More about Exploration Place

I was having troubles uploading pictures the other day. So, instead of going back to add them, I'll just new post them.

Here are some pictures from Mom, Maria's, and my trip to Exploration Place in Wichita!

We all tried this little maze thing. It was pretty hard. Mom did best.


This was awesome. It's a bunch of floor tiles and you need to make it from the center of the bottom row to the middle of the board. Rules are, when you step on a new tile, you have a choice. Follow that arrow's direction or ignore the arrow and keep in the same direction you were headed. We spent a while working on it. Maria finally finished it.


Here is Maria and I riding some medieval horses near the keep.


And Mom and I in a tornado chamber.


And Maria in a baby tornado.


There was also a whole room with logic puzzles and a sweet wind wall. However, I didn't get any pictures that are really good of that. So, I'll just say "It was awesome!"

Memorial Day Weekend

This last weekend was really great. Friday night Shannon and I drove to Wichita for another graduation party for Maria. We got to see Mom, Jayme, Charles, Nikki, Maria, Cody, a bunch of people I don't know very well, Michelle, and all the doggies!


I'll point out that Jayme has lost a lot of weight. She looks great! Not to mention that Nikki just gets cuter with age. Kinda like a wine.


Saturday, Michelle and Shannon drove up to Kansas City to meet up with Newgen, Jenette, Chris, and Andrea. They had some fun of their own, but I stayed in Wichita with Mom and Maria. Jayme, Charles, and Nikki headed to Oklahoma for a wedding for Charles' cousin.

On Saturday, Maria, Mom, and I went to Exploration Place. It was pretty awesome. They had some fun maze displays out, a neat whale exhibit, a really groovy wind wall, and a bunch of other entertaining things. It was a good time. Then we went to eat somewhere not bad, but not spectacular. We headed back to Moms, and basically just chilled. And by chilled I mean, ate some tiramisu and watched some movies on TV.

Sunday, Mom, Maria, and I headed to the Sedgwick County Zoo. That was pretty cool too! It cost more than the Tulsa zoo, but it is nicer also. So, worth it. They had a bunch of animals and everything was well kept and nice. We spent a good chunk of time there, then got hot and ate at Uptown Bistro. After that, we headed back to Mom's and met up with Jayme and Charles for dinner when they returned to Wichita.

After dinner, we all went to the Keeper of the Plains and took Atari and Hendrix. Oh, Atari is pretty large. Kinda like sausage dog. :)

That was a neat place. They have fire, but we weren't there at the right time. There was Indian music playing and for some reason it confused Nikki a good bit. She kept looking around for it. When I finally found a speaker, she kinda of tried to grab the music. Odd.

Monday was my last day in Wichita. Maria, Jayme, Mom, and I went to the mall to look at prom dresses for wedding dress ideas, then we went to David's Bridal and tried on the real things. Fun. There were a lot of really nice dresses. Jay found one that she liked enough for us to make! So after David's Bridal, which Maria had to leave early from, we met up with Charles and Nikki and looked at JoAnn's for a pattern and some fabric.

To finish off my trip, we had a good ol' BBQ at Mom's with Charles' parents, Sandra and Charles. There was yummy corn and limeades and hamburgers, and homemade french fries, and salad, and absolutely delicous watermelon.

I drove back to Tulsa all by my lonesome and was soon joined at home by Shannon and Michelle.

I don't get many chances to spend with Mom and Maria and Jayme. So it was a nice weekend to be able to spend quality time with all of them. :)

11 Years

It's been that long that Rhonda and company has had a graduation to go to. It started in 1998 with Shannon from high school and goes until this year with my sister Maria from college. That is where I was this weekend too.

We drove up through a pretty storm and I had a really nice time with all sorts of family members.

The Castle at Muskogee

Last weekend Chris and Jenette came down. We went to the renaissance festival at the Castle of Muskogee. It wasn't as big as the KC Ren Fest, but it was pretty good. There were lots of people in costume, not us though. They had good prices on goods at most of the vendors. There was this one guy selling real chain mail armor for affordable prices.

I've been to the KC Ren Fest a few years now and one of the neatest things about the OK Ren Fest was that it felt like you went back to the right time, but just a differenct city. Similar activities and goods were all over, but people dressed different and it looked different.

Another one of the neatest things at the OK Ren Fest was their Enchanted Walkway. It was super sweet and I wish I had it! Here's a bunch of pictures of it.


It did renew my desire to sew. Now I need to get the fabric from Rhonda and get moving on that. Also fabric (and a pattern) for Jayme's wedding dress. And, what the heck, Mom I'll sew you up a renfest costume too!

Then on Sunday we ate at Cafe Ted's. There was a 55 minute wait so we went on a walk. There is an alge/pond/swamp behind there and so we walked around. I found a HUGE spider in a hole. The hole is probably 1.5-2 inches in diameter. That means the spider is about that big too! If you zoom in on the picture below you can see him in the hole. Creepy.

Also along this walk we found the a sweet playground. There was a moat around it. But we jumped over it and then when we were leaving, we saw a sign that said it was for the residents of Bricktown. But that isn't before we played with this Spinner Bowl.

Keeping My Busy

I've got the sew-bug again. I don't know what causes it. But there are just times when all I want to do is stitch something up. (This part is now irrelevant...There are pictures to go with this post, but they are currently trapped in my camera. So, I'll free them later.)



This weekend I remembered that I received a book from Newgen and Andrea for Christmas last year, The Tudor Tailor. So I decided I'd make something from it and see how it went. Well, I made the top to a fitted Elizabethan gown with paned sleeves. It was a lot of work, but looks awesome. The size of the patterns as-is is a tad bit small on me, but pretty darn close. I didn't make the skirt, because originally I was just playing around. But it came our really good and now I want to make the bottom skirt part for it. However, I don't have enough of the fabric, so I'll need to use something else. That something else won't be free.

I also found a pattern that could work really well for Rhonda's dress. So, I'll have to try that out and see what she thinks.

Plus I finished my stained glass piece for when work releases the new version of our software. Kind of a gift to our company, I suppose.


Oh, and I finished painting my Halfling BloodBowl team, 12 little guys and a treeman. Sweet. However, during the paint-scapades I spilt a good amount of red paint on our carpet. OMG, that sucked! Shannon and I spent a good 30 minutes scrubbing it out. Now you really can't tell, and it was bad! The secret, Spray 'n Wash Dual Power. Just be sure to get it all out of the carpet. Also, we recently purchased our first bottle of carpet cleaner.