Kansas City Adventures

This weekend, we went to Kansas City for the Groundhog Run. We originally had no plans other than to hang out with Nonnie and Pa, but this quickly turned into a Home Improvement Adventure Weekend. Highlights of the weekend included: 

Fancy Day at school on Friday (because according to our kids, Friday is "one-half weekend, one-half weekday"). 

Will and I visited the much-obsessed for house Friday afternoon. After obsessing all week about a nearby house that we had been swooning over all week (click here), Will and I made an appointment to actually view the house in person. We are so glad that we did because while the house is every bit as lovely at the photographs...it did not "grab" either of us in person. 

Bergman Pajama and Movie Night on Friday night! Daniel and his classmate snuggled up on D's beanbag. 

 We had an bigger turnout than last year and I think there were about 200 people in the end.

Despicable Me 2!

We drove to Kansas City. It appears that the 264-step, 17-story slide they are putting up in Schlitterbahn is way, WAY bigger than the one at Great Wolf Lodge.

We visited Nebraska Furniture Mart. This store is so big and overwhelming that just walking in its front door makes my right eye start twitching. After viewing the much-obsessed-for-house, we decided that we will try to make home improvements to our existing house that would help us enjoy our house more and could also make the house easier to sell if we ever found a perfect alternative.

Our current dining room table has a warped table top, a chair missing most of its back, and other misfortunes from its decades of use. The dining room set below was one of our favorites.

And here was the other favorite...another oak table with a bench seating on one side. We're so hip.

Another area we would like to update is our living room. We currently have two couches, each of which were used when we acquired them in 1999. After wandering around the whole store, we found the couch set of our dreams below. Only...this is the exact same couch set we purchased three years ago to go in our downstairs family room.

We were *almost* tempted to buy the same set as before, but decided that would be tacky, even for us. The other couches that I liked were all ones that our crazy cats could destroy in 1.2 seconds.

We began a Flooring Adventure at Home Depot. After feeling overwhelmed at Nebraska Furniture Mart, we realized we were doing this wrong...instead of finding new furniture, we needed to first get new flooring to replace all of the carpet that our crazy cats have destroyed (sensing a theme here). We were initially confused about hardwood versus laminate so grabbed all kinds of samples.

Tile! Will had the idea to redo the kitchen/dining area with tile.

We went back in the evening and conned Nonnie into coming with us.

Do you know what is exhausting? Shopping. Do you know what is like a Special Circle of Hell Exhausting? Looking at flooring. Ice cream helped make this better.

The kids enjoyed hanging out with Nonnie and Pa.

Annika drew Sponge Bob for Daniel.

I am not sure what Daniel is doing here, but to keep the pictures in the blog balanced, here is a picture of Daniel. :)

The kids helped Nonnie decorate for Valentine's Day.

Hanging out with Pa! He went out and bought them Tootsie Rolls this morning. :)

Will and I ran in the Groundhog Run 5k, a completely underground race. This was the original purpose of our KC trip; it is a race held every January in an underground cave system in Kansas City, Missouri.

 The Subtropolis.

Getting warmed up! The caves are advertised as being 65-70 degrees year-round but we agreed that it was freezing before the race. We later found this was because many of the doors were open to help cool the course down...normally the race is held while it is bitterly cold outside, but a rare warm spell today meant we were running inside on a day with a high of 60 degrees. Oh, the irony.

The Starting Line, before the race. It was a staggered start so I started about 3.5 minutes after Will and the Fast People took off.

After the race! Okay, this is actually before the race, but we looked kind of like this after the race, only sweatier. :) Neither of us had a PR today, but I ran almost 2 minutes faster than this same race last year and Will ran over 11 minutes faster! I cannot believe how incredibly far Will has come in a year; having foot surgery at last was definitely one of the best decisions he's ever made.

We ate lunch at Red Robin. It is very important when we are not in Manhattan that we eat out at places Not in Manhattan.

Will and I made our third (and fourth) trip to Home Depot tonight. 

After spending more time getting an estimate and measurement set up, we bought some floor tiles to try out at home. We were kind of surprised that each of us liked the light-colored one (slightly bigger) in the bottom right-hand corner the best to use in redoing our kitchen and dining area. And evidently we like items that are a similar color to our present linoleum in the kitchen.

After much researching and asking people for opinions and agonizing about yet another First World Problem, we decided to go with Pergo for the stairs, hallway, and living room. And shockingly...we liked the lightest-colored Pergo the best.

So, our final consensus was that we liked the Vermont Maple Pergo (shown below), but are still torn on the tile...either a 13-inch or 18-inch square, laid out on a diagonal. We both like the 18-inch square tile better but it is more expensive and could have more difficulties with installation. Of course, since we are going to hire Home Depot to do the installation, perhaps that is a moot point...

We toasted to making changes to our house. To renovations! To expense! To not being able to use our kitchen for weeks! To action! We decided that instead of debating and researching forever, we are just going to Move Forward on Flooring, because really, life is too short to stress over flooring.

Finally, I re-learned something this weekend: I can never, ever, build a house. Never. If just choosing *flooring* and looking at furniture is making me twitchy, I think making a thousand different decisions on a house would send me over the edge. Even more props to those who have done so!