Great Weekend!

Ok, this weekend completely made up for last weekend.

Nothing can change the fact that my feelings were hurt and I was disappointed, but this weekend way the universe's way of making it up to me.

Started Friday when the ass hat actually showed up and picked up the boys when he said he would. Sad, I know that this mundane seeming thing is cause for applause. But it is and he did. The kids were packed off with hugs kisses and assurances that there would be fishing, games and spoilage going on.

Friday evening a friend of mine came over and we watched a movie and talked and just had a nice adult evening. He left early to meet up with another friend of his and I was fixing to go to bed when I get a text.

My friend M saying she needs to get out of pittsburg or she's going to go nuts. She's taking her kids to Kansas City for the weekend and wants to know if I want to come along. All I have to cover is my own food.

I hesitate a minute, remember what I had planned to do this weekend, and decided that getting the heck outta dodge was an excellent idea.

So I agreed and we left Saturday morning. She'd found an inexpensive but really nice hotel. I slept on the hide a bed in the living room part, she and the kids were in the bedroom part. Saturday we went to Crown Center, its an upscale shopping center, but there's also neat stuff to just look at. A fountain that shoots out of the very sidewalk that kids are allowed to play in, the Hallmark corporate headquarters with a visitor's center and Kaleidiscope, both free and full of freebies (the three story store convinced me that I need a bigger income or less expensive tastes). In the shopping center was a dinosaur exhibit and we ate at this place that delivers your food on a little train.

We left when the shops started closing and kicked us out. Picked up some simple groceries on the way back to the hotel, and spent the evening watching movies and snacking (I ate so much junk food is the only problem with the whole trip).

Got up sunday and went to the KC zoo. First let me say that I am not a huge fan of zoos, but I was with M and her kids and they wanted to go. That being said, the Kansas City zoo sucks. half the exhibits were closed for renovations, and the ones that were open were dirty and stank, well tended animal pens should not reek. The zoo is also set up so that you can't start in one direction, make a big circle and mange to see everything and come back to where you started. Instead it is set up so that you have to walk past three rides, four restaurants and a gift shop to get to the animals, then once you have seen everything on that end, you have to walk back past what you have already seen and all the money traps to get to the other side.

M's kiddos are 4 and 6, and don't have much stamina for walking all day to start with, add having to look at empty exhibits and walk past things they had already seen, and you can see how they would loose patience with the activity. We got there at 10, and left at a little after 1, so they did pretty good. I was ready to go home when we left.

Got back to town around four, just enough time to relax a little before getting my boys from their dad. Last time I sent them they came back with shoes ruined from being in pond water and hiking in them wet, this time he at least ran them through the wash. I think I'm gonna designate a set of shoes "dad's house shoes" though, because he doesn't keep them out of the water and that isn't good for shoes that kids wear everyday.

I am definitely going to take my kids up to crown center one of these days. M and I also talked about organizing a two family camping trip this summer.

So, very very fun weekend.

I needed it.