Road Trip to Kansas City

All the "Burton" grandchildren together

From left to right, youngest to oldest: Megan (1), Olivia (almost 2),
Mara Kate (3), Grant (4), Dresden (4), Liam (7), Alley (10)

I'm back home from my road trip to Kansas City. It was a good trip and fun to be with my family and to have all the cousins together in one place. With 7 kiddos running around there were definitely some crazy moments, but overall it was great just being able to be together for over a week.

Also, it was nice that I got to eat some of the best BBQ around twice during our visit...mmmm!

Since Kane and I have only one car right now (we are getting ready to get a 2nd one soon though...finally after living with only one for 5 years) it was quite a feat working out the logistics of how I was going to get to Kansas City without a car. Here's how it worked out...

Thursday---Kane drove Mara Kate and I to Chattanooga where his sister and her husband picked us up. They drove us back to their place in Nashville where we spent the night. Later that afternoon my sister Heidi and her kids drove to Nashville from Birmingham. They stayed the night with us in Nashville. We did get to take the kids to the pool and Elizabeth fixed us a yummy supper and her sweet, sweet husband took all 3 kids to the playground at one point...so even though it was a quick stop over we were very grateful to be starting out on our long drive approximately 4 hours closer to our destination than if we had started from home.

Friday---Got everything loaded and headed out....then I realized I couldn't find my prescription sunglasses, which I would need to help with the driving...went back and looked for them at Elizabeth's, couldn't find them and decided we just had to leave. Ugh. It got us off to a later start, but we were finally on our way. We drove for about 9 hours to Kansas City, making various stops along the way. At one said stop I decided to dig through some of my bags in the trunk to see if I could find my glasses. I did eventually find them in the bottom of Mara Kate's duffle bag. Not sure why I put them there and certainly didn't remember doing it, but I was happy to find them. Ha! We arrived in Kansas City in time to eat my mom's spaghetti for supper.

We were in Kansas City from Friday evening through the following Sunday morning....lots of family time. Lots of visits to the hospital to visit my grandmother who is recovering from surgery and some blood clots. It was great to get to see her because at one point we weren't sure she was going to make it and I had wondered if I'd ever get to see her alive again. I'm very thankful to God for allowing us to have some good time to visit with her. We are hopeful that she will recover fully and be able to go back to her house sometime soon, but it may take some time for her to regain enough strength to care fully for herself. So, we will continue to pray for her to have strength.

My Mom took her three daughters out to lunch one day while we were there....to a neat place called Andre's. Dad graciously agreed to watch all 7 children on his own while we went for our little outing. We had a lovely lunch together and also enjoyed some time to go shopping at a neat kitchen/garden store afterward. I got several really neat items I know I'll enjoy for a long time to come, including these fun reusable name plates my mom bought me as an early birthday present. I think I'll use them as place settings as well as identification plates for buffet style eating. When we got home my dad was more than a little frazzled. He said he now truly appreciates all mothers of young children. He had 5 under 5 running in opposite directions for close to 4 hours. I think he did a pretty good job though. Thanks Dad for letting us have some "grown up girl time".

Also during our trip all the adults went to see The Proposal. We went in shifts though. I went with Tara and my Dad. It was a pretty cute movie.

Our last day in Kansas City was the 4th of July. When we planned our trip we decided we wanted to be there for that holiday so we could have a good Burton meal, the kind we grew up with. Dad grilled some yummy hamburgers, mom made her potato salad and perfect baked beans and it was just as I was hoping it would be. I had been looking forward to that meal for weeks. :)

Thanks Mom and Dad for hosting us, feeding us and for all the chocolate milk the kids went through. I know that was a big treat for Mara Kate. :) We loved spending time with you and are looking forward to your visit in October.

Sunday---We headed out fairly early on July 5th and drove back to Nashville. Heidi ended up just dropping us off and continued driving to Birmingham. She made it all the way home in one long day, but I know she was glad to be in her own bed and have her husband's help again with the kids. I stayed the night at Elizabeth and Choonghwan's again. Kane's mom had agreed to drive to Nashville from Knoxville and pick us up and take us home. She arrived a little later that evening and spent the night as well. We headed out Monday morning planning to make a pit stop in Rome, GA. She had brought several things that I had in storage in her basement with her to drop off at our new house in Rome. So, we went to Rome and did that. She hadn't seen the house so it was fun showing her where we'll be living shortly. Then we headed back to Atlanta, stopping to pick up supper and take it to Tech so we could spend a little time with Kane. After we ate with him he went back to work (until close to midnight that night) and we came on home. I finally got all the way home around 8pm on Monday night.

So, now I've got to get myself motivated to finish all the packing I didn't do before this trip. I've got less than 3 weeks until moving day and I also need to fit in another trip to Rome to finish cleaning the house and run a few Rome errands to to get everything ready and set for us to move in.

As usual, to see the pictures from our trip, click HERE.

Phew---ok, so this was a long post, but maybe that makes up for the fact that I haven't been posting much over the past few weeks.