Today was our last day of vacation, and we spent most of it doing the very exciting task of driving from Chicago to back home to Manhattan. The highlight of our day was having dinner in Kansas City at my most favorite restaurant in the world, Cinzetti's, along with Nonnie AND Gramps. And tonight, I am proud to report that everyone is sleeping in their own bed once again. All is right with the world.
We got an "early" start at around, oh, 9:00 a.m. Daniel is rocking the bed head with his Newton's Cradle. This was before it got tangled up for the ninth time of the day.
I took this picture at the last minute, but it says, "129 Traffic Deaths in Illinois This Year."
Crossing the Mississippi in Iowa. According to the trivia game that Will and I were playing, the river reaches its widest point in this state.
Oh, and we saw culture along the way, too. Here in the heart of Iowa is the "World's Largest Truck Stop."
And here it is in the flesh, the illustrious Iowa 80.
We stopped for lunch in Des Moines and the kids were only too happy to have a chance to run around to burn off some energy in the indoor play place.
The highlight of this restaurant was the real live Player Piano. Annika in particular was fascinated and we spent some time together just watching it play.
More culture in Iowa - the "Lakeside Casino."
This casino is a "riverboat" casino in the same way that many of the KCMO casinos are. Clearly a riverboat.
Meanwhile in the car, Annika read her book for tomorrow's mother/daughter book group meeting, the first book in the Dear Know It All series. She also spent a decent amount of time playing "Stack the Countries," a geography game on the iPad. Daniel was also desperate for his turn on the iPad to use the drawing app (when you forget to bring drawing apparatuses, the iPad comes to the rescue!).
Coming into Kansas City, Missouri on the fancy bridge.
We made it to Overland Park around 5:45 p.m. and were super happy that it worked to meet both Nonnie and Gramps for dinner there!! This is at Cinzetti's, the "All You Can Eat Italian Feast." This was my very favorite restaurant when we lived in Kansas City and it was our first time visiting it in almost 9 years.
Nonnie and Annika!! Stinger the dragon puppet came, too.
Will and Gramps!! Daniel was on another photo strike at the moment, but he was wearing his vest the whole time.
Oh, and I took a picture of my freshly made apple crepe since it was so beautiful (and delicious).
Getting closer to Manhattan...we got to see the sun set and night set in. We finally made it home around 9:00 p.m.
Home sweet home!! There is really nothing like the pleasure of returning home after vacation. Will and I mentioned that perhaps one day, we will just stay home for spring break so that we could have this relaxing sensation for the whole week. But where would be the fun in that? ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment