MT vs PRT Half-time Dance Performance

2012 Enchanted Forest

Halloween tradition. City of Lenexa Enchanted Forest at Sar-Ko-Par Park. Music, magic, lights, inflatables, candy, hayrides, and pumpkin decorating. We like to do this every year. KC Wolf (our KC Chiefs mascot) was a new surprise though! It was 70 degrees when we got up this morning. Ended up being 47 the rest of the day. We put on about 3 layers tonight to go to this, plus gloves.

 

CCE Pirates

Haylie and Nell after the 5th Grade production of Pirates. Will upload play in later post. Two cute Gangplank Girls.

 

Birthday #46

Today is #46. Each year we get to pick where we want to eat for our birthday and normally I pick Shogun. But this time I wanted to try something different. I had heard that Horizon's Buffet was really good at the Ameristar Hotel & Casino. Savannah had been there before with a friend of hers. So thats where we headed yesterday. It was really good! And the place is just fun so I want to come back and stay overnight sometime. Mike and the girls had a yummy Edible Arrangement sent to my office at Garmin. Yummy yummy! We also had a potluck chili luncheon for all the Sept/Oct birthdays. They do this every 2 months and the whole department participates. Lots of good food! Pretty awesome couple of days for the downhill slide to 50.

 

Everyone Likes a Good Scare (everyone but Savannah that is)

We were up in the air about when we were going to go to Worlds of Fun Halloween Haunt. So when we saw that is was supposed to be 70 degrees yesterday and 42 degrees next Saturday that pretty much sealed the deal. It was a great day. A bit more crowded than last year. I suppose because there are only two more weekends left until they are closed for the season.

 

I had the girls break outta bed and tackle the basement mess and everything else they had been assigned to do while they have been out of school since Thursday. The reward of WoF was enough to get them going. We get here about twice a year; once with Mike's company day and then again at Halloween. I'm not so much on the rides that go upside down but I love all the Halloween decor.

 

At 7p is when the scary haunt starts. It all begins with the Overlord's Awakening. He rises up to call his people. This starts the parade of everyone participating as a ghost, goblin, clown, doll, or whatever. The costumes and makeup are pretty elaborate. They have 13 "haunts" you can walk through but with the girls it pretty much limits us to what they will see. We tackled London Terror (which we also did last year) and Savannah pretty much has the bejeebies scared out of her. Mostly because she wasn't paying attention to the people around her and had her earbuds in.

 

Guess Mike and I will have to do this on our own from here on out until they actually like haunted houses.

Louisburg Cider Fest

And we finally arrive at today. Saturday Oct 6, 2012. I have caught up with all our activities over the summer and end with our trip 17 miles south to Louisburg KS. So like this little midwestern town. Got us some apple cider donuts, kettle corn, and honey roasted peanuts. A little too crowded for us today with all the craft vendors. We didn't do the petting zoo, hay ride to pumpkin patch or the corn maze but it was just too cold. Ended up being only 46* today and just too miserable for me to be outside. Hope you've enjoyed our lives up to this point and hopefully in the future I won't let so many activities go by.

 

Runnin' With the Wolves

Second annual MT Runnin' With the Wolves 5K. I decided not to participate in this one. It was just too cold (even though I would have warmed right up running). Drill Team helped out and Mike and our neighbor Jennifer did the run. Awesome job guys!

 

It Wouldn't Be Fall....

... without a Chiefs game! Gotta love all that red!

 

Old Settlers Day

This is our second Old Settlers Day we've gone to. Like I said in our post about this last year I don't know why we hadn't been going since we moved here 9 years ago! I think it is lots of fun. They have an antique car show, a history of Olathe film, carnival, food vendors and craft vendors. Now you have to remember that this is the biggest parade in KS with over 160 entries. However it IS NOT a state parade like the Days of 47' in Utah where the whole state does participate. This is mainly participants from around the Olathe area. Most of the middle and high school cheerleaders, drill teams, and bands march, along with people and their cars, politicians, etc.

 

MTMS is always a sight to see. LOVE the purple, black, and white. Savannah was up front and looked gorgeous! ONW (Olathe Northwest High School) is the school the girls will be going to and they looked totally awesome too.

 

Labor Day

Labor Day weekend was chock full of activities. Bright and early was our ward 5K ( I cut 4 minutes off my Disney 5K) and breakfast. Girls had a friend come over for the day to go swimming and then we hooked up with the Whites at Black Hoof Park for a bbq and play time. Thanks guys for joining us!

