Paradise Park in Lee's Summit, MO

Grandparents having fun on their visit!

Paradise Park is one of our favorite places to go and spend a few hours, so much so that we bought an annual pass. They have two sections, one is for older kids and it has a foam factory, bumper cars, putt putt golf, and a few other attractions. We frequent the Child's Edutainment Center which is on the other side of the building. It's geared towards kiddos up to nine years old and since we have a two year old and a seven year old it's perfect for our little family. When you first enter the Edutainment Center there's a room with a ball pit, a fun tunnel system with two different size slides, and a construction zone that includes humongous plastic and wooden blocks as well as hard hats and safety vests to truly get into character. The ball pit has a dual purpose cleaning system, the kids get to put the balls into the target hole and then they whiz through the machine and pop out the top of the pit usually bonking the little ones on their noggins. Don't worry, it's not hard enough to hurt and they typically like getting bonked by balls falling from the sky. Once you've reconstructed the Leaning Tower of Pisa (at least all our towers are leaning) you can move on to the water play table. They do provide waterproof vests in case your little one likes to splash and swim with the toy sea creatures floating about. Just beside the water play area is a paint your own face station which my girls love! Not wanting to leave me out they always want to paint me too so I compromise and let them design my hand, that way if it "accidentally" gets washed off in the bathroom they usually understand. There's a soft play area for babies, a reading room that has a great selection of books and a train table, and an animal room filled with barns and lots of, well, animals. Our girls typically make a bee line for the pretend play area that houses a bank with a real vault and paper money, a "home", a pizzeria, and a grocery store with a healthy selection of food and two working (most of the time) registers. No pretend play area would be complete without dress up clothes so they even provide fun outfits for the kiddos to adorn themselves with while trying their hand at baking a pizza. Guess what? There's more! Outside has a sand pit, a fishing pond with magnet fish, a couple playhouses, a big rope dome to climb, and a mining station. The mining is an extra charge and you have to purchase the bags of sand/gems at the front desk. Once back inside there is Adventure Time that starts every two hours and is so. much. fun. It starts with Story Time, then the kiddos get to create art like Michelangelo, and after they finished their masterpiece they get to cook! Well it's not REALLY cooking but they do create awesome edible crafts. The lovely hosts do all the baking if the week's theme calls for a spider cookie or pizza face or whatever. If you are hungry after all that play you can order adult size food from the cafe. So that my friends is why Paradise Park is so fantabulous!!!

Dunn's Cider Mill, a Fabulous Fall Treat!

I can't believe that after four and a half years of living between 5-7 miles from this local gem this was our first trip! We met up with a friend who was in the know about this place and gave us insider knowledge reserved only for a select few. The girls just had to have a picture of their faces in the bushel of apples before we went inside and I'm so glad I obliged, they are the apples of my eye ; ) Upon opening the door you were smacked silly with a fragrant aroma of the hot cinnamon sugar dusted cider donuts; what I would give if I could have one right now. We waited in line as this was THE place to be  that morning and carefully chose several donuts and a hot cider as well as a cider slush. M-M-GOOD!! These really were the best cider donuts I've had, so tender and flavorful. The slight crunch of the cinnamon sugar crowned this cider donut experience in glory. Both ciders satisfied our thirst and washed down those beautiful rings of fried dough. Even though we are just beginning Spring I am longing for Fall so I can revisit this delightful little Kansas City treasure. 

