets up in the 420 section, for $15 per ticket (about half), and I got my bid! A little later I got an email saying that our 4-star tickets were being upgraded to 2-star tickets in section 112 (WOO-HOO!). When we got to the game, I was STUNNED at how awesome our seats were and the kids were just jaw-dropped the whole walk down to our seats! It was so exciting to watch them enjoying themselves so much.
Up there is where I thought we'd be sitting...
The handsome men in my life, having a great time.
The original Princess, Grace, that I got to sit by and who even shut off her phone to talk to me! I was feeling the love tonight!
The kids got up close with the field, Ethan was in heaven.
After 14 innings, the game finally ended, with the White Sox winning by 1. Then we enjoyed some Saturday morning fireworks (it was 1am before they started!). Back at the hotel, it was 2am before Faith FINALLY fell asleep! 9am came VERY early.
We started out our day at the Sea Life Aquarium in Crown Center. It was a pretty neat place (It's not the Denver Aquarium, but still cool), the kids LOVED the touching tank!
I was SO nervous Faith was going to tear apart one of those star fish, but she did good.
Grace is very interested in bones and stuff, as a career, but somehow, I still see her in some line of work that puts her in the ocean or at least near it.
Here, at the aquarium they had neat cards with scratch off places for the kids to answer fun fact questions, and then all through the aquarium there was fun facts on the walls for them to read and then help them answer the questions, it was neat to watch Ethan with Zach. He read all the fun facts to him and then quizzed him at each of the stops to scratch off the right answers. At the end they each got a sticker for getting the answers right. The whole aquarium took about 2 hours to go through. If I have one bit of advice for this place, it would be, get there when they open, and get tickets online, ahead of time, so you can bypass the LONG line AND they are cheaper that way!
After the aquarium, we walked back to the hotel and ate lunch, then we had about an hour and a half of family nap time, after our late night, EVERYONE needed a nap. I was planning on that, and it was MUCH needed.
After nap time we went back over to LegoLand.
This was REALLY cool!
First there was a little tour telling about how Legos are made. 
A spot to demonstrate painting your own design on a Lego.
Every wonder how much you weigh in Legos?
There was a room of Lego models of famous spots in KC, and even an Wizzard of Oz display. Most parts had buttons to push that were supposed to make parts move, but a lot of the buttons were not working (bummer!), but The K was pretty cool, especially since we had just been there.
There was an area of Lego Friends, for little girls to play in, Faith loved this section.
Also while we were there, Ethan got to go to the Master Creators class, where he got to learn to build a dinosaur, he had a great time in there.
Included in LegoLand was a couple of rides, a 4-D movie, and a play area for little kids (kind of like Going Bonkers). There was a cafe in there too. They suggest 2 1/2 hours for your trip, but if you really let your kids play, plan to be there 4-5 hours, I really think we could have been there a whole day, if time aloud.
We spent 3 1/2 hours there and the kids DID NOT want to leave.
We needed to get to dinner though, we were meeting our friends, the Mallinson's at Fritz's in Crown Center. I snagged a couple of pics from Amy, mine didn't come out so good. Faith, just adores Titus!
And these boys are just an amazing little trio. I am going to love seeing them grow up friends, I have already had the pleasure of the past five years. Zach just loves these boys so much, he calls them his brothers, since Ethan has brothers that he doesn't live with full time, he was pretty convinced these were his brothers that he doesn't live with. When they recently moved to KC, he asked me, "Will they remember my name for always?", I about cried, "Yes, baby, they will always remember your name, Mommy will make sure".
I value these friends so much.
Because Fritz's is in Crown Center, we used our $20 gift certificate that we got with our hotel deal and ended up saving half our bill! If you haven't been to Fritz's, I won't tell you the food is amazing, but the kids really loved the trains, and the theme look was really cool. For me, the best part, was the company!
After dinner we all went swimming at the hotel pool.
No pictures of that, but it was great fun!
After a good night's sleep, we headed out to Schlitterbahn water park. This is a really great day! I got tickets online ahead of time and I found a coupon code (sorry, I don't remember where, I just Googled it and found one that worked, it save us about $7 a ticket, I think). We got there about 10:30, I wanted to be there earlier so we could get a table in the shade, but no luck, no worries though,
we spent very little time at our table.
At Schlitterbahn you can take a cooler in, so we did, this saved us SO much money! We applied sunscreen three different times, and still all of us got burnt. I would highly suggest just wearing t-shirts (we definitely will next time!), Faith and Zach wore life jackets all day
(they were free to borrow),
and they turned out a lot less crispy than the rest of us.
We started out all together in the two kiddy pools, but then split up, Zach, Grace, Ethan and Rob all rode lots of rides, Faith and I stayed in the Torrent River, which was like a wave pool, river style, she was perfectly content to ride the waves all day, and I didn't mind a bit, it was very relaxing, really.
I think next time she will be ready to ride some other rides.
We left the park about 7pm, it was a full day of fun. When we got home, everyone showered and I coated them all in Aloe. They were all asleep FAST. This morning, my early risers were not heard from till after 9. That NEVER happens around here.
I think we may have worn them out a bit.
Our somewhat short adventure ended up being just the right amount of time, we had a lot of fun and did a lot in a short amount of time. It was a really fantastically fun weekend. Several years ago Rob and I started calling our little trips with the kids "Adventures", hence the name of our blog, and it was on our license plates even, but we haven't referred to them as that in a couple years,
so I thought it was funny when Zach said,
"Thanks for the adventure,
it was so much fun!"
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