With Alli getting sick and being stuck home for a few days and then the not so great school supply shopping incident, we were ready for a reboot.
Luckily, the McDonalds who had been gone for over a month were finally home, and when your kids are around other people they are supposed to be on their best behavior and stop fighting. Unluckily, we have known the McDonald’s for years and years so my kids are way past impressing them with good behavior, they are more like family then friends to them-but they still fought less than usual.
We made super fun plans to pack a picnic and go check out this really cool park in North Kansas City (40 minute drive) that has GIANT animals like a penguin, giraffe, elephant, and a kangaroo to climb and play on that they kids have wanted to play at! Not so super, steady rain with intermittent down pours settles in over the entire KC area for the day and being outside isn’t going to happen.
Luckily, I remember that the Rainbow Play Ground Store lets you bring your kids in to play on all the play sets for free in hopes that your kids will love them so much you have to buy one. Unluckily, Rainbow Store has decided that you are welcome to come in and play on the play sets but they now charge $7.50 per person and Lori and I won’t pay that on the principle that we don’t go to stores that have decided to charge an entrance fee.
Luckily, we remember that the 360 Gym has open gym and we can all head over there. Unluckily open gym doesn’t start for 40 more minutes when we arrive. Luckily they have a big empty room that they let us eat our picnic lunch in on the floor while we wait for open gym to start and restrooms to use as needed, which is handy with seven kids and two adults, one of them pregnant.
Open gym is great fun and everyone loves it but only lasts an hour. That is not near long enough for the moms to catch up and the kids to be worn out. Luckily the rain looks like it is done, and even though we don’t have time to go to the original park we find a fun one close to home. We had towels in the car (we tried really hard to make the first plan work) that we used to dry the slides and basically everything else at the park off so the kids could play. Unluckily the before mentioned available restrooms were not used by the children and within minutes of arriving at the park, and emergency bathroom trip to a near by Walgreens was made, Once we returned it was smooth sailing for the next several hours and we had a great time with our friends. We are glad to have the McDonalds back in Kansas.
