Hotel Hilarity

Our far out vacation this year was down to St. Joe and Kansas City. Mommy's cousin got married in St. Joe, so we started out there. We went a day early so that we could just relax and play in the fun, little water park that they had at our hotel. Little, being the operative word. Some of the older kids in mommy's extended family were a bit disappointed, but it was absolutely perfect for our younger ones. It wasn't deeper than 3 feet anywhere so Noisy Man could have free roam of the place as long as he was within eye sight. He loved that.

Checking out the cool slides

We had a few hiccups with hotel rooms, however. The first one they assigned us to was right next to the maid's closet and one of the main stairways, so we asked for a different one. Well, come 8 pm that evening we find out our air conditioning in the new room is not able to keep up with the heat indices of 108 degrees. We called maintenance, but couldn't understand what he was saying and just ended up with a couple of fans to keep us cool enough to make it through the night. The next day we were upgraded rooms to a poolside suite with bunk beds for the kids. The hotel management was very good to work with and did a great job making everything right.

The wedding was lovely and the kids had a blast dancing and raiding the candy table. It was great to spend lots of time with all of mommy's family. I think family weddings are the best!

Miss Firecracker loved floating around in her cousin's fish!

The kids thought it was fun to hide in the dresser!

Mommy and most of the kids

The next day we went on down to Kansas City. We were planning on all going to World's of Fun, but with the heat being quite unbearable, we decided to go with an indoor option instead. We found a place called Paradise Park. It was, again, perfect for our kids. A fun children's museum section, bumper cars, arcade, and another place called the Foam Factory where you could shoot foam balls out of guns and cannons and all sorts of other things. It was all inside and air conditioned! There were go karts, mini golf and a playground outdoors as well, but we opted to stay inside.

Noisy Man loading a foam ball blaster

This was so cool.  The kids put the balls through this hole and a tube sucked them up,
sent them through a sanitizer and then shot them back into the ball pit!

Miss Thumb Sucker loved that all of the sinks were at her level. She would have
washed her hands all day if we would have let her!

Later that night, after a big family supper of pizza, the girls stayed at G'ma and G'pa's hotel and swam while most of the boys went to see Cars 2 in 3D. It was a fun family time. We ventured back to our hotel in KC to another horrific night. Evidently there was a Rob Zombie or some other death and hate and screaming type concert that night and all the crazies from it came back to our hotel on our floor and screamed and cussed at each other until 2:30 am. Misery. That is all I have to say. Of course, we didn't know exactly what was going on until some of them were wearing the T-shirts and talking about the concert in the breakfast area the next morning.

Daddy having fun with a foam ball gun

Miss Firecracker with her big win at the arcade

The last day we went to The Legends mall and did some school clothes shopping and ate at the T-Rex Cafe. It was a great experience and I was glad that Miss Thumb Sucker was not afraid of the life-like dinosaurs and meteor showers that were all over. Noisy Man and Miss Firecracker thought it was the coolest thing ever.

They had an awesome cooking area in the Edutainment Center

Roaring with T-Rex!

After 3 nights of not going to bed until 10:30 at night and running crazy all day long we were very ready to go home. The kids did awesome the entire trip with only one huge meltdown from Miss Firecracker on the 2nd day. Another great family vacation down in the books.