This Week's Adventures

As I stated in the previous post, this week is spring break for the boys. The Kansas weather has been wonderful. First part of the week started out in the upper 70s and low 80s. The end of the week is ending in the mid 60s. We have had sunny skies and no wind (until today). Last Friday, Dustin took the day off and we took in a movie and dinner at Cheddar's. It was a first at that restaurant but won't be the last. It was delicious!! With the weather being so nice, the boys have been spending their time outside alot!! Thought about taking them to the zoo but glad I didn't as everyone else did. The zoo reported record attendance numbers on Tuesday (around 8,000 visitors). We instead road our bikes to the local park down the street and around the corner. We enjoyed riding around the park and taking a break on the swings. Saw that the city is building more playground equipment. Am excited to see when it is complete - more to offer to the kids in the neighborhood. The city just recently added new basketball courts since the beginning of the year.


Tuesday night, I attended BUNCO at the church. Was my first time. Have heard so much about this game called BUNCO and wanted to try it!! Loved it - will return next month and take a friend along. Was nice to get out of the house for a couple hours and unwind with others!!

Today, I drove the boys to Hutchinson. We visited the Kansas Underground Salt Museum. WOW!! WOW!! What an experience. I truly enjoyed it. I believe that Tyler and Austin did too but Owen wanted to run. How tempting it was to just let him go...oh, did I say that out loud? It is definitely a place I would like to return to. Enjoy the pictures, but they do not do justice.

Standing outside the museum, getting ready to go in.

Loading on the tram - we took a forty minute guided tour of the salt mine. Did you know that there is 68 miles of road in this salt mine - Unbelievable!!

We stopped at a demo pile and was able to pick out a piece of salt (baseball size or smaller) and/or fill a small bag with the "crumbs".

The salt mine is not only used for the mined salt (not table salt) but is used to store artifacts, records, etc. The temperature is always 68 degrees and the humidity fluctuates a few points but sits typically around 40%. Our tour guide stated that many of us from the Kansas and surrounding area very well may have our name on some piece of document sitting in the mine as we speak. Any medical or court records, yep - guess where they are stored. This picture is of the newspaper printed the day after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. It was in pretty good shape.



The Salt Museum is best known for the movies (films) and things used in the movies being stored there. This is just a sampling of what we saw. We were able to see the original costumes worn by the famous actors/actresses that wore them. Also, the middle picture shows a computer - yes that whole thing is a computer from 1970s and cost $240,000 (today's money) with only 64MB!! An iPod Nano with 8,000MB today only costs $230. Something amazing!! We saw the chocolate bars used in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and Dorothy II from our favorite movie "Twister".

Here the boys are "running" to the elevator. What a remarkable experience. I encourage you that if you are in the Wichita area - make time to see this!! I will be more than happy to drive you there and back!!

After the tour - we stopped in Yoder for lunch!! Hmmmmm!! A favorite for sure. Austin had lasagna (which looked delicious) and Tyler and Owen - well they had their normal - grilled cheese sandwich (owen), fries, and a corn dog (tyler). I had the country fried steak with mashed potatoes and green beans.


Had to get a banana cream pie to go and of course those famous Yoder cinnamon rolls!!
We lucked out...we got the last four cinnamon rolls for the day - good thing, Dustin would not have been happy if we came back home empty handed!!

So that has pretty much been our week. Tomorrow is a day full of laundry and cleaning house. And Dustin is taking Tyler and Austin on a surprise outing Sunday evening...WWE is coming to Koch Arena (WSU) and it is a live event leading upto WrestleMania. The boys will be so excited but it's all still hush hush.