Basketball, Soccer and Dinner at Jean's Home

Kite Flight Festival at Longview College

Half Time at Nick's Soccer Game

Dinner at Nick and Jake's 

Tom and Mary

Relaxing at the Kite Festival

Crowds at Kite Festival

Entrance to Kite Festival

Another quiet morning in Lee Summit, as it's only me and Bella, the dog up at 7:00.  It looks like a nice day, 46 degrees right now, perhaps a bit cooler than yesterday with a high in the mid 50's, again a good day for being out side, watching more games.

We had a very busy day yesterday; fortunately, it was a beautiful day to be outside.  Early morning, we did some shopping as Evie wanted to hit TJ Maxx for a few minutes.  That took about a half hour, then we stopped at Eddie Bauer and Bed, Bath and Beyond as well.  Around noon, we headed just up the road to Longview College's campus, where they were having a Kite Festival.  As you can see from the pictures it was well attended and there were lots of kites,flown by all ages, as well as food stands to attract the multitudes.  We walked around for about 15 minutes, then settled down in the shade beneath a tree and watched the action, the kites struggling to fly as the wind was not very cooperative and the milling crowds.  There were areas set aside for the professional kite fliers, with the huge kites, then areas for kids and amateurs, so all sorts of kites were in the air.  We stayed for about an hour but had to get home because Marlena had a soccer game at 3:00 and Nick at 5:00, about 45 minutes away from Marlena's game, in Overland Park, Kansas.  Marlena's game was in the Lee Summit soccer complex of 17 fields and it was hard to find a place to park so many games were going on.  It was pleasant, even hot out as we watched her play and though her team lost, she was named player of the game.  She has improved so much since last year, knows the game better and can control the ball.  It's fun to see her enjoying sports, running like the wind, up and down the field, developing her endurance.  After her game, we raced over to Kansas, making it just in time to see Nick's game start.  His team is an elite Kansas City Soccer team, so they were very skilled, aggressive and entertaining to watch, replete with obnoxious fans and a red card.  Nick's team played well, dominated the game and were ahead until the last 10 seconds when the other team scored a goal to tie the game, very disappointing for Nick's team but because of the red card, they played the entire second half with only ten players.

We then went out to dinner at a very popular spot in Overland Park called Nick and Jakes; we had to sit at the bar waiting for our table so I ended up talking to a guy who was a huge soccer fan.  He played college soccer back in the 60's at UConn and his son played at Marquette.  He talked about how amazing the soccer complex was in Overland Park, the best, according to his son, in the world.  We had great dinners, mine the best of course, a rack of ribs big enough to feed the entire table, which it did because I could only eat half.  We got home about 9:30, in time to watch a couple more episodes of 24 on Netflix, then off to bed

Today, we head over to Jean's, Evie's sister for an early dinner, then Marlena has softball practice at 2:00, Nick a basketball game at 5:00 and another soccer game in Kansas at 7:00.  That boy will be tired by the time he returns home at 9:00 and so will I despite not having played at minute, just sat and watched.