 

Lenexa WaterFest

Every year the city of Lenexa puts on WaterFest. Now don't think because of the serious drought we've had this summer that this is a waste of water. WaterFest is to educate people of the importance of water and what it does for us. We got there a little late so the girls only had a few minutes in the shower from one of our city fire trucks. I thought that was pretty cool. They both went pole fishing in the parks lake and Savannah actually caught a fish!

 

Go Royals!

Another fun evening at Kaufmann Stadium enjoying our Royals!

 

And Here it is August

Back to normal includes back to school. Don't ya just love Haylie's sense of fashion? She's going to NY someday.  :-)  Savannah is an 8th grader and in her last year of middle school. Haylie is a 5th grader and in her last year of elementary school. Had to decorate her locker with the Biebs.

 

JoCo Fair

I love going to the Johnson County Fair every year in Gardner KS. Its not very big, but its free and has lots of animals. Being in the midwest we have a great appreciation for the "Big Green Tractor" if you know that song. This beast runs around $260,000 I think the price tag said?

 

Haylie Passes Level 6

I love this grin on her face. We waited too long last year to get Haylie registered for Level 6 of swim lessons so the class was full. This time I made sure I got online as soon as the class times were listed. This is the very last level (and the hardest) the kids have to take and SHE PASSED! No more swim lessons. Ever.

 

Two Time Zones; Seven States

What a trip. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of all the states we passed through on this road trip. At the start of this vacation we drove through 6 (KS, MO, IL, IN, KY, and OH). On our way back it was 7 (NY, PA, OH, IN, IL, MO, and KS). We left early Saturday morning July 14 wanting to get most of the way home before dinner time. According to Mapquest (don't trust it) we should have gotten from Palmyra NY to ST Louis MO in 12 hours going 75 mph. However, that did not include road work for the majority of the way in I-90. We made it in 14 hours. As you can see it was a little early in the morning for the girls. But we had a great dinner at OSF (again) and the girls got some pool time in another awesome hotel.

 

Time in Palmyra NY

For those of you that are LDS you know the significance of upstate NY to the church. Several church sites up in that area of the US include the Peter Whitmer Farm. A beautiful stake center is built on the property where the tour starts before going into the farm home. We ran into some baby raccoons that were so stinkin' cute!

 

Went into "downtown Palmyra" if you could define it as a downtown. The Grandon building is where the Book of Mormon was published.

 

Made a stop at the Palmyra Temple and the Joseph Smith Farm. Walked a little ways through the Sacred Grove and went down to the marina.

 

The Hill Cumorah Pageant was later that night. It was so crowded! We walked up to the top of the hill, went to the visitors center and just hung out. This was on Friday July 13 which was our last night together. What a great activity to end a great vacation.

 

Niagara Falls. Both USA and Canada.

Next day was spent around Niagara Falls. Mike had been before but the rest of us were first timers. It was absolutely incredible! Kids loved getting into the blue rain coats and we got front and center on the Maid of the Mist boat tour. If not for that lovely blue plastic we would have been soaking wet!

 

Since our family has our passports we needed to escape into Canada to again Hard Rock Cafe for our glass collection. Halfway across the bridge is the US/Canada border. I was wondering if I were to call Savannah on her cell phone from my cell phone would it be an international roaming call even though we were standing right next to each other?

 

That evening we took a great tour this guy does on the side after his regular day job. He was awesome! If you ever get up there. Book one of his tours. He gave a lot of information about the falls, the area, and threw in some comedy on the side.

 

Kirtland OH

While we were staying in Sandusky my sisters family and my mom flew into Akron. We met up with them at the Kirtland LDS Visitors Center the next day. They had never been there and it was so fun to share it with them. Cousins had a great time with each other.

 

An 8 Year Difference

And here we arrive to duplicate pictures. Same girls, same place, 8 year time span.

Our first time to Cedar Point was in 2004 when Savannah was 5 and Haylie was 2. Notice the harness? Greatest invention since slice bread for wandering little people! We had dinner at Famous Dave's BBQ on the marina and I always did "Miss Mary" with cloth napkins. They were so cute back then!

Fast forward 8 years to 2012. Dinner again at Famous Dave's doin' the "Miss Mary". Savannah is now 13 and Haylie is 10. Still cute dontcha think?

 

Cedar Point Amusement Park

Before meeting up with my family we wanted to spend a day at Cedar Point. If you have never been there you need to go. It is the countries largest amusement (not to be confused with theme) park. SO MANY roller coasters! And this year the girls were old enough to go on them. The last time we were here was in 2004 of which you will see in a later post with the difference in the girls' pictures.

 

So many awesome rides!

 

Though our family has been to the beach before we had never been in the Great Lakes. Cedar Point has a gate in the park that leads directly out to Lake Erie. Toesies on the sand and wandering out into the lake.