Small Adventures with the Neals: Kansas City Trip

Our church history trip started off with us leaving late. Laura wanted out of the house by 6:00 a.m.… an admirable goal, but in getting ready for the trip, we went to bed pretty late. We decided it would be better for everyone if we waited until 8:00.
Now no trip starts well, unless there is at least one unhappy child… can you guess who it was?

Well, we got some of the kids together…. 3 out of 4 isn't bad.

Next stop was south Kansas City… 4 hours later. It was the home of President Truman. This was the farm where he worked 600 acres as a boy. That’s a lot of weeding, fencing, gardening, shoeing…. What a job!

A little more driving and we found the "Welcome to Missouri" center. It had maps, brochures, pamphlets, and all sorts of stuff. Just in its back yard were two (count 'em) two stadiums! It was awesome!

We decided to go from there to Robert's old mission area. It was in downtown Kansas City, only 10 minutes from Independence. The first place we found was the old church that he used to attend. It was a converted Jewish synogogue. The neighborhood was very, very friendly. There were people on the street who would stop traffic and talk if you were driving slow like we were.

Just down the street we found a building with a cool mural!

KC has such cool fountains. We couldn’t find a place to stop so we got these from the window as we went by.

Here is a very old church, built in 1800 something. We asked Nicole to jump out and see if the front door was open… it was. We parked across the street, fed the meter for 30 minutes and walked to the church. They locked the door on us! We just wanted to look around and we got locked out! They must not like company.

Here is Jared being a dare devil on the high wall. What you don't know is that he is wearing heelies…. You know, the shoes with roller skates in them… and we let him scale that wall…. We are bad parents!

Well, we fed the meter a little more and then went walking downtown.

Dad and Sarah standing by the "First Ammendment" memorial.

Kansas City is known for being the "City of Fountains" and boy, we saw them all over the place. This one was really cool, it had a very shallow pool at the bottom, and if we had let them, the kids would have been playing in it.

While walking downtown we looked in an alley way and found a tube running up and down the building. It connected to each floor. We decided it must have been a garbage chute. Jared and dad wanted to climb it…. We didn't!

Isn't there some prophecy about a yellow dog in Kansas City?

Laura saw this sign and cracked up. These two commodites don't seem to go together, but….

We decided to (finally) feed the kids. We wanted something that they would like. Something that would fill them up. Something cheap. Hey $4.49 for a pizza buffet fit the bill perfectly. Come on, we're on vacation!

We thought the kids would like to go to a Bass Pro Shop. They are full of big fish aquariums, stuffed animals, and glass elavators. What else could you want?

Jared and Sarah getting down from a rock over-looking the fish!

Tim Allen's Fish Tank

Jared decided to play elevator button pusher for about 20 minutes. It was so funny!

Sarah being silly in the elevator.

Dad wasn't feeling well. He got really dizzy and just needed to sit down for a few.

We made our way back to Independence. The Community of Christ church (formerly known as RLDS) made a temple.

The Church of Christ owns….. well…. a lot….this temple lot. They don't own much real estate in this part of town, but they did manage to buy the original temple lot.

Sarah sucking on a piece of grass across from the RLDS headquarters.

We went across the street to the LDS Visitors Center. It was way awesome! The mural of Christ has been replaced by a small Christus.

They had interactive things for the kids to play with that showed short movies on gospel topics.

We love Joseph Smith!

A globe with some of the different langauages of the Book of Mormon going around it.

A replica of an 1840's log cabin.

Later that night, when it was quiet, I (Robert) asked each person what they thought was the best thing of the day. Jared indicated "The cool bed" pictured here. (I think he might have been a little tired!)