My Family in KC!

I was so blessed to be able to have  my parents and McKay in town for a week last month. It was better than Christmas! I found out just a few weeks beforehand and I was so excited! They drove long and hard to get here and I was impressed with how quickly they made it.

We had such a blast with them here, hopefully they enjoyed it too. They arrived on Thursday June 7 around 5:00pm. I made them a chicken enchilada dinner that was ready for them when they arrived. We spent that evening just relaxing and catching up. I was still in shock that they were here.

Friday morning I went into work for an hour while they caught up on the sleep they had lost during the drive. We then decided to spend the day seeing the church history sites. We took them to Independence first to see the Visitor's Center and the temple site. We then traveled a few miles over to Liberty Jail.

At the temple site in front of the Community of Christ "temple"

After that my dad said he would really like to go to Far West and Adam-ondi-Ahman. We stopped for a quick pick-me-up snack and then headed up across the farmland of Missouri. We had a great time chatting and remarking about the peculiar things along the way. After an hour's drive, we made it to Far West which is just a lovely garden in the middle of nowhere now. There is a tall metal gate surrounding the temple site where the four cornerstones of the temple still sit in each corner with gorgeous flower gardens in between. We had the place to ourselves which was nice for some quiet contemplation. As we were getting ready to leave, an old rickety bus pulled up with Idaho plates and out piled about 20 kids and 5 adult men. The girls were outfitted in pioneer style dresses which made us think they were LDS kids on some kind of trek. We then heard the kids yelling each other's names (Moroni, Helaman, etc) and quickly realized that they were in fact polygamous FLDS which was an interesting inclusion to our day.

We left Far West and headed north to Adam-ondi-Ahman on some country back roads. It had been 11 years since I had last been and I didn't actually remember much about it. I didn't realize that it was a huge valley with multiple rims around it. We drove around to the two accessible sites. Once again we had the place mostly to ourselves and we had fun seeing deer and pondering the history and future of the place. We were there close to sunset, which I swear the the perfect time of day to go. Absolutely gorgeous!



Adam-ondi-Ahman - over looking the valley



Adam-ondi-Ahman - over looking the valley



McKay is so GQ!

We then headed back home stopping on our way at the new Kansas City temple to take pictures.

Can you believe these two love-birds have been married for 30 years?

Two of my favorite guys :)

He's my favorite youngest brother!

Saturday was more of a lazy day. We slept in and ran some errands. We went up to Crown City but there wasn't much to see there. We did take a few pictures by the fountains.

Sunday we went to church and I cooked a turkey dinner. We rested, talked and just overall enjoyed each other's company. On Monday went over to the Federal Reserve to the Money Museum. It's a free museum that shows every coin of the United States since 1777. There are also lots of videos, facts and statistics, as well as fun things for kids to do. We aren't kids, but we had fun playing anyway. There was a place for us to take pictures of our faces in money so we took full advantage of that.



Alexander's face is priceless here

We now have fair warning to not vote McKay in as president but Dad looks respectable ;)

Trying to redeem himself with a "Vote for Me" smile

That's some good lookin' money right there

We also created our own dollar bills on a computer. We could choose our pictures, motto and it even took our pictures.

We played with rubbing stencils to create bills as well. As a souvenir they gave us a bag of shredded money that looks like expensive confetti. We had a blast :).

Our monies

We then went across the street to the Liberty Memorial. It's the National World War 1 Monument. Dad was upset that they didn't have the names of the soldiers there like they do at the other monuments. He was looking forward to seeing the name of his grandfather listed, but alas it wasn't there. We did see a great view of the city and looking down Dad decided he would like to go to Union Station. 



Liberty Memorial looking at the city

The exhibits are usually closed on Mondays but while we were looking at the architecture, on of the employees mentioned to my Dad that for some reason the Titanic exhibit was open and it was half off today only. I thought my Dad would die of excitement. We had been talking about the exhibit on Saturday but that it was too expensive to go. He has loved the Titanic story since he was a kid, so this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. We had one hour before it closed and it was exactly enough time. Half price seemed fair for a once in a lifetime opportunity. Mom wasn't thrilled, she thought it would be morbid, but it turned out to be really well done and a really neat experience. I thought that maybe this was a tender mercy for my Dad as he had wanted to see it so badly.

Doesn't his face just show his excitement? lol...

Solemn faces in respect of the dead

Tuesday morning came way too soon. My family had to leave to drive back and I was heartbroken to see them go. Godiva was also heartbroken as she adores my Dad and McKay. She moped for two days after they left. It just didn't seem fair that we have to be so far apart and not see each other very often. I know that they made some heavy sacrifices to come out and visit us and I am so thankful they did. I have amazing parents and siblings and I love them all so much! Now I hope to see all my other siblings out here soon too! :)