Food, Fun, and not Fighting (in that order)

This is the weekend that we have designated to be our FF&nF weekend, where we take a trip to anywhere, sometimes with friends, sometimes without, find awesome food, hang out, and you know; not fight. Not that we spend a lot of time fighting, but I want to make for sure that we have a time and place that Wifey and I can connect and just be together without interruption. It is funny how many times you can be interrupted with the same question when you have 4 kids. You wouldn't think more than 4, right? Wrong. But the irritation level increases each time you get asked "Daddy, can we watch a Movie?", until usually the last one comes in and it FEELS like you have been asked 12 times, and the poor little fella gets unloaded on, when in truth it may have been the first time he asked anything.

Anyway, I have spent the last two weeks working on making things run smoothly at work so that I can take 2 days off for a long weekend in KC with my little wifey. We are packed and ready to go; the kids are packed, and bouncing off the walls. I walk outside and as the sun comes up, I see it is the first hard frost of the year. How sweet is it that I actually get to be here for this event, instead of at work for hours before anyone notices that it happened; it is much less cool at my office. Anyway, after we boys remove shirts and walk around in this amazing reflecting crystally wonderland, we finish hugging/kissing/I-love-you-ing-the-kids/loading and shove off. In my mind this Frost is momentous, foretelling good things to come for our weekend.

We kick off our week end of Food, Fun and not Fighting with a stop in Topeka at the TupTimThai restaurant; one of my favorite Thai places. I love me some Thai Red Curry and peanut sauce! I get the "Hot" rather than the "Thai Hot" and then I can add my own spicy pepper oils, red peppers, etc off of their condiment tray. I like to get it just right, where I can just barely stand it; then I wolf it down quickly, because it tastes SOO good, and it hurts SOO bad if you stop. Then I kick back and get "buzzed" as the endorphins kick in. I know, its pretty weird if you aren't a spicy food aficionado, but you know what? I've heard that some people go out and RUN for several miles in order to get their endorphin fix, and that seems pretty crazy to me!

Part of the fun of this trip is that we are doing it on the cheap. I use my Citi Credit Card quite a bit for my work related purchases, so I accumulate a lot of reward points. I can use those for flights (which I don't need to get to KC), Hotels, and gift cards for various things. I booked the hotel in the plaza, and Wifey got online and found several restaurants that we could use reward points for, so we don't have to use any money out of pocket. Coupled with the fact that I am picking up a trailer east of KC Monday in order to save 300.00 shipping, I feel pretty darned good about the amount of money coming out of my pocket for this trip.

Friday night we went to a "Authentic Southern Brazilian Steakhouse" called Fogo de Choa where you go help yourself to the salad bar (not bad) but the real deal is they have the chefs dressed in Brazilian Cowboy (Gauchos? I think) garb with great hunks of meat on skewers wandering around each with one of 15 different styles of meat that they will carve off of their roast and onto your plate. These guys seem as if they are desperate to get rid of the awful burden of these chunks of meat and gladly express their appreciation of your help in getting rid of it. My favorite was by far the lamb; and the chef was so pleased that he had someone that would relieve him of his burden every time he walked by. You could really tell I was his favorite customer. I really broke some personal rules of eating at this place; I quite overate. We have this thing about eating; we love food, not eating. It kind of makes a difference, if you know what I mean; it keeps me from ballooning. But there are a few things that I just do not have access to, but lamb is just so expensive, even unprepared, and most of the time the cooks don't know what they are doing and it "ain't for eating" by the time they get it done. Which is why most of the time people say they don't like lamb. Don't blame the lamb! Look at their little lamby eyes, they just want you to eat and enjoy it!

I am posting from Hotel Lounge computer at 4:00 (I get strange looks from staff) and smart phone, so I will have to figure out how to post some actual camera pictures later. Saturday we will go to the City Market, a farmer's market kind of place that had coffee shops, bakeries, grills, middle eastern food, and big barrels of spices for sale, cheap. We went last year, but it was during the week and they weren't open, we are headed back!

Brynn always wanted a room that had a balcony that we could actually go out onto:

Here is our view from our balcony. I had to call the hotel staff prior to trip and ask them if they had a room on the top floor that had balcony access with a view of a construction project; they were very helpful!