millsite.homestead.com

Apple Picking at Cider Hill Orchards, KCK

Since our last attempt to pick apples in September about melted us from the heat we decided to wait until it cooled off to try it again. The day we picked was really too cold but since the weather doesn't have a thermostat we had to suck it up and realize without these apples Mama wouldn't be able to make a fabulous apple pie. We drove down the gravel path and met up with another friend who also wanted to make a pie filled with apples, after all, it makes for a sad pie to have no filling. So we braved the bitter cold and got bags from the bag lady and waited for our chauffeur to take us to the orchard. He arrived with a hay wagon so we hopped up and bundled together to shield our babes from the biting wind. It was a scenic ride past a pond and a bunch of trees and then we arrived at the particular trees they wanted us to pick from. I must say the apples we could choose from were of a smaller variety and were rather adorable. They definitely wouldn't make for easy peeling but I was smitten with how cute they were. We set out to pick a bushel and a peck of these tiny, juicy delights. Picasso and Princess Tiger Lily thoroughly enjoyed pulling the apples from the mother trees and taking bites out of each one. Princess Tiger Lily even had a taste of a couple rotten apples she picked up off the ground and promptly spit out, yuck! Once we were satisfied with our lot we waited for our carriage once again. We rode the bumpy ride back and when I was going to pay realized that I lost my card out amongst the apple trees. Oh the horrible gut wrenching feeling that came upon me. We were all chilled to the bone so my friend took the kids inside and bought them cider while I made the trek back to the orchard. I searched and searched but no luck. My lovely friend was kind enough to pay for my apples and we each loaded up our little ones in our heated vehicles. I left my contact info with the lady at the register hoping someone would find my card and return it. Once home we cancelled the card and requested a new one just in case someone terrible wanted to take advantage of my misfortune. I think my girls had their fill of apples that day, so much so they didn't care for a slice of that glorious pie hand crafted by yours truly. Oh well, that left more for me ; )

ciderhillfamilyorchard.com

Shatto Dairy Farm

The girls and I went on a field trip with a group of our friends to the Shatto Dairy Farm. You could smell it before you could see it. Well maybe it wasn't quite that odorous but it was definitely fragrant while touring some of the different areas. Could you believe they actually have live cows there?!!?? We met in the big gift store and sorted through all the toys and dairy products they offered. There were a few samples of the cheeses which were awesome but my favorite were the butters. Their honey butter was so creamy and not too sweet, it was perfect! Our tour guide wrangled everyone up and took us through the factory showing how they produce the milk and other products they sell. It was actually really interesting and the children thought it was very neat how they bottle the milk and bring the cows in to quickly and efficiently extract the milk. Gone are the days of the milk man milking by hand and delivering by truck, now are the days of big machines, quick production, and store bought milk. Some of the kids didn't realize milk actually came from cows first, not the store! Unfortunately our kids are living in a different age these days and are very disconnected from the source of the foods they eat. Thus we have farm tours to teach them about how real food is produced and where it comes from. We had the opportunity to milk a cow so each child tried their hand at this old fashioned skill. You should have seen some of their faces, priceless! We went back inside where the tastiest part of our tour was sampling all of the milk flavors. They have chocolate, strawberry, banana, cotton candy, root beer, coffee, orange cream, and I may be forgetting one or two. Their milks are just dreamy! What's better than cold, creamy, and flavorful milk? In my humble opinion only a piece of homemade chocolate cake could have made that taste test any better ; ) That concluded our tour and since my oldest Picasso wasn't feeling well and quickly getting whiny we were on our way home faster than Dom in a 10 second car to save me from getting furious. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone in the Kansas City area!!

shattomilk.com

Snow Day in Spring, WHAT?!??!?

Cheers for snow cream and hot chocolate!

