no time for landscaping? no problem.

During our (short! for me because I had to get back to start my internship) Christmas break, we headed up to KC. The impetus was a gathering of the bridesmaids for my brother and Emily's wedding so we could all try on dresses, which was a fun time! We also were able to be there for longer and spend some time with Mark and Emily. Exciting for me -- not only because BBQ is scarce where we live, but largely because this is the best BBQ I've ever had -- we were able to make it to Oklahoma Joe's for supper. Nom nom nom.


Then we decided to be Christmas-y and drive around looking at Christmas decorations. Emily guided us to an famous decoration stop in the KC area:



The yard on all four sides of the house was packed full of inflatables...plus some on the roof and some suspended overhead in the yard! In some places, only small walkways allowed you to get through. They were also projecting a Christmas movie onto a large screen above their garage and shooting out really cool fake snow from the top of the house. What are you going to do but take pictures among the crazy?!


Really, though, the project was charitable too -- I think you could adopt an inflatable (or something), and the money went to an organization (like a children's leukemia foundation??).

While we were there, a limo pulled up and let out a bunch of people who got out and looked at the inflatables. We figured this was a guided Christmas decorations tour, so we moved into stalker mode and waited for them to get back in the limo so we could follow them around town and see all of the good decorations without paying for it. Oops, it turned out we really were stalkers -- the inflatables must have been the finale of the decorations tour because we ended up just following them back to their house...

So we went back to Mark's place, and he and Emily found a "best of KC" tour that we could follow. And what's more Christmas-y than looking at lights while drinking hot chocolate? Brian and I were wowed by the machine at the gas station that was solely for shooting whipped cream into your drinks. We found some pretty cool houses, and I especially enjoyed the ones set to music.