The Edwards and Hoopers head to Branson!

So the best description we heard about Branson, MO is that it is the old people, non-gambling, christian version of Vegas. hehe kinda true. We had a good time though. While we were there we saw a ventriloquist/magician act (of which Bruce got to be the magician's assistant for intermission, lol). Probably more exciting though was the Chinese acrobats. Check out how tall Bruce looks compared to the acrobats!

They were fantastic; spinning 5 plates at once while doing balancing tricks, sending themselves flying rear end first through tiny rings that are 5' in the air and holding eachother up in contortionist poses while balancing on one arm...incredible things like that.

While we were there we saw a great fireworks show, Hayden got to see the inside of a fire truck and a lot of trucks (even a helicopter and a dinosaur!!), we caught up on our Hand and Foot, and we ate tons of frozen custard mmm!

Now we're just waitin' for the Hoopers to come visit KC so we can have a card game rematch!

St Louis Zoo

For Memorial Day weekend, we went to St Louis to see our friends Tyler and Andrea Hooper. Since we love the zoo and St Louis has (arguably) the best zoo in the US, we decided to go visit. With 3 blogs about zoos in the past 6 months, it seems a theme is emerging.

The complete collection of St Louis zoo photos is here.

Tyler, Andrea, Christie, Bruce

Hayden in front

us, in front of the elephants

Andrea with Hayden

Have you ever seen a tiger in the water before?

We were literally six inches from this hippopottamus, or hippo-thomas as Hayden calls it. There was a large glass wall that allowed us to look into the water where the hippos were swimming/running. This guy kept turing around right in front of us and he usually knocked his nose into the glass!

Here are some elephants playing in the water to cool down. They even used the water fall to bathe themselves. In the picture, the baby elephant is squirting water from his trunk. He had a hard time staying up in the deep water. In fact, he sometimes stood at the bottom of the pool and just raised his trunk out of the water to breathe.

Kansas City Zoo

Our first outing (other than Target and Walmart) was to the Kansas City Zoo. In fact, we became members of the zoo (read: season pass holders). Some of our favorite photos are below. The complete collection is here.

Meerkat

Serval

I had never even heard of this before!

Elephant

Our Apartment in Kansas City

Since everyone is dying to find out what our apartment looks like, here it is! (What? You weren't dying to find out?)

The outside of our building.

A simple video tour

Santa Chewing on a Rawhide Stick

The *what* LDS Church?

I have heard of the RLDS (Reorganized LDS) Church, but they became the Community of Christ about ten years ago.  It turns out there is a "Remnant" LDS Church.  We drove past this building while looking at model homes.  I doubt there are many outside of the Kansas City/Independence, MO area.

 

Welcome to Kansas City

On May 4, this was our view as we pulled into Kansas City, Missouri about a week before Bruce's internship at Hallmark began.  It turns out that the city borders Kansas City, Kansas and we only live two blocks from the state border.