School Day in KC

I just walked Marlena to the school bus at 8:30, along with Bella, just like I do with Marisa in Darien, though we walked Hayden and Halle to their school in October since they live too close for a school bus.  Nick heads off before 7:00, so he is up early and out the door before Marlena even gets up.  I am back to my routine of surfing the net and watching MSNBC, something I have not done for awhile because I usually listen to NPR at the lake.

Last night I went with Tom to his basketball game at the Raytown Baptist Church, a mega church with wonderful facilities, a great gym, a work out center, a coffee shop, and a mini restaurant, all attached to the huge church, one of the largest in KC I am told. The league seemed to be more of a reaching out, as I doubt if the players, mostly black, belonged to the church.  Tom's team was sponsored by USA-800 and was made up of his employees.  They were a combination of young black players and older, slower white guys who could shoot.  It was a different league in some ways, as it was definitely a 'church league.'  Before the tip off, the two teams gathered to say a prayer and at half time, the teams sat together and one player from each team addressed the gathered players, I assume about their life and Jesus or something like that.  I was too far away to know for sure, but it seemed that way.  The nice thing about it was their was less competition, more friendship between the teams, though they did not mind 'putting it to each other,' when given the chance.  Tom seemed to enjoy the exercise, running, doing some rebounding, but leaving the scoring to the younger set.  Before we went to the game, we all went to Buffalo Wings, Nick' favorite place.  We have been their before; it's more of a sports bar, with probably 15 tvs all playing various football games.  It was a good day for KC as the Chiefs beat Arizona fairly easily.  We ended the evening watching parts of the Music Awards, mostly the Black Eyed Peas and Pink.

Tom's getting home early today and we are going to head off to the Sprint Center late afternoon as he has tickets to a college basketball tournament.  At 6:30, Duke plays Marquette and at 8:30,  Kansas State plays Gonzaga, two really top flight games.  It will be the first time I will have seen a top ten college team in action.  Nick's going as well, so we will probably come home early as he has school tomorrow.

We just got back from an attempted hike at Longview Lake, a couple of miles from Tom's house.  We could not find the trails, walked a bit, then found out we were on the wrong side of the lake.  So, we stopped at a new shopping corner, near Longview Lake and college, bought a coffee, and drove over to the other side of the lake to see what was available.  There does seem to be some trails but lots of access seems closed down for the winter, which is silly because it would be a great place to walk, hike, or even cross country ski in the winter.  We measured how far it would be to walk up to the coffee shop, about 1.6 miles but a lot of ups and downs, a good work out to be sure.