Another Art Museum, The Nelson-Atkins, Then Fries, Shakes, Burgers, and Rings At Winsteads

Visiting Nelson-Atkins Museum Of Art in Kansas City

In The Hallowed Marble Halls 

Having Fun With Nick and Marlena At Nelson Atkins

I am up, enjoying the leisure of a Thanksgiving morning and it's just after 7:00.  Only Bella is up, like yesterday and I have just read my email, responded to Mac and Doc, looked at Facebook and the NYTimes and am ready to finish off my blog.  Right now it's overcast in Lee Summit, 25º but it's supposed to get sunny and warmer, in fact, the next three or four days look great, lots of sun.

Yesterday, we relaxed most of the morning after our drive the day before.  Evie prepped the turkey, dry brined it but mistakenly put three or four times the amount of salt on it and had to wipe most of it off when she realized her error an hour later.  I doubt if it will make a difference.  Mary went for a run, so we took care of Marlena and Nick slept in until 11:00.  Evie made eggs for us when Nick got up and we debated what to do as a family for the day and decided to drive into Kansas to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (not in the top 25 supposedly but still worthwhile).  We will have enough shopping over the next couple of days so we wanted to balance it out with something cultural.  A good idea.  It's an easy half hour drive from Lee Summit to downtown Kansas City.  As we were driving, Tom called, had just finished a meeting in Kansas City so he met us at the art museum which was great.  It's a top flight museum, perhaps not the quality or quantity of the Art Institute of Chicago, but well worth visiting.  It too has lots of great paintings by the Impressionists, the Monets, Van Gogh's, Cezanne's, and Renoirs, as well early European painters I enjoy like Boucher, David, Ingres, and they even had a Caravaggio.  We spent an hour and a half visiting each small room, with ten or fifteen paintings and again, we were allowed to take pictures. We finished with Contemporary Art which is always fun, lots of different kinds mediums and genres. They even had a Warhol, Rauschenberg, Pollock, and De Kooning.  What follow are the paintings that we most enjoyed.

Nick Questioning A Sculpture

Women IV-Willem de Kooning

Crow Call, Near The River- Keith Jacobshagen (Kansas Prairie)

Michaelangelo Merisi-Caravaggio

Winter Landscape-Zamboni

Poplars, Sunset at Eragny -  Camille Pissarro

Olive Orchard- Vincent Van Gogh

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View of Argenteuil- Claude Monet

After the art museum, with went to Winstead's, a tradition, the popular 40's and 50's drive in and diner in the downtown.  It has great circular pink ceiling lights, special Frosty's and cherry lime sodas.  We ordered the usual, fries, rings, burgers and  drinks, as the place kept filling up with the likes of us, people looking for a bit of 1950's nostalgia.  Nick is the one who likes the place, wanted to come back...it's tradition he said.  I am glad we did.  We had a great waitress, friendly, smiling and efficient, and a bus boy who struck up a conversation, wished us a happy Thanksgiving.   After our late lunch, Evie got the Costco bug and Mary saw there was one two miles away.  I guess Costco has a new strategy of bringing their stores into urban, downtown areas which is great for the people.  It was in the middle of downtown, crowded but not as crowded as others, and we bought our desserts for tonight, cheesecake and pumpkin pie, as well as other goodies.  Nick and I found cool black hoodies for twenty bucks, so now we can pretend we are Eminem.  We were home about 4:00, still full from our lunch so we put off dinner until at 7:00.

Winsteads, The First And Last KC Drive In

We relaxed, watched some TV and a couple of neighbors came over to play with Marlena.  About 6:30, Evie, Tom and Mary started prepping for dinner, salmon, spinach, rice and salad.  The salmon came from Costco and is always good.  We were hungry despite our late lunch, and the dinner was great, the salmon perfectly cooked which, for me, is always difficult.  We searched and searched for a movie that all of us would like, could not find one, so settled on the second Hunger Games movie, a bore and much like the first I thought but the kids liked it, for the second time of course.  It's hard to find a movie that's age appropriate for Marlena.  It had been a long day, so Evie and I went to bed at 10:15, while Nick and Tom stayed up and watched another movie called Neighbors.  I watched the first 15 minutes and that was enough to send me up to bed.