our last little pig

it's a little surprising how often we've been able to host the ardens in kc the past few years, and we had another opportunity when their cross country sabbatical road trip passed right through raytown.

as is the tradition, we introduced them to another staple of the kansas city barbecue scene with a visit to joe's, and we also made a stop at the beloved mama china. our few days together were otherwise spent chatting, playing games, taking walks, breaking out of an escape room and sorting through donald's baseball card collection. 

the other tradition is eating our last meal together at the little pig in belton. what we didn't know at the time was that it would be our last chance since the restaurant was destroyed by fire a few months later, but we're thankful we got to enjoy those bbq sundae's together one last time!

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anniversary number five

five years ago donald and i were introduced to ned and marjorie. the day we got married they were celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of their own lodge wedding. it's their tradition to come back to the lodge each year, which we thought was a lovely idea. logistically a yearly visit would be tricky for us, but we decided that a return engagement sounded like the perfect way to celebrate five years.

after a little shuffling around we settled into one of the original lodge rooms, and the whole place was just as charming as i remembered. this was the first time we had visited without some sort of wedding agenda and we enjoyed every minute. we took a walk, went swimming, played games, reminisced over wedding photos and video, and of course ate the traditional fried chicken. the one thing we didn't expect was a surprise visit from the broomies! they had decided to drive over on a whim, thinking we had been there the weekend before. it was hilarious and a fun treat to enjoy a little part of the day with some of the same people who helped us celebrate five years ago!

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canada, crepes & central park

since the three of us enjoyed our first cruise together so much we decided to set sail on another adventure, which looked very similar to the first. there was a lot of eating. there was a lot of relaxing. there were a lot of evening crepes. there was a lot of trivia. and there was a lot of eating. there was also a lot of football via satellite which delighted donald to no end.

the main difference was that instead of going south, we headed north and donald got to use his passport in canada. the canadian stops mostly consisted of strolling around town and trying some local delicacies like beaver tail and dulse [the first was delicious, the second not so much]. then we sailed down to maine where we visited acadia national park, ate lobster and blueberry pie, and one of us took a long seaside bike ride. 

when we were planning this trip i very specifically searched for ships leaving out of manhattan so i could sneak in a bonus trip to nyc. my favorite thing is just being in the city...riding the subway, walking around and enjoying the hustle and bustle. there's also fun food, so we took my mom on a culinary tour of some of our favorites. while we were out and about we stumbled upon gulliver's gate miniature museum which turned out to be really cool, and the nbc tour took us into the tonight show studio so basically all my dreams came true. unfortunately we don't all share the same level of love for big cities in general, but my travel companions were troopers and even entertained my request for one final subway ride to the airport [which you should ask donald about sometime...but beware that his version of the events is very dramatic].

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