Snow fluff 

Snowman snacks on a stick

Beautiful Princess Tiger Lily

Dolled up Picasso

Snowpocalypse '13

Since I am so uninspired by the 8+ inches of snow we had dumped on us last night I will share what we did during the last Snowpocalypse. We played outside for awhile but the snow was so deep that Princess Tiger Lily couldn't walk and her too big boots kept getting stuck in the depth of the white stuff. So she settled on eating the snow, apparently it tasted best when licked off her glove. I told Picasso to fill a bowl of clean snow and we will make a surprise in the kitchen. Once we had our fill of outdoor play we headed back inside where I stripped off the wet outer layers and warmed up. Finally dry and warm I told them we were going to make snow cream! I just added stevia until it was sweet enough and then mixed in some vanilla to taste and milk to make the right consistency. It still ended up like a snow ice milk more than ice cream but the girls were delighted that we had a fun treat. I promptly made some hot chocolate and we sat down to watch a show with our snack. The next day we didn't venture outside but stayed indoors and had a jam packed day. For breakfast I baked a dutch baby pancake which was fantastic! We then made snowman pops from bananas and other fruit accessories, mixed up "snow fluff" (shredded toilet paper with warm water and ivory soap, I just googled snow crafts and happened to have the stuff on hand), we had a crazy, loud, and rockin' dance party, and taking a cue from Emily Post we decided to act civilized and proper so I curled their hair, put on some makeup, and they dressed up as beautified princesses. Thankfully Daddy came home from work just in time to give me some relief and while they played together I made dinner. We were snowed in for a few more days and after all that I was depleted of creative ideas and we just stayed in our jammies and watched too much tv until the magical white powder that fell from the heavens mysteriously melted bringing joy and hope to all in our region.

Fanciful Friday @ Bloom Baking Company

A few weeks ago I decided that I need to set boundaries on how much sugar I give my girls (and myself) throughout the week. So I created Fanciful Friday and each week we get to go out and have a sweet treat. Last week we enjoyed cake pops from Starbucks and today we made the trek to the City Market which houses one of my very favorite bakeries, the Bloom Baking Co. They make everything from scratch and offer a delicious array of pastries, cakes, cupcakes, french macaroons, and bread. Be still my heart. Homemade bread slathered with creamy, salty butter is one of the best treats ever! Today they were sampling their foccacia, brioche (which they use to make their amazing bread pudding), a multi grain bread, and a white bread with sesame seeds on the top crust, mmmmm! After we each had a tiny taste of these homemade butter bearers we went inside to behold their sweeter selections. Princess Tiger Lily decided on an iced oatmeal cookie while Picasso debated for awhile. She finally chose a vanilla bean cupcake that had bright green frosting garnished with a delicate pink flower. I stuck with my favorite, the Bloomberry Cupcake. It's vanilla bean cake filled with berries and frosted with a vanilla marscapone frosting. Let me say that there is no one around that has such a delicious frosting as this. It's different than your standard buttercream and so light and fluffy without being overly sweet. It's so delightful I could eat a whole bowl with a spoon. That being said my other favorite bakery does have the best traditional buttercream around, but I'll post about that at a later date. The girls couldn't bear waiting to have their treats so I let them eat them in the van on the way back home. I was the patient one this time and enjoyed mine later : ) Until next week....

We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz Museum in Wamego, KS)

The weather forecast for Kansas City included snow even though it's officially Spring now so I wanted to get away from the powdery white flakes and see something green. Emerald green to be specific. So we followed the yellow brick road (in our case Hwy 70) to a little Kansas town called Wamego. This adorable munchkin sized village houses the Oz Museum which holds the largest collection of Wizard of Oz memorabilia. We first made a stop next door to Toto's Tacoz and ate lunch. The girls had munchkin tacos and I had a Toto taco, which pleased our palates and filled our bellies. Thankfully we didn't have to eat worm filled apples like the Tin Man and Dorothy did on their journey to see the Wizard, ewww! We stepped inside the museum and it felt like we took a hot air balloon ride to a magical land. You have to walk through the gift store which had no lack of Oz related mementos to purchase and then we entered Oz. There was all kinds of movie trinkets and autographed pictures and replicas of each character. We sat down in the theater and watched the end of the Wizard of Oz movie and then continued our visit to the Emerald City. Although I couldn't look at each and every piece since Princess Tiger Lily was running around like a whirling tornado, it was a really neat experience and it took me back to my childhood. The Wizard of Oz was one of my very favorite movies and it warmed my heart to share it with my girls, even though Picasso hasn't seen the entire film yet. Before we left we drove around the square and saw this old Dutch mill and a few little prairie bldgs. We clicked our heels together and chanted "There's no place like home, there's no place like home" and we magically were taken back to Kansas City via the gold Odyssey. The End. 

ozmuseum.com