51st birthday and Kansas City trip

Ok, I know, I should apologize again for getting behind on my blogging. But I won’t. It has been and still is a very very busy time of year at school and I will get back to it soon. At least I will try to get back to it more often. I won’t promise anything. Only 8 more days of school with kids there and 2 days of cleaning up and finishing up and then it is summer break! I am so looking forward to that. It seems sometimes the staff are more excited than the kids are. Unfortunately some of the kids don’t have good home lives to go home to and the thought of being stuck at home for over 2 months without their friends or any way to get away from it, makes them depressed. But then there are others who have been counting down the days almost since Christmas break was over. I do have mixed feelings because I have so much work to get done yet at school, and yet I want to catch up on my sleep and my reading and my housework too.

So what news can I catch you up on? April 30^th I left on a charter bus for Kansas City, MO with the high school band and vocal groups. We headed out at 5:30 AM on Thursday and got back at 5:30 PM on Sunday. I was asked to go as the nurse/chaperone, but I was also asked to pay my own way. I didn’t think that sounded quite fair since the other school employees going were going for free. So after six weeks of dickering, the superintendent agreed to pay for my trip. ½ hour later the vocal teacher told him I didn’t need the school’s money that another chaperone had cancelled and her trip was paid so I could use hers. Then 10 minutes later the band teacher asked if my daughter could go as a replacement chaperone and use the free trip. Communication? Hello? So the way it shook out, I went for free and I had to pay $200 for my daughter to go along as a chaperone. Everybody told me I was dumb to do that, but oh well, it is over and done with now. However, I don’t intend to do this again. I am getting too old I guess. The two new music teachers are younger than my sons and have a different philosophy than I have regarding behavior and respect and discipline.

Anyway, we did do some fun things in Kansas City. We visited the Truman Presidential Museum and Library. President Truman and his wife and daughter and grandson are all buried there in the garden. I learned a lot about his presidency and the different decisions he made that changed history. Did you know he was the president that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan? Did you know that he was the president who accepted Israel as a nation? It was very much a learning experience. If you’re ever in Independence, MO, I’d recommend a visit there. Then we went to a very elite upscale shopping region and my cousin Matthew and his wife Amber met my daughter and I at 810 Zone for supper. It was a sports bar and the food was awesome! We had Bleu Balls, an appetizer of little cordon bleu nuggets. Then we had BBQ for supper. Cassandra had pulled pork and I had beef brisket and they were both wonderful. Then she and I had hall duty until 3AM. That was my 51^st birthday.

The next day, Friday, May 1^st, we went to the Jazz Museum and the NLB Baseball Museum. They were both fascinating. In the jazz museum we saw a saxophone played by Charlie “The Bird” Parker, and one played by President Clinton. We also saw Louie Armstrong’s trumpet. That was a thrill as I LOVE jazz! The museum is on the corner of 18^th and Vine in downtown KC where jazz was born. We spent our afternoon at band and vocal clinics at the University of Missouri-KC. Then we went to Arthur Bryant’s original BBQ place for supper of chicken, ribs and ham with French fries and coleslaw and baked beans. Then we went back to 18^th and Vine and heard real jazz music performed in the Blue Room.

On Saturday, May 2^nd, we spent the day at Worlds of Fun. I rode the train and the carousel. Aren’t I brave? Then we had a picnic lunch and headed back to the hotel to get ready for going out to the dinner theater. We had a wonderful gourmet meal and then laughed through Jamie Farr’s production Don’t Dress for Dinner.

That night we had hall duty until 2AM. Sunday morning, May 3^rd, we got up and checked out of our motel and the buses headed back to Iowa. We stopped at Jordan Creek Mall in West Des Moines and then headed on home. It was mostly a pretty fun trip. I saw a lot of things I’d never find if I were to go there on my own probably. I’ll have to see if I can download some photos of our trip. My daughter downloaded them to facebook, but it is so windy our internet isn’t working right now anyway. So maybe I can add them later. Of course I can’t post this to my blog until the internet is back up either. Well, that’s my KC trip and my birthday.

As you can see, the internet is up and the photos are now included. Linda