Wild Wichita Weekend

Our Memorial Day Weekend was extra memorable this year due to a visit from our friends Whitney and Chris Zeiler from Kansas City. Whitney and I go back to our short semester freshman year at the University of Missouri -- one short, but very long, semester of living in the same dorm at the edge of campus (with NO DINING HALL), avoiding sorority obligations, and handling one roommate issue after another. We knew we were going to be life-long friends when we discovered we both wanted to be the next Mrs. Harry Connick Jr. and were more interested in watching "Dirty Dancing" at 3 a.m. than attending a Kappa Delta camp out. Fourteen years later ... here we were in Wichita with our husbands and Whitney's two kids, Brady (6) and Addison (3), with a third on the way. The last time they were here, Brady was just two and was content playing with Zoe's dog toys and dancing to Craig's guitar playing. This time around, his taste in entertainment had matured.

We started out the weekend with a trip back to the old west -- Cowtown. We saw cowboys, farm cats, a blacksmith and a bank robbery. I think the highlights were the swing and the newspaper press where Brady got to make his own bookmark.

The next day we took a trip to our modern day Zoo. If you haven't been to the Sedgwick County Zoo, we highly recommend it. Every time we go we ask ourselves, "This is in Wichita, Kansas?" Addison seemed to enjoy her first-ever zoo trip and Brady couldn't see the elephants soon enough.

When we weren't running all around town, we played at the house (as much as you can play at a house where the newest "toy" is a battery-powered mower), watched movies (is it sad that the kids had seen the original "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and some of the adults hadn't?), and Brady kicked his dad's butt at the Wii. Seriously, you should see this kid's right hook.