Hallmark and Sprint

Summer is just getting started,

but because we have had such stunning weather, 

I feel like we have been enjoying it since as soon as we felt baby Grey

 was ready to enter the germ-filled world.

This Summer I am determined to fill our weekends with memorable family adventures.

When we moved to Kansas City, 

we were pleasantly surprised to discover that it is an extremely family oriented place.

There are countless free or cheap activities for families.

We kicked off our summer adventures a few weeks ago with a trip 

downtown to Crowne Center.  

Here they have the Hallmark Visitors Center which has a really fun art adventure for kids.

After this I bought Beck some paint for himself.  

He loves it but only because he likes changing the color of the water in the rinse cup.

I don't think becoming an artist is for him.

future chemist maybe?

 Me and my man

 All those snot-nosed kids in such close quarters made me nervous about having my 7 week old there

so Greyson and I hung out outside in the sunshine to wait for Beck and Chase to finish.

Grey didn't mind a bit, and neither did I. 

He is pretty cute company.

One weekend we went to "Sprint Family Fun Days"

This is downtown KC also,

but its in a really cool area called the Power and Light District.

Sprint's world headquarters are in Kansas City so they put on a family fair

 once a month and everything is free.

We went with our good friend's the Steffensons and we timed it perfectly to beat the crowds.

They had TONS of fun activities for the kids from art tables, to coloring, sandtables, facepainting, 

clowns, really tall guys, and kids interactive shows and bands all day.

The kids had a blast!

I think the biggest hit with Beck was the bouncy house.  

He loved coming over to the wall and saying:

"Stuck in net! Stuck in net!"

At one point there was a huge gust of wind and it started to blow over and cave in.

We had a hard time getting him to get out even then.

Beck was thrilled to have a rocket painted on his face

Beck, Gavin, and Reilly

Making drums to use with the drum band

After a few hours of fun, we heard there was a free Rodney Atkins concert at 4:30.

It was only 1:00pm and all the kids were already exhausted but we really want to go.

Someone had given us free coupons to a brand new bowling alley close by.

So we decided to stick it out for another 3.5 hours for the concert and kill the time with some bowling.

The first 15 minutes was spent teaching Beck about taking turns and the dangers of heavy bowling balls.

After that the kids did really well.

And toddler sized bowling shoes?! so cute!

We were all pretty tired as you can see.

After bowling we still had almost two hours to kill.

Somehow we managed to spend the time with the kids (reasonably) happy and nestled ourselves in a great little spot for the concert and waited for the crowds to arrive.

4:30 FINALLY arrived and they announced that there would be two opening bands before Rodney Atkins.

At this point the crowd had changed from young families to singles mingling and we realized hanging out for another 1-2 hours would have been a disaster.  

After all that waiting around we had to fight the crowds and head home before the concert.

We joked about how different our lives are now that we have kids.

It was still a wonderful day and are excited for Sprint Days in June!